Begin Your Research tutorial

Here is a really helpful UC research online tutorial, usable by any campus. Complete with a quiz, it's a great way to get students started who didn't have a library class and can't come in for help.  It was very helpful in training the McHenry Roving students.

Begin Your Research
http://www.lib.uci.edu/uc-research-tutorial/begin.html

McHenry Roving Information Student schedule: FALL 2012

McHenry Library Roving Information Student schedule through Friday, December 7th
(also posted behind the Circ Desk and included online in the Library Ref Desk calendar):

Monday:
5-7pm Alejandra
7-9pm Brandon

Tuesday:
6-8pm Pati
8-10pm Brandon

Wednesday:
4-6pm Alejandra
7-9pm Brandon

Thursday:
6-7pm Pati
7-8pm Alejandra

Friday:
4-5pm Pati & Alejandra
5-6pm Pati
6-8pm Brandon

Sunday:
3-5pm Brandon

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Laura

Writing tutoring for students

Learning Support Services in the ARCenter building offers writing tutoring for UCSC students (not the general public):

http://www2.ucsc.edu/lss/tutorial_services.shtml

New group study room system and policies

There is a new group study room reservation system, and it is listed in the same place on the library website.

Here is a link to the new policies page: http://library.ucsc.edu/study-room-policies

Main differences:
-Rooms may be reserved for up to 4 hours at a time.

-Limit of 4-hours maximum per day of reservation time across all rooms. This time may be split.

-Can reserve up to 2 weeks in advance
-15-minute grace period for reservations. If the room is not being used by an eligible group (at least two people) at the end of the grace period, the reservation is forfeited.
-No back-to-back reservations but groups may stay beyond their reserved time if there is no subsequent reservation and there is no other group waiting for a room to open.

BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill resource

In case people are still getting questions about the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, I wanted to let you know that we recently received the official report to the president: Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b3539867~S5) and the accompanying recommendations (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b3539868~S5).

I also wanted to share this Deepwater subject guide created by the Gov Docs librarian at MSU: http://guides.library.msstate.edu/content.php?pid=136282&sid=1167503

And a reminder about the bibliography link that Cynthia sent out back in May:
http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/govdocs/gd/oilspill2010.html

--Jess

Student survey publicity

You may notice small thin strips attached to our public stations on the 2nd floor at McH publicizing a student survey. The survey is sponsored by UCSC office of Institutional Research and is part of a statewide survey of students regarding class and lecture size. The survey closes on Feb 10th, at which time these strips will be removed.

The strips say: "Get heard. Take the class and lecture availability student survey @ www.uc-class.org. For a chance to win Nite Owl cookies"

Thanks,

Lucia

What to do if a 1994+ UCSC dissertation does not appear in Digital Dissertations online

Although we archive the paper copies of all UCSC master theses and doctoral dissertations in Special Collections, they do not handle the submission of files to Digital Dissertations. We can make an inquiry of the UCSC Graduate Division about the student and title and they will verify that the dissertation was produced. They do not have information about its submission to Pro Quest (the company that produces the electronic files and supports Digital Dissertations). It is not mandatory for students to have their dissertations made electronically available so in some cases it may be that the student decided not to make it accessible in this format. The Graduate Division can check and verify if this is the case.

If you encounter an incorrect record in Cruzcat, where a link to Digital Dissertations is provided but does not work, please let Cataloging know and they can correct the record.

CruzID manager web pg down tonight

The cruzID manager website (http://cruzid.ucsc.edu) will be unavailable from 10pm-midnight tonight.

Printing authentication will still work for patrons. Students will not be able to configure or change their CruzID Gold passwords. This is an urgent change from the IDM team.

-Frank Dang

Zines for Community Studies 161 (Steiner)

If students from CMMU 161 come looking for two zines listed on their syllabus as "at McHenry Library", they are not available here. They are available on the web as free downloadable PDFs.
Here are the links:

Take Back Your Life: A Wimmin's Guide to Alternative Health Care
http://zinelibrary.info/files/takebackyrlife.pdf


Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness
http://theicarusproject.net/files/navigating_the_space.pdf

I will contact the instructor and let her know.

Biomolecular Engineering/Computer Engineering 123A class

Hi all,

In case you get questions for the Biomolecular Engineering/Computer Engineering 123A class, we have a class guide to help students do research for their engineering design project. This is a 2 quarter class, so the page will likely be up for both fall and winter quarters:

http://library.ucsc.edu/course-guides/biomolecular-engineering-computer-engineering-123a

The class page has links to recommended article databases (Inspec, Compendex, Pubmed, etc.), plus other sources such as patents, application notes, and protocols. Please let us know if you have are any questions.

Christy H. and I are also willing to take questions directly from students.

-Ann

Oversized paper for music students

Many music scores are not regular sized and reducing them makes them too small to read. So we have in the cabinet just under the right desk Mac (looking from the desk), some 11" x 14" and 11" x 17" paper. Feel free to give some to students who ask for it. They can use it in the bypass trays on the copier. The bypass tray is a little drop-down tray on the right side of each copier. Please let Laura know if you have any questions.

Precalculus book by Cohen

If you get asked here at McHenry for the Precalculus book by Cohen, we don't have it. It is only at the Science & Engineering Library:

http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/search/X?SEARCH=precalculus+cohen&searchscope=5&submit=Submit

Students are seeing this on the math placement test advising page, and I've let them know that it needs to be changed. Several students have already come by only to find that it is not here:

http://undergrad.pbsci.ucsc.edu/advising/gettingstarted/StudyGuideandPracticeExam.html

Emailing docs to visually-impaired student

Just in case Christian (the blind student with the seeing-eye dog) returns for more help, the following may be helpful. His computer can't read aloud from PDFs, so he needs text copied and pasted into a word doc. I found that when I click PDF full text in ACS, I can't highlight/copy but if I click "download PDF" (bottom left) and open in Acrobat, I can do this, and then paste into word. It is also important to make sure that the pasted article includes the citation information -- in one case it did not, so I grabbed that and added it to the word doc. He is also OK with a link to an HTML text, so when HTML is available that may be more convenient, although I ended up pasting most of the articles into word regardless. Paul

Laptop printing

We had a public services meeting an noon today to discuss the Personal Laptop Printing Pilot. I thought all staff would be interested in this pilot as printing from personal laptops is a question we probably all get. While it is a relatively straightforward process for PCs, it is fairly complex for Macs. Information on the pilot is available on the Library website at http://library.ucsc.edu/services/printing-computing. Thanks to Frank Dang and the CNS staff for launching this.

Elizabeth

Kerry's business guide

In case you need access to Kerry great business research guide, it's on the old server, and here is the link:

http://library2.ucsc.edu/collect/businessweb.html

I had a market research question that this was perfect in answering.

Best,

Laura

Student email: CruzMail to SlugMail

I just had a student ask me if I knew anything about the fact that he couldn't log into CruzMail. Here is the story from the ITS site:

"On April 28, 2010 from 2PM to 6PM, all student email accounts currently using CruzMail, will be automatically switched to SlugMail.

On that day between the hours of 2PM and 6PM, students will no longer be able to login to CruzMail to check and send email. Instead, they will login to SlugMail. Their UCSC email address remains the same."

SlugMail login page:
http://its.ucsc.edu/service_catalog/slugmail/

Here is the full news article:

http://its.ucsc.edu/news_and_events/view_news.php?id=523

16th-century engravings

Students in Allan Langdale's HAVC 137E Renaissance Prints class will be researching a mystery engraving from 16th-century Germany. BR kindly informs us that they should consult the Illustrated Bartsch (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b1431168~S5), volume 10 of which is entitled Sixteenth-century German Artists.

Additional info from Lee:

"That helps. I had a student who insisted the engraving was Bosch, and when that didn't pan out, noticed "Barsch" somewhere on the page, but that name drew a blank as well. I pointed her to some texts about early engravers and suggested the VRC if that didn't work."

Writing class focused on surfing

There is a Writing section that is focused on topics related to surfing. I've helped a couple of students with this topic and have a few strategies to share:

-not using the * symbol for truncating -- too many items come up with "surface"; leaving it as keyword "surfing" worked much better

-adding "NOT internet" to the keyword search was extremely helpful in the article databases

-Encyclopedia of Surfing: McH Ref GV840.S8 W3476 2003
http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b2282202~S5

-article databases: Academic Search Complete; Historical Abs; in Illumina (surfing is a Descriptor in CSA) used Oceanic Abs, both Psych dbs, Socio Abs

-adding ideas/subject terms such as surfers, culture, subculture, counterculture, sport psychology, extreme sports, risk-taking, recreation, coastal management, environmental protection, business, marketing, etc.

Hope this is helpful.

Best,

Laura

Class: History 30 "Making of Modern Africa"

Hi all,

Beth and I recently conducted research sessions for David Anthony's
History 30 (Making of Modern Africa) and History 137B (Africa 1800 to
Present) classes, and you will notice lots of activity around these topics
just now. Although Beth and I are happy to assist them when they have hit
research roadblocks, please be aware that they should first consult and
*use* the resources listed in the dedicated guides for each of these
classes linked on the Course Materials page (and to which we introduced
them in class) and below. They should be assured that Reference Desk staff can help
them as well as Beth and myself.

Thanks,
Ken and Beth

History 30 Guide:
http://library.ucsc.edu/course-guides/history-30-making-of-modern-africa

History 137B Guide:
http://library.ucsc.edu/course-guides/history-137b---africa-1800-to-the-present

CruzID Gold setup tips

Hi everyone,

I have found I have had to do a bit more explaining about what the CruzID gold is to students. Here's a list of things I always include in the explanation that seem to help the setup go smoothly and help them understand what they are doing:

-tell them that their CruzID is the first part of their UCSC email address (before @ucsc.edu), and not their student ID#
-they already have a blue password, and that is their email password
-the gold password will enable them to eventually get into other systems on campus, the first first one is charging library printing to their account (and this works at both libraries)
-this is a one-time setup process
-they may not have had to choose a secure password before so they need to read that sentence about how long the password must be and what it must contain (saves time and multiple unsuccessful attempts)
-make sure to hit "OK" or "LOGOUT" before moving on to the gold student print release station
-there is a bug that sometimes happens with the gold release station, and their new gold password won't work. CNS is working on it, and advises to try again in a couple of minutes. they may have to do that more than once. If still unsuccessful, let them know other options (print card if they have one, loan them ours, etc.), and report to CNS.

Hope this helps when you are assisting students with this process.

Best,

Laura