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.

National Information Literacy Awareness Month

October 2009 is National Information Literacy Awareness Month, according to a proclamation statement issued on October 1, 2009 by President Obama. The President specifically calls people "to recognize the important role information plays in our daily lives, and appreciate the need for a greater understanding of its impact."

Excerpts from the proclamation:

Though we may know how to find the information we need, we must also know how to evaluate it. Over the past decade, we have seen a crisis of authenticity emerge. We now live in a world where anyone can publish an opinion or perspective, whether true or not, and have that opinion amplified within the information marketplace.

An informed and educated citizenry is essential to the functioning of our modern democratic society, and I encourage educational and community institutions across the country to help Americans find and evaluate the information they seek, in all its forms.

Read the complete proclamation: The White House -- Proclamation

"College Football" book signing

Meet the author of College Football and American Culture in the Cold War Era at a book signing and short program by its author -- DSU's own history professor Kurt Kemper. The event will be held at the Mundt Library on Tuesday, October 6th from 4:00-5:30. Dr. Kemper will present a short program at 4:30. The bookstore will be present with copies of the book available for sale. Refreshments will be provided.

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.

Summer hours

Summer hours are: Monday through Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. We will be closed on Monday, May 25, 2009 for Memorial Day and on Friday, July 3, 2009 for Independence Day. A link to library hours may be found in the left navigation bar on the library home page.

Library Open Until MIDNIGHT

The Library is now open until MIDNIGHT on the evenings it would normally close at 10 p.m. The Spring 2009 end-of-semester extended hours are in effect from Tuesday April 21 through Wednesday May 6 on the following days/dates:

Tuesday-Thursday Apr 21-24 8am-midnight

Sunday Apr 26 2pm-midnight

Monday-Thursday Apr 27-Apr30 8am-midnight

Sunday May 3 2pm-midnight

Monday-Wednesday May 4-6 8am-midnight