Reference at Newman Library

Information about two English 2100 classes and assignment to set up alert

I have done lectures and prepare LIBGUIDES for students of  two English 2100 professors, Prof. Grumet and Prof. Entes.  Prof. Entes has asked her students to set up an alert in a database and to bring in confirmation of the alert being set up.  Alerts are features that can be set up on the Ebsco and Proquest databases, as well as others.  I showed the classes how to do an alert on Ebsco.  You first have to establish an accout and then do a search in a database.  You can then select to have an alert sent by email or RSS feed, and the emails with alerts to new articles are either received daily, weekly or monthly.  If no new articles are found, you receive an email that no articles were added with your search terms.  I thought I would share this request in case students come to the reference desk for help.  If you need any help with the alerts, please let me know.

Trial to PsycTESTS and PsycTHERAPY

We have an on campus trial to the two databases above until November 6, 2011. They all show up on the same platform as we have our APA books, which may be confusing. Also, each of these can be searched together or individually but the default for the trial is that everything is selected, including the APA books.

PsycTESTS is a repository for the full text of psychological tests and measures as well as a rich source of structured information about the tests.

PsycTHERAPY is a database of streaming psychotherapy demonstration videos; users may create playlists, clips, search transcripts of videos, and more.

Please share with interested faculty and I welcome all feedback.

Public PC Error Message for “Paused” Printer

At the reference desk yesterday, I noticed that a few of the standup terminals by the circulation desk were giving students an error message when they tried to print. When the student brings up the print dialog box and clicks the OK button, a small pop-up window appears in the lower right corner indicating that the printer is paused. The print job does not get sent.

There is a way to work around this problem until it gets fixed. When the student is looking at the print dialog box, they should click on the part of that box that lists available printers. They’ll see that the one selected says “paused.” If they select the regular “B&W” printer from the options, the job will go through and everything will be fine.

After submitting a BCTC Help Desk request for this (and getting a ticket number for it), I spoke with Bruce Little from BCTC. He indicated that BCTC will resolve the problem, which is connected in some way to the Windows update program on those terminals. In the meanwhile, the trick I detailed above should allow you to help students move beyond the paused printer error message.

Qualtrics available for surveys

A faculty member contacted me wondering if we had access to Survey Monkey for classes as he wanted students to create a survey.  I contacted BCTC and learned the following:

The college uses Qualtrics.

Here is the link :

https:\\Baruch.qualtrics.com

Log on with Baruch username and password.  (One needs to then create one’s own account.)

John Choonoo, of the institutional research office,  emailed me that this is a more flexible product than Survey Monkey.

I’ve added this information to the Reference Wiki.

Comments on Gale Business Insights

I don’t think I have much more to add to the insightful comments sent out on the library’s mailing list yesterday by one of our colleagues. I too think we should take a pass on this database, as it doesn’t seem to have unique content. It’s worth noting that I do really like the database’s modern look and feel (by the way, Gale really needs to bring Business & Company Resource Center out of its early 2000s era design).

As part of my poking around in the database, I did a company search for Google and found myself looking at the SWOT analysis (which happens to be the same SWOT analysis you’d find in Business & Company Resource Center). The SWOT analysis is produced by a company called GlobalData. I’m not qualified to just the quality of the analysis but I do think I can say that it is troublesome that the report featured some grammar problems and incorrect info. For example, the company snapshot section of the report says that Google’s web address is at www.google.co.in (that address is actually for the Indian subsidiary); this mistake may suggest where the SWOT analysis was created.

New database: Oxford Language Dictionaries Online

We now have access to Oxford Language Dictionaries Online, providing searchable access to the following bilingual dictionaries: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. Entries provide pronunciation, examples of use, phrase searching and more. It is possible to search in Chinese and Russian characters.