The new rules have driven confused and frustrated researchers to sources such as APA’s blog, which provides examples and attempts to explain the more complicated rules (check out the DOI/URL flowchart — yes, this rule requires a flowchart), or Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL), which hosts APA and MLA resources that received 3.5 million and 2.5 million hits, respectively, during September and October alone, according to the coordinator of OWL.

It is evident from these stats alone that librarians and faculty have spent countless hours supporting the researchers and students who have spent even more time formatting manuscripts to meet the unbending rules of CSE, APA, MLA and enumerable others.

As Barbara Fister posits in her ACRLog post, is this time well spent? Is research somehow made more valid when its footnotes are perfectly formatted, its works cited page spaced just so? Have we spent so much time agonizing over comma placement and tracking down database names that we’ve lost sight of the whole point of citing sources in the first place? Do our budding scholars realize that citing sources is not merely an academic hazing ritual of sorts, causing them hours of extra labor after their papers are written?

It would seem that the newest editions of APA and MLA are only muddying the waters, making it harder for researchers — especially novice ones — to achieve the true goal of citing sources: to give credit to the scholars their research builds upon and to make it as easy as possible for their readers to learn more about that work.

And if we can agree on that primary goal, how do we get back to emphasizing it rather than the arcane rules?

Ready to start that term paper?  Not sure how to start?  The University of Minnesota Libraries have created an assignment calculator to help students organize their time to meet their research needs.  Start with today’s date, enter the date assignment is due, a timeline is provided, with research milestones.  Use Duke Library links for local, on-site research assistance.  For example, How do I begin my research? or  Find a Librarian in my subject area? or ask for help are just a few of the services available to you through the Duke Libraries.

Shelves in the LSC

The catalog says the location for the item you want is “Library Service Center.”  Where’s that?  and what is it?  The Library Service Center, or LSC, is a high-density shelving facility in East Durham that holds the library’s books and other materials for which there is no room in the campus libraries.  With 30 ft. high shelves, it can hold 4 million volumes.  No searching for call numbers on the shelf here – it’s all tied to barcodes.
Check it out for yourself: 

If you want something from LSC, click on the next to the title.  Then click the Request link in the “Get This Title” box.  Deliveries are made to and from campus libraries twice a day during the week and once on weekends.

Knights who say ni

Why? Because, those zany blokes are celebrating their 40th anniversary in NY City this week. Besides, it’s a proven fact that laughing yourself silly is an effective antidote to stress.  According to a literature review in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services ¹

There are several beneficial efforts attributed to humor and laughter, including improved immune function, increased pain tolerance, and decreased stress response.

If you must rationalize it as schoolwork, you might hone your persuasive argument skills with The Argument Clinic

I don’t think there’s a punch-line scheduled, is there?

¹ MacDonald, C. (2004). A chuckle a day keeps the doctor away: therapeutic humor & laughter. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing & Mental Health Services, 42(3), 18. http://search.ebscohost.com

In an era of globalization, issues of connectivity and access to information concerning health care and health related systems remain uneven across the world. Duke students and faculty from Trinity College and the Duke Global Health Institute will discuss their experiences with information access in health projects around the world, as well as their interactions with health consumers and professionals in other countries.

Sponsored as part of Open Access Week by Duke University Libraries and the Duke Medical Center Library

Three photpgraph collections from Lafayette college’s digital collection. All the photos have very detailed descriptive data (bilingual in many fields) and the images are of good quality themselves.

• Taiwan Colonial Pictorial Works: has 59 sepia photographs from Taiwan from the period 1933-1938
• The Gerald Warner Taiwan Image Collection : A US consul’s impressions of urban and rural life in Taiwan under Japanese colonial rule.
• The Michael Lewis Taiwan Image Collection: A collection of 530 colour postcards from the period March 1918-February 1933.

Taiwan Art Exhibition (1927-1943) Database 台灣美術展覽會資料庫 from Academia Sinica of Taiwan has Images of 2144 artworks from 16 art exhibits during Japanese colonial period. Information is in Chinese with Japanese titles.

The award invites library users to recognize the accomplishments of librarians for their efforts to improve the lives of people in their community.  Nominations will run through October 9 and are being accepted online at www.ilovelibraries.org/ilovemylibrarian.

Up to 10 librarians will be selected.  Each will receive a $5,000 cash award, a plaque and a $500 travel stipend to attend an awards ceremony and reception in New York, hosted by The New York Times in December.  In addition, a plaque will be given to each award winner’s library.

Nominees will be judged by a selection committee based on quality of service to library users, demonstrated knowledge of the library and its resources and commitment shown in helping library users.

As they say in Chicago, vote early, vote often!

It is to be hoped that the sheer magnitude of these transactions and their economic impact will help to focus attention on the humanitarian and ethical issues underlying the process of migration, issues which are often, despite the apparent beneficial financial results, less than benign.

We’ve been getting more and more questions in the library about how researchers can find information from other disciplines.  For example, how can someone working on membranes in Psychiatry connect up with someone working on membranes in Materials Science?  In a world where waiting for the published article is increasingly too late,  we’ve been trying to find new avenues.

To answer the question above, I thought, ‘I wonder if there is a social networking site for scientists?’, did a Google search, and voila – Labmeeting!

The interesting part about Labmeeting is that it is only freely available to scientific researchers.  You have to either get invited by a scientific researcher you know, or show online proof that you are doing scientific research.  Or pay $99.  Thus, not being a scientific researcher, nor willing to part with $99 for a look-see, I was unable to join.

A search on Duke presented 120 results and included the following:

• Associate Professor at Duke University  interested in the following topics: Monomeric lambda repressor, Ribonuclease P protein, Protein A, NMR, CD, fluorescence, stopped flow, amide exchange, dynamic NMR
• PhD Student at Duke University interested in the following topics: In vivo model systems, genetic screens, immunoblotting
• PhD Student at Duke University interested in the following topics: Photonics

Give it a shot and let us know what you think:  http://www.labmeeting.com

Addendum:  As William Gunn points out in the comments below, there are other similar tools which you may want to try.  They include:

• https://www.researchgate.net/
• http://www.mendeley.com/
• http://www.academia.edu/
• http://www.myexperiment.org/