Test #3

also testing

Testing ping.fm configuration to update all social media sites at once…

Useful post on library catalogs

http://www.profhacker.com/2009/10/23/using-loc-subject-headings/

Student ID as temporary barcode

In effort to make the back-to-school adjustment easier, the Alliant library is pleased to announce a simpler way for you to log in to access library resources.  Effective immediately, you may use your Alliant ID number (whether you are a student, staff or faculty member) instead of your fourteen-digit library barcode.

Please note that you will still need to obtain an ID card with a fourteen-digit barcode in order to check out books!  The use of ID as an alternative to barcode is simply meant to provide everyone with easier, more immediate access to *online* resources, not to act as a long-term substitute for the ID card and barcode.

So, the bottom line is that you can log in with your student ID instead of your barcode, but if you plan on using your campus library in person, you will still need to get your ID card.

Our thinking is that this will be a major convenience for online students and those studying at international sites, but it should also benefit anyone who has trouble memorizing a fourteen digit number (I definitely place myself in that category!).

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us with feedback about this or any other library service.  The best way to do that is by emailing library@alliant.edu.

Link+ Adds Media Lending

In a move sure to be popular in these trying economic conditions, the Link+ consortium, of which Alliant is a member, has now made it possible for users to borrow not just books, but also audiovisual media — DVDs, CDs, and so on.

The process is similar to borrowing a book through Link+.  You search the Link+ catalog, locate the item you want, and then log in with your name and Alliant library barcode to place a request.  It’s a great way to have movies and books on CD delivered right to your Alliant library location.  Please try it out and let us know how it goes!

Make RSS feeds from Alliant library databases your personal research assistant

Some of you may be familiar with a tool called RSS, which allows one to receive updates about new content posted to blogs and other sites.  Instead of checking the same twenty to thirty websites each day to see if anything new has been posted, one simply subscribes to the rss feed of each site using a “rss reader” such as Google Reader (http://reader.google.com).  Then all that is necessary is to check your reader for new content, which will have been automatically downloaded.  If you haven’t used rss feeds in the past, you might want to give it a try, as it is a great way to keep up with news from lots of different sources.

An additional advantage, and the main purpose of this post, is that many of the databases available through Alliant’s library support rss feeds of search results.  What does this mean?

Let’s say there is a student working on her dissertation, and her area of interest is the psychology of pet owners.  She could go to the library databases, choose PsycINFO, and after some trial and error determine that by searching the descriptors “Pets” and “Ownership,” she can find results relevant to her work.  If she wanted to stay current with her topic on an ongoing basis, she could make a note reminding herself to run this search once a week, twice a month, or however often seemed appropriate.

Or, if she is a savvy user of rss feeds, she could make things much easier on herself, by setting up an rss feed which will automatically notify her any time new records matching her search appear in the PsycINFO database.  To do this, one must simply click on the small orange box (the logo for rss) on the search result screen.

This will open a popup which includes the details about the rss feed or “alert” being created:

The URL circled above can be copy/pasted into an rss reader.  After this is done, the reader will now contain a new subscription which will be automatically updated any time the database in question receives new records which match the search criteria originally defined (“DE pets AND DE ownership,” in this case).  Reading this new feed looks like this:

The “beauty part,” as they say, is that our patron can now sit down each day to go through her news feeds, checking the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and so forth, and at the same time find out if there are any new scholarly articles relevant to her interests.  It’s somewhat like having a personal research assistant feeding one new material as it becomes available.

This has been a very brief introduction to how rss works and how you can use it to assist you with your research.  For more information, the BBC has a very nice overview of the concept, or feel free to contact library@alliant.edu.   Finally, please note that the examples used here will not work on all of Alliant’s databases, as some database providers have not yet implemented this functionality.

Chat with a librarian

As a great way to start blogging about developments at Alliant’s library, I’m happy to announce that chat-based reference is now available.  Librarians are always happy to assist by phone, email or in person, but we understand that more and more of us live online, particularly when it comes to academics.  So, this is a way for people to get the help they need in a medium they are comfortable with.

To start chatting, head over to the library’s site and, in the top banner click Ask-a-Librarian.  This will take you to a page describing all the ways you can get a hold of a librarian, and if one is available, you’ll also see a chat window like this:

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