Saint Leo University has been named in the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll! Established in 2006, this honor recognizes higher education institutions that reflect the values of exemplary community service and achieve meaningful outcomes in their community. Whether through the university wide Community Service Day or the numerous activities conducted by different groups and organizations on campus, Saint Leo University is a shining example of philanthropy at a Catholic institution.

Whether you are new on campus or would like to find opportunities to volunteer, contact the Center for Values, Service & Leadership, including information on AmeriCorps and Saint Leo’s alternative spring break program, SERVE (Students Engaged in Relevant Volunteer Experiences).

Once again congrats to the SLU Pride!

-Aimee Graham, Online Librarian - 

ebrary is a free mobile app for both iOS and Android users that lets researchers have access to scholarly e-books through a variety of platforms. Users can access Saint Leo’s e-books from leading publishers and even upload research – outside of the library platform – through the DASH!(Data Sharing, Fast) feature.

Key features and benefits of ebrary’s apps include:

• Online and offline reading
• Seamless downloading of full titles
• Simple and advanced search
• Multiple navigation controls
• Table of contents with relevancy rankings
• Early check-in of ebrary’s e-books
• Copy and paste with automatic citation for offline documents
• User configurable download size warnings
• Import and use documents from other sources
• Available in English and Spanish
• Optional sign-in with Facebook user name and password
• Email ID based authentication
• Use of up to 6 different devices from the same account

Take a gander and send some reviews back! Have a great week everyone!

-Aimee Graham, Online Librarian - 

Your CHOICE® of Online Research Sites

Art, Communications, History and Current Culture (Reference): Flickr: The Commons, a subsite of Yahoo!’s photo-sharing site.

CHOICE® reviewers wrote: “This is the most accessible collection of freely available historical photographs on the Web, and the rich metadata make photos easy to find.” Participating institutions include: the George Eastman House, the Getty Research Institute, the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian Institution, NADA, and the national archive of the US, the UK, Norway, and the Netherlands.

URL: http://www.flickr.com/commons

Computer and Information Science: AI (Artificial Intelligence) Topics, from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

Aimed primarily at AI students and faculty, an editorial review board selects materials “to be accessible to all interested readers.” Articles date from the 1980s; video sources include materials from the 1940s and 1960s. The site employs standard Google search methods. Readers may submit materials to the review board for consideration using an online submission form. Not all articles can be freely provided, although each includes citations and abstracts. Saint Leo University students, faculty, and staff can use citations to track full-text back to university databases for full-text delivery, or search for individual eJournals by title using the AtoZ Journal List to locate full-text from online library resources.

URL: http://aitopics.net/

Health Care and Medical Technology: Influenza Encyclopedia, from the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine and MPublishing.

Similar to The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918-1919 <http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/>, the Influenza Encyclopedia site is actually an encyclopedia solely about the American flu epidemic of 1918-1919. It addresses how the Department of Health and Human Services used two University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine research studies to “form policy decisions on handling pandemic influenza.” Fifty US cities are represented, each with an essay and supplemental materials. The site is based on primary source materials, including images, and is divided into four topics: People, Places, Organizations, and Subjects.

URL: http://www.influenzaarchive.org/

Health Care, Sociology and Social Work (Reference): The Human Mortality Database, created by demographers John R. Wilmoth (Univ. of California, Berkeley) and Vladimir Shkolnikov (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany).

On the home page, site developers Wilmoth and Shkolnikov explain that it was “created to provide detailed mortality and population data to researchers, students, policy analysts and others interested in the history of human longevity,” such as those majoring in or researching topics in the fields of health care, sociology, anthropology, or social work. At present, there are 37 countries included, each with data sets linked from the site’s home page. Use the left-hand frame for navigation to sections such as registration, projects, people, methods, data, and links. If you need this type of data, you might also consider looking at the United Nations’ Population and Vital Statistics Report at <http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/vitstats/>. For similar data on the United States, look at the US Census Bureau's The National Data Book, the online version of the series known as The Statistical Abstract of the United States or link to it from the library's online catalog, LeoCat.

URL: http://www.mortality.org/

History and Archeology : Texas beyond History: The Virtual Museum of Texas’ Cultural Heritage, from the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, in partnership with the Department of Anthropology at Texas State University, the Council of Texas Archeologists and 15 other organizations. 

Launched in 2001, the site seeks to “interpret and share” a bounty of research into "at least 13,500 years" of Texas history and archeology. The site includes virtual museum exhibits, Gr. 4-7 curricular materials, and a clickable map to 60 other Texas sites. Additional resources are listed in the Credits and Sources section of individual pages. The site has been infrequently updated in recent years, but still provides a great jumping-off point for both academic and lay researchers.

URL: http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/

Scholarly Communications (Reference): The Scholarly Kitchen, from the Society for Scholarly Publishing.

This moderated blog was started in 2008 by the Society for Scholarly Publishing and focuses on “scholarly publishing, particularly in scientific, technical, and medical fields.” Use the "Follow" button on the lower right of the home page or the Twitter, RSS Feed, and Email Notifications features on the right-hand side of the home page to sign up for notifications from the site. Readers can search by contributor, keyword, or a topical index, as well as join in the scholarly discussions of individual articles using the "comments" feature. You might want to compare it to the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) blog site,< http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/blog/index.shtml>.

URL: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/   

Undergraduate Instructional Materials (Reference): PRIMO; Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online, from the Instruction Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.

Started as the Internet Education Project by ACRL’s Instruction Section, this database is regularly updated and curated by section members. Tutorials are selected for “their strong instructional value” and can be used by both academic librarians and undergraduate subject faculty interested in developing the research skills of their students. The collection presently tops 250 tutorials created from 1996 to the present. Navigate the site by browsing or searching. Results include the tutorial record, a short description, the tutorial link, and data from the developers.

URL: http://www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/directoryofleadership/sections/is/iswebsite/projpubs/primo/

--Items selected by
Sandra Lee Hawes,
eLibrary News Editor,
from CHOICE Reviews
March 2013, Vol. 50, No. 7

Boolean Searches: Easier Than You Think

Finding research for a paper can seem like a daunting undertaking, especially if you’ve never had to conduct such thorough research. Maybe it’s for a subject you are not familiar with, for a thesis, or your topic is so narrow that you need articles on a specific topic alone. Well, have no fear: Boolean Search is here!

The logic of Boolean search is pretty straightforward and will save you a great deal of time narrowing down resources. There are three key terms to remember: AND, OR, and NOT. 

• OR: Search results will contain either one or several or all of the search terms. Best used when you want to pull together results on similar topics.
• AND: Search results will contain all search terms, and results where one of the terms is missing will be excluded. AND is best used when you want to retrieve only those results where the search terms overlap.
• NOT: Used to exclude keywords from your search, this term is most effective when your search is ambiguous.

Boolean searches may be utilized through the library databases and numerous search engines (including Google), so they really are an essential logic to learn. Makeuseof.com has a great article on Boolean searches, including pictures, diagrams, and further interpretations. Take a look and find some relief with your research! Until next time!

-Aimee Graham, Online Librarian -

Top 100 Search Engines for Academic Research

Hello once again, SLU Pride! It has been a while since the last entry, but we are back and in full form!

Being librarians, we understand that sometimes you will use sources for research other than what we have available at our library. Of course we prefer you choose us, but if in a bind, or can’t find the exact information you are looking for, we want you to use credible sources. This is why today’s entry showcases the Top 100 Search Engines for Academic Research, a helpful tool to set you on the path to academic excellence.

Teachthought.com has generated this list in order to keep researchers supplied with information, and will expose researchers to sources they may have never heard of before! The list is organized by genre, with a category for nearly every discipline, and includes reference, general searches, journals, databases, and books.

This list is definitely bookmark worthy, and a great fallback in the event the CML does not have the sources you are looking for. Make sure to check the sources available through the Reference Desk or contact our Interlibrary Loan department if assistance is required! 

-          Aimee Graham, Online Librarian -