USF Polytechnic Library

Gale is currently experiencing intermittent problems with their online databases. They are working on it as we speak. The USF Libraries have access to several Gale databases, including Academic ASAP, Business & Company Resource Center, General One File and a multitude of online reference encyclopedias and dictionaries.

The data from the 2006 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.

You can access the Journal Citation Reports in the Web of Knowledge database. Go to MetaLib, search the database by name and click on the resulting link. In the database itself, at the very top, you will see a drop-down menu. You will see the option for the Reports. If you are from off campus, don’t forget to log into the network first.

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.

NewsBank, a database permitting to search newspapers across the country, is offering two products of use to students and instructors. Look for them in the left-hand side menu in the NewsBank interface.

• Hot Topics: updated each month, Hot Topics suggests search terms for extremely current news topics. Examples for January includes Iran and nuclear facilies, Jimmy Carter’s most recent book, education vouchers and Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
• Special Reports: those reports focus on topics of current interest. They include content from sources throughout the world to provide a global perspective, current and background information, statistics, maps, images, websites, and suggested search terms.

Note: if you search for NewsBank in MetaLib, the system will bring up all the newspapers USF subscribe through NewsBank. Click on one of the titles to access the interface and the NewsBank menu.

Welcome back, instructors! I hope you had pleasant holidays.

A quick word to remind you that I am available to meet your class to provide library instruction. I can explain the library system and services to your students - for example the library system structure, the catalog and databases; circulation issues, source citations and Refworks; etc. I can also show them how to search the catalog and the article databases. The session content will depend on your needs and the amount of time available.

If interested, you can contact me at 667-7737 or clw@lakeland.usf.edu to schedule a session.

If you search the PsychINFO database through the Ovid interface, you migth be interested to know about a new filter to refine your queries. Clinical Queries filter in only clinically sound search results by allowing end-users to set limits in as many as 9 categories—therapy, diagnosis, prognosis, reviews, clinical prediction guides, qualitative studies, etiology, costs, and economics—based on research studies by the Health Information Research Unit (HIRU) of McMaster University.

How Does It Work?
After performing an initial search, select the “More Limits” icon on the Main Search page. From the Clinical Queries list, choose a filter category from as many of the nine that are available for the specific database. Results are further refined by selecting one of three additional limiting options: “sensitivity”, which retrieves the greatest percentage of relevant citations within the database; “specificity”, which retrieves the greatest percentage of relevant articles within the search results; and “optimization”, which combines both options.