Contents
- From
Kim Kelley
Online
Databases- What's New!
Hot
Sites
For
Your Information...
Faculty
Corner
- ILS
Hours and Locations
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From
Kim Kelley
Associate Provost,
Information and Library Services
As the information world continues to change and develop, ILS staff
are at the forefront of recognizing the need for information literacy
instruction, and designing innovative programs to meet this need.
Our instructional programs enjoyed remarkable success this spring,
and we'd like to share some exciting news about them.
Award for LIBS 150
In recognition of the design and successful implementation of UMUC's
LIBS 150, The Maryland Distance Learning Association awarded LIBS
150 its Best Distance Learning Course Award for 2001-2002. In an article
that focuses on the course objectives and plagiarism prevention, The
Chronicle of Higher Education featured LIBS 150 in its Distance
Education Section on May 17, 2002.
LIBS 150, Information Literacy and Research Methods, debuted this
spring with 18 classes and almost 1800 students. This one-credit
course for UMUC undergraduates emphasizes proficiency in the research
process, selecting and evaluating research materials, performing
effective searches, and correctly citing resources to avoid plagiarism.
It is required for undergraduate students in the first fifteen hours
of their studies at UMUC.
The reaction of most of the students who took the course was very
positive. In general students liked the step-by-step approach to
research and felt that what they learned would be very useful in
the rest of their courses. Many said they applied what they learned
in their other courses this semester. Students nearing the end of
their studies said they wished they had been able to take the course
earlier because they hadn't realized the vast range of resources
to which they had access as UMUC students.
The Peck Virtual Library Classroom
The Peck Virtual Library Classroom (VLIB 101) also got off to a
successful start with more than 1,200 students rostered into two
sections of this free online classroom in WebTycho that offers tutorials
and exercises to help students master the research process. As the
classroom grows, ILS staff will develop more materials and tutorials
and post them in the Conferences area of the classroom. To roster
into the classroom, follow these instructions.
Library Instruction in the Classroom
As more and more information becomes available online, ILS information
professionals are visiting classes both face-to-face and online
to help students learn to retrieve and evaluate that information
and to assist them with library-related assignments that incorporate
information literacy. This spring librarians visited nearly 40 classes
and worked with faculty to provide students with the information
and assistance they needed to complete their research projects successfully.
Online
Databases
What's New!
- ScienceDirect
Earlier this spring ILS added ScienceDirect, an extensive multi-disciplinary
database, to MdUSA. It provides full text access to more than
1.9 million articles in journals published by Elsevier Science
as well as to articles in related secondary databases. Coverage
includes the biological, agricultural, chemical, physical, mathematical,
and medical sciences as well as social sciences, such as psychology,
education, and history, management, and arts and humanities.
In May ScienceDirect added backfiles of mathematics journals
with titles dating back to 1962.
- JSTOR
Additional journals in the arts and humanities and business
collections have been added to this archival database of journals
covering a variety of topic areas and in some cases dating back
to 1900.
Look for the link to the following specialized databases, two in
education, and one that provides information about military issues,
history, policy, and news, under NEW DATABASES
next to the MdUSA logo on the MdUSA
login page.
- Primary Search--This database is designed specifically
for elementary school libraries and contains full text for more
than 50 popular, elementary school magazines and elementary school
reference materials.
- MAS Ultra: School Edition--This database is designed
specifically for high school libraries and contains full text
for more than 460 popular, high school magazines. It also includes
biographies, almost 60,000 primary source documents, and reference
works.
- Military FullTEXT--This current news database offers
a thorough collection of military titles, trade publications,
and newsweeklies as well as pamphlets. Over half of the articles
are full text.
The following featured databases will arrive new this Summer. Look
for them soon in MdUSA or on the MdUSA
login page under NEW DATABASES
next to the MdUSA logo.
- Current Issues Universe - offers in-house publications
on current issues from government sources, academic institutions,
as well as business and industry sources.
- Facts on File Curriculum Resource Centers, K-5 and 6-12
- these databases feature curriculum-related handouts, conveniently
organized by grade level, K-5 or 6-12, for those in the education
programs who want to supplement their teaching materials.
- Grove Dictionary of Music - offers more than 3,000 sounds,
illustrations, and articles related to the music field.
- History Resource Center, U.S. and Modern World - provides
full text historical documents on U.S. and 20th century world
history topics.
- Proquest Computing - contains top computing journals
in full text for research on subjects such as database design,
software development, Web commerce, LANs, WANs, Intranets, and
the Internet.
- PCI Full Text - Index to the full text of periodicals
in the humanities and social sciences, from their first issues
to 1995.
Hot
Sites...Search Engines!!!
This issue we're highlighting some of the newer Web search tools.
While Google is a great tool for mining the content of the Web,
you may want to check out some of these others:
AllTheWeb
Powered by FAST (Fast Searching & Transfer) this well-organized
interface is your gateway to a powerful Web search tool. The site
is organized for searching by type of file, such as photos or videos,
and particular news sources. For more relevant search results, check
off the box to search your keywords as an exact phrase.
Teoma
This unique search engine organizes Web sites into a "community"
of sites on similar topics, then uses Subject-Specific PopularitySM
to rank the search results. This search engine ranks search results
on relevant sites that link to the pages within these subject communities.
Teoma consults subject experts to determine the best answer to a
search and thus provides a more authoritative answer than search
engines like Google that rank pages by popularity.
To keep up with the latest news in Web search engines, visit Greg
Notess's Search Engine
Showdown.
For
Your Information...
New Subject Guides
To supplement our instructional programs, ILS is continuing to
develop subject and research guides to help you search successfully
and proficiently for information. There are now more than 30 guides
in a variety of disciplines under Subject Guides on the ILS Home
Page (www.umuc.edu/library). New guides include:
We have also developed a Guide
to General Academic Research that can be found both in the Peck
Virtual Library Classroom in WebTycho and the Library Handbook on
the ILS Web site.
Database Searching Tips
Confused about how to search effectively in MdUSA? Beginning with
this issue, we are going to provide search tips as an ongoing feature.
We'd like to start with how to use the "within" operator
to make your searches more precise.
- Improve your search results with "WITHIN"
With so much information available in the approximately 100
databases in MdUSA, an effective search strategy can save time
and frustration.
When you enter your search terms separated with the operator
AND, your terms may appear anywhere throughout the article.
Using the operator "within" lets you determine where
your terms appear in the results. For example:
In Business Source Premier:
accounting w2 principles
This search will look for records where the word accounting appears
within two words of principles.
In Academic Universe / Legal:
contract w/5 (breach or failure)
This search looks for the word contact within 5 words of breach
or failure.
Notice that in the syntax of some databases the letter w is used
with a slash (w/), while others omit the slash. Check the online
help information for the database you are using to find the correct
format.
Faculty
Corner
Plagiarism Detection and Prevention
UMUC is committed to helping ensure quality learning outcomes through
academic integrity. To that end ILS now has an institutional account
with a plagiarism detection service called TurnItIn. Faculty can
use the online tool to check their students' written assignments
for instances of plagiarism. Log on to the TurnItIn
Web site, create a personal profile, and join the UMUC account
for turning in assignments and generating reports on the originality
of the work submitted.
To join the UMUC account, please contact Neal Pomea at npomea@umuc.edu.
For a more comprehensive description of academic integrity issues
and approaches to plagiarism, see Plagiarism.org.
Libs 150 for Faculty
This summer UMUC will pilot LIBS 150 for Faculty, which will mirror
LIBS 150 for students. This course, taught by Kim Kelley and Gloria
Orr, will begin at the start of the summer term and continue for
7 weeks. Enrollment is limited to 100 faculty members. Faculty will
receive a pass/fail for all assignments; no letter grades will be
given. If a faculty member completes the assignment, that is sufficient.
If the faculty member completes the entire course within the 7 week
period, s/he will receive a certificate of completion. At the end
of the course faculty will be asked to provide feedback and their
opinion of the course in general.
The class is now full. Stay tuned for offerings in fall 2002 or
spring 2003.
ILS
Hours and Locations
 Need
to find us? Please visit Hours
and Locations for more information.
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