Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Web-Based Library Research Guides: Have You Used One?

Librarians throughout the College Library are creating library research guides for a wide variety of subjects taught within FAS. We also create course-specific guides tailored to particular classes, at the request of faculty members within our departments of library liaison.

If you’re a student, take a quick look at the HCL Research Guides page to find a guide for your subject of study or for a specific course – be sure to check the Course Guide Archive for guides done over the past several years that may still be useful in your research.

If you’re a faculty member or teaching fellow in one of my departments of liaison, and would like me to create a guide for a subject or course, just let me know: claguard@fas.harvard.edu. All guides are indexed and accessible through the HCL web site, but I can also link a course-specific guide off your course site, so your students can get to it immediately.

At your service,
Cheryl

LibX: One Stop Searching

The Harvard University Library LibX Toolbar is a browser toolbar add-on that allows you to search quickly the HOLLIS Catalog, the E-Journal List, the E- Resource List, Citation Linker, and Google Scholar. It also: lets you select text on a web page and right-click for a menu of search options; leads you to Harvard’s print and licensed e-resources by embedding a Harvard shield "cue" on search results in Amazon, New York Times Book Reviews, Yahoo! and other sites; and it automatically links ISBNs, ISSNs, PubMed IDs and DOIs to Harvard's print and licensed e-resources. It can save you quite a bit of time in doing your research.

Interested? Just go to the LibX page on the Harvard Libraries site to install the software. Do be aware that LibX was designed for use in Firefox, and works best in it – although it also works in IE 6.0+.

At your service,
Cheryl

Want to learn RefWorks? Take a class

Lamont Library staff members are offering 50-minute training sessions in the basics of RefWorks during the Spring term (if you haven't yet encountered RefWorks, please go to the Citation Tools at Harvard web site for an introduction).

The classes will take place in Room 310 on the 3rd floor of Lamont. All students, faculty, and staff are welcome, but registration is necessary because space is limited. To sign up, contact Steve (kuehler@fas.harvard.edu) or Chris (lenney@fas.harvard.edu), or go by the Research Services Desk on Level B of Lamont Library.

These sessions have already been scheduled:

Tuesday, February 10, 3:00-3:50pm
Thursday, February 19, 4:00-4:50pm

If you can't make either of these sessions, please do e-mail Steve or Chris, as they'll schedule more workshops based on researchers' needs.

At your service,
Cheryl

Welcome to my library liaison blog

My goal for this blog is to get word out about new and useful library tools and services to members of the departments and programs for which I'm a library liaison. These include: the Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Freshman Seminar Program, and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. As you can see, I serve a variety of subject interests, but since it's not feasible for me to do a separate blog for each department/program, I'm hoping that the increasing interdisciplinarity of research means that the posts will be of interest to most, or all, readers.

I'm going to include a link to this blog on each web-based subject and course guide I create from now on, and I'll ask the departments I serve to include a link from their departmental sites. If you have questions about library services and resources, I hope you'll get in touch with me directly (at: claguard@fas.harvard.edu). And I hope this blog will serve as a good means of reaching many folks with timely library information.

Welcome! and come back soon.
At your service,
Cheryl