Online Encylopedias for Specific Subjects January 29, 2008
Posted by Phoebe in : Cool tools, Database Tip, Tips for students , add a commentWe recently wrote about some all-encompassing online encyclopedias. But there are also some very useful encyclopedias on specific scholarly topics. Increasingly the standard print reference works in any given field are becoming available in keyword-searchable full text online. Here are some great ones:
Oxford Reference Online has excellent encyclopedias and dictionaries for fields from Art and Architecture to Science, and also includes foreign language and quotation dictionaries. Titles include The Oxford Classical Dictionary, A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. They even have a browser toolbar you can download and install allowing you to search their products.
AccessScience @ McGraw-Hill gives you keyword searchability of the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology as well as science biographies, yearbooks, and some news articles.
Blackwell Reference Online has especially strong collections in Business, History, Linguistics, Literature, and Philosophy.
Next in our tour of online reference works we’ll look at some specific titles. If you want an overview of the things we subscribe to, look in the Resource Finder under the subject heading Reference, and look for Encyclopedias and Dictionaries.
I need a specific article. How do I get it? January 28, 2008
Posted by Kathi in : Catalog Tip, Question of the Week, Research Help, Tips for students , 1 comment so farNot a problem… we get asked this question a lot!
If you already have the citation (author, title, journal name, etc.) , you can look up the journal title in the E-Journal Finder.
- If we have no online full text, click the link to search the catalog for print or microfilm.
- Need help figuring out what words are the journal title? See Understanding Citations.
- Have a mystery abbreviation for the journal title? See the book Periodical Title Abbreviations at the Perkins Reference Desk or Ask a Librarian.
On occasion, the library may not have the particular journal either in print or online for the year needed. As long as your paper isn’t due in the next few days, you can always request the article through our interlibrary loan service.
Still having trouble? Maybe you’ve already found the article in a database, but can’t figure out how to access it? The answer is in the “get it at Duke” button. Take a look at our “get it at Duke” tutorial (2 min 12 sec). It could save you a lot of time and confusion in the end.
Happy hunting!
Plagiarism Prevention Tips January 22, 2008
Posted by Phoebe in : Citing Sources, Tips for students , add a commentPlagiarism is in the news again, most recently when a romance novel writer was found to have copied from an article on (no kidding) endangered black-footed ferrets. Here’s Paul Tolme, the freelance wildlife journalist, on being plagiarized:
In the Internet age, every freelance writer fears that his or her words will be appropriated without compensation. First I was angry. Then I had to laugh. To see my textbook descriptions of ferrets in a bodice-ripper, as dialogue between a hunky American Indian and a lustful pioneer woman who several pages later have sex on a mossy riverbank, is the height of absurdity.
The romance novelist is claiming ignorance as a cause of her plagiarism. Unfortunately, ignorance is no excuse. Most students who plagiarize didn’t mean to: they either are careless in cutting and pasting from multiple sources and forget to attribute their sources, are genuinely confused about whether or how to cite something, or are working at the last minute and get desperate and sloppy.
How can you avoid plagiarism? The library has a tutorial that helps explain the dangers, sets out the rules of appropriate citation, and sends you to writing tutors or counselors if you need more help. A sample:
Chances are that you understand the difference between creating incomplete citations and passing off someone else’s work as your own. Still, you … may occasionally find yourself in confusing situations. Do Internet sources need to be cited the same way as books? How do you cite something from the Web if there’s no indication who wrote it? What if you rewrite someone else’s ideas, putting them all into your own words — do you still need to cite? If you are in doubt, you run the risk of unintentionally plagiarizing.
In the end, it all worked out for the ferrets. The romance novel reader’s community that broke the story has donated $5,000 to protect the black-footed ferret.
Using the library just got easier January 21, 2008
Posted by Emily in : Catalog Tip, Research Help, Tips for students , 1 comment so farLet’s face it: Navigating Duke library’s online resources can be a challenge — even frustrating — at times. We librarians are trying to cut out some of the guesswork by developing short (2 minutes, tops!) animated tutorials with step-by-step directions designed to illuminate some of the murkier aspects of library research.
Here’s what you’ll find…
- Choosing the right database — Ever tried to get into a database to find an article for your econ paper but just couldn’t figure out which database to use (there are nearly 500 to choose from, after all!)? This tutorial will help you make sense of those categories and never-ending lists.
- Requesting books that are checked out — Yes, there is a way to get your hands on that book that’s checked out till May 15. Take a look at this tutorial to find out.
- Using “get it @ duke” — That little blue button can do oh-so-much good but not without a little confusion when you’re first figuring it out. This tutorial will help shorten the learning curve.
There are more tutorials in the works, and we’d love your input on possible topics or ways we can these guides even more user-friendly. Here’s the place for your thoughts and suggestions!
Do serif fonts get you better grades? January 15, 2008
Posted by Paolo in : Tips for students , 2comments
Last week I saw a documentary called Helvetica, which explored the history and culture of typefaces, and the sans-serif Helvetica font in particular. It got me thinking more about the almost sub-conscious power of the fonts used in the writing all around us, and the ones I use myself. (It’s a fun and elegant documentary by the way, and not at all as boring or geeky as it might sound.)
Coincidentally, a couple of days later I came across a blog posting called The Secret Lives of Fonts, in which the author reviewed 52 papers he wrote for university courses and found that on average he got better grades on the ones where he used serif fonts than on the ones where he used sans-serif fonts. He writes:
Well, would you believe it? My essays written in Georgia did the best overall. This got me thinking as to why that might be: maybe fonts speak a lot louder than we think they do. Especially to a professor who has to wade through a collection of them; Times seems to be the norm, so it really doesn’t set off any subconcious triggers. Georgia is enough like Times to retain its academic feel, and is different enough to be something of a relief for the grader. Trebuchet seems to set off a negative trigger, maybe just based on the fact that it’s not as easy to read in print, maybe on the fact that it looks like something off a blog rather than an academic journal. Who knows.
What fonts do you use, and have you noticed patterns like these? Professors and TAs, do you have typeface preferences for the papers you need to grade? Is there something to this?
Myself, I like Verdana, but I’m mostly reading my own words on screens now. Maybe I should think again and change the font just before I print it out…
