Learning a new application? One of my library colleagues recently showed me CustomGuide. CustomGuide has free reference cards that you can download or print for Adobe, Apple, and Microsoft applications. For example, they have cards for PowerPoint 1997 through 2007. My favorite feature is the keystroke shortcuts.

Check out the website here:
http://www.customguide.com/quick_references.htm

-Malia Willey, Information Literacy/ Learning Commons Librarian

Best known for their “in Plain English” series, Common Craft videos are short, sweet, and stuffed full of information. Tech topics include: Social Networking, RSS, Wikis, Social Bookmarking, Online Photo Sharing, Twitter, and Podcasting.

What’s your favorite Common Craft video?

-Deb Poole, Associate dean for public services

ScienceDirect College Edition web-based electronic journals will be unavailable from Saturday, March 7 at noon for twelve and a half hours. This service is available directly, but these 5500 journals also appear in Journal Finder and Get it! There are several sub-collections: Physical Science and Engineering, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. The time and length of the outage was set by the company in a recent email. It could last a little longer.

The Monroe Library added the Learning Express Library during the summer of 2008. It’s not a database of books or articles, but a service with lots of practice tests and ebooks for improving performance on academic and professional tests. Includes practice exams for GMAT, GRE, LSAT, MCAT, and TOEFL. Also mathematics, reading, and other skill improvement tutorials. This service requires registration. Ask questions at the Learning Commons Desk in person or by telephone at 504-864-7111.

During the summer of 2008 we were able to add the World Book Online family to our research databases. This service has browsable and searchable full text of the World Book encyclopedia. It includes a dictionary, an atlas and special features, like Explore Louisiana. Links at the bottom of the page to World Book Discover (for secondary school students), Online Reference Center, World Book Kids, and the Spanish and French World Books.  Ask questions at the Learning Commons Desk in person or by telephone at 504-864-7111.

Over the summer of 2008 two electronic databases have been changed. Grove Art is now Oxford Art, and Grove Music is now Oxford Music. These new names reflect their integration into the Oxford University Press online family. We also receive the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), Oxford Language Dictionaries Online, and Oxford Reference Online. See all our online reference works at the Encyclopedias & Dictionaries page. Ask questions at the Learning Commons Desk in person or by telephone at 504-864-7111.

Scholarly literature has a process for ensuring high quality in what is printed. This means that you can read scholarly material with high confidence that it is accurate and represents good thinking in that field.

If I’m an author and want my article to appear in a scholarly journal, I submit it to an editor for that journal. The editor is the first line of defense and can reject manuscripts of obviously low quality. If my article is approved by the editor, copies go out to recognized experts in the field. They are generally researchers or faculty members at reputable colleges, universities, and research institutions (private or government). These people are my peers. They review the article and respond to the editor. The are usually three responses:

• The article is fine as it stands and can be added to other articles for future publication.
• The article is not acceptable and should not be published under any circumstances.
• The article has some flaws and may be publishable with some changes. They may also make specific criticisms to be corrected before publication.

The editor then lets me know what the reviewers thought of it. If most reviewers feel that it needs some changes, I can decide whether to make the changes or submit the article somewhere else. If I make the changes, I then send the article back to the editor. The revised version may go back to the reviewers, who again respond, or it may be added to the pool to be published in the future.

This process takes some time. Some journals give the date submitted and date accepted in the article itself when it’s published. Look for it to see how long the gap is between submission and acceptance.

You can be confident that a peer-reviewed journal article is substantially accurate in the information that it reports, the methods used and the conclusions drawn. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t open to criticism by other researchers. Others might be doing the same or similar work and have different results.

A “refereed” article is the same as “peer reviewed.” The referees are my peers who reviwed the article. Magazine articles are written by professional journalists and writers and reviewed only by an editor.

The EBSCOhost company has just made a major update to their user interface. That’s important because we get 56 databases from them - more than any other company! They produce important titles like Academic Search Complete and Business Source Complete. They’ve made the initial page more Google-like, with a simple search box. The search results look different, too. There are many ways to focus your search, by year, type of publication, and other ways. Old features are still there; look at the top of the page and the sides for familiar functions. A great overview is available at http://www.ebscohost.com/2.0_flash. Try it and let us know what you think at 504-864-7111. — Jim Hobbs, hobbs@loyno.edu, 504-864-7126

A citation refers to a book, article, website, score, speech, or other published item uniquely. You’ll find citations to books and articles in library databases and the library catalog. These citations give you the information — title, author, date of publication, etc. — you need to find the actual item. When you write an essay that refers to research material, you’ll create a bibliography or works cited page that lists all the citations you used. To learn more, visit our Citing Sources section: http://library.loyno.edu/researchtech/research/citing/

You might just benefit from RSS. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it delivers new content from web sources you select directly to you. This video from Common Craft explains RSS and its benefits clearly and concisely: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english