Library Faculty Newsletter: Fall 2017

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Five Top Tips For New Faculty Using Walden Library

Research Homepages

Ready, Set, ACCESS: How do you access full text of articles from the Walden Library databases?

Why do I find broken resource links in the Library?

Mysteries of the Library: Revealed!

What are Quick Answers?

Doctoral Student Referral Form

Upcoming Library Labs & Webinars

Library Lab Suggestions

For fun ...

Faculty Feedback Corner

Although Walden Library offers a variety of services for faculty, here are five of our favorites

1. Take a Look at Our Faculty Services Website.
   
   Our faculty services overview is your one-stop shop for getting started with the Library. The faculty toolbox details how we can collaborate on personalized library instruction. You will find our faculty newsletter, doctoral student referral form, and much more.
    
2. Meet your Subject Librarian.
   
   We have a librarian assigned to each academic department. The subject librarian facilitates communication between the teaching faculty and the Library, as well as helps faculty with research or library instruction needs. See the list of subject librarians.
    
3. Schedule a Library Lab for Your Class.
   
   Library Labs are set up and taught by your subject librarian and can cover any topic relating to library research! Perhaps your students need a refresher on how to find articles for an assignment or need assistance with an assignment, annotated bibliography, or literature review. We can help! Click here for more information and to request a Library Lab
    
4. ScholarWorks
   
   Walden Library offers an institutional repository where you can publish your research and scholarly materials for free, which increases their visibility and use. ScholarWorks is a great platform to get exposure for your work.
    
5. Request items through Document Delivery
   
   If we don’t have a published item you need, you may be able to request it through Document Delivery. Document Delivery Services (DDS) is available to all Walden faculty. We can obtain articles and book chapters through partner institutions. Complete books are not available due to licensing and copyright restrictions.

Have you tried to open a link from Google Scholar, our databases, or course readings guides and run into a link that won't open properly? It happens and we wanted to explain why! The list below provides some insights into to the most common issues with accessing resources in the library.

Technical Issues: 

As an example, a technical issue may be a firewall through your internet connection (e.g., government building Wi-Fi) or your security software (e.g., Norton Antivirus). For help or questions with these settings, you can reach out to Customer Care. If you have Satellite internet, this could also be a culprit. It could also be as simple as updating your browser cookie settings if you see the message “attempting to authenticate to a non-existent session”. Take a look at our Technical Help guide for more information about common technical issues.

Link Resolver Issues:

The Find @ Walden link resolver errors tend to be the most frequent issue plaguing our access to articles. If the database doesn't contain the required information about the journal, the link resolver won’t be able to successfully resolve to the full text of an article. 

You can see if the Walden Library has access to the article even if you're seeing this error. Searching by journal title will confirm whether or not we have access to that article in another database. Learn more about search by journal title.

Database Outages:

Although it doesn't happen very often, databases do have outages. It could mean a server is down, there is some bad coding somewhere, or perhaps they accidentally turned off our connection. There are so many things that could go wrong. The library strives to work with vendors to restore service and communicate any outages to the students. Usually, database vendors restore their services within 24 hours but sometimes it may take longer.

Google Scholar:

There are several issues that could happen with Google Scholar. The biggest issues students who are new to using Google Scholar run into is that they are asked to pay for the article. You can fix this problem by connecting the Walden Library to Google Scholar and clicking on the Find @ Walden link to the right of articles instead of the title of the article. Don't see a Find @ Walden link? Not a problem! Learn more about finding full text in the library.

Course Readings:

The most common issue with required articles accessed through the Walden databases comes from the journals being dropped by the database vendor. Once the journal is dropped, any subsequent article published in that journal is removed as well. Unfortunately, databases providers don't notify us before a journal is removed from their collection. If you run into any issues with accessing required course readings through our Course Readings guides please reach out to us at Ask a Librarian. 

Quick Answers is a searchable knowledge base that provides immediate, asynchronous, point of need help for basic questions. Most Library Quick Answers provide specific steps to complete common Library tasks.

For more complex questions the answers link to other resources, serving as a portal to other instructional materials.

Three consistently important and popular Library Quick Answers are:

• Does the Library have textbooks?
• How do I find optional or supplemental readings?
• How do I find scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles?

Here are a few new Quick Answers, created over the summer, in response to frequent faculty and student questions:

• Is the Library able to get books from other libraries for me?
• I found an article that is not in English. Is there a way to find it in English?
• Can I use the pre-formatted reference citations in the databases?

 

Do you have a suggestion for a Library Quick Answer? Send it our way! libraryliaison@waldenu.ed

If you have a doctoral student who is struggling with research, information literacy, or any other library related skill, please fill out the Student Referral Form. We will reach out to the student and do our best to assist them. 

Is there a research topic you feel your students are struggling with? Or an assignment that requires intense and in depth research? Perhaps there's a resource that students are struggling to navigate? Please provide us with some suggestions for library lab topics you'd like to see us cover and we'd be happy work with you to create it.

Do you love to read?  Love to hate the villains in stories?

Norton has put together a Periodic Table of Literary Villains that you can peruse.  How many have you met?  Who is your favorite?  Do you and your family/friends agree or disagree about which characters are the most wonderful horrible?

Did you know that the Library has created detailed, tailored guides for each of our subject areas to assist you with your research? Our Research Homepages contain a plethora of subject-specific information, including databases, e-books, government websites, tests and measures, theories, and webinars. We have Research Homepages for all of our subject areas: Business and Management, Counseling, Criminal Justice & Security, Education, Health Sciences, Human Services, Information Systems and Technology, Nursing, Public Policy & Administration, Psychology, Social Work, and Undergraduate.

The Research Homepages can be accessed via the Library’s Homepage by clicking on the Articles By Topic button on the left-hand side of the screen. While you are on the Articles By Topic page, be sure to check out our Research Starters By Population guides, located just beneath the Research Homepages. These guides are designed to help you begin research on a specific population. We currently have the following guides available: African American Research Starter and LGBT Research Starter. 

You have done your search and have found some great articles, but how do you access those articles?  It’s tempting to click on the title of the article, but that may only bring you to the abstract or to the publisher’s website where you are asked to pay.

In the Walden databases, there are a couple of ways you can access the full text of an article.  First, look for the PDF or HTML link.  These links are usually located below the item in the results page or near the top of the screen if you are looking at the abstract.

If there is no link PDF or HTML link, look for the Find @ Walden link.  Clicking on this link will either take you directly to the article or, if the article is located in more than one database, it will take you to a list of those databases.  You can then select the database you want to use to access the article.

It is also possible that there is no link to the full text of the article.  What do you do then?  

This means that the database could not find the article in the Walden Library. Just because the database cannot find the article, this doesn't necessary mean the article is not somewhere in the Library. We can check to see if the article is available.

The Library recommends that you send us an email through the Ask a Librarian link.  Send us the citation or as much information as you have and we will do the investigating.  If we cannot find it in the databases, or free online, we will send you the link to the Walden Library Document Delivery Services (DDS) where you can request a copy of the article be sent to you electronically. 

DDS is a service that Walden provides that allows you to access materials that are not available at the Walden Library.  Delivery time can take up to 7-10 days.  For information on DDS, including links to register for the service and request articles, see our DDS page here:

Document Delivery Information

You can also check your local libraries if you need it sooner. You can find information about your local libraries here:

Learn about using local libraries and WorldCat to find articles

Remember, when in doubt, Ask a Librarian.  We are always here to help.  Happy Researching!

The Library is presenting a series of webinars that are designed to help students see exactly how the Walden Library works.  We will demonstrate the ins and outs of successfully using the Walden Library.  A new topic will be presented every third Monday of the month from 8:30-9:00 pm EST.  Each month we will take an in-depth look at a different Library tool or resource, show how they work, and how you can use them to be successful in your research.  Please share the following links in your classrooms and with any students you feel may benefit from these presentations. 

If you would like to know more about the secrets of the Library, please join us for some of our recorded or upcoming webinars:

 

The first webinar, presented on September 18, 2017, reviewed the wonderful world of Library databases. Here is the link to the archived recording of the webinar:

Mysteries of the Library: Revealed! Library Databases

 

Here are links to the next three webinars in this series:

October 16, 2017 - Mysteries of the Library: Revealed! Peer Review

What's the big deal with peer review? And why do so many assignments require peer-reviewed articles? If you've ever asked these questions, then this webinar is for you. Come learn what peer review is and how you can find peer-reviewed articles in the Walden Library.

November 20, 2017 - Mysteries of the Library: Revealed! Full Text

Have you ever found the perfect article in the Library, and then not been able to access the complete article? We’ll discuss the ins and outs of locating items in full text in the Library, and options for things the Library may not have. 

December 18, 2017 - Mysteries of the Library: Revealed! Google Scholar

Google Scholar is a freely available research tool, but it can be a bit overwhelming.  Learn how to use Google Scholar to enhance your research skills, save time, and find current research on your topic.

Stay tuned for more topics to be presented in 2018.  

 

Not seeing what you are interested in?  Let us know! You can make suggestions for future webinars here:

Webinar Suggestion Form

 

Please feel free to share these Library labs with your students!

Please provide us with any suggestions about the newsletter or any other ideas you may have!