Lafayette College Library

The library recently acquired Eighteenth Century Collections Online II (ECCO II), which provides access to 45,000 English language titles published between 1701 and 1800 that have been digitized since the original ECCO collection was released six years ago. It includes rare and hard-to-find titles from the British Library, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, National Library of Scotland, and other distinguished collections. The works cover the fine arts, history, law, religion, and medicine as well as literature.

Both portions of ECCO are available from a redesigned interface, which now allows users to search ECCO and Early English Books Online (EEBO) simultaneously. Individual records for each title added to the collection will be available in the Library Catalog in the next few months.

Connect to Eighteenth Century Collections Online I and II.

Skillman Library now subscribes to AEA journals electronically. This includes American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and four new titles: Applied Economics, Macroeconomics, Economic Policy (forthcoming) and Microeconomics (forthcoming). The information about this online access will be in the Library Catalog shortly.

Connect to AEA electronic subscriptions.

The Friends of Skillman Library is pleased to announce that Tracy Hart ’77 has been named the new chair. Tracy has been a member of the Executive Council of the Friends since 2003. In 2006, she spearheaded the organization’s Hermès scarf fund-raiser. Hart replaces Elaine Stomber ‘89, who had a very successful ten-year run as chair. One of the duties of Elaine’s new full-time position in Special Collections is to serve as Friends secretary, so she has now assumed that role, which was previously held by Diane Shaw. The Friends is fortunate to have two talented alumnae at the helm of this forty-five year old organization.

The Friends of Skillman Library is an association of individuals dedicated to increasing and making better known the resources of Lafayette College's library. Founded in 1964, the Friends has more than 300 members, including alumni, faculty, students, community residents, and others who share a special interest in assuring the library's continuing vitality. Through gifts and membership dues, the Friends makes possible the purchase of rare books, manuscripts, and other material that could not otherwise be acquired by the library; supports the development of digital initiatives; sponsors numerous public programs and exhibitions; and hosts the annual John L. Hatfield '67 Lecture.

Instructions for creating a new RefWorks account to be shared with other Lafayette students or faculty have been added to the library's website. Access the instructions here.

RefWorks is a web-based program that enables you to create a database of bibliographic references and automatically format the references into a bibliography. References can be imported from the Library Catalog and many online databases, including all FirstSearch databases (PsycInfo, EconLit, MLA Bibliography, etc.), JSTOR, and Academic OneFile. Shared accounts can be used with classes or among faculty collaborating on projects.

Project MUSE, a database of full-text articles from scholarly journals to which the library subscribes, just released the back issues of nine of its long-held journals. The addition of the back issues is part of MUSE's pilot program to determine the feasibility of expanding coverage. Entire runs of eight of the journals now appear in Project MUSE. The journals initially included in the pilot are select journals published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Back issues were added for the following titles:

* Children's Literature (Vol. 1, 1972-Vol. 30, 2002)
* Children's Literature Association Quarterly (Vol. 1, 1976-Vol. 30, 2005)
* The Emily Dickinson Journal (Vol. 1, 1992-Vol. 6, 1997)
* Journal of Early Christian Studies (Vol. 1, 1993-Vol. 3, 1995)
* Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal (Vol. 1, 1991-Vol. 5, 1995)
* The Lion and the Unicorn (Vol. 1, 1977-Vol. 18, 1994)
* MFS Modern Fiction Studies (Vol. 31, 1985-Vol. 40, 1994)
* Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas (Vol. 1, 2003-Vol. 4, 2006)
* Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology (Vol. 1, 1994-Vol. 2, 1995)

Lafayette Library users now have access to the electronic edition of the Value Line Investment Survey, which provide reports on 1700 stocks, including past performance, current status, and outlook. (Note that our subscription allows only two users from Lafayette to access the database simultaneously. If you see a message saying that the licensed number of users is alreay logged on, ignore the rest of the message and try again later.)

Connect to the Value Line Investment Survey.

The following three professors have been awarded $1000 grants from the Office of the Provost and the Lafayette College Library to incorporate information literacy into their Spring 2009 courses:

Tony Cummings for Music 260: Selected Studies in Music History.
Students in this class will construct a historical event using primary and secondary materials. Given the interdisciplinary nature of this project, they will examine the scholarly differences among disciplines and how disciplines are defined and why. Throughout the semester, students will keep a research journal to document their research steps and organize their research notes. They will be asked to reflect on the multiplicity of formats in which primary evidences in music are preserved and the challenges posed in assembling these. To help students develop a sense of the materials scholars use, students will look at some early modern printed sources housed in Special Collections. Professor Cummings will work with Terese Heidenwolf, Associate Director for Research & Instructional Services.

Lisa DeTora for VAST 287, Stories Matter: Medicine and Melodrama in a Global Age.
For the first half of the semester, students will read and critique scholarly and popular scientific articles, web sites, and films portraying scientific information based on a standard set of questions, such as how do the sources support the argument and what future work needs to be done. They will explore the ethical use of information through discussions about ghost writing and how pharmaceutical companies are represented in those writings. In the second half of the semester, students will prepare an annotated bibliography for a 7-10 paper research paper, which will be graded using a rubric Professor DeTora plans to develop with the assistance of Reference & Instruction Librarian Rebecca Metzger. Students will share their research findings through a poster they develop.

Rebekah Pite for History 345, History of Argentina.
Students will be engaged in several projects: weekly syntheses and peer editing of papers in which they will identify and assess the author's or their peers' argument in relation to the source base; a book review project aimed to help students understand the importance of this body of literature; leading class discussion and writing a historiographical review, which will require students to identify and select one week's readings for the class and analyze the place of those readings in the larger literature about Argentina and Latin America; and identifying and presenting a recent scholarly article about contemporary Argentina. Rebekah Pite will collaborate with Instruction Coordinator Lijuan Xu on this class.

Lafayette faculty and students now have access to ScienceDirect, which provides the full-text of articles in all journals published by Elsevier. Access is available from the WebBridge connection in library databases and from journal records in the Library Catalog.

Unlike most of our other databases, where the library purchases unlimited access for a set annual fee, access to Elsevier full text is on a pay-per-view basis, with the library paying $22 each time an article is retrieved.

Faculty access to full text from both on- and off-campus requires authentication through the Library's proxy server. Once you've authenticated with your Network ID and password, the option to purchase articles through the library's account should present itself. Note that links to ScienceDirect through means other than WebBridge or the Library Catalog will not go through the proxy server; the ability to purchase articles may present itself, but not through the library's account.

Students will be able to submit ScienceDirect article requests via a web form, and will be emailed PDFs as soon as the request is received (typically within 2-24 hours).

Our license agreement with Elsevier does not permit the library to archive purchased articles, but it does permit faculty to post purchased articles in Moodle course websites. If multiple students will need the same article from an Elsevier journal, we ask that you post a copy on your course site.

If you have questions about the service or problems using it, feel free to contact Terese Heidenwolf or any Skillman reference librarian.

The library web site now features a page of suggestions on developing and structuring effective research assignments. In addition to tips, the page offers sample assignments from a range of classes and suggested further reading. The page can be found on the library web site by selecting "About the Library" from the navigational toolbar and clicking "Research Assignment Design" under the heading "Instruction and Information Literacy."

RefWorks includes three new output styles that assist users in generating annotated bibliographies, in APA, MLA, or Chicago styles.

Type your personally-created annotation into the notes section of a RefWorks reference. When it comes times to generate the annotated bibliography, select "Bibliography" from the RefWorks toolbar. In the "Output Styles" drop-down menu, there are now the following three styles listed under "Lafayette College specific":

* APA, Annotated with Notes
* Chicago 15th edition (Notes and Bibliography), Annotated with Notes
* MLA 6th edition, Annotated with Notes

Select the references that you want included in your bibliography and your preferred file type, and click "Create Bibliography."

RefWorks is a web-based application that enables registered users to create a database of bibliographic references and automatically format the references into a bibliography. For instructions on creating an account, visit the Library's RefWorks page.

For questions about RefWorks, email Rebecca Metzger.