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
24-Hour Phone Service Coming July 6th!
Round-the-clock chat and e-mail reference have been such a
tremendous success that ILS will be offering 24-hour phone reference
assistance starting July 6th. Click on Ask
a Question on the ILS Web page for information on how to
access this new service. Once phone service begins, obtaining
reference service whenever you need it will be as easy as picking
up a phone and receiving service 24 hours a day. Please note,
we recommend that overseas students and faculty continue to
use chat and e-mail as these two methods offer the least expensive
options for contacting ILS staff.
Database Updates for Improved Access to Important Business,
Company, and Industry Information!
One area where it is consistently difficult to access current,
reliable information is business and industry, particularly
industry trends that can be used for marketing forecasts. Much
of this information is competitive and proprietary and is often
not offered in one source, such as a library database. ILS has
been continually looking for ways to improve your access to
this type of information. This spring we've made some exciting
additions to our databases that should significantly increase
your abilities to access this type of information.
- Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) Country Reports
EIU Country Reports, a significant addition to our EIU
databases (EIU Viewswire and EIU Executive Briefing), provides
ten comprehensive quarterly analyses and forecasts of the
political, economic and business environment for Canada,
Chile, China, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Ireland, Mexico,
North Korea, and South Africa. Included in each country
report is a detailed review and analysis of political and
economic events, a compilation of the latest economic indicators,
and a 12-24 month political outlook and economic projection.
- Industry Reports Now Available in Mergent
Mergent Online is an excellent database for finding company
and industry information and creating comparison reports on
asset management, profitability ratios, and other financial
information. With ILS' recent addition of the Industry Reports,
Mergent Online has become even more useful for researching
company financials and industry trends. The reports cover
three geographic areas: North America, Asia Pacific, and Europe.
To access these reports, click on the Mergent Online link
from the Library Databases and
E-Journals page, and
then in the database click on the tab, Industry Reports.
From the Basic Search screen, if you enter in a company name
or Ticker symbol, you will also be able to access the industry
specific reports for that company. For instance, enter in
mstr as a Ticker symbol in the Basic Search screen, then click
on the company name, Microstrategy, Inc. One of the tabs will
be Industry Reports.
Over time reports will accumulate and provide a chronological
view of a particular industry.
Online Databases
New Databases In addition to the above
two databases, ILS announces two other new databases as well
as several database changes.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000
An important research tool in women's history and sociology,
this database brings together books, images, documents, scholarly
essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the
women's reform activities. The resource, which examines perspectives
on women's social movements from Colonial times to the present,
includes numerous primary documents that have been carefully
researched and authenticated.
- Gale Opposing Viewpoints Center
LexisNexis Current Issues has been discontinued
by the vendor as of July 1st. ILS has selected an excellent
database, Opposing Viewpoints, to replace it. This
new database provides access to articles defending the pros
and cons of current issues, topic overviews, statistics, primary
documents, links to Web sites, and full text magazine and
newspaper articles in a wide variety of subject areas. You
will find it to be a one-stop source for information on a
wide variety of social issues. It is a great database to choose
if you are trying to select a topic, narrow it, or conduct
preliminary research.
- Gartner Database Updated
Gartner, a well-known IT research and advisory firm, has
developed a reputation for providing topnotch analysis of
IT trends. Its database of the same name covers proprietary
analysis of topics such as customer relationship management
(CRM), e-commerce, supply chain management, wireless, emerging
technologies, security, and IT in reports and analyses from
1995 to the present with a focus on current issues.
This popular database has recently received a complete overhaul
of its interface; and you will find it much easier to use.
Most importantly, you can now search the database contents
by keyword. In addition, you can continue to use a menu approach
to investigate the latest IT news, get access to in-depth
IT research, and participate in Weblogs on hot topics.
To access Gartner, go to the Information and Library Services
Web page, choose the UMUC Library
Databases and E-Journals link and then select Gartner
from the alphabetic menu. Please note that you will need to
register with Gartner the first time you log in.
- New E-Books in netLibrary and A User's Guide
This spring ILS purchased 1,100 new titles for its netLibrary
collection bringing UMUC's total collection to more than 17,000
electronic books. To help you locate books and use the different
features of netLibrary, ILS has created a guide, Using
netLibrary, that explains how to log into netLibrary,
how to search for e-books and then view them, and how to create
a free account that allows you to check books out to read
online for two-hour periods.
You will find the guide to using netLibrary on the ILS Web
page under the Tutorials
link.
Hot Sites... Globalization
The economist Robert Reich visited UMUC in April to present
"The Global Economy is No Longer What it Seems." The
sites below can help you to learn more about the complex issues
relating to globalization.
- The Globalization
Website
Frank Lechner, Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University,
started this site in 2000 as a resource to help students and
others interested in the issues relating to globalization.
The site includes a glossary, links to globalization sources,
synopses of globalization theories, summaries of globalization
debates, and a guide to selected recent literature on the
topic.
- Institute
for International Economics: Globalization
This site covers "hot topics" in international economics,
country and regional studies, and resources including policy
briefs, working papers and speeches on globalization in relation
to the environment, labor, migration and politics.
- World
Bank Group: Globalization
The World Bank Group's Globalization site includes data and
statistics, links to a series of World Bank Briefing Papers
and key readings on the issues, news and videos (including
speeches, interviews and links to presentations) as well as
recent research, which currently focuses on "trade liberalization
and its impact on developing countries, globalization and
financial markets, the role of global and national institutions
in globalization, governance and trade policy, and the impact
of globalization on equality and inequality within developing
countries."
For Your Information...
New Tutorials
To help you learn to access and use library resources and become
an effective researcher, ILS recently created the following
tutorials:
- Business Tutorial
If your professor has given you an assignment that requires
you to locate information about a company or industry and
you are uncertain about where to search, ILS' new Business
Tutorial will help you navigate the library databases and
find the information you need. This clearly-written and fully
illustrated tutorial will take you step-by-step through finding
information by name, geographic area, or SIC/NAICS. Modules
focus on finding information by industry, company, or specific
financial information. Through frequent examples the tutorial
demystifies the use of library databases essential for business
research such as Mergent Online and Industry Surveys.
Interactive exercises encourage you to apply the skills you
learn.
- Catalog Tutorial
If you're searching for book titles on a certain subject and
are not quite certain how to navigate through the library
catalog, you may want to take the new tutorial on searching
the library catalog. This tutorial will guide you through
searching and locating books and other items in catalogUSMAI,
the library catalog of the University System of Maryland and
Affiliated Institutions. There are also step-by-step instructions
for finding e-books in UMUC's catalog and an optional exercise
to test your knowledge of the process after you've completed
the tutorial.
You will find both tutorials on the ILS Web page by clicking
on the Tutorials link
under Research Help/General Resources.
Establishing Authority through Cited References
One of the most important criteria in evaluating the reliability
of resources you have found for a paper or project is authority.
To establish authority, you usually examine the author's credentials
or the publisher's reputation to decide whether or not they
are experts in the field about which they have written or published.
An additional step is to check a citation index to see whether
other researchers have cited it in their works.
ILS has two citation index databases where you can search for
cited references: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI)
and Social Sciences Citation Index (SCCI). Both now include
back files to 1996 and can be searched jointly. SCI and SSCI
offer the unique capability of cited reference searching with
full text linking capability through our “find it”
(SFX) service. Through cited reference searching, you will be
able to enter information about a particular article or book
and find articles from journals that have cited this work to
discover how a known idea has been confirmed, applied, improved,
extended, refuted, or corrected. For more information on how
to use the citation databases, see the vendor's tutorial, "Cited
Reference Searching: An Introduction."
In addition, some of the EBSCO databases, namely PsycINFO,
Business Source Premier, and Academic Search Premier,
now include information about the number of times an article
has been cited. If an article is cited in other works you will
find a note below the link to the article in the results list;
this note indicates the number of times an article has been
cited in other works: Times cited (2).
Not many articles will have cited references or be cited in
other sources, but if you find this type of article as you research,
you will have one additional indicator that the article is authoritative
and reliable.
Staff Notes
This spring ILS welcomed several new staff members and announced
a couple of staff changes:
- Sarah Anderson processes document delivery requests,
handles interlibrary loan book requests, and assists the e-reserve
team.
- Johan Oberg handles all forms of reference questions
from UMUC students, faculty and staff and teaches library
instruction sessions. In addition, he coordinates book circulation
issues and supervises the student workers.
- Susan Olson became the liaison to the Graduate School.
She still handles all forms of reference questions, teaches
library instruction sessions, spearheads library outreach,
and coordinates print acquisitions.
- Michielle Saunders handles day-to-day circulation
of library materials and assists with e-reserves and ILL.
All ILS staff members can be reached by calling 301-985-7209.
Faculty
Corner
One Stop Service for Information about Library Resources
for Faculty
As you prepare your classes for the next semester, you may
want to refer to the new ILS page describing library
services and resources that support your classes. Here in
one convenient table you will find summaries of our most popular
services for teaching, such as e-reserves, library instruction,
and plagiarism detection and prevention. Live links to the forms
and instructions for using these services make it easy for you
to access and use these services to the greatest advantage.
You will also find information about reference and research
assistance, including document and book delivery and interlibrary
loan and a link to our 24 hour chat and e-mail "Ask a Question"
service.
New Acquisitions
View a list of some of our recent acquisitions
in distance education, adult learning, assessment, and research
methodology. If you're in Adelphi, visit ILS in SFSC 2255
and browse through our collection. If you'd like to borrow any
of the books, you can request them in the library
catalog. Books can be picked up at one of the libraries
of the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions,
if you live in Maryland, or delivered by mail if you live outside
Maryland within the continental United States. If you live abroad,
send us an e-mail for
information about borrowing them.
ILS Hours and Locations
 Need to find us? Please visit Locations
and Hours for more information.
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