Monthly Archives: April 2017

Announcing New Library Journal Subscriptions

The Claire T. Carney library has added subscriptions to 18 new journals and online access is now complete. The titles and their access information is listed below:

Acta Mathematica – an open access journal – Access is available from 1882 volume: 1
BIT Numerical Mathematics – Access is available from 1997 volume: 37
British journal of Criminology – Access is available from 1996 volume: 36
Communications in Computational Physics – Access is available from 2011 volume: 9
European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing – Access is available from 2002 volume: 1
Feminist Criminology – Access is available from 2006 volume: 1
Foundations of Computational Mathematics – Access is available from 2001 volume: 1
Health Affairs – Access is available from 1981 volume: 1
History of Political Thought – Access is available from 1991 volume: 12
IMA Journal of Numerical Analysis – Access is available from 1996 volume: 16
Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association – Access is available from 1999 volume: 5
Journal of Immunology – Access is available from 1916 volume: 1
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies – Access is available from 2000
Journal of Phycology – Access is available from 1996 volume: 32
New York Review of Books – Access is available from 1963.
Nursing Inquiry – Access is available from 1997 volume: 4
Nursing Philosophy – Access is available from 2000 volume: 1
SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification – Access is available from 2013 volume: 1

Claire T. Carney Library End of Semester Announcement

Poster of Claire T. Carney Library and Open 24 HoursThe Claire T. Carney Library will open its doors to the UMassD community for 24/7 hours starting at noon on April 23 (Sunday) until May 10 (Wednesday) when we will close at 10PM.  Library services for Circulation/Reserves, the Digital Media Center, and Reference will not have extended hours, so make sure to visit those service points during regular hours.  You will also need a UMass Pass to enter the building after 10PM and until regular opening hours the next day.

We hope you will find a variety of study spaces to choose from including our quiet study areas in the South Reading Room and Grand Reading Room (when no events are scheduled), several group study rooms available by reservation, and many individual and group study areas throughout the building.

Please be mindful that we will be close to seating capacity, so if you are at a group table and not expecting team members, please use our Open/Taken table tents to offer seats to others.

We also encourage everyone to be respectful of the space and other students by watching noise levels and picking up after yourselves should you bring any food/drink.

If you have any question, please contact our staff either at the Circulation/Reserve desk (x8750), the Learning Commons desk (x8884), or the overnight security staff.

We wish you all the best with your exams and a productive end to the semester!   

Do you use Google Scholar? Many researchers do.

Google Scholar, if you’re not yet familiar with it, searches the web for articles, books and book chapters, dissertations and theses, conference papers, and more. Unlike our library databases, you can’t use complex search terminology. You’ll also need to use your critical thinking skills to confirm that you’re looking at reliable sources, since Google Scholar gathers information from all over the internet, rather than indexing a vetted list of journals like our databases do. However, it’s helpful for locating know items from a reference list and for searching across disciplines, and can turn up some things our databases don’t. It also provides convenient access to free full-text from open access publications, institutional repositories, and other sources.

Many things you find on Google will be on publisher web sites, which will ask you to pay for access to those articles. Don’t do it! Our library frequently has what you need in full-text, and if we don’t have access to it, we’ll get it for you through our Interlibrary Loan service for no charge. If you have a Google account, you can turn on our library’s full-text (Get It @ UMassD) links, so you can easily access articles from our journal subscriptions. These links also connect you seamlessly to our interlibrary loan service, which again is free for you to use. To add our full-text links, go to Google Scholar Settings, then Library links, and search for UMass Dartmouth. Check the box next to our university name, and be sure to hit Save when you’re done.

If you use RefWorks to manage your citations, Google Scholar can export brief citations to your RefWorks account with a single click. Go to your Google Scholar Settings, and in the Search results section, look for Bibliography manager. Choose RefWorks from the drop down list and then hit the Save button. You’ll need to carefully examine the citations you export; Google Scholar citations can have errors and omissions, and you’ll probably need to make some edits to them after you get them into RefWorks. Citations exported from library databases are typically more reliable and complete.

If you’re interested in who is citing a particular article, Google Scholar provides a “Cited by” link that will give you a sense of how frequently it’s been cited and where. This is drawing from Google Scholar’s own data, so again you’ll need to critically evaluate the sources it lists. A link also appears to Web of Science, one of our subscription library databases that offers this kind of cited reference searching. If you’re doing complex citation analysis for graduate level research or tenure and promotion, contact your library liaison for assistance! Google Scholar won’t be sufficient for that purpose.

Google Scholar is a tool like any other: it’s great for some things but not for others, and it requires thought and skill to use effectively. While it’s not a substitute for the library databases we subscribe to, it can certainly be a helpful supplement, and our librarians can help you learn to make the most of it. Just contact your library liaison (https://library.umassd.edu/help/liaisons/) or use our Ask a Librarian service (https://library.umassd.edu/help/ask-librarian) if you have questions!