LibX updated - bug fixes and new search options May 16, 2008
Posted by Paolo in : Catalog Tip, Cool tools , add a commentIf you’re a user of the Duke LibX browser plugin for Firefox, you should soon be getting prompted by Firefox to update the plugin. If you want it right away, go to the Tools / Add-ons menu and click “Find Updates” in the Extensions tab.
The new version is 1.2.8, and includes a couple of changes.
One is that the embedded “cues” stopped working in Amazon pages a while back, and this new version applies a fix that makes them work again. When you’re viewing a book page in Amazon, you should see the Duke Library icon next to the book’s title (looks like this: 
- it’s a silhouette of the Reading Blue Devil weathervane on top of the von der Heyden Pavilion). If you click on the icon, it will start a search in the Duke Library Catalog to see if Duke has the book for you to check out.
The other change is the addition of the option to search the new Search TRLN system via the LibX browser bar and right-click menu. The menu item (labeled “Search Triangle Research Libraries”) will search the catalogs of Duke, NCCU, NCSU, and UNC-CH and show you results from all for universities. There’s more information on Search TRLN in this earlier post.
And you can read more about all of the other things LibX can do in this earlier post about Duke LibX or on the Duke LibX download page.
If you’re a Duke LibX user, please tell us in the comments section what you like or don’t like about it, and if there are things you’d like to see changed added to it. If you’re not already using it, try it out!
Can a book be delivered to another library? May 16, 2008
Posted by Kathi in : Duke researchers, Question of the Week , add a commentYou are referring to a system called BARD (Book/Article Delivery) which is available to Duke faculty and Duke graduate students. It allows you to request books and articles for delivery and pick-up from one Duke library to another Duke library location.
A great page with screen shots and instructions is linked above, or you can just follow these easy directions:
- Find the item in the library catalog
- Click on the item’s call number
- Click on the “Request” link on the far right side of the screen
- Fill in the requested information
Connotea — another look May 13, 2008
Posted by Catherine in : Citing Sources, Cool tools , 3commentsIn Ted’s recent comments on connotea, he said he enjoyed it, but found that connotea was not such a great citation manager; it doesn’t always gather the metadata needed. On the connotea site, it explains that it is “specially designed for scientists and clinicians,” so it gathers bibliographic data better for some sites than others.
I agree, connotea is no substitute for a bibliographic reference manager like Endnote (to which Duke subscribes) or Refworks. I also agree that it’s “downright fun!” As a librarian, I use it as an academic networking tool, to find, track and tag resources as I come across them. It’s very handy for retrieving items on a particular topic, and for creating feeds for specific classes–I tag resources with the course name.
Ted was also concerned about messy tags. The “related tags” on the right belong to other users, who may create them however they’d like.
That’s both the beauty and the chaos of a Web 2.0 tool–everyone gets to play, and you can follow their leads, or not.
So, the short answer is: the value of connotea depends on your purpose. For a free web-based citation manager, you might like to try zotero (from an earlier LibraryHacks post):
The open-source Zotero (part 1 / part 2) is [a] Firefox extension that allows you to store, retrieve and organize your reference sources for a more streamlined citation process.
Has anyone out there done more than a first foray into zotero? Please send us your comments.
Save time! Learn EndNote! May 13, 2008
Posted by Emily in : Citing Sources, Cool tools, Duke researchers, Research Help , add a commentStart your summer research with a bang by learning to use EndNote, a reference management tool that is sure to save you time and frustration. Duke faculty, students and staff may download EndNote to personal or work computers, free of charge.
Perkins Library is offering a free introductory EndNote session on Tuesday, May 27 from 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM in Bostock Library, Room 023. We’ll provide an orientation to the software, show you how to set up your personal EndNote library and then teach you to format a bibliography in a couple of keystrokes.
Interested? Register today! And stay tuned for more Intro and Advanced EndNote sessions this summer!
Search TRLN: Facets for Refining Searches May 12, 2008
Posted by Phoebe in : Catalog Tip , add a commentWe have already highlighted a couple of features of the Search TRLN Catalog, which allows users to search the combined library catalogs of Duke, UNC, NCCU and NCSU. If you missed them, see our posts on spelling correction and quotes.
Probably Search TRLN’s most innovative and powerful feature is that is it a “faceted browser” interface. After you perform an initial keyword search, you can narrow your result set by choosing one or more ‘facets’ from the menu on the left side of the screen.
Here’s an example. I am interested in Pylos, a Bronze Age archaeological site in Greece, which was also the site of a famous Classical Greek naval battle, and is today a small city that occasionally hosts academic symposia.
A keyword search for “pylos” pulls up books relevant to all of the above, but I am particularly interested in the Linear B tablets from Pylos, so I click the relevant facet under Subject:
Many of the hits are in languages I don’t read, so I open the Language facet to narrow my search to only items in English:
Search TRLN keeps track of the facets I have chosen, and I can broaden my search again by clicking the x to stop using one of the facets:
Other facets available include format (book, dissertation, map…), location (at Duke?), author, year of publication, and call number range. Happy faceting!
