Lafayette College Library

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The library now subscribes to Lexis-Nexis Statistical, which provides abstracts and indexes of statistical information from U.S. government publications from 1973, state and private sources from 1980, and documents from international organizations from 1983. LexisNexis Statistical can be access from the Major Research Tools A-Z pages or from within LexisNexis Academic.

Connect to LexisNexis Statistical.

No more scraps of paper and call numbers written directly on your hand! The Lafayette Library Catalog has introduced a new feature that allows you to send a call number to your cell phone via text message. Now, when you view a record in the Catalog, there is a cell phone icon and link located below the call number that reads “Text the call number.” Clicking the link opens a new window where you enter your cell phone number and choose your service provider from a list. Within a few seconds, you will receive a text message with the title, call number, and location of the item. Carrier charges may apply if your cell phone service plan does not include free text messaging.

If you have any problems with this new service or your provider is not listed, please contact Bob Duncan at 610-330-5156.

Faculty are responsible for complying with copyright law when placing single or multiple copies of periodical articles and chapters of books on reserve. The American Library Association has developed the Fair Use Evaluator tool to:

• Help you better understand how to determine the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code.
• Collect, organize & archive the information you might need to support a fair use evaluation.
• Provide you with a time-stamped, PDF document for your records, which could prove valuable, should you ever be asked by a copyright holder to provide your fair use evaluation and the data you used to support it.
• Provide access to educational materials, external copyright resources, and contact information for copyright help at local & national levels.

Connect to the Fair Use Evaluator

RefWorks has just added the 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (out this month) to its list of output styles. The library has also added a custom output style called "APA 6th Edition, Annotated with Notes." This style allows students to create annotations within RefWorks that can be easily attached to a list of references -- perfect for facilitating annotated bibliography assignments. Questions about RefWorks should be directed to Reference & Instruction Librarian Rebecca Metzger at 610-330-5154.

If you were used to searching the PALCI EZ-Borrow system for books on a topic, try searching WorldCat instead. WorldCat is a catalog of books, videos, manuscripts, and other materials held by libraries across the country. It includes millions of records, so searches for narrow topics work best. From within a WorldCat record, you can click on the WebBridge icon to discover whether the item is held in the Lafayette Library or to place an Interlibrary Loan (ILL) request.

Connect to WorldCat.

Applied Science & Technology Abstracts (ASTA), which indexes core periodicals in engineering and other technical fields from 1983 to the present, is now being provided to Lafayette through a different interface. While the content is still the same, regular users of ASTA will notice a new look. The benefit of this new version is that it allows for unlimited users, so nobody will be turned away from the database.

Connect to Applied Science & Technology Abstracts

Oxford Reference Online, which contains electronic versions of Oxford dictionaries and other reference works in many disciplines, has just added The Oxford Companion to the American Musical, among other new titles to its collection. In addition, several dictionaries have been updated with new editions, including A Dictionary of British History and A Dictionary of Political Biography.

Read more details on Oxford Reference Online's June 2009 updates

Connect to Oxford Reference Online.

All foreign-language films in Skillman Library's Media Browsing collection are now arranged alphabetically on the shelves by their English-language title, making them easier to browse and locate. The online catalog can still be searched by either English or foreign-language titles.

An updated list of recent library acquisitions has just been posted. The list includes both book and film acquisitions, and can be viewed by subject, department/program, or call number. You can subscribe to RSS feeds for recent acquisitions in your subject of interest. View recent acquisitions.

A separate list of recent video acquisitions can be viewed here.