Category Archives: Electronic Resources

New Look to JSTOR

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JSTOR has unveiled a sleek new look on April 7, 2008! Most veteran JSTOR users will find that the basic and advance search screens retain many of the old features, while adding a few new twists.

Highlights of the new features:

  • In Advanced Searching, searchers can now specify that search terms be within a certain proximity to each other (within 5, 10, or 25 words). Using this feature can greatly improve full-text search results.
  • Save citations within JSTOR and access them again at future sessions. To use the feature, create a MyJSTOR account from the tab at the top of the screen.
  • All searches from a session are retained and can be reviewed.
  • Simplified printing and viewing of articles in PDF format.

To learn more, watch several short tutorials on the new features at:

http://0-www.jstor.org.library.acaweb.org/action/showBasicSearch

In future posts, I will discuss ways to improve JSTOR searches. But if you have any questions or would like any assistance on JSTOR or any other database, please contact me at mjackson at milligan.edu

I didn’t know we had THAT in the Milligan Library…

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As Milligan’s resident reference librarian, I am aware of some really great resources. Some of these are located physically in the library, some are available online through a subscription, and some are free out on the Internet. I hope to have occasional posts highlighting interesting resources that are often overlooked by students and faculty.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

What is it? As its name implies, it is an online reference library. Over 60+ multivolume reference books on social sciences, popular culture, religion, history, medicine and more. The complete text of every volume can be searched at one time, over 86,000 documents.

When would the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) be helpful in a research project? The GVRL is a great place to start almost any research project. Many of the articles give excellent overviews, show how a topic may be relevant in many different fields of study, and give keywords, concepts, and references for further study. The GVRL way also be helpful later in a research project to fill in gaps left by other resources. Most instructors won’t accept Wikipedia articles in a bibliography, but instructors like to see GVRL articles.

What kind of topics might be covered in the GVRL? Just a few examples: Bob Dylan (32 articles), Lord of the Rings (21), PATRIOT Act (50), and tobacco (265).

Accessing and using the Gale Virtual Reference Library
Milligan Library Homepage → Electronic Reference → Gale Virtual Reference Library

Type one or more search terms in the Basic Search box. Helpful tip–Return to the basic search screen EVERY TIME to revise a search or begin a new search.

Need help with Gale Virtual Reference Library or any other research question, contact me, Mary Jackson, mjackson at milligan.edu.

Website Tweak Simplifies Search for Library Journal Holdings

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The Library collection includes not only books, and non-print media (CDs, DVDs, etc.) but also journals and magazines. Journals and magazines are an important medium of written communication.

  • Popular magazines inform or entertain general audiences on a wide variety of topics and interests (e.g., current news, computers, or cats).
  • Professional journals and magazines report on news and current practices within specialized professions (e.g., teaching and education, or nursing and healthcare).
  • Academic (or peer-reviewed) journals report on the results of research from various disciplines of scholarly study (e.g., Medieval history, physics, or Old Testament biblical studies).

The Library subscribes to many different journals and magazines of these various types, in both print and electronic formats. Until recently, if you wanted to find out what journals and magazines the Library held, you had to first browse a listing of print titles and then search for available titles in electronic full-text format. We are pleased to announce that you can now search for all the library’s journal and magazine holdings, in either print or electronic format, from a single location.

From the homepage of the Library website, click on the Electronic & Print Periodicals link. The link takes you to a journal search and browse service called Serials Solutions.

If, for example, you wanted to find Library holdings for the magazine Smithsonian, simply type the title in the “Find” box and click the “Search” button. The results indicate that we have holdings of Smithsonian in print and electronically in two online databases.

Smithsonian

Although we observe that most users prefer to access journal articles electronically, don’t forget that print can still be very useful. Notice that our print holdings of Smithsonian stretch back to 1971, while our holdings in electronic format only go back to 1983. If your research required you to secure an article in an issue from 1979, you would not be able to get it in electronic format. But it is available in print! (Back issues of all our print periodicals can be found in the compact shelving in the basement level of the Library.)

We hope this one-stop interface will help to simplify your search for journals and magazines held by the Library. Remember that articles from journals or magazines not held by the Library in either print or electronic format can be requested from interlibrary loan by filling out the webform here.