End-of-Summer Hours

Buswell Library Hours

August 1 - August 21

Mon. - Fri.	8 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sat. & Sun.	Closed

August 22 - August 25

Sat., Aug. 22	9 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Mon., Aug. 24 - Tues., Aug. 25	8 a.m. - 8 p.m.

Archives & Special Collections Hours

Mon. - Fri.	8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Saturday	9 a.m. - 2 p.m.

Normal academic year hours resume Wednesday, August 26th.

RefShare in RefWorks

In a previous blog entry I detailed what RefWorks can do for you, things like the 2-click formatted bibliography and the benefit of having a place to store and manage your search results from a wide-range of resources (even Google Scholar!).

More recently we added the RefShare feature to our RefWorks subscription. RefShare enables you to share your references with others. Let's imagine that a professor has collected a bibliography (using RefWorks) for a course on "Women in Christianity," and now wants to share it with her students, who are beginning to explore paper topics.

Under either the TOOLS and FOLDERS tab look for "share references" and "share folders" respectively [image 1]. Both take you to the same "sharing" page in RefWorks, where you will see your existing folders [image 2]. Click the "Share Folder" button. This generates automatically an unique URL (i.e. web address) to the references in this folder.

Now the person sharing the references has two options [image 3]:

1. Option 1 - check the reference sharing box at the bottom of the options page and post a link for the folder to "Wheaton College's shared area." Any one with a RefWorks account can navigate to this shared area under the "View" tab. However, one does not need a RefWorks account to view the references in any of the folders that appear if that person possesses a link to one of the folders.
   
2. Option 2 - click on the icon that reads "E-mail URL;" this opens up an email message box for you to send a folder's link to any number of individual email addresses.
   

It is possible too in both cases to set up a RSS feed to help you monitor the arrival of new content or other changes to the references. For example, as a folder owner, you can activiate the comments option that provides a place for members of the group to discuss certain references. RSS and the comments feature are both options on the "shared folder options" screen.

If you would like more information on RefShare take a look at a couple of helpful RefShare tutorials. For personal instruction, contact me at x5847 or email the Reference staff.

Library catalog upgrade completed (mostly)

Wheaton's online library catalog together with the entire I-Share system received an upgrade over the last couple of days, and early indications are that it went relatively smoothly, but with any "upgrade" prepare for some bumps, and surprises (like right now my searches are timing out!). Use the alternate (VUFind) catalog interface if the upgraded system is not performing well.

This upgrade includes a new search interface that attempts to respond to user feedback. Functionality is improved, but the design and presentation leaves a lot to be desired.

A couple of useful features from the previous interface were not ready for today's launch but will reappear eventually, the "repeat search in I-Share" link and the "Text me this call number."

Let us know what you think of the new user-interface. Send your comments to reference@wheaton.edu

Library forced to cut some databases

It will come as no surprise that the Library budget shrank for the coming year. Consequently, we had to sacrifice a few of our online resource subscriptions. The date following the resource title indicates the end of the current subscription period. Note that several will be inaccessible at the end of this month (June). Access them all now still via the library's website.

• Annee Philologique 10/31/09
• Christian Periodical Index 6/30/09
• Lexis/Nexis Congressional 6/30/09
• Lexis/Nexis Statistical 6/30/09
• Encyclopedia Britannica Online 6/30/09
• Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism 12/31/09
• Religious and Theological Abstracts 8/6/09
• Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online 12/31/09
• World Shakespeare Bibliography Online 12/31/09
  

Also, beginning 6/30/09 RILM Abstracts of Music Literature will only be available to 1 simultaneous user.

Send any questions for comments to acquistions@wheaton.edu.

Better Googling. Take it on up!

Google has been around for just over a decade now, and for most of us, it is an integral part of our lives online. But many of us continue to search Google today very much in the same way we did at the start. And perhaps you're satisfied, but take a quick peek at our Guide to Better Googling, and then decide to maintain the status quo or to advance in your searching sophistication.

Also, in case you hadn't yet heard, Google also offers narrower searches of only mainly published academic books and journal articles (Google Scholar) as well as an extensive and growing collection of scanned books (Google Book Project). Try them out, and ask a librarian for more information on Google and other useful search tools and techniques.

By the way, yesterday Microsoft launched its new search engine, Bing. It's gotten some good reviews, but it's unlikely to put any huge dent in Google's majority share in the web search niche. I'm trying Bing out now. I will report back if there's anything remarkable about it.