JSTOR & RefWorks now available!

The library is happy to announce two new online tools for your research: JSTOR and Refworks.

JSTOR is a multi-disciplinary full-text database of scholarly journals, and will be especially helpful for those doing research in the humanities and social sciences. For more information on JSTOR, see: http://about.jstor.org/

RefWorks is an online citation manager, which allows you to export,

sort, edit and share references from many online sources, as well as create bibliographies in a variety of formats, all from a web-based portal. (Note: to use this tool, you will have to sign up for an individual account.) For more information on RefWorks, see: http://www.refworks-cos.com/about/

Off-campus users must access JSTOR and RefWorks through the library's online resources list, or use the following links:

• JSTOR
• RefWorks

New green alternative to photocopying at the library

In an effort to further Stevens' efforts towards being a green campus, the library has a new, easy-to-use scanning station. Instead of photocopying, you can now scan book pages or documents, and then either save them to your usb drive or e-mail them directly from the console.

The simple touchscreen interface allows you to scan in color, black and white or greyscale, and save your files in various formats, including pdf and jpg. You can also use the station to edit and adjust your documents after scanning.

The scanning station is free to use, and located on the first floor of the library, on the north wall (at the beginning of the row of public computers.)

Nature's Publishers Make Genome Papers Available Through Creative Commons License

From the Nature website: "In the continuing drive to make papers as accessible as possible, Nature Publishing Group is now introducing a 'creative commons' licence for the reuse of [papers reporting full genome sequences]. The licence (see http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html) allows non-commercial publishers, however they might be defined, to reuse the pdf and html versions of the paper. In particular, users are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the contribution, provided this is for non-commercial purposes, subject to the same or similar licence conditions and due attribution."

Click here for full article from nature.com.

Get a NJ Public Library Card Today!

Did you know that as a Stevens student or faculty member you are eligible for a Hoboken Public Library card?

Hoboken Public Library, located on the corner of 5th Street and Park Avenue (across from Church Square Park), is a great place to check out popular reading, as well as audio-visual materials such as movies and audiobooks.

For more information on how to apply for a card, click here, or check out the HPL website.

Also, once you have a New Jersey public library card, you can access JerseyClicks, New Jersey's statewide research portal that features federated searching of full-text databases, as well as QandANJ, a free service that provides 24 hour-a-day, 7 day-a-week reference assistance.

From the ResourceShelf: Intellectual Property, the World Tour

Once again from the good people at ResourceShelf: international intellectual property resources.

Oh, and by the way, if you have any good resources you'd like us to share with the Stevens Community, feel free to drop us an e-mail.

From the ResourseShelf... 2007 Global Calendars!

ResourceShelf, a lovely blog that aims to share useful, cool and often quirky resources found by researchers and librarians, has a great post listing lots and lots of calendars of upcoming events.

Among those listed are the global election calendar, world events calendar, international sports calendar, NASA space calendar and the global trade show calendar.

They update the list on a regular basis, so you may want to bookmark...

Weblogs 101

Ok, since we are introducing this new library blog, perhaps we should first post about blogs (also known as weblogs) in general. This is probably not new to most of you, but we figured some background information couldn't hurt... :)

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a blog as follows:

"A frequently updated web site consisting of personal observations, excerpts from other sources, etc., typically run by a single person, and usually with hyperlinks to other sites; an online journal or diary."

Today's blogs, however, are so much more... They are a daily source of news and information for many people, and can be contributed to by multiple authors, some of which are experts or at least highly regarded individuals in their fields. They help many of us keep up-to-date in what's important to us, be it world news, technology, business, or our specific field or research interest.

Finding blogs on topics of interest to you is often a serendipitous process. There are several blog search engines, most notably Technorati and Google Blog Search, but you could of course just do a web search for "insert topic here blog". Very often, you find out about blogs you like through other blogs you like... For example, blogs very often reference other blogs, or include a list of links to the blogs that the author or contributors are reading (often called a blogroll).

Once you start reading a bunch of different blogs on a regular basis, it often becomes cumbersome to visit each one every day to see if there are new posts. Enter the RSS feed aggregator. What is an RSS feed you ask? Well, simply put, it's just a constantly updated stream of information from a particular website or blog. (Want it less simply put? Here's some more info...) You can use an aggregator to compile the feeds from all your favorite sources into one place. Keep in mind that not only blogs have RSS feeds, you can also get them from many websites, especially news sites, which provide constantly updated headlines.

There are many aggregators to choose from, and which one you use is purely a matter of personal preference. Here is a list of what's out there, and here's a chart with some comparisons among them...

Creating and maintaining your own blog is also a great way to share information about yourself or your research with the rest of the world. There are many websites that allow you to create a blog for free, some of the more popular ones are: Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Vox, WordPress and Xanga (just to name a few...)

To sum all this up nicely, we found a great little video on web 2.0... Enjoy!

welcome to eSource!

It is our mission at S.C.Williams Library to provide the Stevens community with not only the traditional resources you need to complete your education, research and scholarship, but also the guidance to help you identify and navigate the plethora of resources available to you in this high-tech world.

In that spirit, we are excited to announce the launch of eSource, a new blog featuring information on finding information. eSource will keep you updated on new library resources and events, as well keep you informed about our databases, including updates, new features, tutorials and system down-times. We will also focus on new and interesting technologies in the world of information sharing.

We will try our best to not only help guide you through the resources we provide here at the Library and on our website, but also through the World Wide Web, focusing on what technology is out there and how are people using it…