EBSCO databases have long used “alerts” to help you keep track of new materials that interest you. Now they’ve begun delivering those alerts via RSS feeds.
Users can now create an Alert directly
from the Result List, Search History, or the Publication list. Create
instant RSS feed Alerts by clicking on the orange RSS Feed icons.
What does this mean? It means you can create a search in any EBSCO database, grab the resulting RSS feed, and get information sent to you about new materials that have been added to that database that fit your search criteria. And without having to re-do your search every time.
(If you need an RSS reader, we recommend Google Reader or Bloglines.)
Butler Libraries currently subscribe to over 35 different EBSCO databases, including Academic Search Premier, Business Source Complete, ERIC, MasterFILE Premier, MEDLINE, Newspaper Source, PsycARTICLES, and SocINDEX with Full Text.
Want to find a book, but don’t know what libraries it’s in? Checked the Butler Library Catalog and couldn’t find that book or CD? Try OpenWorldCat.
WorldCat has been available to Butler students, faculty, and staff via the Library Website for quite a while. But now WorldCat is available to everyone via http://worldcat.org/. Just do a search like you normally would, type in your zip code, and they’ll show you libraries near you that own the item. “Books, videos, downloadable audiobooks… if it’s in a library near you, you can find it in WorldCat no matter where you are on
the Web.” You’ll even get links to the libraries’ websites and services like “Ask A Librarian.”
If you want to search Open WorldCat right from your browser, you can download one of their toolbars. You have the options of the WorldCat versions of the Yahoo Toolbar or Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer or a Firefox browser search extension. All of these include installation notes and “how to use” notes.
A new database that is available on the Library Website is the Directory of Open Access Journals. This database covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and
scholarly journals with the aim to cover all subjects and languages.
- There
are now 2,433 journals in the directory.
- Currently 714 journals are searchable at article level.
- As of today 119,344 articles are included in the DOAJ service.
Open Access Journals are peer-reviewed or editorial-quality journals that are freely available online. They define open access journals as journals that use a funding model
that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. From the
BOAI definition of “open access”, they won’t include a journal in the directory unless the users have the right to “read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts” of the articles.
Journals can be browsed by subject or searched by keyword. Once you get to the journal, you can browse by issue/year or even search some of the journals for a keyword in a particular article. These are online journals being made open-access by their publishers via their own websites, so the features and functions will vary.
The EBSCO databases have a cool new way to search for information. It’s called Visual Search. “Visual Search allows you to search efficiently across broad subjects,
and then returns a visual map of results, organized by topic.”
You just search for a topic and you’re given a visual picture of your search results, where circles represent related topics and squares represent actual articles.
To move back (or up) in the map, click outside of a circle or square. Click on Top Level to view the entire map.
You can even use the filters at the top of the map to limit or focus information by keyword, date, or publication name.
Click on the circles to focus on that particular topic. Then mouseover any square to get the citation info for its article. If you want more, click the square to view the information on the right side of your screen. You can even see whether the article is available full text.
To search visually rather than textually, just click the “Visual Search” tab at the top of any EBSCO database.
Students graduating may want to peruse the Career Subject Resource Guide:
http://www.butler.edu/library/research/srg/career.html
It is a complete list of all our career resources. Better still, most titles can now be checked out by students.
Brad Matthies
bmatthie@butler.edu
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