Bath Spa University Library

Our EBSCOhost services – available on your mobile!

EBSCOhost have now made many of their services available via Internet enabled mobile phones, allowing Bath Spa students to search and retrieve information on the move.

This means that Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier, Education Research Complete, Theatre & Dance, MLA & SocINDEX are all available on popular devices such as the iPhone.

EBSCOhost Mobile has the following features:

• Basic Searching
• HTML and PDF Full Text
• Search Modes
• Limiters
• Image Quick View
• Image Collection (depending on the database that has been selected)
• E-mailing articles
• Preferences
• Multi-database Searching
• Branding

To access this service, please enter http://m.ebscohost.com into your mobile’s browser. You will need your Athens username and password.

For support on using this service, please visit the EBSCO Support site.

Import an informaworld citation into Refworks

A short video on how to import a reference from informaworld directly into Refworks.

Boolean logic

OK, time for some proper librarianship now.

Men in cravats…

 Mutton-chop whiskers…

 
This is George Boole, his strict Victorian values can help you use databases. 

Let’s just wait a moment for the students to leave… Bye! Have a nice time on Facebook. Don’t slam the door.

George Boole’s views on logic laid the foundations for all future databases, including – yes – even Google. One of Boole’s underlying principles is that there are several logical “operators” – “AND”, “OR”, and “NOT” – which determine the relationship between different variables or values, eg the words which you enter into a search engine.

The classic way to explain Boolean logic, seared onto the brain of every librarian since about 1974, is via 3 Venn diagrams. Imagine you’re writing an essay called “Shakespeare in the cinema – discuss the approaches taken by two different adaptations”. You then decide to search a database for journal articles…

By searching your database for Shakespeare and cinema, you’ll only retrieve journal articles that mention both Shakespeare and cinema. You won’t find a journal article that only mentions Shakespeare, or one that mentions only cinema.

Note that a Boolean AND search won’t necessarily find results where your search words are in the same order, or where they appear next to each other! Eg a database search for fish and chips could retrieve a journal article with the sentence “Howard Hughes ate some fish fingers for tea, passing the waiter a rack of $100 roulette chips”.  Instead, to search a database for an exact phrase, use quotation marks around your search words, ie “fish and chips”.

By searching your database for Shakespeare or cinema, you’ll retrieve journal articles that mention only Shakespeare or cinema, as well as those that mention both Shakespeare and cinema. The OR search can easily swamp you with too many search results – it’s best employed if you’re looking for an obscure topic and need to broaden your search.

By searching your database for Shakespeare not cinema, you’ll retrieve journal articles that mention Shakespeare – but nothing that mentions cinema, even if it also mentions Shakespeare.

Why does all this matter? Well… the Boolean AND is particularly crucial because databases work in very different ways. Some databases, like Google, will automatically run a Boolean AND search if you enter several search words, even if you don’t actually type AND. (If you do type AND between your search words, the worst that will happen is that you get exactly the same number of search results).

Other databases, like the library catalogue, assume that you only want to be shown results where your search words appear in the exact order (or close proximity) that you typed them in – unless you type AND between them. Effectively they’re putting quotation marks round your search words, and searching for them as a phrase. If you’re searching this type of database, failure to type AND between your search words could mean you get 50% fewer search results, without even realizing it.

To sum up…

• Use “” quotation marks to search databases for an exact phrase.
• Type AND between your search words if you’re searching for information about 2 or more different concepts and their effect on each other, eg Marxism and teaching.

 Next time around… achieving better grades with Charles Babbage’s difference engine.

Refworks and single sign-on

Athens access to Refworks will shortly be removed, allowing users to log-in with a Bath Spa username/password.

However when you log-in to the service with your new username and password for the first time, your references will not be migrated across. To make sure this happens, you will have to do it manually:

Single sign-on developments

There is now institutional access for almost all of our electronic resources at Bath Spa.

We would like to encourage all students and staff to assist us in testing access, which so far has been very successful. The feedback has been excellent, and we hope to move over to single sign-on in the very near future.

The following resources can be accessed using a Bath Spa username/password:

Sion Hill Opening day

Here are the pictures from the opening of our new Sion Hill library:

[View with PicLens]

Accessing ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collection Online)

It has come to my attention that many students are struggling to access ECCO from home. This is partly my fault, as Athens access to this resource was removed earlier this month in order to test our new ’single sign-on’ system. This means that students and staff trying to access ECCO using links provided in module handbooks or emails may find that they have lost access.

Never fear! You can still access ECCO from home! Simply visit the webpage below (the welcome page for ECCO via the Library webpages) and follow the on-screen instructions. From this page you will be prompted to access ECCO using your Bath Spa username/password.

http://www.bathspa.ac.uk/services/library/electronic-services/ecco.asp

Despite this change for accessing ECCO at home, you will still find that you are taken straight to the resource (no log-in required) when visiting the site on campus.

If you still find you have difficulties accessing ECCO at home, please contact me! m.durant@bathspa.ac.uk

Vote to name our Image Management System!

Voting is now open. Please enter your correct name, as this will enable me to work out which entries are sensible!

You are more than welcome to vote for more than one entry…

VOTING HAS NOW ENDED

Single sign-on at Bath Spa

I am pleased to announce that Library and Information services has begun testing software allowing students and staff to access some of our resources using a Bath Spa username/password. This method of access is available for the following databases:

Academic Search Premier

a-n: the artists information service

Archival Sound Recordings

Burney Newspaper Collection

Business Source Premier

Defining Gender, 1450-1910

Education Image Gallery

Education Research Complete

Eighteenth Century Collection Online

Eighteenth Century Journals II

Film and Sound Online

Historical Abstracts

IBSS Online

International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance

MLA International Bibliography

NewsFilm Online

16th to 19th Century British Newspapers

SocINDEX with Full Text

The Times Digital Archive 1785-1985

In order to take part in this test please visit the library page relevant to your chosen database and follow the on-screen instructions.

Over the next few weeks I will look to integrate more resources, giving every user the opportunity to test this new system.

If you suffer from any problems with accessing the resources or would like more information on this project please contact me by email: m.durant@bathspa.ac.uk.

Name our new Image Management System!

We recently installed our new Image Management System, provided by Extensis Portfolio. Initially the system will house our collection of digitised slides over at Sion Hill, but will later be offered throughout the University as an image repository solution.

To coincide with the launch of our new system, we need a name! Below is an anonymous form which will allow you to send your suggestions. Once I have recieved the suggestions I will put all appropriate names to the vote via the blog.