Thursday, September 27, 2007

LOST & FOUND

Greetings All,

Its finally here, a central lost and found, and its allready filling up. The location is Circulation Desk. So for now lost flash drives, shades, disks, etc. have a home there. And for those who like to loose hot itmes, like flases, please be careful because many times these items are picked up before staff has a chance to find it and set it aside, so students please be careful with your belongings, and especially with flash drives because its easy to get up and leave them. Also be careful with taking out extra stuff while in work/study areas because many other personal items have been left behind as well.

Nursing Success Strategies - Scavenger Hunt

Some sections of Freshman Seminar/Nursing Success Strategies (It may be other Freshman Seminar classes as well) are doing a scavenger hunt that includes questions about the history of the university. One specfic question is "how did the lirbary get its name?" That question was found in the university catalog, but we may want to point them to the unversity history book located in the textbook/reserves area and the Archives website on the library's homepage as well.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Empirical Journal Articles

Empirical journals are also known by the following terms: research, scholarly, professional, peer reviewed/refereed, and scientific.

Empirical journal articles test a hypothesis or opinion about a topic such as “What is the effect of capital punishment on crime?” An empirical article will contain numerous headings including the Hypothesis, Method, Participants, Procedure, and Results, and Conclusions. They also may contain tables and statistics that present the study’s results. Experts write these empirical articles on topics they study based on facts that they discover. Other experts in the field review these articles before they are published (this process is called peer reviewing), which lends credibility to the information contained in the article.

Empirical journal articles for topics can be found using the following “specialized” databases such as Science Direct, Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsycARTICLES, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) or “interdisciplinary” databases such as Academic Search Premier, Project Muse, ProQuest Research Library, and InfoTrac OneFile.

A journal may also contain non-empirical articles that are essays on a topic that present an expert’s opinion on a topic or review previous literature on a topic but are not tests of a hypothesis. These types of journal articles are called review articles. They do not have the headings mentioned above within the article. These are not appropriate for assignments that require the use of empirical articles.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

One Book One Community

We have received two questions about the one book one community reading experience this morning. One faculty member will be requiring the students to write an essay on the book. Please refer individuals to our website – “One Book One Community” there they will find our “reading blog”. Chris is also going to post the PDF copy of the brochure and Jeff is going to post sound bits from the discussion session with the author. Hopefully, these items will be posted by the end of the work day. This is an endorsement that the Blog is very helpful. Thanks

Monday, September 24, 2007

Hello all,

Dr. Lori Sheppard is sending her students to look for articles from an American Psychological Association resource. She recommended PsycLIT, which is no longer in existence. It has been collapsed into PsycINFO. Mr. Foster assisted one student with this today, so we may want to be on the lookout for others. Below is the email that I sent to Dr. Sheppard.


Hello Dr. Sheppard

A few of your students have come into the library to search for articles through PsycLit. That database has been collapsed into the database PsycINFO 1870-Current. To get access to PsycINFO or to PsycARTICLES (another APA database they just go the library’s homepage (http://www.wssu.edu/WSSU/About/Administration/Information+Resources/C.G.+OKelly+Library/)

Then under Research click on Database by Title. Scroll down the alphabetical list and click on the link for with PsycARTICLES or PsycINFO. They can also click on Databases by Subject, click on “Psychology,” and view other Psychology databases.