Langsdale's privacy policy is now available
online.

From the introduction:

Librarians have a long history as defenders of the right of users to pursue open inquiry free of scrutiny. The American Library Association’s Code of Ethics (1995) states, “We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired, or transmitted.”

The full policy may be viewed at http://langsdale.ubalt.edu/info_services/privacy.htm

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Posted by Michael to langsdale at 9/30/2005 01:33:00 PM

Labels: langsdale

In the First Person: Index to Letters, Diaries, Oral Histories, and Other Personal Narratives is a new database providng a centralized access point to numerous historical collections. The database is free to use and many of the materials to which it points are freely availble as well, although some do require a subscription.

From the press release:

This free resource is the most comprehensive archive of social memory yet created, covering every imaginable topic, historical event, and person. Its easy-to-use features enable users to perform in-depth field and keyword searches across all letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies within scholarly materials.

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Posted by Michael to resources at 9/30/2005 01:30:00 PM

The National Center for Educational Statistics has an easy to use tool for creating graphs. The resulting graph image can be saved and then used in paprers, presentations websites, etc.

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Posted by Michael to resources at 9/30/2005 01:29:00 PM

Annual Report: Federal Funds to Maryland State Agencies
This inaugural report contains a description of each Federal grant received by Maryland State government, broken out by fund totals received for State Fiscal Years 2003 and 2004.
HJ485 .A3 2004

The Black Washingtonians: the Anacostia Museum Illustrated Chronology

"A history of African American life in our nation’s capital, in words and pictures."

F205 .N4 B55 2005

A graphic designer’s guide to designing effective compositions, selecting dynamic components & developing creative concepts.

NC997 .K7323 2004

Encyclopedia of the History of American Management

Explores the lives and ideas of a variety of individuals whose work created new industries and products and whose ideas shaped the way wethink about the conduct of the business enterprise.

HC102.5 .A2 E53 2005

Wiley Practitioner’s Guide to GAAS

The clearest, easiest-to-use- guide to understanding GAAS 2005 on the market—fully updated!
HF5667 .W55 2005


Writer’s Digest Handbook of Magazine Article Writing

This comprehensive, practical, how-to guide answers all of your questions about writing for magazines.

PN147 .W67 2005

Labels: langsdale, new titles, reference

A new study from Kingsborough Community College provides evidence that Learning Communities can help students succeed in college

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Posted by Michael to ub at 9/30/2005 12:32:00 PM

Labels: UB

There are a number of pilot projects underway to make articles normally locked away behind subscription databases more accessible. When you use a search engine like Google or Yahoo!, you get results from a variety of websites. However, many public and academic libraries provide their users with access to a plethora of information from published journals, magazines and newspapers that are not otherwise available on the web.

Libraries provide their users access to this additional material by purchasing subscriptions to databases through different vendors. Unfortunately, the information in these databases are not included in search engines, so people who don't think to use their library's databases miss out on a lot of good information.

All this may be about to change. Two database vendors are working on ways to integrate libraries' subscription holdings with the results of a general web search. In one project, the provider of such databases as Business & Company Resource Center and the Biography Resource Center, Thomsaon Gale, is allowing search engines to index their data. In another pilot, a company called OCLC is providing information about electronic journals that are available in libraries to a number of search engines.

Both of these pilot programs have many limitations: UB is not yet participating in them; to get access to the subscription based journals you would have to be on campus; articles from databases may get lost among the rest of your web search results, etc. Nonetheless, it is a step in providing broader access to information that oftern remains hidden.

In the meantime, remember that if you want to use the library databases to conduct a search, you can log onto ResearchPort, from on or off campus, to find a lot of information that is not in your search engine.

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Posted by Michael to resources at 9/30/2005 12:31:00 PM

A recent article from the Online Journal of Distance Learning Education provides a case study comparing the time it takes to run a class online to that of a face to face class. For the courses studied, the online class required more of the professor's time, mainly due to the increased amount of interaction with the students.

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Posted by Michael to ub at 9/30/2005 12:29:00 PM

Labels: UB

Our Chat reference service started on September 19. We are officially staffing the service from noon - 5:00 M-F, however we will probably be able to monitor it until 7:00 most days.

We do not want the librarian on the reference desk to have to monitor the online chat service at the same time as the reference desk. Past experience suggests this can 1) cause confusion because people at the desk may not realize that the librarian is really helping another customer and not just ignoring them while the librarian finishes typing and 2) it can be too much for one librarian to handle. On days when we have a librarian not on the desk and not teaching a class, we can probably monitor the online chat until 7:00.

We have had some discussion about our Chat reference web page as well. Some have questioned what the difference was between the Chat and IM services. Basically, the IM service is for people who use AIM already and they probably know how to use it. The rest of the people should probably just use the Chat service. So what we want the page to say is "If you already use AIM and want to send IM a references question to us, go right ahead. If you don't know what IM is, or how it works, don't worry about it - just click on the "Chat with a Librarian Button". I suspect AIM users will understand this, but we may need to redesign the page a bit for those who aren't IM savvy.

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Posted by Michael to reference at 9/19/2005 01:32:00 PM