Library Intro Notes
Notes for graduate student meeting introducing library resources.
Library Services
Get help:
- Reference Desk (Ask a reference librarian: walk up, chat, email, phone, don’t be shy! Hours)
- Library website! (there is a ton of information and resources here)
Resources:
- Summit (network of 37 NW academic libraries in Orbis Cascade Alliance) and ILL (worldwide network for library sharing)
- Reserves (save your students money!)
- Book purchase requests
More stuff:
Library Catalog
Primo Discovery
- Content: everything that the library has access to (books, journals, gov docs, articles, physical and digital)
- Less focused and powerful than databases
- Use notes:
- sign in (access resources off campus)
- account (check loan status, saved items/searches/history)
- scopes (UI Library, Summit, Articles, Reserves)
- filters (date, resource type, etc)
- “personalize” (weights search results in your discipline)
- item features (citation, permalink, email, summit libraries, virtual browse)
- advanced search, personalize, facets
Databases
Database A-Z List (all databases that the Library subscribes to)
- Content: each database has a specialized set of materials with enhanced metadata to aid in discovery.
- Use notes:
- databases may not include full text access
- each may have different limitations and restrictions
- use proxy to access from off campus
Important ENGR databases:
- IEEE Xplore (standards, personalized account)
- Engineering Village / Compendex
- ACM Digital Library (conference proceedings)
- Dissertations & Theses PQDT (ETD database for most universities)
- Safari: O’Reilly Learning Platform (handy tech learning resources)
- SciFinder (patents, chemical abstracts)
Research Concepts
Scholarly literature:
- Peer Review
- Grey Lit
- Preprint archives, e.g. arXiv or engrXiv
Citation:
- Citation guide
- Citation management software (tools to store citations and create bibliographies. Start using one now, it will make your life so much easier!)
General search strategies:
- Booleans (AND, OR, NOT)
- Keywords and concept mapping (broader, narrower, related, synonyms / thesaurus. intro video)
- Citation chaining (look at what an important paper in your area cites and who cites it)
Web of Science
- Content: wide coverage of science scholarly/peer-reviewed articles from the most important journals and conference proceedings
- Index only (metadata, not full text), contains items that the Library might not have access to.
- Excellent citation tracking, enables in depth citation chaining
- Filter by highly cited, “hot in the field”, etc., to explore subject area
- Export data, citation lists
- WoS Search intro video, quick ref
Google Scholar
- Content: good content coverage of academic literature, but not all peer-reviewed and sources are not always clearly labeled
- Index only (metadata, not full text), contains items that the Library might not have access to.
- Familiar / easy to search
- Good citation tracking
- Connect to UI Library:
- Adding UI Library to your Scholar account will provide a link to full text content in search results via our subscriptions.
- Log in to Google Scholar with your Gmail account; From menu in upper left, go to settings > Library links; Search for University of Idaho, and click the check box; Click “Save”.