Reference at Newman Library

Student inquiry about a print copy of Friday’s NYT

Yesterday while I was on the desk a student inquired if we had a print copy of last Friday’s NYT that he could take out of the library as he was to read it for class. When electronic versions were suggested the student said they were asked to read the print version and bring it to class.

I gave him my contact information as I had it at home and told him I would bring it in today.  As I didn’t get his name, I have put the paper in an envelope and placed it on the shelf under the printer at the reference desk where the “to be picked up box” used to be.  Anyone know where this box is now?

Books 24×7 adds 2011-2010 Wiley CPA review books

New books  added this week to Books 24×7 include some of the Wiley 2011-2010 CPA review books, 37th edition.  Since students often ask if the library has circulating copies of these review books you can mention this site to them.  The most recent print copies we have are in reserve.

Copy Card Machine Is Working Again

On Sunday, the copy card vending machine was still out of order (I worked an afternoon shift at the reference desk). This morning (Monday), it appears that the machine has been repaired.

There are still 2-3 blank copy cards at the reference desk.

Powerpoint Slides Office 2010

The first question I received today – how do you print multiple slides from Powerpoint to a single page? The computers on the 2nd floor now have Microsoft Office 2010 installed, and the menu for doing this is no longer in the same place, and isn’t easy to find if you’ve never used Office 2007/2010 before (I never have).

To figure out how to do this – visit this Microsoft help page for Powerpoint.

The computers at the reference desk and in our office still have Office 2003 installed – so for now, we can’t demonstrate or see how this works – send students to that page if they need help (or if someone has a better / more concise help page, feel free to suggest one).

From the Law Corner

1. I’ve just published a new US Government Documents Guide as a companion to  my three other law guides  (Law, Parts 1 & 2 and Legislative History).  I’ve tried to integrate the four guides so that they work together w/o being redundant. The Gov Docs guide is general; it refers to, but does not duplicate, more specific guides, such as Frank’s US Census Data guide.

2. The U.S. Dept. of Justice has just released new horizontal merger guidelines (press release and link guidelines ).   According to the press release, “these changes mark the first major revision of the merger guidelines in 18 years”.

3. A new title is listed on the Law Guide, Part 2:  The Law Student’s Guide to Free Legal Research on the Web .  This guide is produced by Sarah Glassmeyer, Faculty Services and Outreach Librarian and an Assistant Professor of Law at Valparaiso University School of Law, and is sponsored by Justia.com and Cornell’s Legal Information Institute.

New JSTOR Database to Show Results to Content We Can’t Access

Today, word got out that the new JSTOR interface will show items from all its collections, not just the ones your library subscribes to, when you do a search there. Items that we don’t have access to will have a “purchase article” option off the side. Other databases from do this, too, and it’s a real let down that JSTOR’s new interface will offer the same confusion to our users.

For thoughts about why JSTOR did this (and the limited options we have as a work-around), see Meredith Farkas’ blog post.