Library Hacks Photo Scavenger Hunt August 29, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library , 2commentsIt’s back to school, you have a digital or cellphone camera - come take pictures in the Duke Libraries and join our Flickr-based photo scavenger hunt.
Here’s how:
1. If you don’t have one already, get a free account at www.flickr.com (all you need to sign up is an email address.)
2. Take pictures.
3. Upload your pictures to Flickr and add them to the group DukeLibraryScavengerHunt.
4. Receive fame, acclaim, and maybe a prize!
Here are your prompts: be creative!
1. blue book
2. librarian
3. light
4. stairs
5. new
6. play
There will be two prizes: one given at random to someone who completed the scavenger hunt, and one given to the taker of the photo judged most artistic and/or representative of the libraries by a team of experts (i.e., us.). We may ask you if we can showcase your photos on this blog, or even on the library website.
The Sober Librarian: What’s in a DOI? August 27, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Cool tools, Database Tip , add a commentLibrary staff often learn as much from our patrons - i.e. you - as they teach. My husband, who is a PhD student in engineering at another local institution of higher learning, said to me, “Why don’t you do a post on your blog about DOIs?” I had never heard of a DOI. So I had to look it up, of course.
What? A DOI - Digital Object Identifier - is a number attached to a piece of online content (Wikipedia has a much more technical definition). In practical terms, it is a unique number attached to a full-text online article, much in the same way every book has a unique ISBN.
Why? Well, suppose your article was published in the journal ‘Nitpicky Things About Oceanography’ by Small Academic Press and appeared on their web site. Six years later, Small Academic Press was purchased by Big International Conglomerate. Obviously they are going to change the (previously stable) url of your journal article. But you can find the new online location of the article easily by putting the DOI into a DOI resolver or the global handle resolver. DOIs can also be easily hotlinked, and some article databases are starting to do this. DOIs are starting to be included as an integral part of bibliographic citations in some fields - instead of searching for the journal title to find an article, just enter the DOI into a resolver and there you are.
Who? DOIs are the result of cooperation between commercial publishers and non-commercial organizations (like libraries, universities, and academic presses). The main site explaining all this is at doi.org, but you may find the information available at CrossRef.org, which is focused on scholarly research applications of DOIs, to be more useful.
Very Important Library Tip for Undergrads August 24, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library , add a commentKristin Butler, in her Duke Chronicle column “Duke: A freshman’s guide” has a very good piece of advice for library users:
Oh, and one aside on having sex in the stacks: As a former library employee, I promise that Perkins Level D is not a “sneaky” place to go for it, even at 4 a.m. The security guards know the lights are not supposed to be turned off, and if they catch you they may post your name and photo for all to see. How embarrassing.
I can tell you, she is so not kidding about this.
Linking to Full-text Articles: Stable URLs August 21, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Database Tip , add a commentIt’s back to school time, and that means faculty and instructors all over campus (and sometimes all over the world) are putting books on reserve, setting up e-reserves through the library, and linking from their Blackboard sites to online articles that we have access to through our subscription databases. Perkins Reference and CIT staff have been getting a lot of questions about how to find stable URLs for these articles, so we made up a web page to help: http://library.duke.edu/research/help/databases/stableurl.html
Please Ask a Librarian if your question isn’t answered there!
So You Thought Perkins-Bostock Was Confusing! August 9, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library , 5commentsA very funny video about Harlan Hatcher Graduate “Labyrinth” at the University of Michigan. At least we don’t have an “East Section of Level 1 A North.”
