Comments Off on Finding Cases in Lexis-Nexis

By bmatthie, September 13, 2007 2:39 pm

The old Lexis-Nexis had a nice box where you could input relevant pieces of a case citation. The new and improved version does not.

I had a student come to the desk with note that said: Texas v Johnson 491 V.(unreadable) 397 (1989)

The Legal tab was of no help. Nor was the Help. After talking to Dan for about 10 minutes we found this case by doing the following:

Go to “easy search”.

Type in “Texas vs. Johnson” and use the “s” in vs.

Select the legal box.

Leave year range to “Previous 2”

The  actual case is: Texas vs. Johnson, 491 US 397 (1989).

Now to test the Dan method I found Johnson v. Quarterman in Lexis and tried to search for it.

Usign the “vs.” I could not bring it up. However, if I used just “v.” it will appear in the list.

So, when students start coming to the reference desk for legal cases you’ll have to try both methods.

-Brad

Comments Off on BibMe

By Scott Pfitzinger, July 20, 2007 12:23 pm

Greetings, all. For those of you who deal with citations and bibliographic formats and all, there a relatively new (June 2007) tool that I’d like you to try. It’s called BibMe and is online at http://www.bibme.org/. From what I read from the reviews of other librarians, it’s not only a free program but is good at creating bibliographies quickly and easily. Emily Chang at eHub says:

“BibMe can generate citations in MLA, APA and Chicago style (which you
can change on the fly), and I found it took half the time to create a
bibliography than any other tool I have used. Like its commercial competitors, BibMe has an extensive search function
that can find and generate a detailed citation by entering a few
keywords. Registration is simple and non-intrusive, and once you have
an account you can save and edit your bibliographies.”

I would be interested in the thoughts and opinions of OUR staff about this product. Please give it a try when you have a few minutes and then share your thoughts in the form of comments to this post.

Thanks very much.
Scott

Comments Off on Printing Problems

By Scott Pfitzinger, June 7, 2007 11:49 am

As you’re all probably aware of,
we’ve been having some sporadic printing issues for the last couple weeks. This
has been because I.R. upgraded a print server and added the print drivers for
Windows Vista. Most of the time it’s been that print jobs got hung up in the
queue and eventually all came out. This morning we had different problems, with
print jobs going through the queue like normal but then
disappearing.

The current status is that they
have removed the Vista drivers and backed the
server to working with Windows 2000 and XP. The result is that everything seems
to be printing well now. However, if someone brings in a laptop that’s running
Vista and tries to print, they will probably
have problems using the printers. The best solution for now is that they email
the document to themselves and then log onto a lab pc and print it from there.
Not the best solution, but at least everyone on library machines can now print
again.

If you have ANY printing problems
now, please let me know about them so I can coordinate troubleshooting the
issue.

Thanks.
Scott

Comments Off on Online Social Networking

By Scott Pfitzinger, January 8, 2007 11:30 am

Hello all.
It’s a new year and I’d like to get you all thinking about Social Software and
the role it can play in the library and at Butler.

In short, a
Social Networking site is an online place where people can create a profile and
build a personal network that connects them with other people. There are
various kinds of sites like this, focusing on different things people are
interested in: news, photos, music, school, etc. Blogs and wikis are just the
tip of the iceberg. If you want more information, I suggest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_software

During 2007
we will be exploring the role that social networking programs can have both
within the library and across the campus. Lewis has asked me to form a
committee for just this purpose. If you’re interested in participating, please contact
me. (I’ve already had one person express interest.) As we explore social
networking for the library, we may eventually expand to include or join up with
people from other departments on campus to apply the same analytical process to
the whole campus.

For now,
here are some links to websites that serve as social networking sites, to whet
your appetite as it were.

http://www.facebook.com/
http://www.stumbleupon.com/
http://www.linkedin.com/
http://www.newscloud.com/
http://technorati.com/
http://www.flickr.com/
http://www.tagworld.com/
http://www.frappr.com/
http://groups.google.com/
http://www.myspace.com/
http://www.livejournal.com/
http://www.furl.net/
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.secondlife.com/

Thanks.
Scott

Comments Off on Changing Toner in Reference Printers

By Scott Pfitzinger, December 5, 2006 12:36 pm

Because of the volume of printing we’ve been
experiencing in the Reference Dept., we’ve been flying through toner
cartridges. Even with the amount of printing, though, there has been some
question about whether toner cartridges were really full, because they had to
be changed rather suddenly sometimes.

To help measure the productivity of our toner cartridges, we
will now be tracking how many pages are printed out for each cartridge. What
does this mean for you? Probably nothing more than printing out a page whenever
you change a toner cartridge. I’ll be keeping track of the stats. We just
need a Print Usage Page created every time a toner cartridge is printed.

Instructions are included below, are saved in the Reference
folder on BUFiles/Library, and are posted on the bulleting board behind the
Reference Desk. If the toner cartridge runs out on your watch and you need
help, talk to any of the Reference Librarians.

Thanks.

Scott