6: Library Connections, January-February 2012

Message from Kim Isaac 

The University of the Fraser Valley Library publishes Library Connections in pdf format on the library website, monthly, during fall and winter terms.

This issue was produced by the library newsletter team: Mary-Anne MacDougall, Patti Wilson, Shawnna Pierce, Heather Compeau, Selena Karli and Lisa Morry.

Contributors to this issue: Patti Wilson Kim Isaac Heather Compeau Mary-Anne MacDougall Brenda Philip Auriel Heron Diane Nosaty Lisa Morry

Feedback?

[email protected]

[email protected]

On the cover: Snowy photo courtesy of MarCom’s Auriel Heron. Thanks to ETS’ Diane Nosaty for photos of Hongfei Li, Colleen Bell and other pic-tures. Thanks to library technician Korina Scott for modeling for the photos in the mobile devices story on pages 3 and 4 and thanks to shelver Johanna Sawer for modeling for the book sale photo on page 13.

Kim Isaac

University Librarian

“Like a key to a door, indexing opens up the source for researchers to use.”

—Mary-Anne MacDougall, page 5

2

Something interesting is going on in the world of scholarly journal publishing. At the time of this writing, 7,287 research-ers have signed a boycott against one of the world’s largest academic publishers, Elsevier. For years, librarians have been concerned about some of the practices of the large, commercial, academic journal pub-lishers. Recently a growing number of university faculty re-searchers have also started to recognize that something isn’t right. The Cost of Knowledge boycott against Elsevier began on January 22nd, 2012, and has received a significant amount of coverage in academic and mainstream media since then. The current scholarly publishing model looks something like this: researchers, usually employed by universities and often additionally supported through grants from publically-funded agencies, conduct their research and write up the results, of-ten in the form of journal articles. The researcher/author then sends the draft article to a prestigious scholarly journal in the hope of being published. If the journal thinks the research has merit and the article has some potential, the article is sent out to peer reviewers for their comments. The author may make some changes based on the peer feedback, and then if all goes well, the article is published. So what are the concerns that would lead researchers to continued on page 11

Inside

4 Relevance ranking boosts catalogue searches

5 Home-grown databases fill in gaps

6 Librarian Colleen Bell: modern quilts

8 New look for library databases

10 Turning equipment off to save energy

11 Familiar faces now permanent staff

13 Chilliwack book sale blowout

Research databases at your leisure or on the run 

3

Reference questions librarians get:

“I need to find out Ibid's first name for my bibliography.” 6 

4 

By Patti Wilson

A growing number of research databases and other sites are opti-mized for viewing on your iphone, iPad, Android phone, or other mo-bile device. Many sites now have a mobile friendly version of their interface, and can be accessed using a spe-cific mobile URL. Some sites detect that you are using a mobile device, and auto-matically provide a mobile version, such as UFV Library's Libguides. Other databases have devel-oped mobile apps, which can be downloaded from the Android Mar-ket or iTunes App Store. We have created a continued on page 4

Relevance: changes to searching books

and videos deliver a Google-like experience

4

Research from your mobile device in the coffee shop, between classes or while wai ng in a line‐up  Continued from page 3

Mobile Search LibGuide: http://libguides.ufv.ca/MobileSearch. with information on how to set up some of these mobile apps. The guide will continue to grow as apps are developed and tested. Where to start? Check out EBSCOhost instructions on the Mobile Search Guide works well and allows access to a wide vari-ety of databases. For questions, call Patti Wil-son at local 4277.

By Heather Compeau

You asked and we heard you. Systems and Cata-loguing Librarian Hongfei Li has changed the way results display when searching for books and videos in the library catalogue. Formerly search results displayed based on the date we added the item to the collection. Members of the Library Advisory Committee suggested we change our tactics. Relevancy ranking now brings more relevant titles up to the top of the search results. The more fre-quently the search terms appear in catalogue rec-ords, the higher an item will appear in the results list. This is especially helpful when using more gen-eral keyword search terms, such as “environmental sustainability,” which returns 290 results, with “Sustainability accounting and reporting [electronic resource],” as the first result, “Environmental man-agement accounting for cleaner production

[electronic resource],” as the second result and “The SAGE hand-book of environment and society [electronic resource]” as the third result. Relevancy ranking only works for focused searches. The function is turned off when a keyword search re-trieves more than 1,000 records. Why? Relevancy ranking is not like other sorting. It counts how many times the search words appear in a library record. It takes time to calculate the ranks and so if the limit is set too high, the display would be very slow. Try it out!

Systems and Cataloguing Librarian Hongfei Li

5 UFV home‐grown databases fill research gaps  

By Mary-Anne MacDougall

When I was doing my history degree at Simon Fraser University, nearing graduation, I realized I had a decision to make. Should I do an advanced degree in History, or should I go to library school? I decided on a career as a librarian. I haven’t re-gretted that decision one bit over the years. Don’t get me wrong, I love his-tory and have since I was a child. What makes my job as a librarian at UFV even more fulfilling is the fact that I get to work with history students at the reference desk and in the classroom. I get to keep my hand in, so to speak, in the historical world. Some-times I don’t know who is more excited about a his-tory reference question, me or the student! As well, I’m chal-lenged to meet the needs of the history fac-ulty as they are keen, discerning and commit-ted users of our collec-tion. I am the liaison librar-ian to the History depart-ment and this relationship has provided me with rewarding work experiences. On a parallel journey, UFV librarians have been engaged in a discussion about scholarly activity and our work here as faculty at UFV. Two projects that allowed me to research and develop my own knowledge in library science were the Woman’s Own Index and the South Asia History Bibliography. I was privileged to work with Dr. Jack Gaston (Professor Emeritus) and Dr. David Milobar, two His-

tory faculty members, who share a common passion for opening up areas of literature for students’ use. The germ of each database project began with these two faculty members’ own research work. Both began to accumulate sources, and over time it became apparent to them that there was a gap in the existing body of indexed literature. Indexing, af-

ter all, is the access point for a researcher; if a book or periodical isn’t indexed, its con-tents will remain undis-covered. Like a key to a door, indexing opens up the source for re-searchers to use. Again, both Jack and David understand that these two projects are not exhaustive in scope, but their vision has opened up histori-cal sources to students studying women in 19th century Britain through the Woman’s Own In-dex and the history of South Asia and its peo-ple through the South Asia History Bibliog-

raphy. Once Jack and Da-vid secured funding for

the Woman’s Own Index from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and from UFV for the South Asia History Bibliography, I was able to de-vote some time to working on database selection, metadata description, subject authorities, and data entry procedures, among other tasks. The projects drew on the expertise of UFV Librar-ian Colleen Bell and Librarian Mark Jordan, Head of Systems at SFU Library. As well, the Woman’s Own continued on page 12

Librarian Mary-Anne MacDougall shows library technician Heather LeGood historical documents during the October opening celebration for the Heritage collection.

Colleen Bell: Modern librarianship: mashing

disparate materials together to create something new

By Lisa Morry

Talking with Information, Liter-acy and Web Services Librarian Colleen Bell about quilting is like turning on a fire hose and letting it flow. Quilting is what she does when she’s not working in the li-brary, teaching or studying for her Masters in Educational Technolo-gy and Learning Design. Colleen will explain enthusias-tically about jelly rolls and sand-wiches and challenge quilts in the specialized language that quilters use, as well as the four or five quilts she currently has in pro-cess or the new quilt she’s plan-ning to start at an upcoming quilt-ing retreat. It’s not so much what she says as her evident enthusi-asm for it. “Last year I completed more quilts than in any other year and probably than I’ve done altogeth-er in my entire life,” she said. A recent article on Colleen, who was Miss January in the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild news-letter (http://www.fvmodernquilt.com/uncategorized/miss-january-2012-colleen-bell), includes pictures of all eight of Colleen’s last year’s designs and shows how each one is different from the others. Colleen won’t divulge details about her latest quilt. “I have a mock-up for a quilt on my bulletin board that I’m going to be working on this weekend for the Lions

Gate show.” The quilt is a secret because it will eventually be en-tered into a blind competition.

Publishing details would give away which quilt is Colleen’s. continued on page 7

        UFV library’s Colleen Bell with one of her quilts 

6

continued from page 6 Colleen belongs to not one, but two quilting guilds. The Lions Gate Quilters Guild in North Vancouver, a traditional quilting club, is the guild Colleen has belonged to the longest, for which she edits the website (http://www.lionsgatequiltersguild.com), and which also includes among its members her cousin and aunt. The second guild, The Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild, is part of a new movement in quilting in which members are typically, but not necessarily, younger, Colleen says. “They take traditional quilting and give it a modern twist.” Unlike traditional quilters, mod-ern quilters use more varied fabrics or other materials and create nega-tive space within their designs, Col-leen says. Fabric designs are more likely to incorporate solids than pat-terns, such as batik fabrics, and are less representational in concept than traditional quilts. Modern quilters reject some of the foundational standards of more traditional quilters like pre-shrinking the fabrics and ensuring corners match up. “Modern quilters don’t care. If the fabric shrinks up and the threads pull together, that’s part of the beauty of the quilt,” Colleen says. “Some modern quilters incor-porate natural objects like twigs and other things they find in nature into their quilts.” Quilts do not have to be made from fabric, although Colleen’s quilts are all fabric quilts. She says she can see herself experimenting

with creating her own fabric de-signs. “I’ve taken some classes in fabric painting and fabric design and I’m intrigued by that.” Colleen has her sewing machine firmly planted in both traditional and modern worlds. She does experi-ment with traditional quilting con-cepts. The first quilt she made was put together with a series of cross-stitched Victorian houses she had created. Like all her subsequent efforts, Colleen gave this quilt away. “I put it together and gave it to my mom,” she said. Colleen gives away all the quilts she makes, mostly to family but also sometimes “just because,” she said. “To me that’s more fun than waiting for a special occasion. It gives me a lot of pleasure to give something away that I created.” Giving away quilts is part of the mandate of the Lions Gate Quilters Guild, which includes community service through a club organization known as the Lions Gate Commu-nity Quilt and Society Charity. “We distribute quilts to the neonatal unit at Lions Gate Hospital, to women’s shelters and to people who are dis-placed. We sent quilts to Japan af-ter the most recent earthquake and we give quilts for stillborn babies so they have something to wrap them in.” As might be expected, Colleen, an academic, has done some re-search into the modern resurgence of quilting. Traditionally quilting was a very utilitarian practice, she says. “In Canada and the US it got pretty cold in winters and they

needed ways to keep warm. They would use anything they had around; batting could be an old wool blanket. Fabric could be old clothing and it was all sewn by hand. It was also a very social ex-ercise with women working togeth-er in quilting bees.” “It wasn’t until the 60s and 70s that quilts started to be considered as heirloom objects,” Colleen says, quoting Sociologist Marybeth Stalp. “When it revived, women got into quilting because they wanted to see a legacy of some kind. That’s when you started seeing judging at quilt shows.” “Showing quilts is a way of shar-ing what we do,” Colleen says. She shows her quilts, but she’s not try-ing to win anything. It’s part of the guild atmosphere, which is all about learning and sharing. For Colleen, who is a full-time librarian, a part-time teacher and a part-time student, quilting is a way of de-stressing, while feeling pro-ductive and creative at the same time and using a different part of her brain. “There are opportunities for creativity in my job,” says Col-leen, who among other things is looking at re-designing the library’s web site, “and as a student I’ve got opportunities to stretch myself but I find I need some extra thing.” For Colleen, quilting is also a social activity. She keeps quilting supplies in her car’s trunk and quilts with other quilters in her guild, with family members who are also guild members or at quilting continued on page 12

“Showing quilts is a way of sharing what we do” 7

8

By Patti Wilson

Database News January 2012 The new year comes with the launch of new da-tabase interfaces for a number of our products.

Project Muse Project Muse provides full text scholarly journal articles in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Pro-ject Muse is launching a merged e-book and journal platform. Please note: UFV Library has not partici-pated in the e-book content at this time. The database URL and persistent links should remain the same. Highlights of the new interface include: - Faceted searching, enhanced browsing - Search box on each page of the site, with predic-tive search terms - New access icons to help users clearly identify

content to which they have paid ac-cess, free sample content, and open access content

Books In Print (Global Edition) Books in Print is the world’s larg-est bibliographic database, used for locating ordering information for print and e-book publications. The newly designed platform incorporates a more visually appealing look, facets to limit by format, publisher, date, target audience, market, language, price and more, and the AquaBrowser word cloud. Continued on page 9

New look for library databases 

Collections Librarian Patti Wilson

Gale Virtual Reference Library featuring a sample of a two-page view for a more book-like experience. 

9

Continued from page 8

H.W. Wilson Databases now provided by Ebscohost The venerable H.W. Wilson databases, including Art Full Text, Humanities Full Text, Social Sciences Full Text, Biological and Agricultural Index Plus, Reader’s Guide Abstracts, General Science Ab-stracts, and Applied Science and Technology Index, have been purchased by Ebscohost. As of January 2012, these databases will be searched using the familiar Ebscohost platform (think Academic Search Premier). According to their FAQs, all persistent links to ar-

ticles should redirect. However, if you have saved articles in a My Wilsonweb folder, you should trans-fer these to a myEbscohost account.

Gale Virtual Reference Library Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) provides

subject specialized encyclopedias from prestigious

academic publishers including Greenwood, Elsevier,

MacMillan and Gale, with titles in the disciplines of

business, environment, history, law, medicine, reli-

gion, science, and the social sciences.

The new platform includes book covers, facets to

narrow searches, and an optional two-page view for

a more book-like experience.

Books in Print: new features for the world’s largest bibliographic ordering database 

Bowker’s Books in Print has a new look and new features, including word cloud.

Women in literature Religion 

Specula ve philosophy Belief and doubt 

History and cri cism 

Ethnicity in literature 

Religion and science 

Looking for new ways to save energy and 

cash: turning off computers is one of the best By Brenda Philip UFV Library walls aren’t the only part of the li-brary going green. We invited Sam Thomas, UFV’s Energy Coordinator, to attend our November staff meeting and give us some tips on greening the li-brary. Our Green Team initiatives began with an energy use audit. We already knew the library uses a lot of energy, although much of that is in our public spac-es. One of our Abbotsford staff members snuck around after staff had gone home and recorded what unnecessary items had been left on. We found moni-tors, computers and speakers still sucking back the wattage after everyone had left for the day. In November, we participated in “Turn it Off Week” during which staff members were asked to think about ways in which they personally and the library as a whole could reduce energy consumption. Here’s what we came up with: some of us pro-grammed our computers or monitors to turn off after set idle times and we worked with Information Technology technicians to develop automatic shut offs for the many computers in the library’s public areas. Although most of these computers were turned off manually each night, now they are turned off automatically. Turning off computers at night is the single most powerful energy reduction measure we could take, according to BC Hydro’s Power Smart guide. Computers left running after hours waste “about 500 gigawatt-hours of electricity each year in BC, an amount that translates into about $29 million in annual electricity costs,” states BC Hydro’s com-puter management tips page. In February we wore ugly sweaters as part of Na-

tional Sweater Day, an event that encourages people to keep warm with clothing rather than heat sources. Running an energy-hogging space heater for eight hours a day, six months of the year, consumes energy that could cost $123 a year, according to BC Hydro. We even discovered a way to keep fit and green

at the same time. Did you know that you can burn 23 calories per work day by avoiding elevators and in-stead walking six flights of stairs? That may not seem like much, but it works out to about 1.6 pounds, which is equivalent to what the aver-age person gains—and never los-es—each holiday season! And don’t use the excuse that you’re carrying heavy books. Lifting extra pounds up the stairs just burns more calo-ries. Saving energy saves the library money. We’re all winners when we reduce energy consumption at work and at home. Sam demonstrated how reducing energy consumption at work can benefit our energy use

at home by reducing overall demand. And although many staff members won reusable mugs for correct answers to an energy quiz during our staff meeting, the overall winner is the environment. The UFV Green Team is always looking for more members. Please contact Sam Thomas if you’re in-terested in making a difference ([email protected]).

We’ve put up these posters around our libraries: BC Hydro Power Smart poster from h p: nyurl.com/85hr9bf 

Circula on and Data Services Librarian Brenda Philip 

10

Permanent contracts for Librarians Diane Cruickshank and Selena Karli  

11

By Mary-Anne MacDougall In January Diane Cruickshank and Selena Karli received permanent part time contracts after many years of hard work and dedication to the UFV community of learners. Both librarians have many years of profes-sional librarian experience here at UFV; Selena started working at UFV in 2000 and Diane in 2006. Selena has worked at Douglas College, Van-couver Community College and Vancouver Public Library, and Diane has worked at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Capilano Col-lege. Both librarians provide reference services and in-

struction to our students as well as work on collection development and Libguide (guides to research) continued on page 13

Diane Cruickshank  Selena Karli 

continued from page 2

boycott such a well-known and prestigious academic publisher? Here are a few: The researcher’s goal in getting published is to

disseminate and make available to others the re-sults of their research. The commercial publish-er’s goal is to make a profit, and it does this by restricting access to the research results. Read-ers must pay for the article or the journal in which the results are published, or have access to a library that pays for the journal or can provide ac-cess through interlibrary loans.

Many large commercial publishers are actively lobbying against initiatives and draft legislation that would allow or even require research that is publically funded (by universities and granting agencies) to be openly and freely available.

The large publishers cluster their many journals – now almost completely electronic – into “bundled” packages, and libraries are forced to license the entire bundle even if only a few journals within it are actually relevant to their users. Individual journal titles are priced at such a high rate that title-by-title licensing is not an option for libraries.

Large, commercial academic publishers are mak-ing significant annual profits, while researchers, authors and peer reviewers provide their services for free, and libraries and their parent universities struggle with budget cuts during troubled eco-nomic times.

The migration from print to electronic journals has provided tremendous gains in access to published research. For example, the UFV Library now pro-vides access to about 63,000 electronic journals, compared to our approximately 450 print journal sub-scriptions. Some of our e-journals are open-access publications, freely available to anyone with access to the internet. But many e-journals are available only through licensing, and the only way that the library can continue to provide access is if we continue to pay the annual licensing costs. Librarians and re-searchers need to work together to influence the eco-nomic model of scholarly publishing. When you have some time, check out The Cost of Knowledge web site, and perhaps some of the other online reports and discussions that have sprung up around the boycott and the issues behind it.

Why boyco  a pres gious academic publisher? 

12

Access home‐grown databases through libguides 

Quil ng is de‐stressing, produc ve and crea ve 

continued from page 5

Index project drew on the expertise of a team of col-laborators who Jack brought together from Canadian and British universities. These collaborators, who are scholars in the field of Victorian Studies, reviewed the primary source periodicals for indexing and then entered the bibliographic records into the database. For the South Asia History Bibli-ography, we drew on RefWorks, a bibliographic management software application, as our database sys-tem. We were fortunate to have one of our own library technician stu-dents, Tamarack Hockin, enter the vast number of records David had compiled over the years. A task that could have taken many months to complete was accelerated when Colleen worked magic converting Word files into an Excel spread-sheet which was then uploaded into RefWorks.

We are very fortunate in UFV library to offer our students and faculty access to first class historical databases such as Adam Matthews Digital Collec-tions and Project Muse. These commercial databases are complimented by our own home-grown databases. These sources

will benefit our students and faculty for many years to come, while at the same time, my work and career have been greatly enriched by the experience. The Woman’s Own Index is listed under Primary Sources in UFV’s British & European History Libguide. Also ac-cess the index through this link: http://journals.ufv.ca/cwis_ucfv/SPT--

Home.php?ResourceOffset=1985 and read more about the project here: http://www.ufv.ca/library/Women_s_Own_Index_About_Us.htm. Access the South Asia History Bibliography under Links in the Asian Studies Libguide or by clicking on this link: http://www.ufv.ca/library/south_asia.htm.

“Like a key to a door, 

indexing opens up 

the source for re‐

searchers to use.” 

continued from page 7

retreats. “I enjoy quilting with oth-er people, so having a studio doesn’t work for me,” she says. Modern quilting could perhaps be connected with modern librari-anship: it’s rooted in tradition but incorporates thoroughly modern elements. Colleen wove a circui-tous route to librarianship be-cause of the perceived stodgy image it owned. She started stud-ying musicology but found she didn’t like performance as much as she enjoyed music history and literature. Grad school led from musicology to library science. “Now people have a much more interesting perspective on the profession, they’re tech savvy and that’s where I think the field has to go,” she said. Librarians are creating information by putting together disparate sources and “mashing them up,” Colleen said. “I see that as being a really exciting part of what we do.” So now librarianship is like quilting: putting together different materials to make something new.

  13 Book sale: Chilliwack library moving sale  As Chilliwack Library gets ready to move to the new Canada Education Park cam-pus this summer, the library is working with faculty to pull outdated materials. Any discarded books and other items will be sold to raise funds for new materials. As library staff pack up, there will be an assortment of good deals in the coming months. Books are only a dol-lar a bag. Bring your own re-cycled bag. How much green-er could you get? The book sale blowout is only at the Chilliwack campus library.

Student shelver Johanna Sawer used streamers and balloons to highlight the book sale. 

Chinese New Year: Year

of the Dragon in Chilliwack

Above: February display outside the Chilliwack library. 

Librarians bring inter‐

na onal experience

continued from page 13

creation, among a variety of other tasks. In addition, they both bring a wealth of knowledge to our library. Selena Karli has both a B.A. and M.A. in History from Saraje-vo and Belgrade Universities as well as her Masters in Library and Information Science from McGill University in Montreal. Diane Cruickshank has her B.A. in Eng-lish Literature from UBC and her Master of Science and Economics degree in Infor-mation and Library Science from the Univer-sity of Wales in Aberystwyth. Both Selena and Diane contribute a global perspective with a deep understand-ing of library best practices to the library team here at UFV.