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Using Google Scholar to quickly retrieve the full-text article

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Are you busy writing term papers now? I have been receiving more reference questions about seeking the full-text article with a known reference. Other than relying on the Library Catalogue, we could also use Google Scholar for this purpose. You could set up a library link to McGill University in Google Scholar in order to quickly locate the full-text.

Go to Google Scholar and click “Settings” on the top-right corner. Then click “Library links” on the left side of the Scholar Settings screen and enter McGill University in the “Show library access links for” box. Save this setting, and you will be able to see the Find it at McGill link on the right side of the Google Scholar results page for your next search. Follow the Find it at McGill link and you will get to the full-text article available in McGill Library’s collection. Don’t forget to turn on VPN or log into EZproxy if you are off campus.

 

Films on Demand

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For those of you who don’t know this database yet, I would like to share it with you. Films on Demand is a McGill Library subscribed database offering streaming video clips on many disciplines such as Computer Science and Technology, Geography, Education, Social Sciences, etc.

Canadian Public Performance rights have been purchased for teaching purposes. Instructors may embed a clip into their lecture slides or post the link onto myCourses to let students watch it at their spare time. Since it is one of the online resources available for McGill users, remember to activate VPN or log into the EZproxy window with your McGill email and password when you use it off campus.

Happy watching.

Canadian Library Support Staff Day

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Today, Friday, October 19, 2012, has been designated by Canadian Library Association (CLA) as “Canadian Library Support Staff Day“. Library support staff members provide a wide variety of services in the library day-to-day operations: answer your questions, lend you a laptop, help you locate a particular book on the shelf, assist you in using uPrint machines in the library, etc. As the CLA website says, “the purpose of the day is to celebrate and show our appreciation for the work of library technicians, library assistants, library clerks, pages, shelvers, and all other support staff members who perform daily miracles in our public, private, school, government, academic, and corporate libraries.” So, if you will come to the library today for whatever reason, please do not forget to say thank you to the staff.

Beagle – the €9.90 e-reader

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A tiny e-reader, called Beagle, only five inches and 128 grams, was introduced by Txtr at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week. It has no Wi-Fi embedded, and it needs to work with smartphone to add e-books.  “The main selling point is its low price – €9.90 ($12.88 USD)”. Read more at here.

At McGill University, you actually can borrow an e-reader from the Library. To find an e-book, you may explore this page or search in the e-book sub-catalogue.

Open access textbooks downloadable for free – bookboon.com

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If you would like a quality and free e-book on a topic of your studies, bookboon.com might be a place to go. It provides more than 800 free textbooks in PDF format for everyone to download, even without registration. Topics cover from economics, statistics, IT, engineering, to natural science. Don’t think free things are always in poor quality. Actually, most titles on bookboon.com were written by authoritative authors in the field. Find a book that you are interested in at bookboon.com.

2012 McGill University Faculty of Science Undergraduate Research Conference

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This event will take place on Thursday, Oct. 4, in the lobby of the Arts Building. It is a great opportunity for everyone to see the outstanding research work done by some of the Science undergraduate students and get inspired by the creative ideas behind each poster. Viewing of student posters starts at 10 am. Please arrive before 4 pm for the prize ceremony and a keynote address by NSERC President Dr. Suzanne Fortier. Please click here to learn more about this event and its schedule. You may also read this article published in McGill Reporter for further information.

Writing in the Sciences

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Writing is not only a duty for the students in humanities and social science majors, students in sciences at different levels all face the challenge of good writing. As a librarian in a science and engineering library, I often receive questions on this matter. A hands-on course with quality examples and practice may address this need.

Starting tomorrow, Sep 24th 2012, Kristin Sainani, a professor at Stanford University and also a health and science writer, will offer an online open access course on Coursera, Writing in the Sciences.  As the introduction says, “this is a hands-on course that focuses on examples and practice. In the first four weeks, we will review principles of effective writing, examples of good and bad writing, and tips for making the writing process easier. In the second four weeks, we will examine issues specific to scientific writing.”  Read more at Writing in the Sciences.

 

Europeana opens data for 20 million cultural items

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Europe’s digital library – Europeana has become a significant web site for its huge and open collection of digitized books, paintings, photographs, recordings, and films from more than 2,200 contributing cultural heritage organizations across Europe, such as the British Library, the Louvre, and the Rijksmuseum.

So far, Europeana has opened up data on 20 million items under the Creative Commons rights waiver, which means that “anyone can reuse the data for any purpose – whether using it to build applications to bring cultural content to new audiences in new ways, or analyzing it to improve our understanding of Europe’s cultural and intellectual history.”

Europeana described this release as “by far the largest one-time dedication of cultural data to the public domain”. “Hopefully this will help to establish a precedent for other galleries, libraries, archives, and museums to follow… [and to build up] digital commons of cultural content that everyone is free to use and enjoy.”

Read more at Europeana opens up data on 20 million cultural items

An electronic copy of your textbook

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Now you know that you can find your textbook by searching the Course Reserves Catalogue. Many students who attended the library orientation or dropped by at the library service desk asked a same question – “Is there an e-copy available for my textbook?” The answer is “it depends”. There are a few steps that you could take to find it out by yourselves:

1. Look at your course syllabus to see if there is an indication of an e-copy.

2. Search the Course Reserves Catalogue by your course number, course name, instructor etc.

3. Check the Library E-books Catalogue by your book title or author.

4. For a book published recently by Springer or Wiley, it is worthwhile to go to SpringerLink Books or Wiley InterScience Online Books to check the availability of an e-copy.

5. The library service desk staff and your liaison librarians are always willing to help you out.