Perks for honors thesis writers October 29, 2007
Posted by Emily in : Duke researchers, Research Help , 1 comment so farFacing the exciting (albeit daunting) task of completing your honors thesis or project? To help make the process a bit easier, the library offers these perks to undergraduates planning to graduate with distinction:
- Lockers in Perkins/Bostock, perfect for stashing research materials and stacks of books (stop by the Perkins circulation desk for more info)
- Same check-out times as grad students and faculty (so you can keep books til May 2008!)
- Book and article delivery, or BARD (request that materials in any Duke library be delivered to the library of your choice!)
- One-on-one research consultations with subject and reference librarians
- Access to librarians’ weekly office hours in public policy and history
- Free pencils, pens, notepads (just ask at the Perkins reference desk)
What else can we do to make your months of writing and research easier? Post your suggestions, and we’ll try to make them happen.
Web Browser Search Plug-Ins October 22, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Cool tools, Database Tip , 3commentsOne of the comments on the LibX toolbar post asked about ways we could customize that toolbar to allow searches of specific databases, like JStor.
There is a way to search a database right from your web browser toolbar, using a customized search plugin. Most browsers come with options for searching Google, Yahoo or Amazon, but you can add options like WorldCat, the Oxford English Dictionary, and ProQuest.
We’ve set up a page collecting the plug-ins we’ve found or created here. If you don’t see a search plug-in for the database you want, contact Phoebe Acheson and ask for it. Not every database works with the plug-in generator we’re using, but many do.
New Resource Finder Tip: Bookmarking October 17, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Database Tip , 3commentsThe new articles and databases Resource Finder has one functional change from the old: now, you can bookmark your favorite databases or searches as a way to save them. Look for “Save this Search”:
Click on “Save this Search” to see the full explanation:
What’s this Connotea we’re talking about? See this page about ideas for using Connotea at Duke.
Lost files? Don’t lose hope! October 12, 2007
Posted by Emily in : Cool tools, Research Help, Tips for students , 1 comment so farWe’ve all been there. After working for hours, we hit the wrong key or forget to save a file opened from email, and before we know it, lose it all.
To save yourself the headache of these maddening situations, consider ways that you can prevent them from happening in the first place…
Before you make edits to a doc that you email to yourself to work on from another machine, click Save As, and Save it to the desktop or a flash drive (remember, though, that the desktop gets cleared as soon as you log off).
Better yet, bypass emailing yourself altogether by using Duke’s WebFiles, which provide all Duke students, faculty and staff with 5GB of personal file space and web space. Questions? See How to Use WebFiles.
And, believe it or not, there are ways to retrieve those files that appear to be lost in the Ether:
Strategy One: Check the Recycle Bin on your computer.
Strategy Two: Click Start, Search, and use Windows’ “When was it modified?” option under All Files and Folders (in Vista, click Start, Search and then click the down arrow to the right of Advanced Search, and select Date Modified in the Date dropdown menu at left). See your file? Be sure to save it in another location before continuing to work!
Strategy Three: Try a free undelete utility.
Strategy Four: Buy a file-recovery program (File Scavenger goes for $49, while Easy Recovery Professional will cost you $500).
Still no luck? For tips on how to recover anything from Excel files to a lost password, check out PC World’s How to Recover (Almost) Anything.
Have horror stories to tell about work you’ve lost? Have brilliant tips for recovering precious files? Do share!
Introducing Zotero (part one) October 9, 2007
Posted by Allen in : Citing Sources, Cool tools, Tips for students , 7comments
Zotero describes itself as a Firefox extension that helps you “collect, manage, and cite your research sources.” Since I’m as technologically trail-weary as the next person, I’ll try to make clear what it is about Zotero that should rouse you out of bed and why I’ve been an enthusiastic user for the last six months.
At its most basic, Zotero streamlines the process of creating citations. Instead of making an extra trip back to the library catalog or a book’s front matter when you need to fill in the required fields (publication year, editor, etc.) in your bibliographic software (EndNote, BibTex), you let Zotero do it for you the first time, when you’re looking at the book’s record in your browser (in Duke’s catalog, Worldcat, Amazon, Google Books, etc.). It’ll grab the relevant details and more from the catalog record at the click of an icon (see image below). Zotero gets much sweeter if you’re viewing the item-to-be-cited itself in your browser, rather than its catalog entry–for example, an article on Le Monde or the New York Times. Not only will Zotero pull out all the information you’ll need to cite the article later, it will make a local copy of the page you’re looking at, so if you or the article is ever off-line, you’ll still have a copy. Once the item is saved, creating a citation or a bibliography in whatever style you’d like (MLA, APA, Chicago) is easy.
If you’re already using Firefox, treat yourself to Zotero. It’ll save you typing and time. The extension is open-source as well, over a year in development by a crack team at George Mason University. Still have doubts? Zotero recently won an award for best instructional technology software from the American Political Science Association.
All this said, I’ve hardly touched on the features of Zotero that make it well-nigh revolutionary as a piece of software. I’ll save that for part two.
[update 2007-10-12: If you're eager to read more about Zotero, I recommend Scott Mclemee's review from a few weeks ago on Inside Higher Ed.]
