KML News Blast

Household products safety

The Household Products Database provides health effects and safe handling information about common household products -- for consumers. What about that shampoo you're using? or the ink for your printer? the flea/tick control for your dog? This free database, provided by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, can be searched or browsed by product, manufacturer, ingredient, or health effect. For each product, the database lists/describes any acute health effects, chronic health effects, and carcinogenicity (potential to cause cancer); provides handling/disposal information; and gives a list of ingredients with each ingredient linked to additional chemical and related information.

The information in the database comes from Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) that companies are required to compile so that employees know the hazards to which they are regularly exposed, so that employers can assure safe handling and storage, and so that emergency personnel can control and respond to hazardous situations.

However, consumers are not always exposed to the same risk as employees. Some products, especially personal care products like shampoo and deodorant, ARE used daily by consumers. However, the consumer who is painting a room once a year is not affected by risk in the same way as someone who paints every day at work or who works in a factory that makes paint. While this needs to be kept in mind while using the database, the Household Products Database is a great way to be informed about safety and handling of the products we take for granted and often handle carelessly.

Google Scholar goofiness

Google Scholar is not a research database but people use it because it appears to provide the ease of "one-box" searching while producing scholarly results. Unfortunately, it lacks the most basic quality control found in research databases, so do be aware of its limitations when you use it.

To see it's goofiness revealed, go to the advanced search screen in Google Scholar, enter search term(s), and then set date limits of 2011-2025. Of course, there shouldn't be any items for those dates yet, but you will get results. Browsing your results will reveal several problems:

1. Google searchbots look for numbers that look like years, but the searchbots will select numbers that have nothing to do with the date the item was published. These date mistakes are obvious when using the ridiculous publication dates as search limits, but the ridiculous results demonstrate that date range limiting in Google Scholar is hazardous.

2. Author names are frequently incorrect, because the searchbots can't truly recognize names and Google doesn't provide quality control to find and correct the errors. For example, do a search for bullying and limit to 2011-2025. Scan down the results and see Google's attempt to identify the authors names -- K. Theme, GI Procedures, D Learning, P Steer, etc. Among the first 10 results, only one correctly identifies an author.

3. Only one of the results in the search on bullying is scholarly.

Most of the time, you won't be aware of these problematic results, because Google Scholar will display at the top of its results list the items from known scholarly publishers such as Science Direct, etc., where the quality and consistency of publisher data makes it possible for Google to mine the data more accurately. Given that most people scan the early screens and never reach item 15,000 or item 30,000, they will see more accurate authorship and mostly scholarly items.

Library research databases structure the information about articles. That makes it possible to refine searching accurately by date, author, title, source, etc. in order to produce more focused search results than are possible in Google or Google Scholar.

South Dakota newspapers online

Use the Newsbank database to read South Dakota newspapers from Pierre, Mitchell, Aberdeen, and Rapid City and to read AP news stories from the Sioux Falls area. A link to Newsbank may be found in the "Database Quicklinks" drop down menu in the upper right corner of the Library's home page. Click on "South Dakota News Package" to search on all the newspapers at one time. Or click on the individual newspapers to search one at a time. Newsbank also includes a database of historical Aberdeen newspaper articles from the 1880's to the 1920's (for example, since L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, once lived in Aberdeen, search the historical papers for "oz").

Credible Influenza Information

Credible sources of free information about Pandemic H1N1 and the upcoming flu season are:

1. 2009 H1N1 Flu (Swine Flu) -- http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Infections provides this web page focused on H1N1 flu and information for the general public. Also, each week CDC analyzes information about influenza disease activity in the United States and publishes findings of key flu indicators in a report called FluView.

2. Flu.gov -- http://flu.gov/index.html

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides this site for "one-stop access to U.S. Government H1N1, avian and pandemic flu information."

3. Flu (Influenza) -- http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/Flu/

The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases provides current news, information, and research on pandemic, seasonal, and other types of flu. See especially the sections on "Understanding Flu" and "News & Highlights." Because the Institute's focus is scientific research about infectious disease, you'll find more information here about the scientific and clinical studies of flu that the federal government is involved in.

4. Influenza: Evidence-Based Informational Portal -- http://www.ebscohost.com/flu

As public concern about Pandemic H1N1 and the upcoming flu season continues to grow, the medical and nursing editors from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) are offering evidence-based flu-related information for free. This free flu information resource is located at www.ebscohost.com/flu and will provide continually updated, evidence-based clinical information from DynaMed™ and Nursing Reference Center™, EBSCO’s clinical and nursing point-of-care databases, along with patient education information in 17 languages from Patient Education Reference Center™. To learn about EBSCO’s editorial processes for systematically identifying, evaluating and selecting evidence, visit this page.

ebrary

Over 43,000 online books are available in ebrary, a research database newly available through the Mundt Library & Learning Commons.

To search ebrary, select EBRARY Academic Complete in the “Database Quicklinks” dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the Library homepage.

SIGNIN first !!! This saves hassle later when want to make notes and save items to your personal "bookshelf". To signin, click the signin link on the upper right side of the ebrary screen, and use your library ID and password to signin.

• After doing a search, you can select an item from the search results by clicking on its title. You can navigate through the book using the arrow keys above the book text. The arrow with a magnifying glass will let you move to the next occurrence of the words you searched. The Table of Contents is on the right side of the screen, and you can click on a chapter to navigate to the chapter.

• If you signed into ebrary, you will be able to use the highlighter to highlight items. And, on the right side of the screen, just above the contents, click on "Add to My Bookshelf" to save the book and its highlighted areas for your future use.

• If you click on the Bookshelf tab, you'll see the items you've saved to your personal bookshelf. Note that you can "add a folder" there and drag items into the folders you've created.

If you prefer audio books (and you are using Window or Linux operating systems; not Mac), ebrary has a text-to-speech option. To get that option, follow these steps,

1. The first time only, you will need to download the ebrary reader called the "Unity Reader." Here's how:

a. Signin if you are not already signed in.

b. To get the Unity Reader, click on “My Settings” at the top of the screen. Keep Quickview as your primary choice, but in the preference area for downloadable readers (labeled “When a document is open in a reader use this one”), select “Unity Reader.” Use the "Set Preferences" button to save your preferences.

c. Then go to any book and click on the blue “ebrary Reader” button. The *first time* you click on the “ebrary Reader” button, you will be prompted to download the Reader.

2. After you've downloaded it, the reader will be available whenever you click on the blue “ebrary Reader” button.

3. For text-to-speech, select a book to read and then click on the blue "ebrary Reader" button. In the ebrary reader, highlight the text to be read, and then click the “Speech” tab on the right side of the screen. On the Speech tab, click the “speech bubble” icon to hear the text. On the Speech tab, you can choose Bob or other voices to read to you.

Journal prestige

Journal Citation Reports is a tool for researchers wishing to evaluate the prestige of journals. To use it, select “Web of Knowledge” in the Database Quicklinks drop-down menu at the top of the Library home page; then use the “Select a Database” tab to find Journal Citation Reports (JCR).

JCR can be used to evaluate journal “prestige” based on impact factor, Eigenfactor score and Article Influence Score. These measures use citation data to assess and track the influence of a journal in relation to other journals.

We currently have access to the 2008 editions of JCR Science and JCR Social Science, which provide 2008 data on the journals covered. JCR Science Edition contains data from over 5,900 journals in science and technology. JCR Social Sciences Edition contains data from over 1,700 journals in the social sciences.

To examine data:

• View a group of journals by Subject Category, Publisher, Country/Territory. The default option is Subject Category.
• Search for a specific journal. Search for a specific title.
• View all journals. View all journals in the JCR edition and year you selected.

For more information, go to the JCR search page and click on "Information for New Users." Then do a search; view a group of journals by subject category. When you display the results that show impact factor, eigenfactor, and article influence scores, click on the "i" links at the top of each column for more information about each measure.

Database trials through March 17

Try out Safari Books Online and Credo Reference.

Credo Reference is a full-text online reference collection of more than 380 titles from 60+ of the best reference publishers. Credo's collection contains dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, quotations and atlases, plus a wide range of subject-specific titles covering everything from art (including the images of the Bridgeman Archive) to accountancy, science to Shakespeare, and law to literature.

Safari Books Online (from Proquest) includes online books and videos about information technology. Safari Books not only provides the texts but also provides access to files that would be on accompanying CDs. The videos are typically software tutorials. Trial access ends March 17, 2009.

Trial access ends March 17, 2009.

Instructions for both research databases may be found at http://www.departments.dsu.edu/library/whatsnew.html#Database
Click on the link to “Safari Books Online” or to "Credo Reference" to find login instructions.

SciFinder - chemistry database

The chemistry database SciFinder (a product of the American Chemical Society) provides access to citations and abstracts (and to some full articles). Not only can you “Explore References” in SciFinder (to find the chem literature), but also you can “Explore Substances” and “Explore Reactions.” After logging into SciFinder, use the Help link in the upper right corner for more information about using it. Training and support materials may also be found at http://www.cas.org/products/scifindr/sfweb.

To register and to find the login link, select SciFinder in the “Database Quicklinks” drop-down menu on the upper right corner of the Library’s web pages. The direct link to this information is: http://www.departments.dsu.edu/library/scifinder.htm. The instructions for access are important, because you won’t be able to just link into it. You first have to register and create your own personal username and login. ALSO, in the registration process, the email address you use must end with dsu.edu, AND it must be a real email address to which they will send an email allowing you to complete your registration.

“SciFinder is a research discovery tool that allows you to explore the CAS databases that contain literature from many scientific disciplines including biomedical sciences, chemistry, engineering, materials science, agricultural science, and more!"

Proquest databases - downtime

Proquest databases will be unavailable for 12 hours over the weekend during an upgrade:
Saturday, December 13 at 8 p.m. CDT through Sunday, December 14 at 8 a.m. CDT.

Environmental database

Looking for environmental information? GreenFILE is a research database by EBSCOhost that focuses on environmental issues. It provides access primarily to magazine and journal articles but also to some government reports and book chapters. Topics include "global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more." Although you could find most of these articles by doing a search of all EBSCOhost databases, the narrow focus of GreenFILE may make it easier for you to find what you are seeking. Also, the "Subject Terms" tab at the top of the database window can be very helpful for identifying words to use in your searches.

Many other sources of information about the human impact on the environment can be found by searching the Library Catalog and the web. A few key resources that keep tabs on the state of the environment include:

• Global Environment Outlook, United Nations Environmental Programme

• ENTRI: Environmental Treaties and Resource Indicators, SEDAC, the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

• State of the world : a Worldwatch Institute report on progress toward a sustainable society. This report on the state of the environment is published annually and the Mundt Library has the years from 1984 to the present. The latest edition is in the Reference Collection -- REFERENCE : HC59 .S82. Older editions are move to the Main Collection

• Teaching Resources, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
  

creepy-peepy

You, too, can find out what "creepy-peepy" -- also known as a "walkie-lookie" -- means by searching the online Oxford English Dictionary. The "wow" factor of the Oxford English Dictionary is that it provides quotations that demonstrate a word's first known use in the English language and its use through time. To find the definition and history of a word,

• use the Database Quicklinks menu in the upper right corner of the Library home page
• select Oxford English Dictionary
• on the right side of the screen, click on "Enter OED online"
• use the search box to search for the word

According to the O-E-D (O-E-D is the shortened version of the dictionary's title used by those in-the-know), "creepy-peepy" is first found in Life magazine in July 1952. Quotations from the article in Life, from a 1976 issue of the Edwardsville (Illinois) Intelligencer, and from a 1998 article in the Evening Standard demonstrate the meaning and use of creepy-peepy.

Here's what you'll find in the O-E-D:

creepy-peepy

A portable television camera used for close-up shots on location. Cf. PEEPIE-CREEPIE n.

1952 Life 21 July 18 The walkie-lookie (a new NBC hand camera which was promptly dubbed a creepie-peepie) did for the visual audience what the roving candid microphone had done for radio listeners. 1976 Edwardsville (Illinois) Intelligencer 19 July 4/5 How is CBS..going to get its creepy peepy right into that smoke-filled room where the deal is being made? 1998 Evening Standard (Nexis) 2 July 28 Posing as a martyr to the Truth as he carries his creepy-peepy camera on his shoulder.

The O-E-D also has a Word of the Day link (with an RSS feed so that you can get your daily word) as well as a link to "Lost for Words? Get an entry" where the O-E-D will send you to random words just such as "creepy-peepy".

Enjoy!

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