Finding similar articles from a cited article

Here is a method that should work well for finding aticles that relate to another article.

In this case there is an article on reserve:
Scannella, J. B., & Horner, J. R. (2010). Torosaurus Marsh, 1891, is Triceratops Marsh, 1889 (Ceratopsidae: Chasmosaurinae): synonymy through ontogeny. Journal Of Vertebrate Paleontology, 30(4), 1157-1168. doi:10.1080/02724634.2010.483632

The assignment is to find an article that cites or reviews this article.  After experimenting, the easiest way I found to do so was to do the following:

1. Go to EBSCO Academic Search Premier
2. Search for "Torosaursu Marsh 1891"
3. Click on the title of this article
4. Click the button "Find Similar Results"
5. The first article listed in the article itself, the second one listed includes that article in its works cited.

Give it a try!



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Education Stats

One good source for the perennial question of the "value of an education" is the Almanac of American Education. Table A-27. Mean Earnings of Workers 18 Years Old and Over, by Educational Attainment, Race, Hispanic Origin, and Sex, 1975-2008. In 2008, for example, the average earnings were $42,588, ranging from:

• $21,023 for "Not a high school graduate"


• $31,283 for "High school graduate"


• $58,613 for "Bachelor's degree"


• $83,144 for "Advanced degree"

Wow, I guess I'm underpaid.

Further Reference Dos and Don'ts

Some of the most basic reference dos and don'ts are:

Do:

• Look around and notice who's there and what's going on.



• Make eye contact.



• Smile.



• Be cheerful.

Don't

• Become so immersed in work or other activities that students are afraid to disturb you.



• Face the wall, so that people coming into the library see the back of your head rather than your face, when you are alone at the desk.

Use of Mr. Test login

Recently a student e-mailed Ask A Librarian regarding problems loging on. She was given the Mr. Test login. She subsequently talked to Karen, and then to Randi who got to the root of the problem, which was that she was trying to logon to something other than the proxy server. (One of those "Create your own account" deals.) That got me thinking, and here are a few guidelines regarding handling these types of problems:
1. Do not give out the Mr. Test login unless they are using the user name and password in their reocord and it still doesn't work. Everytime you give out the Mr. Test, Randi must be contacted to trouble shoot that person's record.
1. By e-mail: Give them the username and password found in their record - whatever it is - and tell them to contact us by phone if that doesn't work. Also, if their login is not a 14-digit barcode number, let them know that they should get a Century Student ID and where and when to get one. Also say that they should call the library when they have that information, so we can update their record to insure that they can access all library resources.
2. By phone: Ask them to try the logon while they are on the pohone with you. Talk them through the process, so you can correct any problems they are having.

ILL Oddities

If an ILL has the status of "closed" when you check your "Patron Info" it can mean one of two things:
- A book record is closed when it has been returned to the library that owns it and they have updated the record to closed.
- Articles that come in the bin, or through Ariel, are closed by Cathy when we get them. However, the student will get an e-mail telling them to come pick it up, so this may cause some confusion.

Finding Primary Source Articles for Biology

Soon students will be coming in looking for primary source articles for biology. This basically means experiments. The best place to find these articles is: EBSCO Academic Search Premier, Gale Expanded Academic ASAP, or Gale's General Science Collection.

Use a keyword that describes what they are looking for and the keywords "Research" AND "Methods" AND "Results" and limit to "peer reviewed." Wait to limit to full-text until after you search, that way you get a sense of if there is a lot, or a little, available on a subject. If there isn't much, dig into what you get and see if the articles are available full-text in another database, or see if the student can wait a few days for an ILL.

Limiting to an article type doesn't work well. There isn't a specific article type for what we're looking for in these databases.

EBSCO's Science Reference Center is not a good source for this type of article. This database is geared more towards K-12 and has few research reports.

Libstats: Logging Reference Questions

Greetings: Today I want to talk a bit about using Libstats to log questions.

We started using this on September 1st. Since we were not able to all get trained at the same time, here are a few notes regarding what you should and shouldn't do while using it:
-Location: Leave as is, if you're at the reference desk
-Question Info:
Other is for questions we would have only made a hash mark for. There is no need to enter any question or answer information for these questions. Just select "Other" and "General" under question type, and click "Save Question/Answer."
Subject is for a question that is not an author, title, or criticism, but you record a question and sometimes an answer. For example, a citation question.
-Read Score: Do not record a read score.

Be careful about the selections at the top, the system will "remember" what you last used. So be sure that the settings are accurate. For example, once you select "Not Owned" everything will be "Not Owned" until you change it back to "Owned."

That's all for now. There will be more on this subject later.