Hi all
In case you hadn’t noticed this recent change…
The blue navigation bar “EJOURNALS” has changed to “JOURNALS”. There is also a search box on the page for a journal catalogue search for those print titles that don’t show up from the ejournal search box, but which we do have in print.
Try “Stadion” or “Reference Services Review” in both search options to see what I mean if this is not clear.

Journals and books interfiled to HC79 P6 L55 as of Friday January 19th.

Hi-
On the publication stand and on the ref desk (a couple, just for a few days, ok?) are flyers for the Arts Student Workshop Series. Please familiarize yourself with these workshops and refer students to them as you think appropriate. We’re hoping to attract many more students this term: it’s important info plus the Faculty of Arts is underwriting part of the cost.
You’ll notice that verso the Library offerings is a schedule from Arts ISIT. They’re our partners for part of this and two workshops presented by library staff in the Arts ISIT lab appear on both schedules.
Registration for all the workshops on the Library side is through the UBC Library events calendar, and they are all members of the “undergrad” series. No registration is required for the Arts ISIT workshops.
Questions, suggestions always welcome.
Sheryl

I thought it might be useful for us to post notes on Mary’s weekly gov pubs session for GAAs and those who couldn’t make the session, and also to serve as a rudimentary knowledge base of topics we’ve covered. We could add an entry post-session, and then anyone can edit or comment as necessary. (Thanks, Mary, for agreeing to this!)
In today’s session, we looked at the new interface for the World Bank’s World Development Indicators Online (WDI). WDI has statistical data for over 550 development indicators, and time series data from 1960- for over 200 countries and 18 country groups. Mary notes that we continue to carry the WDI print volumes as they have a substantial amount of extra material NOT found in the online source, such as large bibliographies and extra resources.

WHEN SHOULD I USE THIS RESOURCE?
This is the first place to look for stats on developing countries. Recently, they have started adding social statistics and statistics on social projects.
The new interface is quite clear and easy to navigate. Users are presented with a series of screens from which to make their selections on three variables: Country; series; and time. A search box is also available on each screen to search for variables.
We selected 4 countries:(Canada, Cuba, China, and the US); searched for “vehicles” to retrieve two series on “Vehicles per 1,000 people”and “Vehicles per km of road”; and selected a range of years (1986-2006).
The table that is generated is manipulable; you can view and resort the data in a number of different ways (all series for a single country; a single series for all countries, etc.) The data can be presented in table or chart format or even a lovely colour map! To display the map, you need to select all countries for the series and dates.
In the new WDI interface, notes on data sources can be found by clicking the link for that entry to display the notes (rather than going to a separate “notes” section to view all notes at once.
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PLEASE leave comments on anything I missed (or misinterpreted!). As we add more, you’ll be able to browse topics from earlier sessions by clicking the “Gov pubs sessions” category in the left hand menu.

Several students from Family Studies have been approaching the reference desk looking for information on theories of explanation, specifically to look at what an explanation is from various philosophical standpoints, like positivsim, for example.
Patrick suggested using the Philosopher’s Index where there are many articles related to this topic. Search for theories/theory of explanation.
There is also a good overview article online via the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(http://www.iep.utm.edu/e/explanat.htm) that includes a short bibliography.
This article also mentions The Scientific Image by Bas van Fraassen which we have in Koerner at Q175 .V335 1980, which some students might want to check out.

Hi all,
We’ve (or at least I”ve) got a puzzle. A patron wanted to access a title from the above online collection. He was using one of the guest access workstations, which I thought would allow him access to our online resources while here in the library. He was able to bring up the specific title and conduct a search for keywords, but then unable to bring up any of the page images. It seems like access to the content/images was blocked. I suggested he get a guest ID from upstairs and try that. It worked!
I guess my question is: how do we know which resources are restricted? Is it a case by case thing? I thought the catalogue and all online resources could be accessed by guests on one of the three guest stations….
Thanks.
Celia

Now interfiled to GN33 I…

Heads up – You will likely start seeing students from Anth 323 (Archaeological Foundations of Mesoamerican Civilizations) at the desk over the next two weeks. They are working on an assignment in which they have to select two similar articles, one popular and one scholarly, on a topic in Mesoamerican archaeology and compare the two.
The assignment guidelines, including partial lists of scholarly and popular journals with Mesoamerican content are linked from the online course page, where you’ll also find links to suggested databases.

If you take a close look at the bottom of this blog entry, you’ll notice a new feature. I’ve added a bit of code that will allow us to email blog entries. Just click the link that says “email this to a friend”, fill in the details, and off it goes!
This may be useful for emailing time-sensitive postings such as new assignments or hot topics at the desk to the HSS-desk listserv, for folks who don’t check the blog regularly. We’ll have the benefit of a quick, wide-reaching email plus an archived posting to refer to at the desk.

Hi all,
Can someone remind me what the procedure is for reporting problems with indexes and databases? A student called this afternoon because she was unable to access the OECD Education Database from home–it didn’t work from the ref desk either. So far I’ve just been filling out the eResources comments/suggestions page when things like this come up. Is there anything else I can suggest for the student when indexes or ejournals don’t cooperate?
Karine