A Few Interesting Updates...

It feels like forever since I've posted here, but apparently it's only been a week.  In that week, I've traveled to New Orleans and back for the annual conference of the American Library Association.  During this conference, librarians meet to conduct business, share ideas and practices, and (perhaps most importantly), talk with library vendors about resources and products that we use in our libraries.

This year, I was able to bring back a few interesting tidbits that you may be interested in:

• EndNote X5 was just released!  Currently, only the PC version is available, but the Mac version should be coming out this fall.  If you have a PC, you can now download EndNote X5 from the VT network software site.  Contact me if you'd like to set up any group or individual training for EndNote X4 or X5.  
• The 2010 data is now available in ISI's Journal Citation Reports.  You can read our library release about it here, and also brush up on why Journal Citation Reports and impact factors are important!
• Web of Science has an enhanced interface.  I saw a few demonstrations of the new interface, and you can read about these enhancements here.  The changes didn't seem to be too big, but there may be a few options that you find helpful!  More on this later.  
• Springer has a cool (totally free, to anyone!) tool called AuthorMapper that will allow you to search for institutions and authors and plot their locations on a map.  Check out the "Virginia Tech" map that I just created:

Powered by AuthorMapper.com

That's about it for the big news from the vendors that you all may be interested in from the American Library Association annual conference. However, there was quite a bit of discussion surrounding a few library issues that you may also be interested in:

• E-books.  The general consensus is that they're here to stay, but that libraries are in the throes of negotiating what our collections will look like.  More and more libraries are lending Nooks, Kindles, iPads, and other e-readers.  
• Collaborative arrangements.  Since storage is tight on many campuses, and because university libraries are opening up more space for collaboration, many libraries are turning to collaborative agreements to house print journals.  Overall, access to journals won't be impacted (from the user perspective), but it may change the way libraries look (and act on-campus) in the near future.
• Institutional repositories.  It is becoming increasingly common for libraries to build their own institutional repositories to house the research coming out of that university.  Virginia Tech is moving toward this goal, and I, for one, am very excited to see where this takes us!

Evaluating Sources, Author Credentials, and Online Identity

During the summer, I try to keep these posts light, saving the meaty, research-oriented posts for the school year when the information is likely to be immediately applicable.  However, I've been thinking a lot about evaluating sources lately, and wanted to just jot down a few of my thoughts as they are germinating.  I may write more about this later (during the school year), but today I want to make the connection between online identity and evaluating resources.

As any researcher will admit, taking the time to evaluate the articles, books, websites, and other resources found during the research process can be one of the most important and one of the most frustrating steps in the whole research process--how do you know that the information that you've found is good?  In general, resources should be judged on five criteria (read more about those five criteria here).  One of these criteria--authority--makes the researcher consider the source of the information.  The researcher should ask, " Is the person, organization, or institution responsible for the intellectual content of the information knowledgeable in that subject?"


Seems like an easy question, but, if you're just starting out on a research project, how would you know (or find out) whether or not an author is particularly knowledgeable in a subject?  Usually, this involves a bit more background research:  a researcher may search their local library catalog (Addison for us), or another catalog, like WorldCat, to see what other books a particular person has written on a topic.  Similarly, researchers could conduct author searches in subject databases like Web of Science or PubMed to find other articles authored by a particular person and see if that author seems to have a subject expertise in a particular area.  In light of the social media and social networking boom of the past few years, though, I think that this element of evaluating the authority of authors and their publications just got a whole lot more interesting.  


Sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, Blogger, and other social networking sites now make it possible to uncover a wealth of information about scholars, researchers, and authors.  While not every author will have an accessible (public) social networking presence, increasing numbers of authors/researchers/scholars are turning to the web to enhance their scholarly reputations and identities.  I blogged about this idea earlier this spring, and am working on a related presentation and article for other librarians.  Regardless of my personal/professional interest in this topic, I have been thinking about the potential value of these sites for students interested in really thinking about the authority of their information and who is producing it.  


I recently read a really interesting, related blog post, and of course, can't find it again in my Google Reader mess....  However, the post included several lengthy student quotes about research, one of which summarized a student's use of LinkedIn to help her evaluate a resource she was having trouble evaluating.  Essentially, she used LinkedIn to review a particular author's education, professional associations, and employment history, ultimately helping her judge whether or not that author was reliable.  That is really cool!


In some ways, it seems like scholars have more control over their reputations than they ever have before.  New researchers can certainly benefit from this, since Googling an author's name may now turn up more than enough information on an author for a new researcher to be able to really consider his/her reliability.  If you're interested in learning more about tools that could help you (1) control your online reputation and/or (2) track down information about other researchers, then check out this scholarly identity handout I created for last spring's Graduate Education Week.  I'll definitely be writing more on this topic in the near future.

Culinary History Highlight: Banana Pudding

Okay, so banana pudding isn't the title of our culinary history collection book that I'm highlighting today, but it is one of the defining features of this book!

With funds from the Peacock Harper Culinary Fund, VT Special Collections recently acquired the Kentucky Receipt Book, one of the first recipe books known to have a recipe for banana pudding!  According to WorldCat, VT is now one of only nine institutions to own a copy of this unique item.  As soon as the book is cataloged, it will be available to researchers in the Special Collections Reading Room.

However, you can also peruse a digitized copy of this book on Google Books!

25 Greatest Travel Books

Image from Budget Travel feature (see link in post)

Consider this post an addendum to the summer reading post that I wrote a few weeks ago....  Budget Travel just published a list of the 25 Great Travel Books of All Time, and we have most of them here in the library!  So, if you're like me and will be spending most of your summer in Blacksburg, take a look at this list for some works of literature that will take you somewhere else for a short while!  I've linked all the titles below to their Addison records so that you can easily find them, check them out, and take them home with you.  The list seems to be in no particular order, except for fiction/nonfiction:

Fiction:

• On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
• The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles
• The Beach, by Alex Garland (use Interlibrary Loan to get this book!)
• Daughter of Fortune, by Isabel Allende
• White Teeth, by Zadie Smith
• A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster
• The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith
• Open City, by Teju Cole
• The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova
• Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
• The Plumed Serpent, by D. H. Lawrence
• Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin
• The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway

Nonfiction:

• In a Sunburned Country, by Bill Bryson (use Interlibrary Loan to get this book!)
• Video Night in Kathmandu, by Pico Iyer (use Interlibrary Loan to get this book!)
• Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer
• Travels with Charley, by John Steinbeck
• Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey
• Wrong about Japan, by Peter Carey
• Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz
• Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
• Shadows on the Grass, by Isak Dinesen
• The Snow Leopard, by Peter Matthiessen
• The Great Railway Bazaar, by Paul Theroux
• In Patagonia, by Bruce Chatwin
• Great Plains, by Ian Frazier (use Interlibrary Loan to get this book!)

Cookbooks of the Year, Revisited

In my haste to post the information about the 2011 Cookbooks of the Year yesterday, I didn't do a thorough search through the list to see which books we already had, here in Newman.  Turns out, we have quite a few.  So, if you're interested in trying out a 2011 Cookbook of the Year (or Finalist), check out this list, with titles linked to the Addison records:

• The Essential New York Times Cookbook
• The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook
• Culinary Ephemera:  An Illustrated  History
• 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
• American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of its Food (and What we can Do About It)
• The Wild Table
• Food Matters Cookbook
• As Always, Julia:  The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto:  Food, Friendship, and the Making of  Masterpiece
• Taste Buds and Molecules:  The Art and Science of Food with Wine
• Exploring Wine (3rd ed.)

2011 Cookbooks of the Year

It seems that the International Association of Culinary Professionals has just announced its cookbook award winners for 2011.  According to the IACP website, 2011 represents the 25th anniversary of these cookbook awards, and that these awards represent "the gold standard for culinary publishing."  I had no idea that this group even existed, but now I'll definitely be using their lists to help me decide which new cookbooks we should be adding to Newman's circulating cookbook collection!

You can view the entire list of IACP 2011 Cookbook Award Winners, but a few of the big winners for this year are listed below.  Although you may not see some of these in Addison YET, you better believe that I'll be purchasing some of them!  And, remember, if you come across any cookbooks, or books in general, that you'd like to see added to the library's collection, just send me an email or suggest an item for purchase via the official form!
      

Winner in the American category

Winner in the Compilations category

Winner in the Chefs and Restaurants category

Winner in the Baking:  Savory or Sweet category

iPad Ideas: PubMed Searching, Part 3

Parts I and 2 of this series of posts focused on finding and use apps that will help you search PubMed on an iPad (or other mobile device).  In Part 2, I mentioned the "library" feature of PubMed On Tap Lite, a feature that will let you store citations/articles that you find within a particular area of that app.  However, most of us using PubMed already use some sort of reference manager to which we'd like to add references and articles that we find.

Those of you who've worked with me know that I am a heavy EndNote user and proponent.  However, I know that many of you use Zotero, Mendeley, or Bookends to accomplish the same level of organization as you conduct your literature searches.  So, how does reference management work on the iPad?  I have to admit, I'm still struggling with this a bit as I figure out the best system; I know, though, that some sort of reference management integration has to work on the iPad to really be able to use this tool in my research.

PubMed On Tap Lite, the app that I've discussed in the previous two posts in this series, claims that it will allow you to email your results to yourself in RIS format, which is the type of file that reference managers use.  I tried this out, and there are a few steps that you need to take in order to successfully add articles that you find through PubMed On Tap Lite to your reference manager (in my case, EndNote, although the same process will work for Zotero, Mendeley, Bookends, etc.):

1.  Check the settings of your PubMed On Tap Lite app and make sure that the "export reference options" has the format set to "modified RIS"

(2) After you've checked (and possibly reset) your settings, then you'll conduct your search as usual.

(3) When you receive your search results, you have the option to use the email icon and email yourself the reference information.  Now that your email settings are changed to the "modified RIS" format, whatever you email yourself will look like this:

(4) When you receive this email from your iPad (or other device), the information you see on the screen above will come in the body of an email, rather than an attachment, which means that you'll need to create a file that you can import into your reference manager.

(5) Create a text (.txt) file, and copy/paste the contents of the email into this text file.  Save it under a name, and to a location, that you can easily remember.

(6)  Open EndNote, select the library that you want to import the file into, and then use the "import" button to locate and import the text file that you just created.  You'll want to select the "RefMan RIS" filter (import option) to successfully import the file:

That seems like a lot of steps, just to get one reference into your EndNote (or other) library.  Personally, I think I might just email the references to myself through the PubMed On Tap Lite email option, then use the PMIDs to do an online search with EndNote and pull in the references that way.

It's also worth mentioning that several reference managers actually DO have iPad apps.  Mendeley has an iPad app, as does Sente, a tool I'm not very familiar with.  You can search the App store for both of these, and I plan on reviewing related apps in a separate post.  Although EndNote does not currently have an iPad app, it does have some suggestions for using the iPad to conduct research.  Check out the video below for using EndNote Web to search PubMed on the iPad:

iPad Ideas: PubMed Searching, Part 2

Last week, I introduced a tool for searching (for free!) PubMed with your iPad.  Today, I am going to investigate that tool a bit more, and point out some of the features that you may want to use or consider using.

After you install PubMed On Tap Lite to your device, you'll want to check the application's settings before you start searching.  You can can do this by simply touching the "settings" icon at the bottom of the screen:

Click on screenshot to enlarge

With PubMed On Tap Lite, users are limited to retrieving no more than 10 articles at a time, so that first setting cannot be changed.  The other settings options, however, may be helpful:

• Sort your results by the publication date OR when it was added to PubMed
• Enter your email for quick article delivery from your device
• Decide on the article format that you want to see when you search PubMed
• Check for free full text
• Edit your library proxy settings so that you have full access to University Libraries resources!  (Sort of the GetVText option of PubMed On Tap Lite)

I've bolded this last option because you'll definitely need it to be able to access full-text resources that are not freely available.  For this, you'll need to plug in the University Libraries proxy resolver:  http://login.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/login?url= 

Click on screenshot to enlarge

Now, that takes care of your settings.  There are just a few other details that you'll need to be able to search PubMed efficiently through this tool.  Since screen space is limited, the icons for various activities are streamlined.   You'll find icons for interacting with the application in the upper right hand corner of the screen, and in the lower left hand corner of the screen:

Lower left hand 

This row of icons is more like a navigation panel.  Clicking on an icon will take you to a specific destination:  the library of citations, the PubMed search screen, the settings menu, or the "about" page.  Each one is labeled, so using these icons isn't too difficult at all!

Upper right hand 

This row of icons will let you manipulate and work with an article once you've searched a topic and located some relevant results.  The ones that you'll mainly be interested in are:

this icon will use your proxy settings to look through library resources for the full text of an article

this icon will add the selected reference to your PubMed On Tap Lite library

this icon will email a selected reference to yourself, or someone else

Finally, a word on searching.  Even though the PubMed On Tap Lite search screen represents only one search field (box), you can use connectors (and, or, not) and field indicators (such as "ti" for title or "sb" for subject):  brain[ti] and miller[au].  You can view a full list of the PubMed field codes here:  http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/mms/medlineelements.html

And thus concludes Part 2 of this series on finding and using a free PubMed searching app.  Part 3 will focus on using reference managers on your iPad or mobile device.  Stay tuned for that!

iPad Ideas: PubMed Searching, Part I

So, how many of you out there have an iPad, or other sort of mobile device?  I just got an iPad2 a few weeks ago (thanks, University Libraries!), and have been experimenting pretty much nonstop with what I can do with it!  It's so lightweight and easy to carry around that it's replacing my laptop (and netbook) for quite a few of my daily tasks.  This means that, for a lot of us in the university, iPads (and other mobile devices) need to be up to the task to aid in research.  Because of this, I will be featuring regular reviews and tips related to iPad research apps.  I'll be defining "research apps" pretty broadly, because a lot of iPad apps have broad applications (no pun intended!).  I'll be tagging all iPad/mobile device posts with iPad and mobile technologies so, as always, use the tags on the right-hand side of this blog to find all posts categorized as such!

For my first iPad app discussion/review, I want to talk about using the iPad to search PubMed.  I usually go about looking for relevant apps two ways:  (1) search the App Store for keywords (in this case, PubMed), and (2) Google a keyword (PubMed) and "ipad app" to see what people are saying about them.  When I searched the App Store for "pubmed," I discovered that most PubMed-related apps are not free, which is definitely not what I had hoped for.

Click screenshot to enlarge 

However, I discovered that one free PubMed iPad app--PubMed On Tap Lite--does, in fact, exist, and I quickly installed it.  You'll see from the image below that the app works on the iPod Touch and iPhone, in addition to the iPad:

Click screenshot to enlarge

The app is "Lite" because a full version does exist--PubMed On Tap--and the Lite version limits the user in a few different ways.  I'm currently experimenting with the app, and will write back in a few days (Part 2 of this post) with some specific information about using the resource in the best way(s) possible.  Until then, check out these helpful descriptions I found of this, and other, PubMed apps:

PubMed On Tap
PubMed Library
Best PubMed Search Apps (discussion of 6 apps)
Pubmed Clip

Finally, PubMed does offer a Gallery of Mobile Apps and Sites: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mobile/

Are there any resources, or types of resources, for the iPad that you'd like to see me review on this blog?  Just let me know!

Around the Web: Summer Reading 2011

It's been awhile since I featured an around the web piece, but I thought that might be a fun way to present summer reading ideas!

Regardless of whether or not we're going on an actual vacation this summer, summer is a great time to pick up light, fun, or even just different books for a few minutes or hours of mental relief.  Take a look at some of the links below for ideas on creating an awesome summer reading list, finding cheap e-books, or getting involved with an adult summer reading program:

• Lifehacker's tips for Creating an Awesome Summer Reading List
• Kindle books for $3.99 or less!
• Free Nook Books!
• Join the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library Adult Summer Reading Program
• Check out a few pleasure reading books from Newman Library
• Use BiblioTravel to find a book that "takes you away"
• Use PaperBackSwap to recycle old books and find (cheap!) new ones
• Use GoodReads to connect with your friends and talk about books

What sort of summer reading plans do you have??

New Books: May 2011

Two new book posts, back to back! Since I was so late in posting the new books from April, I didn't want to make the same mistake with new books from May.  Check out the entire May new book list, or simply skim the highlights below.  As always, remember that you can check out all of these books (until someone else does).  If there's a book that you'd like to see on these lists, use our request form to suggest that we purchase a book for you!

Coffee:  Philosophy for Everyone:  Grounds for Debate

Read a summary and several reviews of this book!

The Endurance Paradox:  Bone Health for the Endurance Athlete

Read a brief summary of this book!

Icons of American Cooking

Read a brief summary of this book!

Storied Dishes:  What Our Family Recipes Tell Us about Who We Are and Where We've Been

Read a brief summary of this book!

Taking Sides:  Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Food and Nutrition

Read a brief summary of this book!

New Books: April 2011

Yes, that's right--I'm a month late in posting the April 2011 New Books list.  If you've been following along, you would have noticed that I always post the new books list as soon as the month ends, which means that I should have posted the April 2011 New Books on May 1, not June 1!  The end of the semester wrapped up so quickly that I forgot entirely.  Without further ado, highlights from new books from April 2011!  Remember that you can check out any of these books (unless someone else does, first), and request that I purchase any new books that you'd like to see on these lists!

View the entire April 2011 new books list

The Devil's Cup:  A History of the World According to Coffee

Read a summary and excerpt from this book!

The Food and Culture Around the World Handbook

Read a summary of this book!

Career Opportunities in Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources

Read reviews and a summary of this book!

Making the Mexican Diabetic:  Race, Science, and the Genetics of Inequality

Read a summary of this book!

Keeping the Nation's House:  Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China

Read a summary of this book!

Clinical Trials:  What Patients and Healthy Volunteers Need to Know

Read reviews and a summary of this book!