It can be found in the catalog here.
To access the PDF file directly go here.
Year: 2010
Finding U.S. Supreme Court decisions with a dissenting opinion
When I came to the desk today a student asked for help in finding all U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the past 10 years in which there was a dissenting opinion or dissenting opinion. It turned out that the student needed only one U.S. Supreme Court decision in which there was a dissenting opinion for a presentation in a class.
(Dissenting opinions are when the court is not unanimous in its decision. A 9-0 decision means there is no dissent, although if there is a vacancy on the court, it could be 8-0. There are many decisions in which there is a dissent. A judge may dissent in whole or in part from a decision, and other justices may or may not join the dissent, in whole or in part.)
To find all the decisions with dissents, we went to Westlaw campus, selected U.S. Supreme Court decisions and limited the time to the last ten years. Then we added dissenting as a keyword. This resulted in 648 decisions. You can look at the decision and there is a brief summary of the case and then which justice wrote the majority decision and which justices wrote dissenting opinions, and if other justices joined them in whole or in part.
On Lexis Nexis, the same type of search can be done but the longest time period was 5 years. This resulted in 328 decisions.
I asked the student if there were a subject he was interested in and he said privacy.
So we did a new search, with the limits mentioned before, and added privacy as a keyword and dissent or dissenting. There were 32 results, which is much more manageable for the student.
Top 10 Quality Issues in Chat Reference
As you may know, the local administrator at each institution subscribing to QuestionPoint’s cooperative chat service are encouraged to review closely all chat transcripts in which their patrons were helped by librarians at other institutions. If the admin sees something notable (good or bad), the admin can describe in an email to the QuestionPoint quality control team what went well or went wrong in the chat session. That QuestionPoint team then reviews the comments from the admin, considers the relevant policies and procedures, and then composes a message that is sent to the admin at the other institution.
Each year, the quality control team at QuestionPoint compiles a list of the things that are most often at the heart of quality control complaints. Here is this year’s list that was published today on the QuestionPoint: 24/7 Reference Services blog:
Policy Page: Librarian did not use policy page to answer the question or use local library’s resources; information was on the policy page which would have answered the patron’s question
Resolution Codes: Librarian did not use a resolution code or did not use the correct resolution code.
Reference Conversation: Librarian did not conduct an adequate reference interview.
********* Compliments!! *********
Incorrect Information: Librarian sent the patron incorrect information
Tone/Phrasing: The chatting tone of the librarian affected the quality of the session, or, the librarian used negative phrasing.
Ended Abruptly: Librarian ended session abruptly without a natural closure to the conversation or when the patron still seemed to need help.
Sources: The librarian could have sent the patron better sources. For example, perhaps the librarian only sent Wikipedia and then ended the call.
No Searching: Librarian did no searching.
Search Strategies: Librarian could have used different search strategies that would have made the session more effective, or could have suggested search strategies to the patron when recommending that the patron search a database.
Contact Library/Followup Option: Librarian told the patron to contact his library (by phone or visit), without offering the option for email followup.
New Reference Titles
Black Americans: a Statistical Sourcebook & Guide to Government Data (REF E185.5 .B512 2009)
Tables of data, all from government sources, many from the Census.
International Encyclopedia of Men and Masculinities (REF HQ1090 .I58 2007)
A guide to theoretical and empirical research on men and gender with an international scope. All essays are signed and include bibliographies.
Oxford Handbook of International Business (REF HF1379 .O996 2009)
Essays by scholars. Focus is on the multinational corporation.
Twentieth-Century British Political Facts 1900-2000 (REF JN231 .B8 2000)
New edition.
ebrary printing page limit
Ebrary has increased the number of pages one can print: 40 pages at one time, with a limit of 60 pages per session.
LibGuides Tip for books without covers
I noticed a Springshare Support Blog entry called “No Cover Art” Placeholder Images for Books providing urls for images to be used as a placeholder for books that do not have an image available. There are two images available, both in two sizes.
There were a few books I wanted to add to my LibGuides, but decided against adding them because they did not have an image. (It looked funny when placed in a list with other books that had images.) These placeholders are handy. Here is an example of how one looks on my Women’s Studies page.
FYI, I noticed this support blog entry after logging in to LibGuides and reading the Support Announcements on the left.
Health Reference Center subscription expires March 31, 2010.
This used to be provided by the NOVEL, then by CUNY, but the subscription will expire March 31, 2010.
Springer e-books: problems with access
We are experiencing problems accessing Springer e-books. The vendor has been notified. Thank you for your patience.
New database: Uniworld
We have added Uniworld, an online directory of American firms operating in foreign countries and foreign companies operating in the United States. This replaces and updates the print directories we used to have.
American Antiquarian Association Periodicals Trial
We have a trial lasting until June 30, 2010 to the the American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals. Series 1 includes 550 titles from 1693 to 1820, and Series 2 includes over 1000 titles from 1820 to 1837. Although there are 2 links, once inside EBSCOhost, you can combine the two databases to search them together.
As always, comments on the usefulness of this database for our curriculum and the merits of its contents and search interface are welcome.