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Pegasus Librarian Posts

Wish Me Luck: Tackling One of the Least User Friendly Databases We Have

Published by Iris on Thursday, February 15th, 2007

Tomorrow I have to teach a WilsonWeb database for the first time. I’ve recommended databases we get through Wilson to students but never had to concentrate on one before.

It’s just a simple class… 8 students, two databases, simple assignment. We’ll be meeting in the reference area and working on our big SmartBoard together, and then we’ll move to individual computers in the reference area. Even so, I’m feeling the need to dig into WilsonWeb tutorials (which, by the way, if you click “help” and then “tutorial” when you’re in a database, it asks you if you’re using a Bibliographic Database, Full Text Database, Biography Database, Image Database, Standard Catalog Collection Development Database, Multiple Databases, or a Facts Database… What the… Even I had to back out, go figure out what kind of database I was in, and then come back before being able to access the stupid tutorial! Shouldn’t “help” know what kind of database I’m in?!? Yeesh.)

So, to help me should I ever have to teach this stuff again, here are the more-or-less helpful things I’ve found so far.

Maybe one of these will explain why I can never navigate these databases without hurting my brain, why when you think you’re opening a single citation you’re actually just switching to the “full” display of the result list, and why the thesaurus is so clunky to navigate. And it’s a good thing we’re not working on a full text database. The HTML full text option from those is incredibly bad. All formatting in those full text articles appears as multiple question marks.

Don’t get me wrong. The interface is better than it was last year. But still… (Oh, and the page that announced the enhancements listed in the link above included the URL as text, not a link. Seriously.)

Sorry… I’m more than usually grumpy at the moment. It just seems like the vendor of our library-related databases should be more usable. As it is, it’s a sad irony.

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Know Your Copyrights: a New Guide for Faculty and Teaching Assitants from ARL

Published by Iris on Thursday, February 15th, 2007

ARL has just released a brochure called “Know Your Copyrights” (PDF) which it says “gives faculty and teaching assistants in higher education an easy-to-scan explanation of when and how they can legally use intellectual property in their teaching, often without requesting permission or paying fees.”

I just gave it a quick read and I’m impressed. It covers educational use very well, and even touches on how to manage the rights of the things you produce, and all with a healthy library influence. There’s also a handy quick-reference chart near the end that is one of the best I’ve seen. My only gripe is that it occasionally commingles the law with non-legal guidelines without calling attention to which are which.

On the plus side, it’s released under a Creative Commons license which specifies that derivative works are fine as long as they include attribution and aren’t commercial.

You’re either able to pay for the beautifully printed copies or… you can download a PDF for free.

[Update: Just to clarify, the guidelines I mentioned aren’t “illegal,” they just aren’t law. For example, when the guide says that copying a timely article when you’ve just found it and don’t have time to seek permission is generally accepted as fair use, this directly references the “spontaneity” section of the Classroom Guidelines, which were never adopted as law but are nevertheless widely accepted by publishers. Nothing in the legal code says anything about time crunches.]

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A Little More on Stats

Published by Iris on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

After writing that last post, I did some more analysis of our reference desk stats (I do love having data dumps from our online knowledge base into Excel!). Did you know that over 7% of the questions we’ve fielded were answered while there was no scheduled desk coverage? Almost 2% of all questions were answered between 10 and 11 at night, and reference service ends at 10 on Sundays and Monday through Thursday. Another 2% were answered in the hour before reference services begin Monday through Friday.

These I can understand. But what’s with the average of one question per term week answered between midnight and 9AM? 9 of these 14 questions occurred between midnight and 4AM. I can tell you right now, those weren’t answered by me!

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