Teaching English

I'm a little out of my league here, but everyone is being very nice. No bobbing heads yet!

Heading towards the end of Winter Term

*How do I turn a .wav file into an .mp3 file?

*How do I abbreviate journal titles in the style of Chemical Abstracts?

*How do I use EndNote with a database like PsychInfo?

*Where is the most recent copy of the Bulletin of the Geographical Society of America? (Also known as the Geographical Society of America Bulletin)

*Where is the journal x located? repeated many times.

*Where is the Bulletin of the US Department of Fisheries from 1880something?

*How do different types of images get recalled from the posterior part of the temporal lobe?

*How do I write the equation (p1-p2/SA)*100,000 in excel?

*What is Scholar's Bank?

*Where does International Women's Day come from/commemmorate?

What a difference an S makes

Patron came in looking for volume 4 of The enzyme by Boyle. Like the Boyle of Boyle's Law. A classmate of the patron had found this book in our library and it had what they needed for something in their Chemistry class.

Finally found our reference set of The Enzymes by Paul Boyer.

A busy couple of days

*Evolution/sexual selection/adaptation of blackbirds, birds (aves), and tadpoles. Oh my!
Replete with printing problems, missing volumes and confusing journal titles.

*St. John's Wort/Hypericum perforatum use in history and in different cultures.

*Spectral data for [Co(NH3)6]Cl3, starting with finding its CAS registry number.

*We are missing 11x17 paper for the photocopier and the Feb 9, 2006 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

*Nutritional information for organic food (and organic food labeling laws).

Questions I hath answered

*A book or a chapter in a book on Newton's Law of Linear Momentum. (hint, it's also Newton's 2nd law of motion and covered in every basic textbook on physics.)

*Still trying to help folks sign on to Science Direct.

*A missing book on fractals.

Google

Check this out, from Google employee #1:

"My guess is about 300 years until computers are as good as, say, your local reference library in doing search," says Craig Silverstein. "But we can make slow and steady progress, and maybe one day we'll get there."

from URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/25/sunday/main608672.shtml

And some Google tips:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/25/technology/circuits/25POGUE-EMAIL.html?ex=1138856400&en=76c7158acd2602eb&ei=5070

Biology 131 proposals are due

I was having difficulties helping students with the topic "Hunting or fishing as a means of evolution or natural selection." At least I think that's the topic. Here are some tips:

1. If the student can idenify a particular species, it makes things a bit easier.
like, instead of searching wolf or wolves anywhere, try canis lupus as a descriptor

2. Zoo. Record
line 1
-search
evolution OR selection as descriptor
to expand your search
line 2
- hunt* as a descriptor
this gets you things like:
influence of hunting by humans, Hunting impact on population dynamics in primeval forest, human hunting relationship
etc.
OR for line 2 and 3
-hunt* AND pressure anywhere instead of the above
if you're doing fishing try
line 2 and 3
- fishing [no truncation] AND (pressure OR impact) anywhere
line 3 or 4 (you'll have to add a line to get this)
- review searched anywhere gets you some review articles
- you can try adding the name of the species but remove review

3.biosis
-evolution and adaptation is a Subject heading
-hunting is a keyword
-narrowing by latin name for wolves not so useful in this search and this database

4. ASFA (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts)
***Please use this if you're doing fish***
Use the words impact or pressure or selection anywhere
But, evolution as a descriptor doesn't seem to really work
Fishing anywhere or possibly as a descriptor

5. Words to use from Dean. Not clear which database he used:
selective pressure of hunting
hunting and speciation
poaching as a selective pressure on rare species
many terms for fishing

6. Several searches work really well in Web of Science (the ands are important in these searches)

selection and hunting and sheep
selection and hunting and elk
selection and hunting and deer

selection and fishing

evolution and hunting and human



Please feel free to come in and ask about how to impliment the above. I'm not sure how clear this is as an email.

2006, a New Year and a New Quarter

I am doing research on Marguerite Thomas Williams (b.1895 - d.sometime around 1991), the first African American to get a Ph.D. in geology. She was a full professor by the end of her career and the head of the Division of Geography at Miner Teachers College/University of the Disctrict of Columbia. I can't even find an obituary for her. Luckily there are lots of places to try. None of the actual people I have spoken to have been particularly helpful. Goodness, what fine insights I'm getting on the nature of doing research in libraries.

I'm also working on editing my blogs presentation so it isn't so scary. And, I'm working on coming up with something short and snappy for one Environmental Studies class and something more ponderous for another.

And check this out:
REBINDER, is truly recyclable and reusable because it is a corrugated cardboard binder. Vinyl binders are neither recyclable or reusable.

The end of Fall quarter 2005

Fall always starts out with such a loud roar and then becomes this pitiful mewling by this time of year.

The last question I got was fetching a journal article from the (locked) Math library. Before that I was looking for moons of Saturn.

I'm going to get to use my blogs (and the kitchen sink) presentation with an English class next quarter. That should be loads of fun.

Looks like I'm going to start developing a discussion section to accompany Chemistry 111 next year! I'm so thrilled.

Science desk and L-net

I got the wackiest questions online last night

- "i need some info. about the gods and what would happen if they were pleased and what would happen if they were displeased with the city-state"

- Phillipino christmas decorations and recipes for traditional foods that weren't too "fancy"

- High and low temperatures recorded on Earth

- Biographical information on Jean-Paul Marat. [My mother would be so pleased!]

And then in person we had a book that was supposed to be here, but wasn't on the shelf (we found it!), a patron apologizing for referring to me as intelligent, carpet being installed and no public computers.

Standing in front of CIS 110

It makes me nervous to stand in front of a class and blog.
Folks seem pretty bored already.

A surprisingly busy Wednesday

*More printer questions
*Anatomy of pregnant women or questions about midwifery.
*A misplaced Atlas
*Real email reference questions. Found the article under "Mise en evidence d'une tectonique majeure du Jurassique superieur (phase nevadienne) dans le Nord-Est de l'Oregon (secteur d'Huntington)" but not under its translated title, "Evidence for a major tectonic episode in the Upper Jurassic (Nevadan Phase) of the Huntington area."
*Supralaryngal vocal sounds that birds make.
*A misplaced, misfilled ILL.
and then a whole bunch of nothing.

Tuesday at the desk

Pretty slow today
*Printer issues abound. Do we have a color printer? Do we have more paper for the printer?
ho. hum.
*Found our limited run of a journal that is now mostly at OIMB. Have to remember that Sci Desk can also mean that back room.

We have more and more new furniture. It looks pretty nice. We have a very cool table in that back room. Looks like a benzene ring. How fitting.

Oh. And, I wrote down the time for the class that I've been preparing for incorrectly. I'm all dressed up and no place to go. Next week, I get to try again. Thank goodness for 2nd chances.

Monday November 21, 2005

*Someone looking for a Geological Society of America. Bulletin from the 1930s.
*A person trying to get into SciFinder Scholar. Showed them Inspec, as a start.

Friday, November 18, 2005

* Several more iron oxalate questions, must be due soon.
* Recently folks have been interested in birds of all kinds, like ducks and crows
* Then there was the behavior of squirrels and humans. Turns out searching for squirrel under their latin names was the key to getting decent results.

chemistry, et al.

*when using APA for citations, please note that et al. is used after the 6th author.
*What is the viscosity of sorbitol at room temperature? [Couldn't find this, but did know where to look for organic compounds and what one was!]
*In excel, do I get the words to not spill out of the cell and then get cut off? [Years of excel contortions helped answer that one easily!]

Monday, November 14, 2005

I was staffing both L-net, the statewide virtual reference desk and the real one here in Science. Questions have been intermixed to protect the innocent.

Looking into getting a concealed weapon permit. Please send form or other address to find out more.

An article on carpal tunnel syndrome from 2003.

Lots of annoying questions about the revolutionary war.

What kinds of plants are in the ocean?

Lost cards, books from other libraries, geneaology. It was pretty busy....

iron oxalate

The question about iron oxalate has come up for Victoria and Dean.

I found the following article for several patrons:
"Doping of emeraldine base with the monovalent bridging iron oxalate ions and their transformation into nanostructured conducting polymer composites" in Acta Materialia

Victoria, who was able to log onto SciFinder (and knows how to search like no one's business) found something different:
Olmsted, John, III. Preparation and analysis of potassium tris(oxalato)ferrate(III) trihydrate: a general chemistry experiment. Journal of Chemical Education (1984), 61(12), 1098-9. CODEN: JCEDA8 ISSN:0021-9584. CAN 102:45133 AN 1985:45133 CAPLUS

This one too, but it was less helpful
Dallinger, Richard F. Synthesis and characterization of potassium tris(oxalato)ferrate(III) trihydrate: a spectrophotometric method of iron analysis. Journal of Chemical Education (1995), 72(10), 936. CODEN: JCEDA8 ISSN:0021-9584. CAN 123:313034 AN 1995:881184 CAPLUS

Other questions today have included
*Why is the photocopying machine only getting half a page?
*How do I search inside these journals?
*What does shelved by title mean?
*Do we have journal X (we share it now with OSU, but older copies are in Knight)

Questions from the desk

Karen Munro points out the following in her Nov 7, 05 posting:
"Interestingly, our library just issued an annual report profiling the reference services here in Knight Library. They used real, live reference questions submitted by us (the librarians) as examples of the kind of work we do here. Some of those questions were taken from this very blog! I guess that more or less settles the issue of how we feel about making patrons' requests public."

So, here are some questions from the past few days:
*How do I find this journal? Asked in a variety of ways, shapes and forms.
*Science Direct doesn't let me register. What should I do? [GRRRR. Isn't there some way to let patrons know that they have to sign in from www.sciencedirect.com?]
*In our chemistry lab on the use and preparation of iron oxalate we have an equation that we have to balance. Our lab TA said that the correct answer was in an article in the Science Library. We've tried Google Scholar and some of the NLM sites and we can't find it. [I tried Sci Finder Scholar, and couldn't get on, of course. But, INSPEC worked. Go figure. Those wacky physicists.]
*How do I print? Can I print later?
*Where is the photocopy machine? Where are the other photocopy machines, as there is a line for the single working one.
*I'm an artist and I want to understand the science of light (and color, too). [The call number range starts QC355....]

More tricks with EndNote

JSTOR makes exporting/importing into EN easy.

Procite (I'm using Ethnic newswatch) is proving tricky. Ok. Well, look at this cool trick from NYU.
http://library.nyu.edu/bib/endnote.html#mac%20import

It doesn't actually prompt you to find the library, you have to know that's why it's giving you a finder screen.

yee haw!