Karen Hinton of Proquest will be offering training on the suite of Community of Scholars (COS) research tools the UBC Library, in partnership with the UBC Office of Research Services, has recently acquired on behalf of the UBC community.

When: Tuesday, November 4, 2008; 3:00 – 5:00pm, Koerner Library, Room 217.
Register for the session here.

The COS suite of research databases includes the following:

COS Funding Opportunities, the world’s largest compendium of available funding sources, with more than 25,000 current opportunities for grants, fellowships, and awards

COS Scholar Universe, an editorially controlled, keyword-searchable database with nearly 2 million profiles of scholars.

COS Papers Invited, a database of calls for papers for conferences and journal special editions.

COS Expertise, a profile management system that enables institutions to keep track of their faculty’s expertise and research work, with first-person profiles maintained by the faculty themselves.

You know that lots of journals and magazines are published on the web. But where? This workshop will show you where to look — whether you’re starting with a bibliography, an author’s name, a topic, or just an idea.

Mon 03 Nov 2008
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Koerner 216 (Arts Lab)
Workshop is free, but please sign up here.

UBC Library has joined SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture and 65 other institutions in the First International Open Access Day.

What is Open Access?

Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge. It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.
(From: http://openaccessday.org/what-is-open-access)

To help us celebrate this event we are proud to present a number of distinguished speakers in our community who will be describing how they participate in the open access movement.

Schedule of Events

Introduction to Open Access & cIRcle: UBC’s Information Repository
11am– 12:20pm
Joy Kirchner and Hilde Colenbrander (UBC Library)

Using Wikipedia in the Classroom: an OA medium for research and student work
1 pm – 1:40 pm
Dr. Jon Beasley-Murray (Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies, UBC)

The Public Knowledge Project: providing open source software for OA publishing
2 pm – 2:40 pm
Brian Owen (SFU Library)

Open Medicine: a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access general medical journal
3 pm – 3:40 pm
Dr. Anita Palepu (Internal Medicine, UBC)

OA Day Worldwide Webcast: taxpayer access to publicly funded research
4 pm – 5 pm
Keynote address: Sir Richard Roberts, Ph.D., F.R.S

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
11:00 am – 5:00 pm
Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Dodson Room (302)

(photo credit: western4uk via flickr)

This Friday from 10-11:30am, I’ll be doing a session on “Current Awareness Tools in the Arts“.

We’ll be looking at ways to use the research tools offered by our online resources to save yourself some valuable research time and keep-up-to-date. In this workshop you’ll learn how to use current awareness tools to:

– get notified when new articles and dissertations are published on your topic,
– get Table of Contents notifications when the latest issue of your favorite journal is published, and
– set up an RSS Reader for RSS feeds to alert you to new content in blogs, journals, databases, and newspapers.

You can register for the course here: http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/description.cfm?sessionid=6035

If you can’t make the session, we’ll be offering a repeat on Tuesday November 4th from 12:30-2:00 pm. Sign up for the November session here: http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/description.cfm?sessionid=6036

Both sessions will be held in the Koerner Lab on the second floor of Koerner Library.

Check out other offerings in the Graduate Student Workshop series here:
http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/searchevents.cfm?seriesid=55127194

Whether you’re majoring or minoring in Linguistics or just taking a single class, you’ll want to visit Koerner Library as that’s where you’ll find many of the Linguistics books and print journals, not to mention people who can help you with your research questions.

For an overview of Koerner, check out the Guide to Koerner Library to get you started. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you need help. I welcome questions and feedback from you via telephone, email or MSN.

photo credit: UBC Library Graphics

Have you ever found the perfect book at Amazon and wanted to quickly check if it was available at UBC Library? Do you wish you could find a copy of that great journal article cited on a webpage, without having to go into the Library catalogue on another webpage?

LibX is a browser plugin that provides direct access to the UBC Library’s resources from a webpage in two ways.

(1): It creates a searchbox – right in your browser toolbar – that allows you to search the UBC Catalogue, Journals, Google Scholar or WorldCat simply by highlighting or dragging-and-dropping the text. The search box is placed directly below the address bar in your browser, like this:

(2) LibX also places a tiny UBC icon
on pages displaying citation information, such as online book sellers, abstacts, or bibliographies. Clicking the icon takes you to related library offerings. For instance, on book pages at Amazon, the icon will link to the book’s entry in the UBC Library catalogue. The icon is displayed next to the book title, like this:

The icon is displayed at Google, Yahoo! Search, the NY Times Book Review, and other pages.

For more information and to download the plugin, go to: http://www.library.ubc.ca/labs/libx/

The new Faculty of Arts Outreach schedule for this term is out. This semester’s workshops are on the theme of intellectual property in a digital environment, and include workshops on Refworks, Google Scholar/Metalib, plus two new workshops: the first on finding and attributing digital images in papers and presentations, and the second on preserving your digital reputation.

For more information, you can download the flyer here, or click the “Continue reading…” link below for descriptions, dates, and locations.
Finding & Using Digital Images
Learn how to find the best images for your presentation or paper and how to cite them.

Monday, January 14, noon – 1:00pm
Friday, February 15, noon – 1:00pm

Your Digital Reputation
Don’t become a headline! Learn how to manage your digital identities so you reflect the image you want – now and in the future.

Monday, January 28 noon – 1:00pm
Monday, February 11 noon – 1:00pm
Wednesday, March 26 noon – 1:00pm

RefWorks for the Arts
Use RefWorks to format your bibliographies and footnotes automatically!

Thursday, January 24 9:00 – 11:00pm
Tuesday, February 19 2:00 – 4:00pm
Friday, March 7 1:00 – 3:00pm
Please register for one of the Refworks workshops at http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/
description.cfm?sessionid=5194
Location: Koerner Library, Room 217

Google Scholar and Beyond
Go straight to academic articles via Google Scholar; search up to ten article databases at a time with Metalib, and more . . .

Friday, February 1 noon – 1:00pm
Wednesday, Feb. 13 noon – 1:00pm

All sessions in Buchanan B114 , with the exception of RefWorks (Koerner 217).
Sponsored by UBC Library, and supported in part by funding from the Office of the Dean of Arts.

Welcome, everyone, to 2008 and the start of a new term. If you’re wanting to get a head-start on course readings, here’s a quick tip – did you know you can search for a list of course texts that your prof has put on reserve at the library? Here’s how:

1) Go to the library catalogue (http://webcat.library.ubc.ca/, or from the library home page at www.library.ubc.ca)

2) Click on the course reserve tab – it looks like this:

3) Search for your course by course name or instructor using the pull down menus, like this:

And that’s it!

The exam period runs from Dec 4 – 18 – check the Student Services portal for a list of Linguistics exam times and locations.

Did you know that the AMS has an exam database with final exams from a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses? Studying from these examples can be an excellent way to prepare and supplement your course knowledge. Select LING from the dropdown menu on the AMS Exam Database website to see what is available for Linguistics.

Good luck to all on your finals!

Both Koerner and Woodward libraries will be open extended hours during the exam period from December 4-18.

Koerner’s extended hours:
Monday – Friday: 8am – 1am
Saturday, Sunday: 10am -1am

Woodward’s extended hours:
Monday – Thursday: 8am – 12midnight
Friday: 8am – 6pm
Saturday: 10am – 6pm
Sunday: 12noon – 12midnight

(Photo : Library graphics)