Author Archives: Brenda Ellis

Google Scholar Metrics for Journal Rankings Updated

“Scholar Metrics provide an easy way for authors to quickly gauge the visibility and influence of recent articles in scholarly publications.” On June 26th, Google released the 2014 version of Scholar Metrics. “This release is based on citations from all articles that were indexed in Google Scholar as of mid-June 2013 and covers articles published in 2009–2013.”  More info on Google Scholar Blog.  Be sure to click on the categories and sub-categories on the left menu to drill down by discipline.

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You can also get journal citation metrics from Scopus (library subscription database of scholarly articles).

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Click on Browse Sources to see a list by subject (some categories are very broad) – you can rank by SJR or SNIP, but only within each letter of the alphabet.  You can also click on Analyze Journals and get metrics for a specific journal and compare with up to 10 journals you select.  See a brief demo here.  More tutorials are available on Scopus.

Bibliographic Essay: Online Educational Videos

The August 2013 issue of Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries (Midd subscribes) had a bibliographic essay is entitled: “Teaching and Learning with Online Educational Videos: A Subject List of Web Resources for Educators.”  It describes both general sources for a variety of subjects (such as open course ware sites, lecture sites, etc.) available on YouTube and elsewhere and also provides a subject listing.  Resources range from popular sites to more academic.

LIS Workshops: find summer reading, movies, & more + website development

LIS Workshop:  Library Services & Resources at Middlebury

Wed, 5/28,  2:00 – 3:00 pm  Davis Family Library 105 Computing Lab (lower level)

We’ll introduce you to library services and resources available to Midd users and show you how to search MIDCAT, the library catalog, and Summon (our “search everything” tool) to discover resources like books, articles, films, eBooks, audiobooks, and more.  Learn how to access news and popular magazines online as well as find online resources aimed at all ages.

Website Maintenance Work Session

Thu, 5/29,   1:00 – 2:30 pm  Davis Family Library 105 Computing Lab (lower level)

Do you maintain a website in Drupal, WordPress, MediaWiki (wiki), or Moodle?  Bring your work to this session and we’ll have staff on-hand to help you with any questions as you update or create your site.  This is not a formal workshop; we will answer questions and problems as they come up.  Work sessions will be staffed on a rotating basis by representatives from each of the following areas:  Web Application Development, Curricular Technology, and User Services.

Sign up online or visit http://go.middlebury.edu/lisworkshops to view the full workshop schedule.

Friday Links – Nov. 15, 2013

For those of you with kids, this article “Teach Kids how to Code, Make Apps and 3-D Models With These Tools” lists some interesting possibilities. From School Library Journal and The Digital Shift.

Announcement: “Digital Public Library of America Launches DPLA Bookshelf”

“DPLA Bookshelf lets the user scroll a visual representation of a bookshelf… When a user of the DPLA site searches for books, the results are displayed as books on a bookshelf; the shelf is shown as a vertical stack so that the titles and authors are more easily readable on their spines. The width of the book represents the actual height of the physical book, and its thickness represents its page count. The spine is colored with one of ten depths of blue to “heatmap” how relevant the work is to the reader’s search.” Follow the announcement link to learn more.

3D Printing is a hot topic, but have you heard of 3D scanning? Lucky for us – the Smithsonian has, and has been busy scanning several artifacts that you can now view online! Their 3D exploration tool is in Beta so they are looking for feedback and bug reports. Load time is a little slow – but it’s worth it! (Check out the Woolly Mammoth!)

Smithsonian X 3D of a Wooly Mammoth, http://3d.si.edu/explorer?modelid=55

Screen shot of Smithsonian X 3D of a Woolly Mammoth

Curious about how 3D scanning works? Check out the video below.

 

 

Friday links – June 14, 2013

From Cave Paintings to the Internet: Chronological and Thematic Studies on the History of Information and Media
This interesting website from Jeremy Norman “is designed to help you follow the development of information and media, and attitudes about them, from the beginning of records to the present. Containing annotated references to discoveries, developments of a social, scientific, theoretical or technological nature, as well as references to physical books, documents, artifacts, art works, and to websites and other digital media, it arranges, both chronologically and thematically, selected historical examples and recent developments of the methods used to record, distribute, exchange, organize, store, and search information.” (from About the Database).  Images and text (with links to wikipedia) are combined with geographical information to allow mapping of the information.

Friday Links – May 17th

Markham Nolan: How to separate fact and fiction online | Video on TED.com

~13 minute video talk by a journalist showing how news organizations verify information posted by users on the web (tweets, photos, videos) using technology such as Google Earth, etc.

How to Read a Book

Did you find an odd box with pieces of paper inside? It might be a book! Some of them still have real pages—and I’ll show you just how to read one.

The Business Value of Google Glass and Wearable Computing – Wearable computing is an emerging technology that’s affecting both the consumer and enterprise space.

Predatory Publishers Strike Back
Predatory publishing is what happens when open access publishing is subverted by manipulation, exploitation, and spammer mentality. Jeffery Beall is a librarian who uses his blog to expose predatory publishers, and they would rather he didn’t. Beall has written a Nature column piece  about predatory publishing, and his blog is Scholarly Open Access.

Open Access Journal PeerJ Publishes First Articles

From Library Journal / The Digital Shift:
“Multidisciplinary Open Access journal publisher PeerJ announced the publication of its first 30 peer-reviewed articles today. Co-founders Jason Hoyt, formerly chief scientist and VP for research and development for Mendeley, and Peter Binfield, formerly publisher of the Public Library Of Science (PLOS), launched PeerJ in June 2012. They quickly garnered support for the project, ultimately assembling an Editorial Board of 800 academics and an advisory board of 20—five of whom are Nobel Laureates…”
Full article.