Mantor Library access for recent graduates

Congratulations to everyone graduating on Saturday! It’s the time of year when we start getting questions about access to the Library’s resources post-graduation.

After graduation, if you plan to be in the Farmington area this summer or beyond, please feel free to stop in to the library with a photo ID to sign up for a community library card. We would love to help you with your borrowing needs.

Interlibrary Loan: 

Any graduates who transition to community member library cards will still enjoy access to our full suite of interlibrary loan services through URSUS, MaineCat, and ILLiad.

Physical resources (Books, DVDs, CDs): 

Community members have borrowing privileges for most of our physical collection (everything except Reserves and IT equipment).

Online Resources:

For community members, access to UMF's electronic resources such as journal article databases, streaming videos, and certain ebooks (such as those in Ebook Central) is available in-person at the library. Every Maine resident also has access to database content through the statewide Digital Maine Library. Community members with current library cards may also borrow ebooks and audiobooks through cloudLibrary.

Please let us know if you have any questions or need help with anything of this.   

Graduates: Congratulations on all of your accomplishments during your time at UMF; we are very proud of you! 🎓👏🎉

What's with that website?

We had a few questions this week from people having trouble accessing Films on Demand, one of our databases, and it seemed like a good reason to talk about why you might have trouble accessing a website (and what you can do about it.)

Cause 1: Something is affecting your connection to the Internet 

To see if this is the case, try loading a couple of other different sites (I usually try the Mantor Library page, Google, and something else - sites run in three different places). If these don't work, check to make sure you're connected to the Internet.

(And a little humor: Have you checked your input/output badger?) 

Cause 2: Something is affecting that specific site

Sometimes a specific site goes down. Large sites generally run on computers in 'datacenters' that have redundant connections to the Internet. That way, if a single connection fails, the others stay up and running, and you can still reach the site.

However, it's possible that all the connections can fail at one (which is rare but does happen, usually because someone with a backhoe dug in the wrong place and broke a lot of cables.) Or the datacenter is somewhere where there's been an extensive natural disaster.

One of the other ways a site can go down is because of a Denial of Service (DDOS) attack - this is what happened with Films on Demand. Basically it means that someone is trying to interfere with a given site and make it inaccessible. The most common way is to set up lots of computers to connect with the site they've targeted with over and over again, bringing everything to a grinding halt, but there are other methods. 

(This is why - besides protecting your own files and data - it's so important to have a virus check and other protective tools on your own computer. Some viruses and malware are designed to allow others to use your computer in a Denial of Service attack.)

To check if this is the case, you can use a tool like http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ - type in the address of the site you're trying to reach, and it will test and see if the problem is you or the site. However, in a DDOS attack, the site may be up and down for a bit while the people running it sort things out. A lot of sites also use Twitter to update about site outages.

Cause 3: It's that specific site, but it's all about you

There are some things that can affect you accessing that site. If you've installed filtering software, turned on parental controls, or installed a concentration tool on your computer, some of them may block your access to a site in a way that's not immediately obvious. If you can generally access other sites, and you've made sure the site you're trying to reach is up, this is the next place to try.

Solving it is usually a little trickier.  The best thing to do is undo any recent changes (back to before you noticed the problem.) If that doesn't work, try disabling all of the extensions in your browser (and any filtering software or parental control software) and then re-enabling them one at a time until you figure out which one is causing the problem.

Cause 4: It's that site, but it's partly you

Sometimes part of the site will load, but parts won't. If you haven't used the site for a while, there's a chance that your computer or browser needs an update. Check out the help information for the site and try clearing the cache, and see if that helps. This is especially common with sites relying on Flash to play videos or provide graphics.

(If you need help with this, try putting "clear cache" and the name of the browser you are using into your favorite search engine. Searching on "not loading" and the name of the site sometimes helps too.) 
Other tips:
- Make quick notes of what you've already tried. If you need to ask someone else for help, it'll help them figure out what's going on more quickly if you tell them what you've already done.

- If you're having problems with one of our databases, we'd love to know, and we'll do our best to help you figure out what's going on. The best way to reach someone immediately is via Access Services (ext 7210, or stop by) or at our Reference desk (stop by, or if someone is available on chat through our home page, try that.)

-  In many cases, a site that is down briefly will be up again - especially if it's a smaller, independently hosted site. Come back in 5-10 minutes, and many brief glitches will have resolved.

The forest of filetypes

We've had a rise recently in the number of questions about how to open one kind of file in other kinds of software. Most commonly, we've had people who are using OpenOffice (or LibreOffice, or related programs) at home, and who come in to use our library computers, which have Microsoft Office on them. These files usually have file extensions of .odf, .odt, .odp, or .ops .

So, this seems like a good time for a quick post about different file types, translators, and some other useful tricks.

A quick guide to file formats: Different software programs store their files in different ways. Sometimes these are easily read by other programs. Other times, not so much. There are also some generic file types (like .txt or plain text files) which will keep most of your content (the text) but not the formatting (bold, italic, etc.)

If you use OpenOffice/LibreOffice and want to come and print or work on a file on our computers, we've just done something to make this easier for you. Basically, we've added a plug-in that should open these file types. Just open Word, Excel, or Powerpoint, find the file in the OpenOffice/LibreOffice format (download it from your email, open your USB/thumb drive), and it should open.

Note that fonts, margins, spacing, and other details may not translate perfectly - you'll want to look through your file and double check. If the exact layout matters to you, there's more help below.

If the formatting of your file really matters (like for a flyer) but you want to print it on one of our printers, not yours, the best way is to save it as a PDF. This format will preserve all of your formatting, layout, etc. (But you won't be able to edit it or make changes in that version, unless you have special software.)

Macintosh computers build this into the system software. For Windows computers, there are a variety of plug-ins and add-ons that will do this for you, and more recent computers also make it easier. You can also (if you have email access from your starting computer) use the translator I describe below.

You can use an online translation tool to change formats. One of the best known of these is called Zamzar. You upload the file, indicate what you want to translate it to (they have dozens of options for everything from audio to image to word processing and more), enter your email address, and a short while later, you get an email with your translated file attached.

How fast the email comes through depends on how busy their service is - when I've used it, sometimes it's a minute or two, sometimes it's been a couple of hours. (There are subscription choices if you use it a lot, and want your documents faster, as well.)

If you're not sure about the format or it's critical you have access to the content of a file, it's a good habit to save your file as something that most other computers can read. Some programs will let you save a word processing file in a Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx).

• .txt is a generic text file. It won't save italics, bold, headers, or other things like that, but if you want to make absolutely sure you have the text of your paper, this is a good backup to have.
• .rtf is also a great option for word processing files. It stands for Rich Text Format, and it should preserve all those formatting choices (bold, italics, headings). Again, check your entire document before printing or submitting it just to be sure. 
• Also, most modern computers will easily let you read a PDF, though again, you won't be able to edit the content without specific software.

Google's new privacy policies

Google is everywhere, it seems (certainly for those of us who use UMF's email or other tools.) But as you might have seen, they're changing their privacy policies as of March 1st (that's tomorrow).

What does that mean? Google says that they're doing this to simplify things, but there are several new situations you want to think about as you consider how you use the wide variety of Google-owned tools. (That means not just Gmail, but YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, Google Reader, and others.)

First, it's a good idea to read the new policy. Then you might want to read the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) guide to what's changing.

The big changes are in three areas: connecting information about you across different Google services, connecting a name on one account with names on other accounts, and phone and mobile device privacy.

The first one means that even if you're not logged in under your account on one service at the moment, but are logged into another Google service, Google will connect it. For example, if you are logged into your personal Gmail account, but not into YouTube, Google will still connect what you watched with your account.

The second one means that they may also connect a name used on one service with names on other of their services (presumably based on the email account you used to sign up or on cookies on your computer: the pieces I've seen aren't quite sure how this will work, either.)

And finally, they may store, collect, and use some information (including location data) from your phone to connect pieces of data, make recommendations, and so on.

An answer to a Q&A session describes what they're aiming for in more detail - some of what they're doing could be very interesting, but a lot of privacy and online technology groups also have concerns. (What happens for people searching for health related topics, for example?)

Google said:

Specifically, our policies meant that we couldn’t combine data from YouTube and search history with other Google products and services to make them better. So if a user who likes to cook searches for recipes on Google, we are not able to recommend cooking videos when that user visits YouTube, even though he is signed in to the same Google Account when using both.

So, what can you do? 
If you're either concerned about your privacy, or would like to wait and see how this works in practice before you rely on it, here's some things you should consider doing:

(One option is to avoid using Google services at all - but that's hard for a lot of people to do.)

1) Turn off your web history:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has a guide with illustrations to help you do so. Basically, if you do so, Google will still store a history of your web searches through them - but it will be deleted after 18 months, and be more highly anonymized, and some other kinds of results (like customized search results) will be prevented. The guide has more details on this.

2) Turn off your YouTube history.
Again, the EFF has a guide.

3) Consider other steps to preserve your privacy.
Some of these are more complicated than others. The EFF has a guide that outlines 6 options, ranging from fairly simple to more complicated. 

Steps include (and the guide explains these in more detail):

• Don't search for personally identifying information (like your name, address, etc.) 
• Don't use your ISP's search engine to search (since they can connect your internet address with your complete identity pretty easily.) 
• Use a different web browser to do searches than the one you log into as an individual. (So if you use Firefox to read your email, open up Chrome or Internet Explorer to do a search.). Don't create an account on a search engine to store data or searches.
• Block cookies from search engines.
• Vary your IP address (more complicated)
• Or use anonymizing tools (also more complicated.) 

Other possible tools are out there too:

• There are browser extensions that allow you to block or limit browser cookies. I've seen recommendations for Ghostery, Disconnect, and Do Not Track Plus but I'm still testing them out myself. (As always, read what they do before you install...) 
• There are also other search engines. I've heard a lot of great things about DuckDuckGo which makes a point of telling you they don't store information. (This also means they remove you from the search bubble - they explain that too.) Lifehacker has a roundup of some other options.

Learning new things

For today's Resource Wednesday, I thought it'd be neat to look at some of the ways the 'Net brings us great new ways to learn. (I plan to dig into some of these in more detail later, so consider this a taste...)

Passionate people, briefly being brilliant:
One of my favorite ways to learn about totally new-to-me topics has become the TED talks. TED started as a series of annual conferences (focused on Technology, Education, and Design), bringing in some of the top experts in the world to give brief (10-20 minute) speeches about the things they know best. They now film them, and make them available (900+ and counting) for free online, and a number of offshoot events have also developed.

I find them fascinating not just for the content (which covers a huge range of fields) but also for what I can learn about making a powerful, fascinating presentation. In some future week, I'll post some of my favorites, but in the meantime, browse away from their list.

Crowd-sourced wisdom:
All right, we all know that just Googling it doesn't work for some kinds of questions, right? (That's a big part of why we in the library are here, after all - there's a lot of academic questions where that's the case, of course.)

But what happens when you want to know something complicated - how to move across country with an odd combination of pets? What's a great free online tool to solve a particular problem? What foods could you make that would take you through a long day of classes and work, without needing a fridge or a microwave?

Enter AskMetafilter. Part of a much larger site (Metafilter itself is focused on discussion of links and online material, the idea being that the cool stuff rises to the top), AskMetafilter is focused on questions and answers. It's been my first stop for several years for general questions where I want well-focused answers to a particular practical issue or interest.

How does it work? You can browse the site all you like for free (you'll see some ads). If you'd like to post a question or respond, you'll need to pay a $5 user registration fee. It's one time (not a subscription), and it helps both support the site, and keep a handle on spamming and other problematic behavior. (It's a method that's unusual in online sites, but works really well for them.)

And a few other notes: the content on the site is widely varying: you may find things that are not to your taste. Discussions do have moderation to keep them within site guidelines, but of course, moderators may not have spotted a problem comment yet. Their FAQ has lots of answers to questions you might have about how the site works. And of course, use your head, and evaluate the information you get from this source, just like you would any other.

Learn something new:
One of my goals for a while has been to learn a little more about programming. (I took a class in college, but that was both a long time ago, and didn't get used again - so it's fallen out of my brain.) I'd started playing with a site called Code Academy, and in January, they started a project called Code Year, where you do a series of short lessons (new ones every week) that take you through a lot of coding basics.


I'm still on week two, but I'm learning a lot. (If you've never done any kind of programming or coding before, the learning curve is a little steep, but they've got forums and other help information - and there's a lot of people doing it, so there are little communities growing up to share ideas and resources.)

Quick notes about Gmail

For those of you who use UMF email accounts, you may have noticed a window popping up asking you if you want to change to the new Gmail format.

First, if you are so overwhelmed with everything else right now (it being the last week of classes, of course), you can temporarily put off dealing with this. Just click the button that says you want to. (How long is 'temporary'? Not forever, but Google hasn't told us, either.)

Why the new look? 
Google has been rolling this out for a variety of reasons - some have to do with function, some have to do with appearance. The major changes are:

• a cleaner looking interface - more modern, more streamlined. 
• some new themes to customize how your Gmail looks (more in a moment)
• improvements to the conversation view that keeps messages on a topic together. 
• more ways to customize appearance (more in a moment again.) 
• simpler ways to search and filter in Gmail
• easier switching between mail, contacts, and tasks.
• a new toolbar that only shows you buttons when you need them. 

Common questions:
The two big questions I've heard so far today are about contrast between text and the background, and about the spacing of items in the sidebar/inbox. Gmail gives you options on how to handle both of these.

Spacing: 
The items in the sidebar (like Inbox, Important, Sent Mail, etc.) have a certain spacing. You can decide to make that roomy and spacious, or you can make it very compact, so it takes up less space.

If you look at the top of your mail inbox, you'll see a little gear symbol. When you click on it, you'll see the following drop-down menu. Adjust the "Display density" until the spacing suits you. You can also use this menu to revert to the old look temporarily, or to easily get to settings or themes.

Contrast: 
Themes are a way to personalize your Gmail. Here's a view of your choices. Some of them have better contrast than others, or may be more pleasing to your eye.

The classic themes came over from the older look of Gmail, and a couple of them look more washed out in the new version, which is why I've been hearing questions about how to make the contrast better. This is definitely a "play around and see what works for you" thing.

One nifty trick is that some themes change based on the weather, the time of day, or have rotating images. If you look at the themes below, the little sun symbol in the bottom right means it changes based on weather. If it's got a clock, it changes based on time of day. And if it's got the three little squares, it has multiple rotating images.

Conversation view:
One thing that can confuse people (though it's not new to Gmail's new look) is that Gmail by default groups conversations (series of emails) together.

If you'd rather not do this, use the settings menu (the gear I talked about above) to go to settings, then on the General tab, look for the "Conversation View" option, about half-way down. You can select "Conversation view off" and you'll see each email individually.

Want to do more? 
Finally, if you're now curious about all that Gmail can do, let me point you at an awesome feature, the Gmail Labs tab. (Found in the same Settings window we just talked about...)

Labs are features that are not part of Gmail's default settings. Often, that's because they're still in development, or because they're things some people want, but not everyone. I plan a future post about some of my favorites, but in the meantime, LifeHacker had some great tips earlier this year in a top-ten list, and then ten more experimental features to check out.

More about social bookmarking

Last Wednesday, I talked about social bookmarking in general - this week, I want to take a closer look at a couple of different options. (Two of which I use regularly, and then talk about a few other choices.)

One of the big names in social bookmarking is Delicious (http://delicious.com). It's had some ups and downs recently (it started as an independent start-up, got bought by Yahoo, Yahoo decided to stop supporting it, and it has now been bought and is getting updated by an entirely different company. Yeah, it was confusing at the time, too.)

Here's what you see if you look at my professional Delicious account. (You may want to click on the image to see it a bit better.)

On the left, you can see when I added each link, and you can see what tags I gave it. On the right sidebar, you can see some basic info about me, and then a list of all the tags I've ever assigned anywhere.

 So, how do I add to my links? Most of the social bookmarking sites have a little link you put in your bookmark toolbar. Here's mine - off to the right, you can see a link to delicious, and then to "my delicious". The first one is what I click to add a link. The second takes me to my account and shows me all the links I've saved previously.

 When you click on the "add a link" bookmark, a little window will pop up. Most of the time, I just add tags, and don't comment, but commenting is handy if you're creating links that will be shared with other people. (You can share a note about why you like it, what to pay attention to, etc.) As you can see in the bottom left, you can add this to a larger group of links (a stack - more on that below) or make it private (so only you can see it.)

The former version of Delicious had a way to bundle tags into larger groups (so I'd have one for library.profession, technology.tools, teaching.and.learning, and so on, that would gather smaller tags into one group.) The new version of Delicious has "stacks" where you can pick and choose specific links to include (though they make it easy to select whole groups at a time. Below, you can see what a stack looks like when I've added some items.

Finally, it's also possible to follow someone else on Delicious - that means that every time they save a public bookmark, you get to see what they saved. In practice, while I think this is a sort of neat idea (and it can be a very cool collaborative tool for some kinds of projects), I've never used it extensively.

Pinboard: an alternative:
When the future of Delicious was looking pretty uncertain, people spent a lot of time exploring some other options. One popular choice that rose to the top turned out to be a site called Pinboard (http://pinboard.in). They describe themselves as " a bookmarking website for introverted people in a hurry."

Unlike Delicious (which is free), there's a one-time fee (which goes up very slightly with each account created - currently, it's about $9.55.) but it is in fact very quick, simple, and the creator and admins are very responsive to concerns. You can see what it looks like here. (I've got an account for some professional uses, but I use it more heavily on my personal account.)

And here's what adding a new link looks like.

What are some other options? 
Twitter has become a great way for some people to share links of interest - the problem is finding them later when you need them. (So a lot of people will save a link to something like their browser, a 'read later' application like Instapaper, or to a social bookmarking site.)


There are a variety of other social bookmarking sites - I've only scratched the surface here. Popular sites include Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon, though all three have much more of a social factor than the two I've discussed above. (Great if you're working with popular topics, but sometimes a little weird if your interests are less common.)
 

Resource Wednesday: Social bookmarking 101

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how Google Reader is a great way to keep on top of interesting topics.

But that raises the question: When you find interesting posts, or interesting webpages, how do you keep track of them? That's where my next topic comes in: social bookmarking sites.

What's a social bookmarking site? 
Basically, it's a site where you can save your bookmarks. Depending on the site you use, and your settings, you can set them private (only you can see them when you're logged in) or public.

Some sites have ways to make it easy to share other people's bookmarks and see what they've found useful, usually through tagging.

You can take a look at the collection I keep for professional topics at Delicious.com, one of the best-known social bookmarking sites. (I'll talk a little more about some of what you see in future Wednesday posts.)

When are they useful?

• If you want to share links with other people. 
• If you're collaborating with other people.
• If you like sharing things you find interesting. 
• If you use lots of different computers, and want to be able to find articles, pages, or sites you use frequently without syncing your bookmarks between different computers. \

Some people save bookmarks on their own computer and on a social bookmarking site - including me. I bookmark sites I use regularly on the computers I use them on (my work computer, my home computer) and use Delicious and other sites for more general collections of links.

So how do you keep track?
Many social bookmarking sites have a way to group links in some way. Probably the most common is by tagging, assigning a term (that you choose) to a link, so you can group them in ways that make sense to you. Many sites will suggest some tags (including those other people have chosen.) Some sites allow tags to have spaces, others don't. (I can never remember which site does which, so my tags are either one word, or have a . in the middle to join phrases - for example academic.libraries)

What to know before you start using a social bookmarking site:
Basically, be aware of the normal standard privacy issues. If your bookmarks are public, people can see them. They can see what you choose for a tag (so, if you call it really.idiotic.stuff, the person whose site you tagged with that might find out...) 

Second, it's always a good idea when using a site to have a way to get your data back out again - sites do get bought and sold or go out of business. It's good to be in the habit of saving a backup every few months (at least, more often if you absolutely must be able to find material again.)

Finally, be aware if you're behind an access-protected area. For example, if you do a search in our databases and find an article you like, you could bookmark it and access it on campus, perhaps without any problems (it depends on the database). But from off campus, you'd have to demonstrate that you should have access to the site (usually by logging in), and sometimes it's very hard to get back to the original article afterwards.

Resource Wednesday: Google Reader

(Do you have a resource you'd like to see me post about? Or even a "Hey, what resources are out there that do this thing well?" sort of question? Feel free to comment here, or on our Facebook page. Comments are awesome!)

We'll be continuing to touch on UMF library resources as they come up, but we're also branching out into other tools and resources that make life better, easier, or more fun as we try to make sense of all the amazing information resources out there today.

Reading along: 
Today's installment is about Google Reader, a quick and easy way to keep up with blogs.

Blogs, of course, are a way to share content online that includes date-based entries, with the most recent material on top. While short-form approaches (microblogging!) like Facebook and Twitter have caught on, there are still lots of topics that work better with a bit more space.

One of the challenges of blogs has always been that you need to remember to go and read them (or get a reminder some other way, like how our blog auto-posts a "Hey, we have a new post" snippet to our Facebook page.)

Google Reader fixes that. How to get there? http://google.com/reader should take you to the reader front page. If for some reason that doesn't work, try the instructions at the end of this post.

Adding a blog:
Before you can read a blog through Google Reader, you'll need to add a subscription. This is a very simple process. Click the subscription button at the top left of the page:

subscribe button

You can enter a search term, or you can paste the address of a blog you like to read. For example, if you wanted to subscribe to our blog, that you're reading right now, you could type "Browsing room Mantor" or you could paste in http://browsingroom.blogspot.com. Either way, if there's a blog you can subscribe to, you'll either be subscribed (if there's only one blog that fits that search) or be given blog feeds that match that search.

Many blogs also have the option to subscribe right from the blog. The most widely used RSS icon looks like the orange square with white lines below, but you'll see all sorts of other icons out there (usually they'll say RSS or XML or feed, something like that.)

most common RSS icon

Once you click on the feed, you'll be taken to a page where you should have the option to choose Google, then Google Reader, as  your way to read. (There may be lots of options, which is why using the subscribe button in Google Reader can be a lot simpler!)

Managing your feeds:
Once you get a few feeds, you might want to organise them! You can divide up your blogs into different categories. To do so, you can either use the Feed Settings menu (in the top center) or the Settings tool, found at the top right of the page. (You can also find the help here.)

help and settings menus

To give you an idea what this might look like, here are my folders for my professional blog reading (I have an account for professional reading, and one for personal reading, because I subscribe to a lot of blogs, but read the two sets differently, and at different times.)

Sorting them like this helps me manage my time: I read the UMF folder first, then work my way down. (The humor folder has my subscriptions to a couple of library-related comic strips.)

example organization : my Reader folders

 What it's like to read:
Once you have some new posts to read, your Reader screen will look a little like this, with your blogs and other tools down the sidebar, and posts in the larger right hand side of the screen. As you can see, you can get both text and images, but you don't get all the formatting of the original blog. (In this case, the post is about providing paper handouts for conference sessions, and how he handles that.)

reading in Reader

You can scroll down the blogs page. Sometimes I like to read all the new things, in whatever order they arrived (most recent on the top) so I click on all items in the left sidebar. Usually, though, I prefer to read by topic, so I click on the folder I want, read all the topics in there, and then move to the next one. Whatever works for you is great.

As you read, each item will be marked as read by default, but you can change this in the settings menu we looked at just above. You can also manually mark something as unread, or you can star it, to make it easier to find later. You can also browse in expanded view (where you see the entry) or list view (where you just see the titles of posts.) Lots of choices!

Some blogs will give you the entire text in the reader. Others, you may see a link that says something like "Read more" or "Click here to read more" that takes you to the blog. (People do this for a variety of reasons, but often it's because people are taking their text and using it without permission.) I typically open up the blog posts I want to read in more detail into a tab in my browser, then go through and read them all when I'm done, but there are lots of other ways to do it. Do what works for you.

Other neat tricks:
If you have a smart phone, an iPad, or many other mobile devices, there are apps out there that will allow you to use your Google Reader feed to access content on the go or to format posts in a way you prefer to read. (I use one for my personal blog reading called Reeder which I like a lot, but there are plenty of others.)

There are also tools that let you save webpages or blog posts to be read later on a wide range of devices - I'm currently testing out Instapaper, and expect to write about it here sometime soon (and that works with various of the ereaders, including Kindle).

Got questions? 
Again, please ask! I'd be glad to use future editions of our Wednesday blog space to answer your questions about any of the resources we've talked about here. 

Finding Reader from your email: 
If you've got a UMF email account, you already have access. (And if you don't, you just need a Google account.) In the top menu from your email, go to the More menu (as shown below) and select the Reader option.

This will bring up all of the many and varied Google products - and somewhere on that page, you'll find the option that says "Reader". Click on that, and you'll be on the main Reader page.

Thoughts about ebooks

Ebooks really are the topic of the year: more and more thought about both the immediate practical issues and the larger issues are coming up in the blogosphere.

One of the major conferences for libraries and technology (Internet Librarian) just finished, and one of the attendees, Bobbi Newman, just posted a great round-up of links that came up in discussion. You can check them all out at her blog.

I'm really glad to see an increasing depth in the conversation, not just "More ebooks, yay!". I'm particularly glad that more and more people are digging into issues of ...

• licensing
• privacy
• digital rights management (how you can share books, both with others, and simply within your own household)
• and the implications for people who, for whatever reason, cannot or do not wish to buy.

A special shout-out here to author Seanan McGuire's post "Across the digital divide: let's talk about poverty" from last month, which is a powerful call to the benefit of physical, tradeable, shareable books (something that is currently true only in very limited ways with ebooks, if you want to read anything written at all recently.) It's got some fascinating bits in comments, too.

It's not that ebooks are bad - they're not.  I (like most people who read) am in general favor of more ways to read more awesome stuff.  (And I do read a number of titles in ebook version these days, rather than print.)

But they're not perfect, either.

And the things that are problematic about them (privacy, licensing, and access issues in particular) are going to continue to be complicated until readers, authors, and publishers can push through and sort some of those issues out, in a way that makes them truly accessible and effective for everyone. Until then, being informed about the issues is a great place to start - and those links on Bobbi's page are some of the best explanations out there on what you should know, and why you might care.

Resource Wednesday: Mobile EBSCO

A quick question: Today's resource is a mobile app for the EBSCO database products.

We're looking at how much interest there is in other kinds of mobile apps, including whether it's worth investigating, say, a mobile catalog interface for our catalog. Our current stats show that most people don't use mobile devices to look at our catalog or webpages. If you'd be interested in something like this, drop us a note (in the comments or on our Facebook wall) letting us know what kind of device(s) you use, and what you'd find especially useful.

Let's set the scene: So, you're walking down the street, and you get an urge to look up that article for your research paper. You pull out your smart phone (or your iPad, or whatever other portable device) and head straight to the EBSCO databases, and settle down to read.


Sound unlikely? Actually, it's quite easy. EBSCO, one of the big database providers (and from whom we get a wide range of databases) has a nicely designed mobile app that does just that. Once you set it up and authenticate your account, you can do searches in most of the databases EBSCO provides to UMF wherever you are.

[Here's a secret: part of me thinks that looking stuff up in databases from my phone is sort of silly, even though I love my phone for all sorts of other information seeking geekiness. But part of me thinks it's incredibly awesome to be living in the future.]

What does it look like? Let me show you some shots from the iPhone version. (Since I only have the iPhone, I haven't had a chance to look at other versions, but this should give you an idea. If anyone with other devices - Android smartphones, or whatever, feel free to let me know, and I'd be glad to post a followup.)

initial screen: EBSCO mobile iPhone app

Once you install the application (more about that below), this is the first screen you'll see. From here, you can see recent searches, access saved searches or articles, and get help.

The settings tool will let you select specific databases to search (that's up above what you can see in this image), and adjust some other preferences, like searching for full text articles, peer reviewed articles, or limiting the publication date. You don't have as many choices as you do using a web browser, but you have quite a few.

Try a search: Here, I've tried a search on "mountain lion". You can see there's a number of different results (over 3,000!), and I can sort by relevance or date.
 

 See that Refine button in the top left? If I touch that, I'll get a bunch of options to refine my search. I can limit it to specific subject headings (as shown below) or journals. Touch Ok and I've got a limited set of results.

Reading: If I click into a particular article, I'll either see whatever information is available about it. If that's an abstract, I'll see the abstract and a button to see if full text is available. If a PDF is available, I have a few more options - I can view the text of the article, download the PDF, or email the abstract (or PDF, if I've already loaded it) to myself.
 

So, how do you get this tool? First of all, you need to have a device it'll work on. Supported devices include

• iPhone
• iPad
• iPod touch
• BlackBerry
• Android Smartphones
• Windows Smartphones
• Dell Axim
• Palm
• Pocket PC

Wander over to the EBSCO mobile access page, and click on the button for your device.

 

It will bring up a window on screen giving you additional information. For non-Apple products, it will direct you to a FAQ page with instructions. 

For iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches, it will direct you to click the link at the bottom of any of the EBSCO database pages. If you click that link, you'll be prompted for an email address. EBSCO will then send an email with a link (for Apple products) to the app store, followed by an authentication link. Copy and paste that into the browser on your device, and it'll set you up with all the same access you'd have had from a computer on campus. Pretty slick! 

Try it out, and let us know how it goes! 

Resource Wednesday: Literary Resource Center

Looking for literary information? One of the recent additions to our database list is the source for you! The Literary Reference Center (access on-site or through UMF library card login)

The Literary Reference Center has a wide range of information about thousands of authors and their works, with full-text articles from reference books, other titles, and literary journals. You can find plot summaries, overviews, literary criticism, author biographies, book reviews, poems, short stories, author interviews, and classic texts!

It also includes access to

• Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
• Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
• Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
• Continuum Encyclopedia of Children's Literature
• The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
• Beacham's Research Guide to Biography and Criticism (six volumes)
• The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature
• The Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story, 
• all of MagillOnLiterature Plus™ 
• and much more.

As with other EBSCO databases, you can limit your searches in a variety of ways, using the sidebar at the left. As you can see here, one of the ways you can limit is by the type of source - so you can look just for plot summaries, or reviews, or whatever else.

What's great about this database though, is the initial search options. The search page gives you the chance to limit by an author's cultural identity (so you can look for African American authors, or Native American ones, Gay and Lesbian authors, and much more.) This option is halfway down on the left.

 

On the right side, you have a number of further options. You can enter a literary author's name, search for female or male authors, national identity - or authors in a given lifespan.

Tip: If you want to search by national identity, enter the name of the country (France, Wales, Egypt) rather than an adjective describing people from that place (French, Welsh, Egyptian).

Finally, you can also search by a literary character, either by name (try the last name or full name), locale (place name), or by the type of work. 

Enjoy, and have fun with all those amazing literary people, places, and creators!

Resource Wednesday: Academic Search Complete

Welcome to today's installment of Resource Wednesday, when we're going to look at Academic Search Complete, a great start for general database searches.

Why is it a great place to start?
Academic Search Complete includes more than 8,000 full-text periodicals (7,500 of which are peer-reviewed, great for your academic projects). It also indexes and provides abstracts for more than 13,200 other publications. And it does that while covering many different academic areas - everything from anthropology to humanities to science to zoology.

While you might want to use a more tightly focused database for higher level classes or focused research, Academic Search Complete is a great place to start for more general searches, or while you're trying to get a feeling for a particular topic or area of interest.

Getting there:
You can get to Academic Search Complete in a couple of ways. One of the easiest is to go to the Mantor Library Homepage, click on the Databases tab (shown below) and select Academic Search Complete from the dropbox that says "Select a Commonly Used Database". You can also browse our A to Z listing (the link on the left), or the CourseGuide for your class may include a link. 

Using the database:
Your inital screen will look like this at the top. (If you can't see an image clearly, click on it to load just the image at a larger size.) There are lots of options, so let's look at them group by group.

 

In the top left, you can enter search terms. Just to the right, you can choose to limit a search term to a particular field - so you could enter the author's last name, and only search on the author field, or a word you know is in the title of the article.

You can also choose how you search. Boolean/phrase means you can either use a combination of AND, OR, or NOT terms, or you can enter a phrase. SmartText searching means you can copy and paste text (up to about 5000 characters). You can learn more about all of these options in the help files.

A final set of options lets you determine what kind of results you get back. You can limit to full text articles, scholarly journals, a particular publication, a particular kind of document (like an article, review, or more.) You can also limit to a particular language, or when the article was published.

 

Refining your results: 

Once you run your search, you'll end up with a list of results down the right side, and a left sidebar that has all sorts of useful tools.

The top of the sidebar (shown here on the left) tells you how many results you have. You can then refine your results by clicking the boxes to limit to full text, or scholarly journals, or articles with references.

I really like the sliding bar that lets you limit the date range (and see very clearly how old the oldest articles in your search are. And of course, you can limit to a particular type of source.
 
Below that, you have another neat feature. Often, when we're new to a subject, we're not sure what the best terms are. The Thesaurus Term and Subject areas of the sidebar help you figure that out. (If they're not visible, click the little arrow to the left of the header.)

Once you get sort of close to the right topic, you can use these headings to narrow things down, or to take your search in a more focused direction.

 Either way, once you find an article you're interested in, click on the title of the article to go to the page with details about it.  

 Working with an article:
 Now that you've found your article, you can do all sorts of things with it.

 

The left sidebar will have a link to the full text version if there is one. You can click on it to read the article. (If there isn't a full text version, you can find out more in steps 5 and 6 of our Finding Articles CourseGuide - and I'll talk more about that next week, too.) 

You can also click on any of the subject headings to search on that heading. And on the right sidebar, there are all sorts of tools to help you save the article. You can send it to your email, save it, export it to RefWorks, and much more. (You can find more about exporting in our RefWorks CourseGuide - follow the directions for EBSCO for the Academic Search Complete database.)

Resource Wednesday: borrow for your Kindle

The big news of late last week was the announcement from Overdrive (the company who handles ebook lending for most libraries who offer it, including Mantor Library and Farmington Public) that they'd launched the ability to borrow books in Kindle format.

So, if you have a Kindle - or a Kindle reader app for your other devices - you just got access to a bunch more great things to read. (And there are reader apps for pretty much every major device out there.)

How does it work? 
1) Go to the Maine InfoNet Download Library page. (You can also browse there from our databases page.)

2) Find a book you'd like to read. You can search for a particular title, browse by genre or subject (using the lists in the left sidebar). You can also browse from the entire list of subjects. And you can limit just to Kindle titles by clicking the "Now Available: Library eBooks for Kindle" image in the left sidebar.

If you'd like a book right now, once you select a genre, you can limit to books currently available (as opposed to those where you'd have to wait) by checking the box right under the search box that says "only show titles with copies available", and click the search button again.

3) When you've found your Kindle ebook you'd like to read, click on the add to cart link. You'll get taken to a page where you see a list of any books you've selected and information about the loan period. (You have 45 minutes to complete the checkout process: after that, the book is automatically returned to be available for other people.)

4) Check out the book by entering your barcode.

5) Click the Get for Kindle button. This will open the Amazon website (you may need to log in if you aren't already).

6) Select your Kindle device or reading app, click the Get library book button. Then sync your device or app, and the book should appear on your reader.


Important details! 
1) You can only get books using Wi-Fi or USB connections - Kindle for Libraries does not work over the Kindle 3G network. If your Kindle doesn't have Wi-Fi, or you're not near a Wi-Fi connection, read Amazon's instruction transferring by USB. 


2) At the end of the loan period, the title will be automatically returned, and you'll need to go through the checkout process again.

3) If you can't find the title, check your archived items area.

4) Just as with physical books, books that are checked out won't be available for an immediate loan - this is part of the licensing process. You can place a hold, and you'll get an email when the book is available.

5) The loan period is set by the library consortium we're a part of - we don't have individual control over the length of the loan. 

(Got other questions? Feel free to ask them in the comments, and we'll be glad to help find the answers.)


Want more help?

• Overdrive created a video guide to the process (now with closed captioning if you click through to watch it on YouTube)
• Here's a great guide with screenshots of each step of the process from the Essex Public Library in Essex, CT.
• And here's another photo guide, from Brier Dudley at the Seattle Times. 

CourseGuides show the way

photo by Nancy Phillips (NKPhillips)
shared under Creative Commons

Feeling a little lost?

If you've been in a library session with one of your classes this semester, you already know about one of the awesome tools the library offers - CourseGuides.

If you've looked at the library website (and I hope you have!) you already know that there's a lot of information on it. Sometimes, it feel overwhelming - there's so much there that it's hard to tell where to start, or which part of the site has what  you need.

That's where CourseGuides come in.

Using a tool the library subscribes to, we can create different guides for all sorts of specific needs. Sometimes, we create them for common needs or questions, like finding books, finding articles, evaluating or citing your sources, or how to find a scholarly source. Sometimes they help with larger issues, like copyright or ebooks.

We also create guides for both general subject areas (computers and technology, for example) and for specific classes.  As an example, most of the First Year Seminar classes have a guide designed just for them to help with particular projects or needed resources. (Lots of other classes do, too.) We can easily build in links to other guides, so it's a one-click trip if you need help with citing your source, finding an article, or evaluating something you found.

And finally, we include guides about major campus events - both our own On Our Minds program, and events like the Native American Film and Performance University Forum this fall.

Here's a few more useful tips about the course guides:

• We have a lot of guides. If you're looking for a specific topic, we suggest browsing down the left sidebar on the main index page and clicking on your subject area, then looking for the specific class or topic.
  
• Each guide includes a sidebar with information about the librarian who created it, and how to contact them. Feel free to use this if you have a question about that guide or a particular resource.
  
• You can see how recently a guide was updated by looking at the summary information on the index pages. (Most of ours are checked at least every semester.) 

Enjoy exploring the guides! 

Resource Wednesday: Where's that book?

A student question yesterday reminded me that our catalog can be a bit confusing - so today's Resource Wednesday is here to help you figure out exactly where those items you're looking for might be.

First of all, I'm sure you all know by now that URSUS is our online catalog - the place you go to look for books and other materials (like DVDs, sound recordings, and more) in our library. But did you know that we share that catalog with a number of other libraries? In fact, URSUS will show you materials in all of the University of Maine system libraries, the Bangor Public Library, the Maine State Library, the Maine State Law and Legislative Reference Library, and the Maine State Archives. Whew! That's a lot of materials.

The two things you need to know are pretty simple: you can request books from any library in the system (assuming they're available). However, it'll take them a little time to get here. (3-5 business days). If you're a commuting student, and you live closer to another library in the system, you can have the books sent there, instead.

The image below shows you a sample search. (Click on it to see a larger version.) If you look by the red arrow on the left side, you'll see a list of locations. Books that are on our campus start with FAR.. The call number tells you where in the library it'd be located, and the status tells you whether the book is available or not. (This is the record for the hardcover version of the book: if you search the catalog, you'll see we have a bunch of paperback copies for our On Our Minds program too.)

If the book isn't available on our campus, you can request a copy by clicking on the Request icon (see below, and follow the arrow: it's the circle with a checkmark through it.) You'll be asked to enter your name and barcode. You can also enter a date to automatically cancel the request (but choose a date at least 7-10 days away, or the request might get cancelled before you get it.)

You'll get an email when the book arrives. If you had it sent here, you can pick it up at the Access Services desk. (As always, you'll need your ID to check it out).

What happens if you need a resource right now? You can limit your searches just to items in our library by selecting the library you want to search on the initial search screen. (You can do the same thing for any library in the system.)You can also limit to some parts of our collection, like the Kalikow Center, our Juvenile and Young Adult collection, or our Archives.

And finally, if you're not finding what you're looking for in the URSUS catalog, you can search MaineCat, a larger database of materials throughout the state including many more libraries, or use Interlibrary Loan, which can help you get materials from other states. (These options both take longer...)

You can learn a lot more about these options (and get some additional help with URSUS) by reading our online guide to Finding Books. And of course, the library staff would love to help you - stop by, or use our online chat option to ask for help.

Resource Wednesday: Chat reference

Ever wondered about that chat box on the right side of our website? That's our chat reference tool.

When a librarian is available (it'll say "Reference Desk Online"), you can ask your questions in the chat window, without having to come to the library (or ask at the access services desk...) It's a great way to get some quick help, or get started on a research question. Even for complicated questions, where you need to come visit us to look at resources, we can probably get you started online.

This semester, we've scheduled chat reference more regularly, and with extended hours compared to last year.

You can find help via the chat tool:

• 9am-3pm every weekday
• 5pm to 9pm Monday-Wednesday
  
• 6pm to 9pm on Thursday

(We have fewer staff in the building on weekends, so we can't staff chat in the same way.)

Take some time to explore the chat tool this semester, and let us know how it works for you! We want to make it as easy as possible for you to get help with your research needs and questions, so we'd love your feedback.

And of course, we always love to help people in person - just stop by the main access services desk (on your right as you enter the library), and the staff there will answer your questions or help you connect with the best person to help you.