RefWorks: Off-campus Access
Comments Off on RefWorks: Off-campus Access For information about accessing RefWork’s “Write-N-Cite” features off-campus see the following URL:
http://www.butler.edu/library/research/db/about/refworks.html
Thanks!
-B
Comments Off on RefWorks: Off-campus Access 
Voice Mail: Reference Desk
Comments Off on Voice Mail: Reference Desk Friendly reminder: If you answer a voice mail reference question be sure to delete the originating message.
This way a reference librarian will not needlessly call a patron who has already been helped.
-Brad
MG 101 Individual Research Project
Comments Off on MG 101 Individual Research Project Reference Librarians –
Four sections of MG 101 will be working on their Individual Research Project during the next two weeks.
They are instructed to forumulate two research questions which are
related to investigating the following areas of the business
environment
- Economic Environment: Describe the
prevailing and anticipated economic conditions that will impact the business.
- Industry/Competitive
Environment: Describe broad industry trends. Describe the nature of the competition in the
industry. Specifically identify key
competitors, their strengths and weaknesses; and, the related threats and
opportunities.
- Market/Customer
Analysis: Describe the demographic and lifestyle trends that will
impact demand for your product or service.
- Global
Environment: Describe any prevailing global conditions that relate to
the business such as foreign markets where the business may sell the product in
the future or obtain resources such as supplies.
After having created their questions they need to find two relevent
business sources that may help them answer these questions.
Sources may include magazine and scholarly articles, industry reports,
etc. To help with database selection I’ve matched the business
databases to the various environments and noted this in the abouts.
Students were taught to match the abouts to the respective business
environment that they are researching. So, you may have to help refresh
their memories in this regard.
I also created a citing guide and sample paper in order to help them
with the writing and citing portion of this assignment. The
Writer’s Studio has copies and is aware that the students are required
to visit.
Resources:
Jon can field any complicated
questions regarding the assignment, their Individual Project, or their
end-of-the-year Team Project until I get back. I will return Oct. 12 at which
point you can refer students to me as well. Many will likely want to talk to me
regarding questions about the IRP because I am the grader.
So, feel free to encourage them to
seek me out starting on Oct. 12.
-Brad
Switching the Blog
Comments Off on Switching the Blog Hi all. Sorry about the confusion with the blog(s). I explained the
reason for switching sites on DawgBlog, and this has also had the
effect of making our internal blog (“ButlerLib”) independent, rather
than inside the other blog. But this one will still be the one where
our internal communications and announcements get posted.
This means that you’ll either need to get used to checking two blogs or else you’ll need to use an aggregator.
An aggregator collects RSS feeds and allows you to view them all from
one webpage, making it unnecessary to visit multiple websites just to
check and see if anything new has been posted. You just visit your
aggregator page, and if anything’s new on any of your sites, it tells
you! This comes in very handy if you visit a variety of websites
regularly, whether they be blogs, news sites, or even library
listservs. 🙂
One recommended aggregator is Bloglines.
It’s free and is easily configured to collect your various feeds. The
sites with new posts show up just like unread email messages, complete
with the number of them.
Another free and easy one is Google. Now you can have a “Personalized Home”
page via Google. Just click that link in the top right. You can add all
kinds of content, including your own custom sources. Just click on
“Create a Section” and paste the URL of the RSS feed you want to
subscribe to. Google does the rest, listing the latest 3/5/9 posts from
that site. It’s very easy to use and is worth a try. The end result
with this one is your own personal Google page. It still has the Google
search interface at the top, but now it also has news headlines, blog
feeds, etc., below it. A true all-in-one page.
The one caveat: right now, our blogs are set up so that you must log in
with your Butler ID to get to them. I think this will prevent you from
adding these blogs to an aggregator. If I find a way to overcome this
obstacle, I’ll post a followup article here on ButlerLib.
Scott
Themocracy