USF Polytechnic Library

Opening hours for the PCC/USF Library:
Saturday July 1st - 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Sunday July 2nd - closed as usual
Monday July 3rd - 12:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Tuesday July 4th - closed for the holiday

Happy 4th of July to all!

Friday, June 30, I will be in Tampa all day for meetings. I will be back on Monday, July 3rd.

The USF Lakeland phone system is down for the moment. You may not be able to reach me from outside USF. The problem is being worked on.

UPDATE: the system is now operational again.

I found the following webpage that lists the differences between the PubMed and MEDLINE databases:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/dif_med_pub.html .

MEDLINE is a component of PubMed and both deal with the life sciences. PubMed is free and while it may be easier to use, MEDLINE will be more specialized and will link to more full-text. Both databases are still very useful to know. The USF Libraries gives you access to MEDLINE via different platforms; the OVID platform contains a subject headings map (a list of predetermined descriptors) - the MeSH - to help you formulate your queries. It is also available in PubMed. A common strategy is to use PubMed to draft a search query you will then use in MEDLINE.

The data from the 2005 Journal Citation Reports is now available in the ISI Web of Knowledge database. This data gives information on how many times a journal was cited, how many it has cited other journals and it’s impact factor, among others.

This kind of information is interesting when you are choosing a journal to submit an article, or when you are collecting additional information for a tenure and/or promotion dossier.

Two of the ABC-Clio databases available at USF, Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life will present enhanced interfaces starting tomorrow June 22.
This new version 4.1 features will include:

• Cross-database searching between Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life
• Faster, smarter searching, including: suggested terms for searches that return no results; inverted author names; punctuation alternatives and dynamic search tips
• Ability for users to save search histories to a personal profile
• Enhanced search capability for time period searches that includes individual years and spans of years
• Ability for users to build a set of tagged records across multiple searches
• A display option for expanding all of a user’s search result records at once
• Addition of a “print-this-entry” option for each record in a search results display
• Ability to easily limit searches to English language entries only
• OpenURL-support for book entries in the Historical Abstracts database

The ACM Digital Library, specializing in computer science, will be down for maintenance today starting at 4:00 PM. The service should be restablished within 12 hours.

To be notified when the service will be back up, enter your email address on the ACM website.

I will be at a conference from Monday, June 12th to Thursday, June 15th. I will be back on Friday, June 16th.

If you need immediate assistance, you can use the Ask-A-Librarian services or, for a short, factual question, use the PCC/USF Library.

ISI Web of Knowledge (which you may know better as the platform to Web of Science) has announced enhancements:

• Easier refinement of results, one category at a time
• Greater amount of results that can be analyzed with the Analyze function, up to 100,000 at a time.

I am of course available to guide through Web of Science but online training is also available with seminars or short, recorded sessions.