Library Hacks

iGoogle and Duke Libraries April 10, 2008

Posted by Phoebe in : Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Database Tip , add a comment

We’ve heard of several faculty and library staff members who are converts to iGoogle, which is sort of a customizable universal home page. If you use iGoogle and the Duke Libraries, you should certainly add our Google Gadget, which lets you put the tabbed search box from the library home page right into iGoogle. Here’s how it looks:

You’ll notice that Catherine also has her Gmail account, Facebook account, Google Reader (for subscribing to blogs, like Duke’s Library Hacks!), Google Docs, and a news feed (plus other stuff you can’t see like weather and Youtube) all feeding in to her iGoogle page.

You can also create your own free-form “gadget” with links to, for example, e-journals or databases that you search all the time, creating a series of research shortcuts for yourself. Give the Duke Library Google Gadget a try and see if other iGoogle tools work for you. If you have a library or research-related iGoogle Hack, leave us a note in comments!

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Search TRLN Feature 1: Spelling Correction April 2, 2008

Posted by Phoebe in : Catalog Tip , 1 comment so far

Search TRLN (introduced here) has some great features that make the search experience more like familiar online searches (cough*google*cough) than like more traditional library catalogs.

Search TRLN will try to suggest corrections for your spelling errors or typos. I did an Author search on “milosAvic”, deliberately, but plausibly, spelling this name wrong. Search TRLN realized I might have meant “milosEvic” and included search results for that spelling in my list. As it turns out, the first 5 items in the list have authors named Milosevic associated with them. Nice!

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Search TRLN: unified catalog for Duke, UNC, NCSU and NCCU March 25, 2008

Posted by Phoebe in : Catalog Tip, Cool tools , 3comments

Did you know that these local universities have cooperative agreements between their libraries ? Duke students, faculty and staff can use their Duke ID cards to check out books at UNC, NC State, or NCCU, and vice versa, for example.

Now TRLN (the Triangle Research Libraries Network) has launched a new catalog that has a unified search for the collections of all the schools’ libraries. You can request delivery between the schools, which is expected to take 48 hours.

Search TRLN has a number of exciting new features:

It still has the support you’re used to:

We’ll be posting some more detailed suggestions and web tutorials for how best to use this new catalog in the coming weeks. Right now, give it a try! Leave a question or a tip in comments.

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Search Duke Library Resources from Facebook March 14, 2008

Posted by Phoebe in : Catalog Tip, Cool tools, Database Tip, Tips for students , add a comment

Hang out in Facebook a lot? Do you think you might want to search the Duke library catalog and other library databases directly from there some times? You can now using the Duke Libraries Facebook application.

To install it, go to http://apps.facebook.com/dukelibraries/ and follow the usual method for installing Facebook applications, checking or unchecking the settings you want for this application. Then look for it on your profile page. The box should be able to be moved around on your page and fit in either column. With this app, you should be able to do any of the searches that you can do on the library home page.

Try it out, and let us know what you think!

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