Tag Archives: library databases

More Consistent Linking from Library Databases

In order to provide a consistently satisfactory user experience, in which users of the Library’s research databases (and the Summon discovery service) don’t face dead-end blank screens when trying to reach articles and books, the Library will deactivate Index-enhanced Direct Linking (IEDL) in our link resolver (360Link).

What does this mean exactly?
Index-enhanced Direct Linking (IEDL) is available for certain article databases that cooperate with the company which provides 360Link.  IEDL takes the user from a results list to an article or book without any kind of intermediate screen. From certain databases (and from Summon), IEDL was supposed to streamline the user experience by eliminating clicks between the search results and the items themselves. This has not turned out to be the case.

What will I see?
When you click on a link for full-text, you will now see the familiar intermediate screen for all articles and books.  This “Get it @ Midd” screen is 360Link, our link resolver.  You will then click a button to access the item, as you always have in cases where you saw this screen. The intermediate screen will be similar to the following example:

Get It @ Midd page

Why did we make the change?
For several reasons having to do with commercial relationships among various database vendors, IEDL used to function better than it currently does. Now, the inconvenience of the dead-end screens occurs much more often. The dead ends (blank screens) provide little or no useful information as to how the user can access materials the Library actually has. Always displaying the intermediate “Get it @ Midd” screen will allow users to see our accurate holdings and to obtain access consistently.

Questions and/or Feedback
Please feel free to comment below or send questions to the Midd librarians at http://go.middlebury.edu/askus .

(not) Finding Fuente Academica articles in Summon

For reasons that are difficult to explain in a few sentences, we are aware that links to articles in Summon to a full-text database of Spanish-language resources called Fuente Academica Premier are not working. We have reported the problem, and it is being worked on.

Meanwhile, when you find an article of interest, you can access it by starting from our list of databases at go.middlebury.edu/databases . Find the link to Fuente Academica Premier and, using the citation information obtained from Summon, find the article directly.

We regret the inconvenience.  I will add a post the LIS blog when the problem is corrected.

JSTOR – not just for archives anymore

You may be familiar with JSTOR as a resource for journal content that is more than a couple of years old. Beginning in January, though, JSTOR will launch its Current Scholarship Program (CSP) which will include current content for journals from a few publishers, primarily university presses.

Middlebury subscribes to about 50 journals, published by the University of California Press and the University of Chicago Press, that will become available through JSTOR’s CSP beginning in January 2011.  If everything goes well, the only thing you will notice is that the links to current content for those titles (accessible through the Journals A-Z list at go/journals ) will say “Current JSTOR”.  If you should encounter problems with access to these titles in the new year, please send me an email.

Search strategy for EBSCOHost databases

We have been informed that some of our databases will have a new search feature enabled over the next few days. The following databases are included in this update:
ABSEES
America, history and life
ATLA religion
EconLit with Full Text
European views of the Americas
Historical abstracts
Repertoire international de litterature musicale (RILM)
SocIndex

Continue reading →

Celebrate Constitution Day, September 17th

You don’t have to be taking a class on constitutional law to reflect about the importance of the US Constitution or debate the issues.   There are library databases, publisher, government, and other websites that feature articles and other content to highlight or debate aspects of our Constitution.  Here are a few:

U.S. National Archives Constitution Day page
Also see their electronic version of the Constitution of the United States

NewsBank (publisher of the library database Archive  of Americana) Special Reports: The U.S. Constitution page

Find addtional library databases on the library subject guides.

JSTOR Journals – 2 new collections added

JSTOR – Collections V & VI added
Collection V title list. Description: “…important literary reviews and state historical journals. It will also widen the scope of core disciplines in the arts and humanities, such as philosophy, history, classics, religion, art and art history, and language and literature.”

Collection VI title list. Description: “…extends JSTOR’s coverage in disciplines across the social sciences, with clusters focused in economics, education, linguistics, political science, and area studies.”

See other library resources added recently here.

New database: Social Explorer

The library recently added a subscription to Social Explorer, which provides easy online access to demographic information about the United States, from 1790 to present.  It allows for the easy creation of thematic maps and downloading into other software products such as PowerPoint.  It also provides convenient digital access to two censuses never before available online: 1970 and 1980.

Predict Nobel Laureates with Library Database

The Library subscribes to Web of Science, which is the platform for Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index.  Since 1989,  the publisher of Web of Science, Thomson Reuters, has correctly predicted at least one Nobel Laureate each year using citation analysis from these databases.  See the full story here: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/news/2009-10/8551997/

To access Web of Science, see our list of library databases here: http://go.middlebury.edu/research or use http://go.middlebury.edu/wos.
For help using Web of Science or any other resources, contact a librarian http://go.middlebury.edu/librarian.