Circulation Notes: Overdue/Lost Book Enforcement

We wanted to add an informative blog entry, as fair warning, to the Facebook posts and signs that have been placed in and around the library for over a month. Please note that Circulation/Reserves will soon start enforcing overdue policies by blocking student accounts for the use of all reserve materials, including reserve textbooks and library laptops. This policy goes into effect at the start of the new calendar year: January 1, 2011.

At the start of next month, Patrons with overdue, unreturned materials on their library account will no longer have reserve privileges until the missing material is returned, replaced, or paid for.

How do you avoid this dire fate?

Simple: Return you books and other library materials on time. Or renew them before they are due. (For details on renewing, see http://www.suffolk.edu/sawlib/renewbooks.htm )

Check your Suffolk-issued email. The Library will send you an email when your materials are overdue. Pay attention to your due dates and get the materials back in a timely manner. (If you get a notice about an item that you think you returned, don’t ignore it. Talk to the folks at Circulation/Reserves.)

Need to check to see what you have out? You can determine this online. See https://library.law.suffolk.edu/patroninfo~S6 or click the "View Your Circulation Record" link from the online catalog search page (as illustrated below)

Take advantage of our Extended Amnesty Period:

Return your (even overdue) books, videos, etc., in December and all is forgiven.

What if you lost the book?

If you can provide us with the exact equivalent edition of the exact same book, we will also forgive all charges.

What if your account IS blocked in January?

First: Return the missing material, the block will be lifted immediately.

Second: If you want to replace the missing item, Circulation/Reserves staff can put together a receipt that lists the correct title, author, and edition for the missing item’s replacement. Only material exactly matching what has been lost will be accepted as a replacement. Circ. Staff can also inform you of the replacement cost if the Library must order the new copy.

Third: If you want to simply pay to replace the missing item, you may do so. However, an additional fee of $50 will be charged on top of the cost of replacing the missing book. (Want to check the cost yourself? Just look at the LIST--not discounted--price you find at Amazon.com.) You will then have to go to the Student Accounts Office to pay the charges. No monies may be accepted at the Circulation/Reserves Desk.

The Circulation Department is not doing this to be mean or uncooperative. They are simply doing this to "get our stuff back." And we do mean OUR stuff. Library materials are shared resources that are meant to support the research needs of the entire Suffolk community. When you fail to return materials you’ve checked out, you are not only making extra work for staff, you are penalizing other library users who might need that material.

So.....Please return you library materials on time!

Notable E-Book: APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology

Industrial and Organizational Psychology (often abbreviated as I/O psychology) is a multi-faceted and ever-changing branch of psychological research. As the Penguin Dictionary of Psychology (which we have on Credo Reference) defines it, it covers "organizational, military, economic and personnel psychology and including such areas as tests and measurements, the study of organizations and organizational behaviour, personnel practices, human engineering, human factors, the effects of work, fatigue, pay and efficiency, consumer surveys and market research." And not just in the classic corporate environment, either. I/O scholars conduct research into the operational and human dynamics of hospitals, prisons, universities, public-service agencies--any and all types of organizations!

That's a lot of territory. And it deserves an extensive and up-to-date reference handbook. It has one now through the APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

Although we also purchased the paper copy, most users will be interested in the electronic version of this three volume set. Click a link--you will authenticate through the proxy server off-campus--for one of the three volumes. Each numerical chapter is presented in order as a PDF. (You are supposed to be able to click the abstract link to the right to read a summary, but this does not work for these ebooks. You only get a page linking to the three volumes and a description of the entire reference work...which is not particularly useful.)

You can, however, use the search option in the upper right of any page to search within the handbooks.

And, since this handbook set is from the American Psychological Association, the publisher also indexes the chapters in their PsycINFO database. Which is useful, but not as much as it should be. Because handbooks like this one are expensive extra content, beyond what is contained in the PsycBOOKS database (to which we also provide access), the chapters do not directly link in PsycINFO--although we are currently working with both APA and Ebsco to see if we can make that happen. For now, when you find a chapter in PsycInfo (as in the example below), just go to our online catalog (or one of the links in this blog) to get to the ebooks and their content.

This is a valuable handbook that will benefit not only psychology majors, but also those in the management, public management, government and even the sociology/criminal justice fields. Take a look at this latest handbook for I/O psychology. But remember that others are available. We also own the Sage Handbook of Industrial, Work and Organizational Psychology on Sage eReference, and we even have a respected older print handbook which is still quite useful for some topics. The four-volume Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology from the Consulting Psychologists Press is now located in the circulating collection on the 4th floor, along with many of our other I/O psychology monographs.

New Database: Biological Abstracts

Interested in exploring journal literature "in virtually every life sciences discipline, including biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, botany, pre-clinical and experimental medicine, pharmacology, zoology, agriculture, and veterinary science"? Then a database that we've just added will be a valuable tool!

Biological Abstracts (aka BIOSIS) is considered the definitive index to life science literature, and has been so for generations. Over 250,000 records from journals worldwide are added annually to Biological Abstracts. Over 4,200 journals from 100 countries are indexed. And "every item included in Biological Abstracts has met the high standards of an objective evaluation process that eliminates clutter and excess and delivers data that is accurate, meaningful and timely."
Unfortunately, with the word "Abstracts" in the title, you know that this is an index that provides citations, useful controlled vocabulary (subject and other limiting terminology) and summaries....and nothing more. That is the main reason that we got BioAbs on our familiar EbscoHost platform. Ebsco provides direct-linking to many articles available in its proprietary databases like Academic Search Complete. But it also allows us to make use of Custom Linking and our Serial Solutions 360 Link (look for the green 360 dot-link below results list records).

It's not unusual to have more than one access option on some articles. Although with indexing as extensive as this, not all articles will be available through our collections.

The really admirable thing about Biological Abstracts is the great many precise "Limit Your Results" options that you have from the opening search screen or from the Source Type and Subject limits in the left frame of any results list after you perform a search. There are also many clickable link terms attached to individual article records.

Below is an example of the kind of index links that are available on a single record about shad in the Merrimack River:
























In addition to publication level limiters such as: Date Published, Journal Name, Abstract Available, Language, Publication Type and Document type, the updated Biological Abstracts database also offers a host of additional limiters designed to support complex relational indexing, for example:

* Taxa notes
* Type of Organism Name
* Disease Affiliation
* Organ System
* Chemical Role

If a particular term or concept looks promising, click it to explore the entries that use that term or code. Or do what I usually do: perform a simple keyword combination search (like myotis lucifugus and echolocation) and then browse through multiple records, decide if there is better terminology available, and then use those terms in a fresh "advanced" search for more precise results. To get a sense of BioAbs terms, you can also search or browse the "Major Concepts," which is a link in the upper left frame of any screen, as seen below.

If you wish to see a more extensive list of the Controlled Vocabulary (Authority File) for the Biological Abstracts and BIOSIS databases, you can also take a look at this website from the publisher.

Biological Abstracts is an expensive database, with older segments based on purchase instead of lease. We could not afford to add very deep backfile to the index yet. However, we did all coverage years back to 1995. This dovetails nicely with the kind of fulltext access we have through other databases and publisher aggregates.

Those of you interested in the life sciences should definitely make this professional-level abstracting service a regular research stop.

[FIND Biological Abstracts on the Sciences page of the "Database by Subject" Lists.]

Notable E-Book: Encyclopedia of Research Design

We are adding new content to our Sage Reference Online database this autumn. And one of the recent adds is a fairly unusual resource called the Encyclopedia of Research Design. The 3 volume set self-describes as "a collection of entries written by scholars in the field of research design, the discipline of how to plan and conduct empirical research, including the use of both quantitative and qualitative methods."

Entries cover everything from "Chi-Square Test" to "Krippendorff's Alpha" to "Semipartial Correlation Coefficient" to "Zelen's Randomized Consent Design." Not all topics are quite so esoteric, of course. Want to read an essay on the "Case Study" technique? You can do that here. And this encyclopedia also has a couple of useful entries that help explain the differences between "Qualitative Research" and "Quantitative Research." Editors point to "two topics [that] are especially interesting and set this collection of volumes apart from similar works: (1) a review of important research articles that have been seminal in the field and have helped determine the direction of several ideas and (2) a review of popular tools (such as software) used to analyze results."

As with all Sage eReference, you can do a quick search and see entries that relate, or you can browse through an A-Z presentation of entries. As you read one essay, a list of "See Also" entries will be listed in the left the frame, offering other articles to peruse. And below that, you'll even see cross-links to other Sage eReference titles that might be worth exploring. In the left side frame there are tools to format for printing, email, or create a citation, too.
Research Design is a complex matter. The over 500 entries included in this encyclopedia are only a starting place. But for a short introduction to a variety of complicated concepts, this resource might be quite useful.

New Database: SourceOECD Becomes OECD iLibrary

OECD, or the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development is a Paris-based group dedicated to "help its member countries to achieve sustainable economic growth and employment and to raise the standard of living in member countries while maintaining financial stability – all this in order to contribute to the development of the world economy." Although only 20 (developed) countries originally signed the Convention forming the OECD 1960, it has, in recent years, expanded both its scope and membership. OECD now "shares expertise and exchanges views with more than 100 other countries." And their membership is expanding. Chile became a member in May of 2010; Slovenia became a member in July; and Israel became a member in September of this year.

One of the group's strengths has always been its research and publishing. As they say of themselves: "For more than 40 years, OECD has been one of the world's largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistics and economic and social data. As well as collecting data, OECD monitors trends, analyses and forecasts of economic developments and researches social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, agriculture, technology, taxation and more."

Several years ago, we added the first version of their research database and ePublishing portal, SourceOECD. It was slow, awkward, but had a great deal of valuable data and information, not only about its wealthier member nations, but also about the developing world.

Now, SourceOECD has become the OECD iLibrary. It is now more user-friendly, with data that is easier to capture and manipulate. And the depth of resources and data are even greater than before. Content includes over 5,000 books covering anything from statistics to major policy topics. The specific Glossaries section contains a great many subject specific dictionaries, as well. You can also find over 2500 working papers, 300 datasets, and 5000 Excel tables in this database.

A few new publications are usually featured on the opening screen. And you can quickly jump to resources on a particular country, or to materials in major subject areas by opening the drop-down boxes mid-screen on the homepage. Note, too, the links in the top frame, which include the Statistics module. Here you can quickly get Tables from a mid-screen list or get to PDFs from OECD Factbook links to the right. To the left are links to actual data files that can be manipulated and/or exported to Excel. As with most databases, we do not have access to ALL materials here....but almost all! The one component you will not be able to access is the affiliated IEA (International Energy Agency) data sets. But the great wealth of OECD data and publications should be readily available to all CAS and SBS students and faculty through our link.

OECD material can be useful for everything from Economics to Business to Social Science research. Explore! And if you would like to see an overview two-sheet guide to the new platform, take a look at this PDF.

[FIND OECD iLibrary on the Business and Social Sciences pages of the "Database by Subject" lists.]

New Database: MasterFILE Premier

Although we encourage our students to use high-quality academic journal literature in most research situations, the fact is that sometimes the content of more popular news and consumer magazines is just what is needed. Perhaps you want to see how news magazines have covered our recent health insurance reform legislation (sometimes pejoratively labeled "Obamacare"). Or perhaps you are a Second Language student hoping to find a few basic readings to look at before tackling the more complex English of scholarly journal literature. Or maybe you want to see PDFs of Consumer Reports because the only other online source for that magazine, LexisNexis Academic, only has HTML, without the photos of the new car models.

For instances like these, we have added a database originally designed for public libraries called MasterFILE Premier. This database contains full text for nearly 1,700 periodicals covering news, general interest, business, health, education, general science and multicultural issues. It also contains full text more than 500 reference books, over 107,000 primary source documents, and an Image Collection of over 510,000 photos, maps & flags.

MasterFILE Premier offers PDF backfiles (as far back as 1975, in the case of Science News) for key publications including Foreign Affairs, History Today, The Nation, National Review, Saturday Evening Post, and many more.

Another feature is the Lexile Rankings, listed at the end of the citation. These are reading levels. Designed to help educators get an estimate of the reading difficulty of the particular article in the results list, it provides an approximate grade level reading ability required for comprehension. Therefore this might be useful for Second Language Learners. (As a reference point, 1100 to 1300 is considered Grade 11 & 12.) This first article that I pulled up in a search for healthcare reform and consumers--see screenshot--is at level 1660, so it should be appropriate for college students of all types.

However, let me emphasize that this database is no substitute for the use of scholarly journal databases, of which we have a great many, including Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, and Sage Journals Online. If a teacher says "academic only," then MasterFILE Premier is not a good option. But if you want some consumer magazines on the best brands of refrigerators or some quick news articles on a current topic, then MasterFILE Premier might do very well for you.

[FIND MasterFILE Premier on the General Resources page of the "Database by Subject" Lists, right below another good popular magazine database called General Reference Center Gold.]

Database Alert: Too Many Linking Icons!

Don't be alarmed if you do research in our EbscoHost databases and discover an overabundance of linking icons in your results list. See this screenshot for an example:
You can see that the "Custom Linking" option at Ebsco has gone a bit crazy. It is attempting to link an article from Consumer Reports to anything from BioOne (all peer-reviewed biology journal literature) to HeinOnline (an archival database of law-related materials). Clearly, Consumer Reports would not be at either location!

So, don't be distracted by this plethora of linking options. First, look to see whether the article is sitting right there in the database you are currently in. In this case, it was. (See the PDF link?)

If the article is not there, rather than click on all the custom link options in the hopes of finding it, look for the icon that looks likeThis will send you to our Serial Solutions link-resolver and that will check across all of our databases for that specific article, rather than throw a great many inappropriate individual database link options at you.

We have reported this issue to Ebsco and they tell us that it is a "known issue. The Custom linking is affected by an error somewhere involving Local Collections. We are aware of this, and are working [on] this with our highest priority. "

Hopefully, before long, the only Custom Links you will see in your EbscoHost results lists will be appropriate ones!