Lynch School Library Newsletter
31 March, 2006
                                                                                                    Vol. 3,  No. 1
BC Libraries

Quest

Your Quest Account

Online Databases

E-Journals
E-Books

Other  Libraries

eScholarship@BC

Scholarly Communications

RefWorks
Interlibrary Loan

 Faculty Research Support

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Digital Library Initiatives

Circulation Services

Hours


 


 
Welcome to the latest issue of the Lynch School Library Newsletter. The following "news items" are potentially useful for one studying, researching and teaching Education and related areas. Of course, they refer to just a few of the many resources and services provided by and/or pointed to by BC Libraries. To keep up to date with the Libraries' myriad new databases, guides, web sites, tutorials etc. it's a good idea to browse frequently through the Libraries web site. Also, feel free to get in touch with me any time if I can assist you in any way with your research or teaching.
Brendan Rapple ( rappleb@bc.edu )
x24482


CSA Two New Social Science Databases
ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts
ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts is an indexing and abstracting tool covering health, social services, psychology, sociology, economics, politics, race relations and education. Updated monthly, ASSIA provides a comprehensive source of social science and health information for the practical and academic professional. Updated monthly, ASSIA currently contains over 375,000 records from over 500 journals published in 16 different countries, including the UK and US.

Physical Education Index
Physical Education Index features a wide variety of content, ranging from physical education curricula, to sports medicine, to dance. Other coverage includes sport law, kinesiology, motor learning, recreation, standardized fitness tests, sports equipment, business and marketing, coaching and training, and sport sociology/psychology. Health education and physical therapy are also covered. Records are indexed and classified from peer-reviewed journals, report literature, conference proceedings, trade magazines, patents, articles from the popular press, and many other publications.

Both databases are accessible from the Libraries' Online Databases page.

Journal Citation Reports® (JCR)
Journal Citation Reports JCR is a resource for journal evaluation. It presents quantifiable statistical data that provides a systematic, objective way to evaluate many leading journals and their impact and influence in the global research community.  Multidisciplinary and international, JCR includes two editions: the Science and Technology Edition (5,900 journals) and the Social Sciences Edition (1,700 journals). The journals come from more than 3,300 publishers in over 60 countries. JCR is a sophisticated database and it is recommended that the Online Help be utilized to get the most out of it.  The database enables users to sort journal data by clearly defined fields: Impact Factor, Immediacy Index, Total Cites, Total Articles, Cited Half-Life, or Journal Title. It is important to refer to the documentation to understand what these terms signify.  A useful tutorial is available at http://scientific.thomson.com/tutorials/jcrweb3/. The database lists 38 journals under the subject Educational Psychology; 91 journals under Education & Educational Research; and 26 journals under Special Education. To access: go to the Online Databases page. The direct link is http://proxy.bc.edu/login?url=http://isiknowledge.com/

Finding Who Has Cited a Publication
Web of Science BC Libraries have a new guide: “How Do I Find Who has Cited a Publication.” This guide provides details about a number of multidisciplinary and disciplinary specific databases that permit citation searching. Such databases assist users in following a particular cited reference, or cited author, forward in time to find other articles that have also cited that author or work. Cited references may be useful for a number of reasons: locating current research based on earlier research, patents, reports, etc.; finding how many times and where a publication is being cited; identifying who is referencing a particular paper; exploring how a particular research topic is being used to support other research; analyzing the impact of a publication on other research in the field; tracking the history of a research idea; tracking the research of a colleague, or keeping track of your own research.


World Map Some Education Related Web Sites
The following are several web sites that are potentially useful for researching aspects of Education.
Education Resource Organizations Directory (EROD)
This Directory is intended to help one identify and contact organizations that provide information and assistance on a broad range of education-related topics.

Education Review
Education Review publishes reviews of recent books in education, covering the entire range of education scholarship and practice.

Education: The State We’re In 
This site provides a comprehensive, state-by-state snapshot of education today in America. It brings together publicly available data, slicing the numbers in two ways. First, seven of the most pressing issue areas in education are explored in reports encompassing all 50 states. Second, individual state report cards provide a comprehensive look at education in each of the 50 states. In both instances, Education: The State We’re In offers some indication of comparative performance by ranking states from first to worst.

International Archive of Education Data
The Archive acquires, processes, documents, and disseminates data collected by national, state or provincial, local, and private organizations, pertaining to all levels of education in countries for which data can be made available. Data will encompass the "inputs" to education (funding, personnel, teaching resources, facilities, teacher and student preparation, etc.), the variety of processes by which teaching and learning occur, and the "outputs" of education (graduation and matriculation rates, drop-out rates, test scores, job placements, life histories, life assessments, etc.).  The data stored in this new Archive are intended to support a wide variety of comparative and longitudinal research through the preservation and sharing of data resources. The Archive seeks to serve the needs of academics, policymakers, and researchers in the field of education.

RAND Books and Publications
RAND research briefs present policy-oriented summaries of individual published, peer-reviewed documents or of a body of published work. Clicking on Browse by Category in the blue area on the left allows one to search by EDUCATION. There are numerous education related full-text documents.

Copyright Agreement to Extend Author's Rights Adopted
For several years Boston College Libraries have urged BC faculty, students and staff to consider carefully before signing a publishing contract how the contract might later affect their usage of the published work in their teaching and research. In particular, the Library recommends that BC authors retain the right to include the published work in a course-pack, to place it on their personal web pages and to post and update it in a scholarly e-print server. To effect this most easily, the Library encourages authors to request that a scholarship dissemination-friendly addendum be added to their contracts. Very recently the Board of Directors of the Boston Library Consortium (Boston College is a member) approved unanimously the adoption of a similar amendment to a contractual or publication agreement, namely Agreement to Extend Author's Rights.  This is a document that gives authors and their employing institutions non-exclusive rights to use, distribute, and reproduce material in electronic digital or print form in activities connected with the author's academic and professional activities. The amendment also supports placement of material in institutional repositories. One may access the agreement in both Adobe Acrobat and Word formats at the Boston Library Consortium website. The Boston Library Consortium also has an Authors’ Rights website at: www.blc.org/authorsrights.html.

 

Newspapers at BC: Current, Contemporary, and Historical
New York Times A new research guide to newspapers available from the BC libraries in different formats and for different dates is now available on the Libraries' web site. The guide describes sources of current, contemporary (recent past), and historical newspapers available in print, on microform, or electronically.  These sources are summarized in a table Sources of Newspaper Content at the end of the guide. The guide also indicates other means of identifying, finding, and searching newspapers, including newspapers available at other institutions; newspaper directories; and newspaper indexes. The Newspaper Reseach Guide is available from the Libraries' Research Guides (under History) web page.

Alt-Press-Watch Two Databases Pointing to “Left” or “Alternative” Material
The two databases below point to a large quantity of Education related material that may be difficult to access from more mainstream databases. As the names of the databases imply, coverage is veers to more alternative, independent, and left-wing press.

Left Index
A guide to the diverse literature of the left, emphasizing political, economic, social and culturally engaged scholarship inside and outside academia. Topics covered include the labor movement, ecology & environment, race & ethnicity, social & cultural theory, sociology, art & aesthetics, philosophy, history, education, law, and globalization. Many of the 774 sources indexed are unique and are not indexed in other databases.

Alt-Press Watch
This database provides full-text coverage of the alternative and independent press. It offers access to viewpoints and perspectives on topics in politics, government, education, labor and the arts that complement and challenge mainstream media coverage. The database presently has about 250,000 articles from 175 publications. Coverage varies by title. Both databases are accessible from the Libraries' Online Databases page.