NUCAT

Scholar OneSearch Quick Tip: Search the Library Catalog

Now that Scholar OneSearch is live, we want to help you get the most out of this research tool! This is our next installment in a series of Scholar OneSearch Quick Tips. Today’s tip: searching the library catalog. The default option in Scholar OneSearch lets you search beyond Northeastern University Library holdings and includes articles from a variety of journals, because the tool is meant to help people quickly discover all kinds of information in different formats. This is the “Library Catalogs + Articles” choice that is already selected when you first start to search. But sometimes you just need to know if the NU Libraries (Snell, Law, African-American Institute) have a specific book, video, or journal, and you don’t want all that extra stuff. That’s where you want to click the area marked above to select a different option. Choose “Library Catalogs” instead. You can do this on our library home page (shown above) or in the Scholar OneSearch environment: Now when you do a search, two things will be different:
  1. No articles will be included in your results, and
  2. It will only show you books, e-books, videos, journals, etc. that the NU Libraries own or have access to.
Here I have selected “Library Catalogs” and am about to do a search on “language acquisition”: Here’s the top of my results list. I got 915 items. Notice that the items shown are a journal and a couple of books, and also that on the left-hand side under Material Type I can select just Books, or just Video and Audio, or whichever I choose, but that Articles is not one of the choices. The same search as above, under the “Library Catalogs + Articles” selection, gives over 420,000 results (!!!), most of them articles. So if you don’t want articles to overwhelm the other items, it pays to change the selection of where to search. You may also want to choose the “Library Catalogs” option when you have a specific item in mind and you want to see if the library has it. For example, let’s look for the book Life of Pi. First I’ll look using the default “Library Catalogs + Articles” option: This search brought back over 369,000 results! And the first 3 items I can see are two articles and a video. It’s not obvious from here if we have the book or not. Now let’s try it with “Library Catalogs” selected: Much better! Only 28 results, first of all, and the first two are the movie and the book, so I can see right away that we own the novel (although it was checked out at the time of writing this post). So, you can see that changing the selection to “Library Catalogs” can help make a much narrower target for your searches. If you were familiar with our old library catalog, NUCat, you’ll see that the “Library Catalogs” option mimics the types of results you would get from NUCat. What Scholar OneSearch tips would you like to learn about? Let us know! Related information:

LibX Plug-in Updated for Firefox 4

Everybody’s favorite browser plug-in, LibX @ NU, (version 1.5.6) has been updated to be compatible with Firefox 4! If you’re already using LibX, you may be prompted to update the plug-in sometime in the next few hours. This version also works in Internet Explorer. If you use Chrome, there’s now a Chrome version too! LibX for the NU Libraries offers: • An optional search bar at the top of the browser window for NuCat, Nexpress, and WorldCat Local • The ability to highlight any text in a web page and drag it to the search bar (see video) • Right-click highlighted browser text and search in NuCat, Nexpress, WorldCat or Google Scholar (see video) • Click the embedded N in Amazon, WorldCat, Google, and more, and search in NuCat or Tour (see video) • Right-click a web page or URL, including Google Scholar, and log in from home with Library/myNeu login (see video) • Click any isbn, issn, doi, or PMID on the web, and link to NuCat or full text (see video). • Get links to COINs, a standard for creating citations (see a video of how it works in Wikipedia) The plug-in helps you avoid frustration and save time, and brings you access to the library’s content where you are on the web. Try it out! Download LibX for NU Libraries here

Lots More E-Books!

In my last post about the availability of the 2010 Springer E-Book collection, I outlined some of the advantages of e-books over the print — 24/7 multi-user access, support for distance users, powerful and granular searching, suitability for reserve, and more. To expand our e-book offerings, we’ve now leased access to a core collection of over 50,000 e-books from the past several years — a collection called Academic Complete and hosted on the ebrary e-book site. We’re providing this collection on a trial basis this year to see how well the titles are used and to gather feedback from you. The Academic Complete collection is multidisciplinary, covering a variety of subject areas in the humanities, social sciences, business, medicine, and science, and offers a large number of titles from leading academic publishers. Over half of the collection dates from 2004 and later. Special features include: * Powerful searching across all of the e-books or all e-books in specific discipline areas * Complete full-text searching, including indexes and tables of contents * Ability to navigate directly to your highlighted search results within a title * Ability to browse through a book, or to navigate via the table of contents or index * Ability to browse titles by discipline and drill down to specific subject areas * Automatic generation of citations and persistent links to titles, chapters, and individual pages * Ability to add highlighting and notes to text and save in your personal online bookshelf * Convenient printing and copying * Easy export of information to EndNote or RefWorks citation managers * Text-to-speech and other accessibility features You can go directly to the ebrary site to search or browse this collection. You’ll also find the individual titles listed in NuCat. By the way, on the main search or advanced search screens in NuCat, did you know that you can now limit searches to e-books only? Instead of “View Entire Collection,” simply select “Ebooks.” I hope you enjoy using our new e-book collection. Your comments are welcome and important to us; you can comment on this post, contact your subject librarian, or you can reach me any time at a.aaron@neu.edu.

Class of 2015: View Library Tips from an Upperclassman

With the first full week of Fall classes complete, I would like to welcome the Freshman class of 2015. If they haven’t already, they will shortly find Snell Library to be their second home, literally. Let’s all put aside the fact that this class is spoiled by having the new 24/7 policy of the Library that we all fought for. It will help them adjust to those long nights spent doing projects last minute. (Do the rest of you Upperclassmen remember when we could get away with that?) So come on in, put the cell phone on mute, and plug those headphones in, because it will be a year of hard work with plenty of fun in between. I have listed below a few resources/events that may help those last minute panics. NUCAT is your resource to find any type of print/media that is in Northeastern’s libraries. Here is a list of upcoming news and events. Come check out the Meet The Author talks listed here. Need to find a peer-reviewed article by 8 AM and “Googling” isn’t accepted by your Prof.? The Library has you covered. Welcome new faces and be sure to check out all the Library has to offer. Feel free to ask any Library staff or students around you if you are confused about anything. My best advice to you is to explore the opportunities you have here at Northeastern and get involved. The Library is always looking for new ideas and new writers (so comment away right here)!.

InterLibrary Loan: A Memoir

So my favorite easy read author is Harlan Coben. He comes out with a few books every year and they’re fast paced mysteries that I find extremely easy to breeze through in just a few days. Given that he only comes out with one or two a year in hard cover it’s difficult to read them all right away. This is why I would like to give a big thanks to Northeastern Universities Inter-Library Loan. When I first decided to check if he had released a new book, NUcat helped me out and found that the only copy of his new novel was at the Wellesley College Library. Under the advice of the librarian assisting me, I put a request through ILL in about 30 seconds and the book left my mind. Two days later as I’m leaving for the weekend and looking for a read on the bus, I get To Kill a Mockingbird. I figured I’d give it a second go since it’s been a few years, and the guy working the desk says my book is in! Two days. Literally it arrived before I even remembered ordering it. And to top it off, the book is great! I just started it a day ago and I’m already 200 pages in. Thanks Inter-Library Loan!! I will definitely be using this service again!