Issue No. 54 November 2004 http://library.ust.hk/
ILT and New Student Orientation
Comparing to last year, our tours, classes and online tutorial (ILT) for the new students have all enjoyed a much higher participation rate.
Tours: Using the Olympics as a theme, thirty-six tours were offered to 531
students, representing an increase of 103% when compared to the previous year. Students were introduced to various services, facilities and Olympics-related
collections in different locations in the Library.
Classes: Twenty-two instruction sessions were presented to 473 students - an increase of 88%. Students learned effective ways of searching the Library catalog, databases and the Web. A sample of 5 sessions with 129 students was analyzed. It was found that 96% of the students strongly recommend or recommend the class to others.
Information Literacy Tutorial: Twice selected as a good example for online learning by the Center for Enhanced Learning and Teaching, this tutorial (
http://library.ust.hk/serv/skills/infoliteracy.html) enables students to self-pace their learning of various information skills at their own convenient time. Seeing the potential benefits for students, Dr. John Milton (the course coordinator for Lang106A, Lang107A, and Lang108A) decided to give extra points to students who complete the tutorial. Over 300 students had tried the tutorial and its quizzes by October. To encourage students to learn the key points in the tutorial, the Library prepared two $500 book coupons for students who scored 90% or more in the tutorial quizzes. Twenty-nine students participated in this competition and the two prizes were awarded to Mr. Lau Tsz Ming (劉子銘) of Accounting and Ms.
Tsang Lai Yi (曾麗怡) of Business Management.
Most students commented favorably on the tutorial. Their remarks included: "The tutorial was very well designed. We can learn about the Library's facilities on our own" and "This tutorial is useful. It does not only introduce the Library, but also teaches about searching information on the Internet and plagiarism."
Bookmark Me@UST Congregation
With the successful launch of the Program last October, Bookmark Me@UST has now entered its second year.
For a donation of $500, we will print the names of your special ones along with the wording of your choice on an exquisite
bookplate and have it affixed to the inside cover of a book in the Library.
To recognize your support, we will set up a Photo Corner in the Library lobby for you to take pictures holding your dedicated book. You will also receive a souvenir if you donate during the University Congregation. Details can be found at the Program's web site at http://library.ust.hk/bookmarkme/.
Consortium Access to e-Journals
Some faculty and research associates have asked why the Library cannot afford to subscribe to certain expensive journals they recommend, while at the same time being able to provide access to some marginal/medical journals. In previous issues of "Notes" we have at different times featured four major
consortium/package subscriptions that the Library successfully negotiated and acquired in the past three years.
These subscriptions include Elsevier's Science Direct (373 paid subscriptions) and its Freedom Collection (1,066 titles); Wiley InterScience (58 paid subscriptions, with
reciprocal access among the JULAC libraries to 312 titles); Springer (51 paid subscriptions and 246 titles via package payment); and Oxford University Press (24 paid subscriptions, and JULAC discounted package subscriptions to 144 titles). Because the paid subscriptions constituted less than 23% of the permissible access journals, the Library
frequently received comments from our faculty on this seemingly unclear journal selection/retention policy.
To assist Library staff as well as our users in distinguishing journal titles that were NOT selected individually by the Library/faculty, a common term "Consortium Access" is now being inserted in the Library Catalog to denote journal titles that automatically come with either the consortium or package subscriptions. Users can also access the deselected titles, (approximately 500 of them) via the publishers' sites.
ProQuest New Features
There has been some major restructuring of the CD-ROM backup titles of ProQuest. Previously, these CD backup titles included: Applied Science &
Technology Plus (ASTP), Business Periodicals Ondisc (BPO), General Periodicals Ondisc (GPO) and Social Sciences Ondisc (SSO). In 2004, ASTP and SSO ceased publication, with the former replaced by a new title called ProQuest Science Journals. Full-text titles previously available in SSO have been moved to GPO. BPO remains the same.
Meanwhile, ProQuest has added a new search feature. ProQuest Smart Search suggests topics based on the search terms you provide. It maps your search terms to relevant entries in their controlled vocabulary, with suggestions
displayed above your search results on the results summary screen. They may help you to re-direct or narrow your search. You may also use ProQuest Smart Search by clicking the "Topic Guide" tab on the top menu in any ProQuest search screens.
Another ProQuest enhancement is in the email function. In the past, each article was exported as an individual email. Now multiple articles are processed as a
single email. You may also specify the format and citation style of the records to be exported.
INTERNET: Special Features of Search Engines
What can search engines do? Search for web resources, of course. Well, on top of this, they can also perform calculation, unit conversion, translation, and much more!
For example, you can type in expressions like 7086+9394, 5678-1234, 99*35, 456/7 in the Google query box to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication & division. Google also includes complicated functions like square root (e.g., sqrt(9)),
logarithm with base e (e.g., ln(17)), trigonometric functions (e.g., sin(pi/3)),
factorial (e.g., 10!), exponentiation (raise to a power of, e.g., 7^4), modulo (finds the remainder after division, e.g., 8%7) and calculates the nth root of a number (e.g., 5th root of 32). You can use hexadecimal, octal and binary numbers. Prefix hexadecimal numbers with 0x, octal numbers with 0o and binary numbers with 0b. For example: 0x7f + 0b10010101. Conversions between different units can also be done, like 100 miles in kilometers or 100 kg in oz. Detailed instructions can be found at http://www.google.com/help/calculator.html
Google ( http://www.google.com/language_tools/) and AltaVista
(http://babelfish.altavista.com/) can translate a block of text as well as a whole Web page from one language to another. Google can translate between English and Italian, French, German, Spanish & Portuguese while AltaVista includes additional languages like Greek, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (both simplified &
traditional).
If you are going on a trip and want to find out the current local time or weather of a place, you can go to AskJeeves http://www.ask.com/ and type in time in Hobart
Australia or weather in Tel Aviv. Maps of the United States and Canada are also available from Yahoo! ( http://cityguides.local.yahoo.com/u_s__states/) and AskJeeves ( http://sp.ask.com/docs/announcements/searchsmarter.html - Choose Map Search from
the latest features area).
To access your favorite search engines instantly and enjoy features like pop-up blocker, view search history, anti-spyware, you may also download a toolbar from Yahoo! (http://toolbar.yahoo.com/), AskJeeves ( http://sp.ask.com/docs/toolbar/) or
Google (http://toolbar.google.com/). Read the article "Search Toolbars & Utilities" at http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156381 for detailed listings &
Search engines are certainly doing more than just web searching. Explore the help and/or FAQ section of individual search engines and you will be able to find out more.
WEB: Migration & Enhancement of the Digital University
Archives
After a lengthy and rigorous fine-tuning of a free software package developed by MIT for maintaining digital objects, October saw the successful migration of the Digital University Archives to the DSpace repository system. This made possible Internet access to all our University publications - Academic Calendar, HKUST Newsletter, Alumni News and Genesis - dating back to their first issues. This expansion of access, from Intranet to Internet, enables not only our staff and students, but also the general public and our alumni, to access University publications from any corner of the world.
For example, if a graduate pursues a higher degree they can consult course descriptions from UST academic calendars for possible course exemptions, downloading the information for any year.
Another major enhancement is that users will no longer have to use separate logins to access different types of documents. Users can now login to the Digital University Archives using their ITSC email address and password to view,
download and print these publications, quasi-public documents, as well as other documents to which they are permitted access. Access to the records of
administrative offices that contain various degrees of sensitivity will continue be restricted to authorized individuals of the originating offices.
Visit the newly released Archives database (http://archives.ust.hk/) and you will note
that the Library has built up a sizable digitized collection of University publications and documents. Contact Archives staff ([email protected]) if you notice any crucial documents that capture the development of the university but are not yet
included. Over the next couple of months, Archives staff will be visiting individual departments/offices to acquaint users of the new systems, discuss the pertinence of our current retention policy in light of the recent enhancements and
systematically review the access policy of archival documents.
ILLiad Rollout
Since HKUST ILLiad was rolled out on 8 September, over 1,000 users have registered with this new Inter-Library Loan system, and 98% of them chose to have articles delivered to them electronically if possible. Indeed, many of them are receiving articles in such a way because more libraries are sending PDF files to us ever since we started to use the ILLiad system, which is the same system
being use by six other UGC libraries. Needless to say, this has shortened the delivery time and users can enjoy faster ILL service.
HKUST ILLiad also supports OpenURL, an enabling technology which allows users to send ILL requests directly from a database to the ILLiad system without re-keying the citations. Linking is available for over 60 databases including Web of Science, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Ovid, and FirstSearch databases.
FAQ Revised
The Library revamped its FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) this summer. As time goes by some questions are no longer asked frequently, and other new ones
become more important. We add questions created by new technology like Wi-Fi, and eliminate questions that are asked less often because the Library's catalog or Website have been improved. When we notice that Library users are starting to ask a certain question a lot, we think "This is a candidate for the FAQ."
The new categories and reduced number of questions will make it easier for library users to find the information they need. When you have a question about the Library, check the FAQ (http://library.ust.hk/faq/), type keywords in the "Search
this Server" box at the bottom of the home page, call the Reference Counter (2358-6760), email the Library ([email protected]), or use the Ask a Librarian form (
http://library.ust.hk/cgi-forms/req-reference.pl)
SYSTEMS UPDATE: WebBridge
We have recently rolled out a new feature in the Library Catalog. WebBridge provides links to specified resources based on the value of the object next to its link. This object could be a browse list or a record in the Library Catalog, or a record or article citation in a remote database.
Outgoing links show up when you search our catalog and click on the WebBridge icon - these links take information from your search or from the displayed record and plug it into URLs to search our subscription databases and e-journals.
Incoming links will show up when you are in a remote database and click on a provided WebBridge icon there - these links will take information from a remote article citation and pass it to our Library Catalog's OpenURL server, to determine if we have a subscription to that article in full text.
Institutional Repository Conference
On 9-10 December the Library will be co-hosting an "International Conference on Developing Digital Institutional Repositories". It will focus on "Experiences and Challenges" in the IR field. Our co-host in this endeavor is the California Institute of Technology Libraries.
There is growing interest among academic and research libraries in the establishment of digital repositories that allow global access to scholarly output and learning content created by their
institutions. Overall the program is designed to help conference attendees to envision and implement a plan at their own
institution which builds on the experiences of others and tries to minimize complexity and cost of a digital IR implementation.
For more information, please see http://library.ust.hk/conference2004/
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