Collection News: November - December 2011
Just in Time for Term Paper Season: New Literature Ebooks
Have a paper on A Doll's House? Need an overview of the poetry of Robert Frost? How about help with Toni Morrison's fiction? All these topics and more can be found in the nearly 1,000 electronic books in the Twayne's and Scribner's series online. These books provide essays and chapters on themes, works, and criticism of particular American, British, and world authors.
You can find these new ebooks in our catalog by searching for your author by subject and then limiting your search to location = Internet. Examples:
- subject = carson, rachel limited to Internet locations
- subject = wilson, august limited to Internet locations
You can also use our ebook and ejournal search form to search for keywords in book titles and subjects, Examples:
Need more sources for your literature paper? Check our recommended databases:
- Literature Resource Center: Offers work overviews, author biographies and interviews, and some full-text journal and magazine articles
- MLA International Bibliography: The comprehensive index to journal articles, book chapters, and other publications on world literature from the Renaissance to the present. Use the Find it! button to locate full text for articles of interest to you.
Need help locating information on your topic? Ask a Librarian! We're here to help, 24/7.
Online Exhibit Features the Work of George Fisher
Special Collections has launched a digital collection documenting the life and career of famed Arkansas cartoonist, George Fisher. Fisher’s legendary work has become an integral part of the history of Arkansas.
Titled “Drawing Distinctions: The Life and Work of American Cartoonist George Fisher,” the collection includes samples of his professional work, memorabilia, photographs, scrapbooks, and correspondence to friends and family with quirky illustrations. The collection begins with his first cartoon strip “Fisky Limps” created by an eight-year-old Fisher, to his final cartoons for the Arkansas Times. A chronology of Fisher’s life and a bibliography of his published work are also contained in the digital exhibit.
The Fisher collection is not yet processed; this exhibit is just a sample of all of the thousands of different items included in the collection. This project was funded by a generous donation from Kathryn and Tommy May and Simmons First National Bank.
Faculty of 1000: Peer Review Reinvented
This month, try out the Faculty of 1000 web site while the University Libraries conduct an assessment of this resource for our campus.
Faculty of 1000 (F1000) identifies and evaluates the most important articles in biology and medical research publications. Articles are selected by a peer-nominated global 'Faculty' of the world's leading scientists and clinicians who then rate them and explain their importance. From the numerical ratings awarded, we have created a unique system for quantifying the importance of individual articles and, from these article ratings, journals. Both articles and journals can then be ranked overall and, importantly, at the subject, or Faculty, level.
Launched in 2002, F1000 was conceived as a collaboration of 1000 international Faculty Members. The name stuck even though the remit of the service continues to grow and the Faculty now numbers more than 10,000 experts worldwide. Their evaluations form a fully searchable database containing more than 100,000 records and identifying the best research available.
Faculty members and their evaluations are organized into over 40 Faculties (subjects), which are further subdivided into over 300 Sections.
On average, 1500 new evaluations are published each month; this corresponds to approximately 2% of all published articles in the biological and medical sciences.
Other features include journal rankings, poster presentations, and a review journal.
The trial ends on November 18th, 2011. Send your comments about Faculty of 1000 to Judy Ganson, Director for Collections Services and Systems.
American Art Resources
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opens this month and that occasion had us thinking about the Libraries' collections on American painting, illustration, sculpture, and design. You can study up for your trip to the museum with these and other resources:
At the Fine Arts Library, you will find books and journals on art, architecture, design, photography, and landscape architecture. The library space is something of a work of art itself, as it is part of the arts complex designed by Edward Durell Stone that is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year. Here are some subject searches in our catalog to start your browsing:
art, american
sculpture, american
artists--united states
ARTstor is a digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences. Users can search for or browse images by creator, time period, genre, type of work (e.g., sculpture, jewelry, architectural drawing), or by region where created. ARTstor images are contributed by museums, libraries, and universities worldwide and are intended for educational use.
Some of the collections represented in ARTstor include the American Folk Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Collection of American Art.
Art Index now incudes both retrospective coverage back to 1929 as well as selected full text of articles published from 1997 to the present. This database will soon be available on the familiar Ebsco platform, but the beauty of Art Index is the thoughtful subject terms applied to each of the articles indexed. With subject searches such as Hudson River School, Eight (Group) (for the Ashcan School), and Portrait painting, American -- 18th Century, you'll soon be up to your eyeballs in scholarly articles on American art.
The Grove Dictionary of Art Online is a part of Oxford Art Online, a gateway to scholarly reference sources on all aspects of art. Here you will find signed biographical or critical essays with bibliographies of suggested reading, as well as topical articles on schools, techniques, and ideas. Many entries feature art images and links to images on external web sites.
Need more guidance on how to research American art? Check our LIbGuides for American Art to 1900, Getting Started with ARTstor, and History of Art, Architecture, and Landscape Architecture. Or, Ask a Librarian.
ERIC Updates
ERIC, the education index produced by the U.S. Department of Education, has some nifty new features.
If you use ERIC, (and we know you do, you MAT students!), then you are probably aware that this index to journal articles and reports comes in many flavors. You can use the Ebsco, CSA, or FirstSearch versions, depending on the interface you prefer. These latest updates were applied to the version available through the U.S. Department of Education web site. They require that you register for a free "My ERIC" account. My ERIC allows you to save search strategies
- Search Alerts allow you to receive weekly email notifications when items matching your search criteria are added to the database.
- Shared Search allows you to share searches with other members of you "My ERIC"community. As part of setting up a shared search, you can tag and describe your searches to help others understand your parameters.
ERIC provides real power to your search with specific subject descriptors that help you focus your results to specific grade levels, types of articles, or research methodologies. In includes both journal and periodical articles as well as ERIC documents (EDs), reports or conference proceedings that are often available in full text. Older ED numbers that are not available online may be here in the library on microfiche. Ask at the main service desk for help with ERIC documents.
