Talking in the Library

Coming July 6, Get It recommends...

I don't know about you, but I really like the way Amazon.com produces recommendations when I look at a book (or some music or shoes or a phone or...). It's pretty neat to see what people buy in addition to the item I'm looking at, even if I don't want to buy that item. All kinds of Web services offer recommendations. Netflix even held a contest for people to improve the company's movie recommendations. With all these automated suggestions floating around, have you ever wished that there could be some for your research?

Wish granted.

After you get back from your July 4th holiday weekend, the Get It menu will look just a little different. Oh, it will still take you from citation to full text, catalog search, or interlibrary loan in just a few clicks. But it will also make recommendations. Based on the article you're trying to get, Get It can suggest more articles on that same topic. It will give you a full citation and the Get It button. Like the look of one of those articles? Click the Get It button to - well - get it. You'll also be able to export those suggested article citations to RefWorks or Zotero.

How does Get It know what to recommend? The software is based on research done at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Basically, the researchers were trying to turn some of libraries' ordinary usage data into value-added services. The recommender service gathers up data from many libraries to inform its recommendations. Suppose you're researching food safety and find three or four articles really relevant to your specific topic. You might recommend those articles to a friend who's researching the same thing. Now spread that out over hundreds or thousands of food safety researchers, all of whom found the same three or ten or twenty articles clustering around that topic. In the same way that Amazon.com turns data about customer purchases into recommendations, Get It's service will turn all that food safety research into suggestions for you.

Or, if you like neat and tidy summaries, you can think of it this way:
Usage creates relationships; relationships create recommendations.

Baking cookies in your car

We're pretty proud of our cookery collection here at K-State Libraries, but I'm willing to bet that our ginormous collection doesn't include this baking technique: baking cookies on your car's dashboard. 

Obviously, you can't do this just any day. It needs to be a hot day.  Real hot.  Like today.  Or tomorrow. Or this whole summer. Basically, if the NOAA temperature map is yellow and orange as it is today, you're good to go.

And you might want to use an eggless cookie dough, or use an egg substitute, or I've recently (okay, today) heard tell of pasteurized eggs.

I haven't tried this myself, and I'm curious as to whether we can entice Doug or the other folks at Barfblog to do some kind of test run for us. 

All of those qualifiers having been stated, here's how to bake cookies in your car:

Hat tip to Dave A. here in the Libraries for the story.

Image credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Digital Forecast Database, http://www.weather.gov/forecasts/graphical/sectors/centplains.php. Accessed June 26, 2009.

MLA 7th edition released

Just when you figured out the rules from the 6th edition, the Modern Language Association (MLA) rolls out a new edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.  We're still waiting for our copy--we do have the 6th and earlier editions. Until then, here are guidelines from a writing center and a library:

Purdue University's OWL
Duke University Libraries Citing Sources

And here's what you can do with all of those in-draft articles and papers that you formatted according to the older rules*:

*Unless, of course, you've been using RefWorks.  RefWorks is all set for the 7th edition--just log into your account, go to Tools/Output Style Manager, and select and add MLA 7th from the list on the left to your Favorites.  Then take whatever paper you've been writing in Word in MLA 6th and reformat it in 7th.

It's getting hot in herre...

Been outside lately?  I just hoofed it across campus and I can tell you it's getting a wee bit warm. I don't want to say hot because I know we haven't even touched Kansas hot yet. Oh, but it is coming...

So what do you do to stay cool? Nelly might say, “It's getting hot in herre, so take off all your clothes”. Umm...you can do that. Preferably at home. I'm going to go out on a limb here and and say we don't want to see any naked people in the library. Or outside the library. And really, that will only get you so cool.

So what do you do to stay cool?  Here are a few tips that I learned from a few people in the know:

• Do outdoorsy stuff in the cooler times of the day
• Take lots of breaks if you have to work in the heat
• Slowwww down so you don't generate extra body heat
• Wear cool loose-fitting clothes and a hat. Even if you feel you look like a dork, like I do
• Drink plenty of fluids. And by fluids I mean water, not adult refreshments

For more info, check out theses sites:

HOT Weather Tips
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Extreme Heat
Heat Illness
Hot Weather Precaution
Summer exercise: How to keep cool in hot weather
Hot Weather Safety Tips

Students reveal why and how they use Wikipedia

And they're using it almost exactly the same way I do.

Check out this video from Project Information Literacy, based on interviews conducted with undergraduate students at seven universities in the U.S.

When I work with students beginning, or stuck in the middle of, the research process, I may begin at Wikipedia, too.  Especially if it's a topic I know little to nothing about, like Lewis structures.  This way I can locate other search terms, related concepts, and journal articles, books, conference proceedings, and other sources of information. 

Some students already know my standard caveat speech, but I give it anyway.  "Start with Wikipedia, don't end with Wikipedia.  Any information you find in Wikipedia that you use in your paper/project/speech, you had better be able to confirm (or disprove) with another source, such as a journal article or book."  Another part of the speech, "If you use something in your paper/project/speech that you only found on Wikipedia, you have to cite that Wikipedia article."  As part of the scholarly process, your audience must be able to locate and read/hear/watch your source of information.

By the way, if you download the LibX toolbar, and the references in the Wikipedia article are correct, you may be only a few clicks away from reading or requesting those legit sources.

Faculty and Grad Students tell us what you want to learn, when

K-State Libraries is planning a Library Day for faculty and graduate students.  During Library Day, we'll offer classes about conducting research with various tools and resources through the Libraries and beyond.  We'd like to make Library Day as useful to you as possible and would appreciate your answers to this brief survey.

In the past we've offered classes throughout the summer but your feedback indicated that a more concentrated schedule would work better with your schedules.  If the Library Day that works for the most people doesn't work for you, don't worry, we'll keep offering classes in the fall and spring semesters, too.  We're also trying to record and post more classes via the Research Help @ K-State Libraries class on K-State Online that everyone at K-State can access.  Plus, you can always contact your subject librarian!

Short Cuts: Ask Dave!

Q:  Hey Dave!  I was walking into the library the other day and was like “HOLY CRAP WHAT HAPPENED??!!??”  So, um, what did happen?

A:  Dëthkløk happened.  They were touring with Windir and The Sword and all three bands came by because they heard that K-State Libraries were metal.  Horseplay and shenanigans ensued.

Actually, that’s not what happened, but it would have been seriously awesome if it has.  As awesome as sky pirates fighting ninjas riding on robot pterodactyls with laser eyes, which, coincidentally, will appear on the cover of the next Mastodon album.  We’re just getting new carpet.  Also, we’re consolidating services into one convenient stop, so when you have a reference question, need to check out books, use reserve material, and learn about the databases, you can just come to the Hale Library Help Desk, located on the second floor (once it reopens – until then come see us on the first floor in our temporary home at the former Science Reference Desk).  And one stop shopping is kind of metal.  Maybe more like Hair Metal, but the point stands.

Short Cuts is a series from K-State Libraries' Instruction Team providing library and research tips and tricks for undergraduates. Please feel free to share our articles and ideas with classes and colleagues - just give us credit!

Out with the old, in with the new

Hale Library is full of carpet - old and new!  The old carpet is being gathered and stacked on pallets until it's trucked off to be recycled.

New FLOR carpet tiles are being installed, and boxes are stacked all over the building on pallets.  The cut scraps are saved and either used to fill spots or recycled, and we're also breaking down and recycling all the cardboard boxes.  Since the installation process doesn't use industrial glues like regular carpet, there are really no strong or unpleasant odors in the building.