Cell Phones for Citation December 20, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Cool tools, Life in the library, Tips for students , 3commentsA colleague in the library recently observed a student using a cell phone camera to make a quick “note” of the title page of a book, and the call number label. What a great idea! Very useful for people who are in a big hurry, but want to make sure they capture the full bibliographic citation of something they checked, and also want a reminder of the call number so they can come back for it. Much better than a scribbled post-it note that can be lost or undecipherable.
Photo by absent.canadian from the Photo Scavenger Hunt - any interest in doing a new hunt in the new semester?
Duke Library Website Under Creative Commons License December 14, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Cool tools, Original research , 2commentsMost of the Duke Libraries’ web pages are now licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License. What that means in non-lawyer speak is that everyone is welcome to use, share or remix the pages so licensed, under certain conditions.
Look for the logo below the footer on every relevant page. A few pages are not licensed, because of various copyright or other legal issues; they will explicitly say so.
The conditions for use are: you give credit to the Duke Libraries for the used material, you don’t use our material to make money, and whatever you make from our material must also be available for sharing and remixing.
Do you have a web site that you host or contribute to? Consider Creative Commons licensing for your site.
New Soda Machine in Bostock for 3 AM Caffeine December 11, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library , add a commentIn response to student interest, the library has installed a Pepsi machine in Bostock, on the Lower Level across from the elevators. Now you can get a caffeinated beverage without leaving the building after The Perk at the Pavilion by Saladelia closes!
The new machine sells Pepsi products in 20 ounce bottles for $1.25. Right now it only takes cash; there is a change machine on Bostock 1 across from the elevators. The Card Office will install a card reader so the machine will take flex, but this probably won’t happen until exams are over.
End-of-Semester Crunch Time Tips December 6, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library, Research Help , 1 comment so farIt’s that time of year when we find people asleep at the computers (some with head back and snoring loudly). Here are some tips for taking care of yourself and fellow Dukies in the library as the semester comes to a close:
1. Take care of your computer & files. Back up often. Don’t walk away from a library computer without saving your files to a thumb drive, your AFS space, or emailing them to yourself (or all three); when you log out of a library computer the files saved to the desktop disappear (and they auto-log out after 15 minutes of inactivity, so be careful if you tend to fall asleep!) If you’re on your laptop, take it with you to the bathroom - laptops are stolen every exam period, even those with half-done not-saved papers on them.
2. Ask a librarian for help. We can save you time and frustration at the best of times, and we’ve probably had more sleep this week than you have. Walk up, IM, email, or call. At Perkins and Lilly you can get Reference help from 8am to 2am.
3. Take care of yourself and your fellow students. Get sleep, take walk-in-the-garden breaks, hit the Perk for a salad instead of McDonald’s. If you move into the library, try to put your trash in the trash cans to make life easier for the housekeeping staff. Consider ceding the group study rooms to actual groups who want to study. Keep the headphones low enough so they don’t drive the next person crazy.
LibX browser add-on - take the library with you December 4, 2007
Posted by Paolo in : Cool tools , add a commentLast summer we posted the first version of the Duke Libraries LibX browser add-on. A new version is out now, with some fixes, updates, and new functionality. If you already have LibX, Firefox should have notified you that there was an update available (if not, in Firefox go to Tools -> Add-ons and click “Find Updates”). If you haven’t heard about it yet, please read on.
What is LibX? It’s an add-on (or extension) to your web browser that puts library services wherever you go on the web. It has a toolbar (which you can choose to show or hide as needed) that lets you do several different kinds of library searches (catalog, journals, databases, Google Scholar, etc.) directly from your browser. There are also quick links to frequently used library services (My Account, Ask a Librarian, and more) and a Scholar “magic button” - drag and drop text on it, and it will search for that text in Google Scholar.
But some of the coolest functionality is what’s hidden behind the scenes, and only shows up when appropriate. Go to Amazon or Google or other places where a book’s unique ISBN number is encoded (including many book reviews) and a Duke Libraries icon (the “reading Blue Devil”: 
) will appear as a cue that there’s a library connection there. Click on the icon, and it will link you to a search of the item in Duke’s library catalog. The same thing works for many journal articles - look for the embedded Get It @ Duke cue 
in Google Scholar, CiteULike, and elsewhere. Clicking the link will take you to it via Duke Library’s subscription.
More hidden functionality is revealed when you right click on a web page. If you’re off-campus and a site that requires a Duke subscription doesn’t recognize you as being from Duke, right click and look for the item that reads “Reload [name of web site] via Duke University EZProxy”. Clicking on this will send you through the library’s EZProxy system, which will authenticate you as a member of the Duke community and then direct you back to the page you were on. Not all sites work with this, but many do, and it might save you a trip to the library catalog or VPN.
The right-click menu also gives you lots of search options if you highlight some text before right-clicking. Highlight a word or phrase, and the right-click menu will give you lots of places where you can search on that word or phrase. For the “Author” field, it will even flip the terms, so if you highlighted Joe Smith it will turn your Author search into Smith Joe, which the library catalog likes better.
Give it a try - it’s available for Firefox (Windows, Mac, and Linux - yes Linux users, we love you too) and for Internet Explorer on Windows. Note that while the Firefox version is stable and well-tested, the IE version is still in beta, and requires recent versions of the browser and .Net framework.
See Duke Library’s LibX page for download links and instructions, and please let us know what you think.
