New Database: ARTstor

ARTstor
A collection of 500,000 images that document artistic traditions across many cultures and time periods: architecture, sculpture, photography, design as well as other forms of visual culture. Be sure to read the technical requirements before trying to use the software.

Technical Requirements:

- Flash Player 6 or above
- Java (Sun Version 1.3 or higher)
- Cookies enabled
- Pop-up blocking software must allow pop-ups from www.artstor.org
- Monitor resolution: 1024 X 768 recommended
- Memory: 128 MB or higher.

Changes and Upgrades to NC Live Databases

NC Live is the State of North Carolina's program serving over 200 libraries. NC Live provides many of Hunter Library's online research databases. This year, NCLive is adding many new resources including major upgrades to favorites like Academic Search Elite, CINAHL, and Business Source Elite. New databases include Newsbank: North Carolina Plus, an index to NC newspapers such as the Asheville Citizen Times; Learning Express Library, a database of practice tests for GRE, SAT, etc; Morningstar Library Edition, a database for investment research; and Reference USA, an interactive business directory.

There will be a few database cancellations including ABI Inform and the InfoTrac databases, but upgrades in existing databases will provide comparable (or better!) access to information. Librarians' recommendations for alternative resources will be on the library's list of databases.

The upgrades to Academic Search Elite, CINAHL, and Business Source Elite are available now! Other changes will be effective in early January 2006.

If you have any questions about these database changes, please call the Hunter Library Reference Desk, 227-7465 or 1-866-928-5424.

New Databases: Hospitality & Tourism Index and Ulrich's Periodicals Directory

Hospitality & Tourism Index with Full Text (1965-present)
Available from EBSCOhost through Hunter Library.
An index to articles in over 500 national and international periodicals, covering the scholarly research and industry news relating to all areas of hospitality and tourism.

Ulrich's Periodicals Directory (Ulrichsweb)
Available from R.R. Bowker through Hunter Library.
Provides comprehensive and authoritative information on serials published worldwide. Also contains links to alternate titles, tables of contents, article abstracts, journal full-text and document delivery.

New Database: Philosopher's Index

Philosopher's Index (1940-present)
Available from FirstSearch through Hunter Library.
An index with abstracts for journal articles, books, contributions to anthologies, and book reviews. It covers the major fields of philosophy, including aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of related fields such as education, history, law and religion.

Hunter Library Announces New Service for Faculty

Beginning today, Hunter Library offers a new service for WCU faculty. Faculty Article Delivery (FAD) makes it easier for you to acquire articles, book chapters, or conference papers. Just submit a citation—or list of citations—to http://library.wcu.edu/libraryservices/FAD.htm and we will do the rest! You no longer need to determine if the copy you want is available through ABC Express, Interlibrary Loan, Ingenta, or some mysterious database. We will find it and deliver it to your desktop.

Caveats of this new service:

Citations must come directly from faculty. We can not accept requests from graduate students at this time.

The service is for copies only. We anticipate adding the ability to request books, media, and other physical items in the future.

For questions regarding FAD, email Krista Schmidt, FAD Coordinator or call her at 828-227-2215.

Color Printer Available in Hunter Library

The color printer in the Pay-for-Print system has been moved to the Hunter Library main floor, across from the Reference Desk. For 75 cents per page, patrons can send color print jobs from any computer labs or from computers in the Library. Jobs sent to this printer can be released from the 3 release stations in the Library, where they can be paid for with a CatCard or cash.

New Database: SocINDEX with Full Text

SocINDEX with Full Text, is the world's most comprehensive and highest quality sociology research database. The index features more than 1,300,000 records with subject headings from a 15,600 term sociology-specific thesaurus designed by expert lexicographers. This product also contains informative abstracts for more than 620 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895. In addition, this file provides data mined from more than 500 "priority" coverage journals as well as over 1,390 "selective" coverage journals. Further, extensive indexing for books, monographs, conference papers, and other sources is included. Searchable cited references are also provided. SocINDEX with Full Text offers coverage from all subdisciplines of sociology, including abortion, anthropology, criminology, criminal justice, cultural sociology, demography, economic development, ethnic & racial studies, gender studies, marriage & family, politics, religion, rural sociology, social psychology, social structure, social work, sociological theory, sociology of education, substance abuse, urban studies, violence, welfare, and many others. SocINDEX with Full Text contains full text for 242 "core" coverage journals dating back to 1895, and 72 "priority" coverage journals. This database also includes full text for 547 books and monographs, and full text for 6,711 conference papers.

New Database: Web of Science

The Web of Science portal provides access to the following databases:
Arts & Humanities Citation Index
Science Citation Index Expanded
Social Sciences Citation Index
Arts & Humanities Citation Index covers over 1,144 leading arts and humanities journals plus selected articles from over 6,800 science and social science journals. Science Citation Index fully indexes over 5,900 major journals across 150 scientific disciplines. Social Sciences Citation Index fully indexes more than 1,725 journals across 50 social sciences disciplines.

New Digital Collection - Horace Kephart: Revealing an Enigma

Horace Kephart: Revealing an Enigma is a collaborative project of Hunter Library and the Mountain Heritage Center and was made possible by a grant from the State Library of North Carolina. The site includes a searchable database of digital images drawn from Kephart’s photographs, artifacts, journal entries, and manuscripts. In addition, Kephart’s 80-page photo album has been reconstructed virtually, and a variety of exhibit pages are devoted to topics of regional interest. Please visit the site to learn more about western North Carolina in the first part of the 20th century.

Horace Kephart: Revealing an Enigma - http://www.wcu.edu/library/digitalcoll/kephart/index.htm

New Databases for Literature and Business

Hunter Library has added two new databases to our collection:

Gale Literature Resource Center
Available from Thomson Gale through Hunter Library.
“Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline.” The Literature Resource Center “covers more than 120,000 novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, and other writers, with in-depth coverage of 2,500 of the most studied authors.”

NetAdvantage
Available from Standard & Poor’s through Hunter Library.
A business and financial research database providing access to Industry Surveys, Stock Reports, Mutual Fund Reports, Bond Reports, Corporation Records, The Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives, The Outlook, and other sources.

Project MUSE Collaborates with Google to Index Journal Content

Project MUSE subscribers, including Hunter Library, can now use Google or Google Scholar to locate full text of journals hosted by MUSE

Project MUSE has collaborated with Google Inc., to enable researchers and students to use the Google web site and its Google Scholar interface to explore the Project MUSE web site for relevant scholarly research information.

Individuals at a MUSE subscribing institution can now use the familiar interface of Google at www.google.com or scholar.google.com to search the full-text content from any of the more than 270 scholarly journals that MUSE currently hosts. Articles can be viewed in HTML or PDF.

“Project MUSE is excited to work with Google to provide our users with yet another easy, user-friendly gateway to find appropriate full-text articles on MUSE,” said Aileen McHugh, Project MUSE Director of Electronic Publishing. “We believe that this new Google capability will help subscribers increase their usage of MUSE content, enhancing its value and usefulness as a research tool at libraries.”

LibQUAL+ Results Summary

Beginning in mid February until the end of March 2005, Western Carolina University students, faculty and staff were invited to participate in the LibQUAL+ survey, an electronic questionnaire used to assess library services. Hunter Library was one of 238 libraries nationwide to use the 2005 LibQUAL+ assessment instrument. The primary goal of administering the LibQUAL+ survey is to better understand user perceptions of the quality of library services. The survey gave library users the opportunity to tell us which services are important, and in what areas improvements are needed. The information gathered will be used to assess the quality of our existing services, and help us develop services that better meet the needs and expectations of the Western Carolina University community. We would like to thank everyone who participated in the LIBQUAL+ survey.

Survey participants were asked to provide three ratings for each of the survey questions. Each rating measured the minimum acceptable level of service, perceived current level of service, and desired level of service. The core survey items measure service quality in three dimensions: Affect of Service – quality of services received from the library staff, Information Control – quality and access to the library’s collection of materials, and Library as a Place – quality of our space for individual and group study. There are also a few items concerning interlibrary loan/document delivery and instruction services, information literacy outcomes, and questions which measure general satisfaction. A box for open-ended comments is also provided.

A total of 515 responses were received with undergraduate students representing 47% of the respondents. Graduate students represent 11%, faculty 26%, and university staff members 16% of the total number of respondents.

Overall, Hunter Library is doing very well. In the survey summary, representing all of the responses, the Library fell above the minimum level of service expectations in all of the categories. Our overall score for the perceived level of current services is 7.33 on a scale of 1 to 9 (with 9 being the highest rating).

In breaking the analysis down by user group, we find similar findings among our undergraduate respondents. No areas were revealed to be below the minimum acceptable level of service for this group. Our overall score from undergraduate students for perceived level of current service in all categories is 7.28.

Although our overall perceived service rating from the graduate student respondents is 7.21, library services fell below their minimum level of acceptable service in two dimensions, information control and library as a place. Improvements noted in services involving information control primarily concerns enhancing our collection of print and electronic materials, as well as making our resources more easily accessible. Library as a place is the other area identified by this group as needing improved services. The graduate students would like a more comfortable and inviting location, as well as improvements in space for individual quiet study.

The overall rating from WCU faculty members of perceived acceptable level of service is 7.50. Data from this group revealed one area in which the library fell below the minimum level. Under the dimension of information control, the faculty identified the need for improvements in print and/or electronic journal collections required for their work. Hunter Library has already taken steps to increase our journal holdings through access to additional electronic full-text databases.

The staff of WCU also rated perceived library services high in their assessment with an overall score of 7.24. One area fell below the minimum level of acceptable service for this group. In the category of information control, university staff indicate that improvements need to be made in the library web site to enable users to locate information on their own. Redesigning the library web site is currently underway.

Additional survey questions are designed to measure interlibrary loan/document delivery and instruction services, information literacy outcomes, and general satisfaction. The overall score for interlibrary loan/document delivery and instruction services is 7.58. The overall score for information literacy outcomes is 6.70. The general satisfaction summary score is 7.46. In addition to responses to the survey questions, 183 open-ended comments were also received. These thoughtful suggestions reflect the overall findings, as well as provide specific information on how the library is meeting user expectations of quality services.

We are happy to report that the Western Carolina University community gave high ratings to the quality of services received from the library staff who they perceive as attentive, courteous, knowledgeable, dependable, responsive, and caring. We will continue to maintain this high level of personal service. The LibQUAL+ survey results have helped us identify important service areas in which to focus our attention. The information will be used to make improvements in order to provide the desired level of quality library services for our users.

The entire survey results notebook is available in a PDF file. For additional information, please contact Eloise Hitchcock, Assistant Director for Personnel and Planning, Hunter Library, by telephone: 227-3421 or e-mail: Hitchcock@wcu.edu.

LibQUAL Winners

Thank you to all who participated in completing the LibQUAL, library service quality questionnaire. At the close of the survey, a list of fifty randomly generated names was used to select our prize winners. Our First Prize was an Apple iPod which was awarded to Jennifer Gerber. We had two second prize winners, Leila Tvedt and Jennifer Richardson, who each won a computer flash drive. The remaining winners were awarded a Java City Café coupon. Congratulations to all!

We appreciated everyone’s participation. Results of the survey will be available soon. We will use the information to assess our services and make improvements to better serve your needs.

3rd Annual Library Olympics Winners!

A part of National Library Week, the Library Olympics is an event where student organizations compete to win money for their chosen charities.

1st Place - SHIMA (Student Health Information Management Association)

Prize: $50 to their chosen charity, REACH of Jackson County

Team Members: Dana Rose and Alex Earle

SHIMA won 3rd place in last year's Library Olympics





2nd Place - Sigma Alpha Omega

Prize: $25 to their chosen charity, World Vision

Team Members: Melanie Galliers and Shannon Reaves





Thanks to the WCU Athletic Department for letting us borrow jerseys and a megaphone!

Winners of the 2005 Edible Book Festival

Please visit the Gallery of Winners.

National Library Day, Wednesday, April 13

Hunter Library cordially invites the University community to participate in National Library Day, Wednesday, April 13.

2:00-4:00 p.m. - Reception on the main floor.

2:30 p.m. – Announcement of winners from the LibQual Survey.

3:00 p.m. – 3rd Annual Library Olympics.

We hope that you will join us and enjoy the April 13th festivities.

Return Books Outside the Library

Hunter Library once again has an outside book drop box behind the library, near the loading dock, on Buzzard Roost Road.

You may return books by placing them in the book drop box at any time, whether the library is open or not.

Please do not return videos, DVD’s, CD’s, or CMC Kits in the book drop box – they must be returned inside the building.

You Can "Eat Your Words" at the 3rd Annual Edible Book Festival, Friday April 1st

If you have a taste for great literature, Western Carolina University is offering a chance for insatiable readers to really dig in.


Kim Ponder takes a bite of her book "Snap, Crackle and Pop" at the 2004 Edible Book Festival.

Hunter Library is asking members of the university and surrounding communities to fork over their most creative ideas for the 3rd Annual Edible Book Festival on Friday, April 1.

You can bring your munchable manuscripts to the library lobby between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. that day. The edibles will remain on display from 3 until 4 p.m. for photos, judging and prizes. After that, authors, creators and friends will have a chance to eat their words on the spot.

As part of this year's festival, North Carolina's poet (or palate) laureate, Kathryn S. Byer, will be on tap to help with the judging. (No word yet on whether she'll consume a piece of poetry.)

Dana Edge, reference librarian at Hunter Library who is helping to organize this year's Edible Book Festival, says the event is inspired by artist Judith A. Hoffberg and honors the birth of French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, author of “The Physiology of Taste or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy” – a classic treatise on food. It also helps that the event always falls on April Fools Day, so you can take it with a grain of salt.

Past winners of the moveable feast have been Western biology professor Jim Costa for his “Home Library” and reference librarian Heidi Buchanan for her “Frank In Stein.”

For more information, call Dana Edge at (828) 227-3413.

New Database: Historical Abstracts

Historical Abstracts (1954-present)
Available from ABC-CLIO through Hunter Library.
Indexes the scholarly literature of world history from 1450 to the present. Provides citations and abstracts for articles from over 2,000 journals published throughout the world. Also included are citations to book and media reviews, as well as dissertations.

New Database: Historical New York Times

Historical New York Times (1851-2001)
Available from ProQuest through Hunter Library.
Search EVERY page of EVERY issue of the New York Times from 1851 through 2001. See digital reproductions of the full page, including advertisements, pictures, and the text layout. Files are downloadable PDFs.

New Database: CQ Weekly

CQ Weekly Online (1983-present)
Available from CQ Press through NC LIVE.
Coverage of the U.S. Congress, including the status of bills, votes and amendments, and floor and committee activity.

Search by topic, page number, committee, "exact phrases or words," bill number, byline or reporter and by Boolean full-text and date searches. Detailed floor votes dating back to August 1983 are easily retrieved.

New Database: CQ Researcher

CQ Researcher Online (1991-present)
Available from CQ Press through NC LIVE.
Provides in-depth, non-biased reporting and analysis of political and social issues, with regular reports on topics in health, international affairs, education, the environment, technology and the U.S. economy.

Each 12,000-word CQ Researcher report is a unique work, investigated and written by a seasoned journalist. It can be read in its entirety or by section, which include a background and chronology; an assessment of the current situation; tables and maps; pro/con statements from representatives of opposing positions; and bibliographies of key sources.

New Database: ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect (1995-present)
Available from Elsevier through Hunter Library.
Full text access to more than 1,000 journals published by Elsevier Science. Includes indexing for approximately 800 more journals. Subjects include the sciences and social sciences. Registration is not necessary unless you wish to save your searches or set up email alerts.

New Database: PsycCRITIQUES

PsycCRITIQUES
(1995-present)

PsycCRITIQUES is a database of full text book reviews in psychology. The database replaces the print journal Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, and provides reviews of current books and some films, as well as a 10 year backfile. It is updated weekly and is searchable by author, reviewer, document title, review title, and other standard search fields.

Do the LibQUAL Survey and Win an iPod

Critique Hunter Library — And Be Eligible for Prizes!

Hunter Library invites all WCU students, faculty and staff to participate in LibQUAL, an electronic survey used to measure user perceptions of the quality of library services. Your participation is needed to help us better understand how we are doing, and how we can improve.

You can be eligible to win prizes just for filling out the survey! The Grand Prize is an iPod music player. Flash drives and Java City coupons will also be given away.

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO COMPLETE THE SURVEY:
http://survey.libqual.org/index.cfm?ID=216516

The LibQual survey will be conducted February 14 through March 28. We hope you will take the time to fill out this online questionnaire. We need to hear from you!

For additional information, contact Eloise Hitchcock, Assistant Director of Hunter Library, at x3421 or e-mail Hitchcock@wcu.edu.

We appreciate your support and hope you will help us improve our services. Look for the email soon!

You must be 18 years of age or over to participate in the survey or have parental consent. All responses are anonymous and confidential.

Google Scholar

Google recently introduced Google Scholar, a search engine designed to find articles, preprints, books, chapters, gray literature, and other scholarly sources while filtering out those sites we often associate with the dark side of the web: Mrs. Carbunkle’s eighth-grade classroom, photos of your in-laws 2001 Alaskan vacation, a live web-cam of someone named Candee…

We have been reading a lot of spin about Google Scholar—both the pros and the cons—and have concluded that it is OK for rudimentary research but inappropriate for higher-level scholarship.

Here is a quick rundown of the pros and cons of Google Scholar as well as a few pointers on how to use it effectively.

What’s good:
• It’s easy and convenient. Google has applied its famous search mechanism that sorts results based on relevance as opposed to date. This means that the first articles in any search may be seminal.
• It includes prepubs and gray literature. (Students will need guidance on how to read citations and how to determine when such material is acceptable.)
• One of the best features is citation searching: there is a simple link to articles that cite the original! See this entry on Jim Costa (WCU Biology professor) for an example.

What’s not so good:
• It’s Beta. This means that, while not quite ready for prime time, the public is encouraged to use it and make comments in order to improve it. There are contact links on their information pages, so tell them what you think!
• It is not comprehensive.
• The results can include non-scholarly items such as books by Stephen King.
• There are lots of broken links.
• Google won’t say what journals, topics, or publication dates are covered.
• It is geared to expert searchers who can tell a book citation from an article citation from a gray literature citation. However, students will turn in whatever they find because they found it on Google Scholar.
• The basic web search mechanism is unsophisticated: there is no field searching, no date limiters, no controlled vocabularies—in short, none of those features that make library databases so great.

Pointers
• Keep looking. SPORT Discus, the preeminent database for all aspects of sports, has 1224 citations specifically about soccer injuries. Google Scholar has 3380 citations that mention both “soccer” and “injuries.” Many are outstanding and many are irrelevant. The same is true in other academic fields.
• Don’t pay for anything! WCU students, faculty, and staff can use Hunter Library to obtain research materials. We’re fast, free, and friendly.

Live Webcast: Libraries and Digital Mapping in the 21st Century

Thursday, January 27, 3:00 p.m., Hunter Library Conference Room

Learn how research libraries are incorporating GIS and geospatial data into their service offerings in a special Webcast cosponsored by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and ESRI on Thursday, January 27, 2005.

The Webcast, Libraries and Digital Mapping in the 21st Century, features speakers from three research libraries who will discuss topics such as library service models for GIS and working with GIS metadata to help users find appropriate spatial data.

The intended audience for this Webcast is librarians who want to stay current with developments in digital mapping services (particularly those who work with faculty and researchers) and library administrators interested in developing or growing GIS library services.

Audience members can participate through a live Q&A session during the Webcast.

Contact Anita Oser for further details.

Reception for Faculty & Staff Exhibition

Reception for the WCU Faculty & Staff Exhibition of Publications & Creative Works from 2004

Hunter Library
Tuesday, January 25
3:00 - 4:30 p.m.

Please join us!

2004 Tax Forms Available

Federal and North Carolina tax forms for 2004 are now available to download.

Federal: http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/index.html

North Carolina: http://www.dor.state.nc.us/forms/index.html