Win a Kobo E-Reader: Take Concordia Library's Student Survey

We want to know what you think about Concordia Library's services, collections and facilities. Give us 5 minutes of your time and you can enter your name in a draw for a Kobo e-reader. Just click on the link and tell us what you think: Please click here to fill out the 2012 Concordia Library Student Satisfation survey

Thank you for taking the time to fill out our survey. The winner will be contacted by email after April 20, 2012.

Provincial Election Information

Getting ready to vote? Visit Elections Alberta to learn more about the candidates and voting process.

Turtles and Horror - oh my!

Putting out some new stuff on the book display and a few titles caught my eye:

Life in a shell : a physiologist's view of a turtle by Donald C Jackson QL 666 C5 J28 2011

 

Extraordinary evil : a brief history of genocide by Barbara Coloroso

HV 6322.7 C64 2007

 

A history of horror by Wheeler W Dixon

PN 1995.9 H6 D59 2010

 

 

 

Extended Exam Hours April 2012

Extended Exam Hours - April 2012
In addition to our normal weekday hours ( Mon-Thu 7:45 am - 9pm, Fri 7:45am - 5pm) we have added extra weekend hours:

Saturday the 19th 8am - 7pm
Sunday the 20th 10am - 7pm

See you there!

The Cataloguer's New Book Picks

Students in the Earth Science 102 class may be interested in some new library resources that may be helpful with their biomes assignment.

Grassland productivity and ecosystem services / edited by Gilles Lemaire, John Hodgson, Abad Chabbi

    QH 541.5 P7 G7128 2011

Sand dunes : conservation, types and desertification / Jessica A. Murphy, editor

    QH 88.5 S26 2011

Biodiversity Hotspots : distribution and protection of conservation priority areas / editors: Frank E. Zachos, Jan Christian Habel

     QH 75 B538 2011

Field guide to freshwater invertebrates of North America / James H. Thorp, D. Christopher Rogers

      QL 365.4 A1 T44 2011

Drought and aquatic ecosystems : effects and responses / P. Sam Lake

       QH 541 L35 2011

Citation Obsession? Get over it!

Citation Obsession? Get over it! interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Go on a Blind Date with a Book

Go on a Blind Date with a book from the concordia Library.
The books are all dressed up and ready to be taken out. What will you get - mystery? history? Who knows! Take a chance and see.
Let us know how your date went by posting to the library blog, Facebook, or @librarycuca Twitter feed. Or simply fill out a Rate Your Date form, included with each Blind Date book.

Primary Resources About Slavery

Looking for Primary Resources about the history of slavery? Look at the Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice database of primary resources from 1490-2007.

If you are connecting from off-campus your User ID is the barcode from your ID card and your PIN is the last 4 digits of your student ID number

Lives of Girls and Women - Resources

Looking for info on Alice Munro's "Lives of Girls and Women"? Use Concordia Library E-Resources:

1) From the library homepage ,click on the E-Resources tab and choose English & Writing from the drop down menu (don't forget to hit the GO button)

2) Click on the link to the Literary Reference Center. If you are off-campus, log in with your library barcode and PIN. Search for Lives of Girls and Women (choose AT Title of Work from the drop-down menu to get the best results.)  Click on Full-text or Where can I find this to locate the article you are interested in.

3) Go back to the English & Writing E-Resources page and click on the link to the

Literature Resource Center. Search for Lives of Girls and Women (choose Name of Work from the options below the search box.) When the results appear, look at the tabs across the top of the page - the one marked Topic & Work Overviews has an entry from Novels for Students that provides a great introduction. The Criticism tab will have more in-depth information. Again, click on the Full-Text link to read the article.

 

4) Check in with the Library Info Desk staff if you would like help with any of these steps or for more research assistance. Contact us via email, telephone, or instant messaging.

 

BioOne goes mobile

"BioOne is pleased to announce the official launch of BioOne Mobile, an optimized website now available to smartphone users. With this new mobile interface, all content from BioOne's 167 journals and book series is available for easy access to faculty, students, and researchers via their iPhone, Android, and Blackberry smartphones.

Because BioOne's optimization is site-wide, there is no app to download or keep updated. Instead, users will be automatically directed to BioOne's mobile site whenever they access bioone.org from a compatible mobile device. Users accessing the site from an iPad or tablet are shown the full site for optimal viewing, but can select the mobile site if they prefer.

Just as on the full BioOne site, users are able to access abstracts and the full text of open access articles without a subscription. Users can also access their account profiles; execute complex searches, sorting by most-recent, most-downloaded, or most-cited articles; and save PDFs for future access.

Users associated with an institutional subscription can easily pair their device with their university's access privileges, giving them access to all subscribed content, whether they are in the library or on-the-go.

BioOne has created a number of resources to assist libraries and researchers using BioOne Mobile. Please visit the Mobile Resources section on our site for more information."

From the Nov. 28 email to customers from BioOne's Marketing Director Nicole Colovos

How to Use Google More Effectively

Ever wanted to use google more effectively to get what you really want.  Here are a few strategies.

http://mashable.com/2011/11/24/google-search-infographic/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

Statistics Canada to make all online data free

Need Stats? Statistics Canada plans to make all of their online data freely available starting in February 2012. Click here to learn more.

Reformation & Medieval History Research

Is your progress report for Reformation or Medieval History due soon? Find more sources to include in your paper with the help of Concordia Library.

1. Get background information to understand your topic by looking it up in an encyclopedia about that time period.

For example, you can find The Encyclopedia of the Reformation In the library's REFERENCE collection, on the ground floor of the library, the call number is BR 302.8 O93 1996. Or Medieval England an Encyclopedia, call number DA 129 M43 1998.

2. Once you know a bit more about your topic, choose some keywords to search such as the names of important people, or groups of people, involved. To find books, search the library catalogue using these general terms about your topic.

For example, if your topic is how the Reformation led to the development of the Hutterites and other religious groups you use the keywords: Hutterites, Anabaptists, Reformation, John Hutter. Try different combinations of these keywords. Make sure to try both the plural and singular forms of your keywords.

3. To find Articles Open the library's E-Resources page for History and choose an article database to search. I suggest Historical Abstracts and Academic Search Complete. (If you are connecting from off-campus your User ID is the barcode from your ID card and your PIN is the last 4 digits of your student ID number) Use some of the same keywords you used to search the library catalogue. Articles tend to be on very specific topics, so read the article summary (sometimes called an abstract) to make sure that the article is relevant to your project.

For example, searching the keyword "Hutterites" finds many articles but some of them are about Hutterites in North America and not about Hutterites in Europe during the Reformation.

To read the full article, click on the Full Text link. If there is no full text link, click on the "Where can I find this" link to see if Concordia has a copy of the article in another database. If you have any difficulties, contact the Info Desk for assistance. We'd love to help you find some good sources for your essay.

The October issue of The Corner Shelf is up on the library website. Find out about our Librarian Trading Cards, Canadian Library Month Contest, and the upcoming Governor General's Awards.

Scholarly Articles for Your History Paper

History Students: looking for scholarly articles and primary resources for your essay?

Try searching your topic in these databases - they can all be accessedfrom the History E-Resources page on the library website. (If you are connecting from off-campus your User ID is the barcode from your ID card and your PIN is the last 4 digits of your student ID number)

Historical Abstracts - TIP: Click on the "Choose Databases" Link above the search boxes and check off "Academic Search Complete" and "Humanities International Complete" to search 3 databases all at once.

Cambridge Histories Online, JSTOR, or Project Muse may also have good articles for you.

For Primary Sources try searching World History in Context or the World Digital Library

For articles, books, e-books, and other formats try the WorldCat Library Catalogue - Seach Concordia's holdings or All NEOS Libraries to see what's at the UofA, Grant MacEwan, and other libraries. You can place a hold on non-Concordia books and they will be delivered to Concordia for FREE!

If you would like assistance with your research (such as choosing keywords, finding the full-text of an article, or locating books and e-books) contact the Info Desk in person, via telephone at 780-479-9324, or online using our chat window.

Effect of Temperature on Cell Membranes

Attention Biology Students: Do you need information on the effect of temperature on cell membranes for your latest lab?

Step 1: Open the Scopus database from the library's Biology E-Resources page.

!!! If you are off-campus, you will need to log in with your library barcode and PIN# (the barcode is 13 digits long and can be found on your ID card, the PIN is the last 4 numbers of your student ID#) !!!

Step 2: Search with the terms: plant cell membrane fluidity temperature.

Step 3: Look through the results for helpful articles. If you see one you like, click on the title to read a summary of that article.

Step 4: Click on the PDF link to open the article. If there is no PDF full text available, click on the FIND IT  button to see if Concordia has that article in another database or in print. Our staff can help you if you have any difficulties or if you need to order an article in from another library.

Step 5: Once you find an article you like, look at the references the author used - they will probably help you too. You can also use keywords from this article to find similar articles.

Step 6: Download the PDF then print, save, or e-mail the article to yourself. Make sure to keep the information about the article such as what journal it was published in, the author(s), and other details.

Here's an article to get you started: Ruelland, E., and A. Zachowski. 2010. How plants sense temperature. Environmental and experimental botany 69, (3): 225-232, www.scopus.com (accessed October 13, 2011).

Wikipedia: Beneath the Surface.

Wiki-what? Whether you think Wikipedia is your friend or your foe - learn more about how Wikipedia works in this video from NCSU Libraries.

Scholarly Articles for English Class

Writing a paper for English? Get scholarly articles from the English E-Resources page

Step 1: Click on one of the databases listed here - I suggest MLA, Literature Resource Center or Literature Reference Center. Try the Canadian Literary Center if you are studing a Canadian author.
(If you are connecting from off-campus your User ID is the barcode from your ID card and your PIN is the last 4 digits of your student ID number)

Step 2: Type in the name of the novel, poem, or short story that you are studying then click the Search button.

Step 3: From the list that comes up, click on the title of the article to read a summary about it and decide if you want to view the whole article.

Step 4: If there is a Full-Text link, click on that to open the article. If there is no Full-Text link, click on the "Where can I find this" link to see if Concordia has that article in a different database, then open the full-text.

Step 5: If Concordia doesn't have the article, use the Request feature to order it in.

Step 6: Need more? Try searching the author's name or the theme/topic you are discussing, such as Responsibility in Frankenstein or feminism in Virginia Woolf

If you need help with your research, contact the library Information Desk in person, via telephone at 780-479-9324, or online using our chat window.

German Propaganda Archive

Looking for primary sources about life in a totalitarian regime? Try the German Propaganda Archive, a website of documents from both Nazi Germany and East Germany.

The Cataloguer's New Book Picks

Recently the library has acquired new versions of Short Guide to Writing about…Series. These handy guides contain discipline specific information about writing: finding sources, tips on different types of documents, citing sources, style and format. They could be very useful to you when it comes to writing that big English or History paper that’s due in a few weeks.

All of the newest copies of these books are in the Info Desk Collection. Here’s the list:
A Short Guide to Writing about Biology / Jan A. Pechenik, 7th ed.
QH 304 P43 2010
A Short Guide to Writing about Chemistry / Holly B. Davis, Julian F. Tyson, Jan A. Pechenik.
QD 8.5 D38 2010
A Short Guide to Writing about History / Richard Marius, Melvin E. Page, 8th ed.
D 13 M294 2012
A Short Guide to Writing about Literature / Sylvan Barnet, William E. Cain, 12th ed.
PE 1479 C7 B3 2012
A Short Guide to Writing about Music / Jonathan D. Bellman, 2nd ed.
ML 3797 B4 2007
A Short Guide to Writing about Psychology / Dana S. Dunn, 3rd ed.
BF 76.8 D86 2011
A Short Guide to Writing about Social Science / Lee Cuba, 4TH ed.
H 91 C962 2002