Social Work Librarian @ Play

APA goes gray...

2004-12-28T14:12:00.000-05:00

This year[at ALA Midwinter in Boston], APA will present a database approach to managing the gray literature. The talk will run from 10-10:30 at the Nantucket Theatre in the Convention Center [on Monday, January 17].
[I just got this email announcement from PsychInfo because I am on the ACRL - EBSS listserv] ...The product's name is PSYCHExtra; began this year with 43, 000 items; 30, 000 will be added each week. http://www.apa.org/monitor/dec04/databases.html
So, does this make WWWRSW more or less
valuable?

"But real world therapists don't do Research..."

2004-12-28T13:04:00.000-05:00

This article addresses in a complete way the multitude of reasons Social Work students give for avoiding learning the whys and hows of Research. It comes via Georgia State University Library from The New Social Worker. (I found it while doing my own research on RSS for librarians.)

http://www.library.gsu.edu/news/index.asp?view=details&ID=4544&typeID=61

2004-05-07T12:22:00.000-05:00

Last day for me this semester in SSW Resource Room

2004-05-07T12:01:00.000-05:00

I will be taking a break from the blog to deal with my other non-Social Work Library Projects. One involves setting up the beginnings of a library in a small, religous, elementary school. No block grants are involved. This means they are invisble in terms of our professional literature which means we have had to learn mostly on the job and that there is certainly a journal article in this project somehwere.

I hope also to get a chance to work on my other academic interest - investigating why Evangelical Christians are so keen on IVF; why their religous leaders are mum about the ethical issues involved and what Korean Christians could teach us about adoption and DNA worship.

About this Blog
I am looking into ways to improve it by adding links and such. I also want to be more graphics oriented to stretch myself. I am very much a text person, but I know most of my patrons are not...I expect to be back in about 3 weeks, still plowing through Gary Holden's WWWRSW

Until then, have a great month and thanks for reading

Log for Friday May 7, 2004

2004-05-07T11:56:00.000-05:00

Printers: no problem
Computers: SSWLIB1 gave a funky error msg when student tried to print from inside webct e-reserves..."Printer needs to be attached"...checked to see if it was attached to CSPrint and yes it was...this may be part of the problems caused by the suspected spyware on this machine...student got what she needed at a kinder, gentler computer...
Reference: more along the line of "can I have a paper clip?"...many packed in here doing last minute papers....finished drafts of training manual for general suff and one for the printers...

Log for Tuesday May 4, 2004

2004-05-07T11:55:00.000-05:00

Printers: no problems
Computers: no problems
Reference: nada; it's a morgue in here...

2004-04-27T16:50:00.000-05:00

Log for Tuesday April 27, 2004

2004-04-27T16:39:00.000-05:00

Printer: no problems
Computers: evil SSWLIB1 froze again- during a SAVE - walked the student through recovery and over to a new machine
Reference: Prof wants a specific search on best practices dealing with a program whose board she is on - gave a heads up to the team....finished the first pass on training manual on dealing with printing resources - I think I'l subtitle it : How to avoid a riot at the Printer...No time to work on my new fav project - understanding Gary Holden's WWWRSW

Log for Friday April 23, 2004

2004-04-23T12:06:00.000-05:00

Printer: no problems
Computers: SOAR registraion is in process; hearing the usual sqeaks about it; gave up my workstation at 10 to the registration cause...students were very grateful; the email citations feature on Proquest appears to not be working, but I have been too busy to fully test - will do so next week and then tell MF if it's bad; SSWLIB1 &2 are freezing up intermittently- will alert help desk by email; still haven't figured out how to save predictably to a CD...
Reference: student needing help getting full text from Psychology Journals. She had not been successful in doing her search and was delighted in getting one on one help; she recorded the process as if she had never seen the DB before... Investigated how to use RefWorks in a group manner as requested by a prof who actually had read one of the Tech Tidbits...which of course made my day; sent this info. to my boss for her to walk through it and then pass onto the prof.; working on training manual for the reource room - concentrating now on how to fix printing problems.

RefWorks - it has so much promise...

2004-04-20T16:42:00.000-05:00

But at my college, it just seems like a pain, unless you really diislike formatting footnotes and bibliographies. And it makes sense for doctoral dissertations. But that's about it. There is no uniform interface for RefWorks with respect to all of our databases. And the cool cite-n-write feature is not useable on campus...only on your home computer. And the Search Online Database feature allows only limited access to one database - the Simmons OPAC and then what you can search for on the OPAC is not clear. I have mixed success with the searches. What is the point of this feature? If I ran the zoo, i would build an interface around the RefWorks logon that gives the Simmons view of it - the features that work for Simmons...this tool is just so unfriendly and reminscent of everything I dislike about libraries...

Log for Tuesday April 18, 2004

2004-04-20T16:26:00.000-05:00

Printer: no mechanical problems; student did have problem printing out the right form of her powerpoint slides - she was very happy to find out the magic that happens when the Print window is displayed for PPT with its own particular options.

Computer: SSWLIB1 giving intermittent problems again same "shell hook.." problem. Occured this time when student trying to save to floppy from a Word doc. On our new computer, I discovered from my collegue, JK, that the floppy drive can be attached to the front of the computer as well, where you can also put in the USB.

Reference: Professor requested me to print out 2 items while she was in class. I neglected to get the full bibliographic info from her and so was able to get her only one article.

Tech Tidbits: worked out a second article on RefWorks- this time focusing on the databases that have a big, fat RefWorks button on the results page. These of course would be the databases that CSA gives us; CSA also being the owner of RefWorks.

Correction to Miss Ratio for WWWRSW

2004-04-20T16:22:00.000-05:00

Last week I did a tiny search of WWWRSW, playing with ratios of search results. The correct Miss ratio should have been 1 miss to 8 hits = 12.5%. I am still working out the usefulness of this ratio...

Correction to WWWRSW miss ratio

2004-04-20T16:09:00.000-05:00

Last week I miscalculated the miss ratio for an initial, tiny search I did on WWWRSW. It should have been 1 miss for 8 hits = 12.5%. I am still working out the usefulness of this ratio...

OOPs - I made a mistake w/ repsect to WWWRSW

2004-04-16T12:08:00.000-05:00

In my post last Tues, I miscalculated the miss rate for a search in Holden's WWWRSW. It should have been 1/8 or 12.5%. I am still working on the utility of this ratio...stay tuned for further developments...

Log for Friday, April 14, 2004

2004-04-16T11:55:00.000-05:00

Printer: having intermittent problems with 3 workstations; notified helpdesk
Computers: one workstation brings up a rougue site when the Internet Explorer Icon is clicked; in my explorations on the desktop, I clicked on another IE icon and got a very strange error msg; sent this to helpdesk; on all of the computers I have noticed no similar toolbars which is odd because the user is typically not allowed access to those settings. It is particularly annoying when you can't find an icon to Webmail or WebCT. The problem will likely be solved with the new computers expected in the near future; but it would be good to understand how these toolbars were able to be altered.
Reference: no requests; semester is dying down; spent most of my day figuring out system weirdness, both computer and administrative.

Log for Tuesday April 13, 2004

2004-04-13T16:44:00.000-05:00

Printer: I received an error msg I had never seen before; it may be related to our new computer ; sent email to C.
Computers: Technology brought up a new computer for assistant's desk. Only problem so far is no floppy drive. SSWLIB3 kept freezing in WebCT even with powering off and on; SSWLIB1 froze once but is okay now.
Reference Questions: A student I directed to the City's main library for a resource found that they really didn't have it - even though it was listed in the catalog. Quite Distressing. A student wanted help with a Word/Excel problem; I was able to help a bit but not completely. A fellow student was able to help her completely. At least she left happy. Anothe student failed to find two articles her professor says is on reserves; we looked in WebCt and through the library page, but no luck.
Backgound Tasks: learning about Gary Holden's WWWRSW site; it appears quite rich but it's not apparent what it's made of...

When do we use Gary Holden's WWWRSW site?

2004-04-13T15:59:00.000-05:00

The Social Work library of my school plus many others lists WWWRSW as the web-resource for Social Work students and professionals. I have ambled through this site but could never get a handle on it which meant I never recommend it to SW grad students. It didn't appear to be a problem because most of the time all they are required to use is peer-reviewed journals. But down the road, when the students graduate, they will not have access to all of our library databases. And with Evidence Based Practice (EBP) rearing its head, they will need access to good quality evidence that will hold up to an HMO review process.

So I have started to work at understanding WWWRSW- in the hope that it could prove an acceptable substitute for our library databases. I missed the sites's "about us" button on the bottom of the page which led to a bibliography about the site - I had done a lit search on my own and had come up with some of the articles on my own (but not all). The key finding is that this site is built around Grey Literature...so now I am looking at what exactly constitutes Grey lit for Social Work..

In the meantime, I did a search for "evidence based practice", choosing Exact Phrase and got 8 hits. I was expecting to see a link to University of Michigan's Social Work Library that has excellent links, but it was not listed. Four of the 8 did look relevant - particularly the last one - a site based in the UK dealing with children. So the relevancy ratio so far (for this extremely small sample )is 50% and the miss rate 1/10 or 10%. More later.

Log for Friday April 9, 2004

2004-04-09T15:22:00.000-05:00

Printer: ink getting lighter; did the cartidge shaking trick which stretched it out another hour but when started getting blank again - I replaced cartridge.

Computers: SSWLIB6 refused to print and yes I checked that it was hooked up to the CSPint network. Help Desk just said to turn off/on which I did and all was well.

Reference: helped student do last minute search for specific legal cases related to Patriot Act for Policy class- after the class, the Prof came and thanked us librarians for helping out her students so well on their policy projects. Go SSW Lib Team!

Found articles for student doing project with a Harvard class; her topic was unusual enough to give vocabulary problems and she was overwhelmed with the results given her by the last librarian. As I talked with her, I realized she was not familiar with Serial Solutions or WorldCat. As I walked her through them, with a detour through the BPL catalog, she began to feel more in control of her searching. She now realizes we can save her hours of time; I suspect she will be a regular...yeah!

Helped student figure out how to save a file and print it from email.

Tech Tidbits: did a first pass through RefWorks. I am having a love-hate relationship with this piece of software. It's a pain to get into; it lies about what it can do and nowhere in my library do I see any literature explaining what it really is about. It's just lying in wait to seriously annoy unsuspecting students...but it's the only citation manager we have onsite so we just have to make peace with it. It just bugs me that the library released it w/out documentation pointing out its weirdnesses- it makes us look so incompetent and patron-unfriendly.

log for Tuesday April 6, 2004

2004-04-06T16:46:00.000-05:00

Printer: no fix since Fri; but seem to work if Tray 3 is pulled out...still awaiting the wondrous M. C. says a fix-it ticket has been put into the system.

Reference: helped a student find PsychInfo from the Main Simmons page. By her comments, I don't believe she had ever accessed it in this room or anywhere while at Simmons...how could this be for a graduate SW student?...finished search for websties that help refresh SW as to how to evaluate research - for Boss G.

Tech Tidbits: the glories of using "Cited References" in PsychInfo

Log for Friday April 2, 2004

2004-04-02T12:41:00.000-05:00

Printer has had a persistent and invisible paper jam since mid morning. Had 3 folks up here from Tech Support. They have an idea that it is the paper lift and will have someone higher up the techy chain come and look at it. Thank goodness students have access to another departments'resouce center - or it could get very ugly in here...

Reference: worked on boss G's request to find websites that help refresh alumni on how to read and evaluate research. Google, Altavista and Gary Holden's site (his dictionaries) prove usful. Psychcrawler gives a mess of results but I don't see how they are relevant and then it just hangs up (as usual). Still have more to plow through - looking more now at statistics helps not directed so much at a particular field.

Log for Tuesday March 30, 2004

2004-03-30T17:51:00.000-05:00

Printing: student clicking on her jobs in CSPrint, all is accepted, but no printouts for what seems forever...and then it starts spitting out. This happened around 5:20. I suspect that CSPrint was having a huge amount of end of day jobs sent to it. But I realized it would be helpful to know what all the codes mean in the Status column on the CSPrint screen. File that under: future training for worker-bees.

Reference Qestions: I wasn't able to help a student who wanted to know how to email all his classmates. I told him that I thought it was controlled from someone on the first floor. He asked a teacher nearby and she said it could be done via WebCT - duh! I should have realized that...and this is not the first time I have heard students asking this question.

Ongoing search: spent bulk of day on search for history of FBI misuse of powers.

Tech Tidbits: actually had time today to do one - did the new kid on the block - "Bibliography of Asian Studies"

Log for Fri 3/26/2004

2004-03-26T13:07:00.000-05:00

Priniting - student unable to print a powerpoint out of WebCt, but fellow student said she had done it successfully in the lab under the library, so she went there

Reference - near end of shift, Patriot Group asked for:
Historical moments when FBI has had more extensive investigatory powers and used them...student wants to buttress the argument that "If FBI has powers, it will use them" I told her I will be able to work on it Tuesday.

Finished Prof. B Blog search

Work today - mainly searched for counterterrorism efforts/human rights issues in other countries for the Patriot group. handed off to the student.

Items on the Horizon : the boss visited and asked if I'd be able to work on a website presentations on evidence based practice (EBP) for newbies - near end of semester...still the question remains, how will social workers get tiimely access to their trade journals after graduation - particularly given the demands of EBP?

W

2004-03-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

Dear Dr. B.

This is the last of my blog talk - specially for you.

I figured out why I couldn't find Laura Ingraham (I wasn't spelling her name right...like the pun.?..forgive me...). But she doesn't Blog per se anyway. Her felllow blonde - Ann Coulter - does blog, but only weekly.

Let me wrap up the choices:
I gave you 4 each of progressive and conservative blogs plus 6 I couldn't label. I didn't weed it down more than that because I just didn't feel right making that value judgement.

take care,

Winifred Flint

2004-03-26T11:34:00.000-05:00

Hi Prof. B,

These are my last of the blog choices - keeping in mind your strong desire for diversity.

Winds of Change by Canadian Joe Katzman. Award winning site . Tends to Conservatism; much knowledgable commentary on Middle East and Israel.

These next bloggers are definitely not conservative...their motto:
It's time for the Christian Right to meet the right Christians

ummm....the URL for this group isn't coming up in Blue for this blog software, so I'll just give it the old-fashioned way...
http://theRightChristians.org/

2004-03-19T12:51:00.000-05:00

Hi Prof. B.

These are blogs that I want you to know about, but they may not be exactly what you are looking for. One is a very new blog which will cease after the 2004 presidential campaign. It lists candidate statements and tracks their validity. I found it via the Christian Science Monitor via a Lexis-Nexis search - CampaignDesk from the Columbia Journalism Review.

The other blog touches on a population not heard much from in blogland - feminists, but it is more a bulleting board than a blog with a known editor. I found it via The Web Review : The Feminist Blog