New library website featured in The Stute

The Stute, Stevens Institute's weekly newspaper, has published a front page article about the new library website in their September 5th issue. The article, entitled Stevens' S.C. Williams Library Website Revamped and written by Jean Matusiak, gives a positive review of the fresh and interactive features of our streamlined new website. The article features librarian Valerie Forrestal's description of many of the new site's features, like the Meebo IM reference tool, the elegant and modern new design, and the recent publications (by Stevens' professors & researchers) feature, which is a tool powered by the Scopus database that helps to provide more visibility for the research papers published by the Stevens community.

As Valerie Forrestal is quoted in the article, the development of the new website can best be summarized as follows: "Essentially, we wanted to increase awareness of the Library's resources by making them more accessible and easier to use, and by providing better means for patrons to contact us with comments, needs and suggestions."

Check out the full article in The Stute here. And, as always, we welcome your feedback about our new site!

User feedback helps improve new website

We've been getting a lot of positive feedback about the new library website from students and faculty alike - and we really appreciate your taking the time to let us know what you think. This week, a library user suggested that we change the name of the Full Text Finder to a more accurate representation of what this search tool really does. So, we discussed it and we've changed the name to "Full-Text Journal Finder". This search tool helps users to find out whether or not the full text of a journal, magazine, or newspaper is available in any of the online resources to which the library subscribes.

For example, if you want to know if you can get the full text of the New York Times, just type this newspaper title into the Full-Text Journal Finder search box, and click "Search". The results will show you that you can get the full text of NY Times articles from 1980 to the present.

If you're not entirely certain of the exact title of a journal, select "Title contains all words" in the drop-down box to the left of the search box. Then, enter the words you think appear in the journal title for which you're looking. For example, if you are looking for all publications that contain the phrase "Academy of Management", type in that phrase, and click "Search". The results will show you that 14 publications available in full text contain the phrase "Academy of Management", including: Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, and Journal of the Academy of Management.

The Full-Text Journal Finder is just one of many new search tools on the library's new website that will help make your searching more efficient and more rewarding. Ask a Librarian if you have any questions.

New library website to launch July 1st.

The staff of the S.C. Williams Library is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of its new website planned for July 1, 2008. The new site brings into focus the most important content of the former version and is more intuitive to navigate. We hope you’ll find the new site to be more logically organized – it should make finding the information you need quicker and easier.

The site design focuses on technologies that enable communication and interactivity and simplifies access to resources and services so that using the website for your research is less complicated.

Features of the new site:

• Clear, concise and logical navigation


• Simple, elegant design


• Greater accessibility of online resources


• Guidance for using library resources (tutorials, subject guides, chat reference via instant messaging, ‘how do I?’ menu, ‘help’ section, ‘ask us’ page)


• Multiple, logical access points to information and resources


• Meebo^© instant messaging application on homepage, which allows users to chat with librarians during reference hours without having to log in or sign up for any instant messaging account


• Recent publications section highlights whenever a member of the Stevens community publishes in an academic journal (indexed by the Scopus^© database)


• News and Events section on homepage that highlights what’s going on at the library


• Rotating pictures showcase distinctive pieces of art housed within the library


• New Multisearch tool allows searching across multiple resources at once

We are looking forward to rolling out all of these new features and we hope you will be as excited to see our new website as we will be on July 1^st. Please feel free to send us your feedback on the new site, here in the comments or by email. We look forward to hearing from you.