K-State Libraries: Digital Initiatives

Finding book reviews in Web of Science

This may be an odd place to put such documentation, but with a search appliance in the house, what does it matter.

I'm tired of having to relearn how to find book reviews in Web of Science, so I thought I'd finally write down how to do this. I originally wrote this post in July 2007, but then the nice people at Thomson ISI revamped the WoS interface, making it even harder to use their tool to find book reviews in my humble opinion. Here are the revised instructions:

• use the Advanced Search (ugh, now you have to know how to type a complex query)
• put some keywords from the title of the reviewed title in the search box; you must put ti= in front of each one and connect them with 'and' (e.g.- ti=prague and ti=territories), or put part of the title in quotes after ti, e.g.- ti="tour de france a cultural" (note: this need not be the complete title, but it must be an exact string).
• at the bottom of the search form, set the restriction in the righthand box to Book Review

That's it. If you're lucky, you'll find more reviews here than you will in such flimsy and expensive titles as Book Review Digest and Book Review Index, which both largely ignore reviews in academic journals and mainly list only those in the popular press.

This is not the only way to do this in the new Web of Science interface, but I do believe it is the most direct.

UPDATED! Wish Week 2007: Call for Wishes

Wednesday, November 28:
Get your wishes in! Thursday, November 29 at 5:00pm is your deadline, so that all the wishes you've generated can be given their due. If you submit a wish, please plan to attend the open discussion next Tuesday for which you'll soon be receiving an appointment. Thanks for your continued support of Wish Week!

Whether or not you participated in or even remember Wish Week 2006, K-State Libraries' Wishers want you to know that this year we're doing it all over again. We'll be stepping out of our daily routine to focus on creative, nifty, and downright useful solutions to everyday problems and users' needs.

What does a product of Wish Week look like? Consider that Wish Week 2006 brought you:

• K-State Libraries Wiki
• LibStats
• New Books RSS feeds
• LibX toolbar
• Automated class registration
• Google calendar for hours and events

Just think what could emerge this year.
Does another library's cool tool inspire you to get that tool for K-State Libraries?
Do you repeatedly help users with inconveniences that you'd like to fix but don't know how?
Do you dwell on your own brilliant idea for user services but somehow never have time to work on it?

We want to hear from you! Please post your ideas and wishes as comments here, or email them to Jamene. Anything goes, as the song says, although we can't promise to churn out a product for each wish (at least, not in a week). Before Wish Week, the Wishers will be hosting an open discussion of all the submitted wishes. If you post or email an idea, don't be surprised to receive an appointment and further details about this discussion.

Wish Week 2007 will take place December 17-21 in Hale 301. We hope you'll drop by to perhaps...

• dabble in the work on your favorite wish(es)
• lend moral support
• have a snack

Please talk to any of the Wishers if you have questions: Dale A., Jamene B-K., Donna E., Harish M., Jenny McC.