Beginning Friday morning, October 10, 2008 at 8:30 am, members of the Temple University community may experience difficulty connecting to the Temple University Libraries’ electronic databases and other electronic resources such as e-book and e-journals. Owing to the Libraries' need to update the technology that allows on and off-campus users to connect to its licensed electronic information resources, access may not be possible during certain hours of the day. Depending on where the connection is occuring from in Temple’s global community the disruption may last as long as 48 hours. The disruption should be minimal, possibly 30 minutes to an hour, for anyone connected to the Library via Temple University’s network. Those using other Internet Service Providers to reach the Libraries’ databases will experience longer periods of disruption. If you experience difficulties during this time, try clearing your browser cache and try again. If difficulties persist, please wait about 30 minutes before re-trying.

We ask that you use this information to plan your research accordingly. The Libraries apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

The staff of the Paley Library are pleased with the positive response of the Temple student body to the renovation of our first floor computing area. In fact, the area has become popular quickly and at peak hours it can be a challenge to find a computer. See the photo below which shows the computer area on a recent afternoon at 3:00 pm

While there are almost double the number of computers in the first floor west computing area compared to prior semesters it still does not always meet the demand. Students should keep in mind that there are still an additional 25 computers by the front window on the east side of the first floor. During the summer we also added 20 computers on the second floor (10 on each side of the building) and 6 on the third floor (all on the west side). See the photo below of some computers on the third floor.

So if you can't find a computer on the first floor computing area, keep in mind we have more computers at other locations in the Paley Library. Do note that all of the library's computers print to the printers located in the first floor computing area.

ILLIAD is our new service for requesting materials not available or not owned at any of our Temple University Libraries. To use ILLIAD you need to register as a first time user, and once you have done that all you need to do to use ILLIAD is to login with your Temple access net account and password. Then you can request articles, book chapters, books not available at Temple or through E-ZBorrow, dissertations, conference proceedings, and anything else you need. Using ILLIAD you can check on the status of your requests, request renewals, and access articles you requested. It also keeps a history of your requests.

A video is available to help you if you are using ILLIAD for the first time.

Library patrons at the Paley, Law, Ambler, Tyler, SEAL, and Harrisburg Libraries need to use this login.

For Kresge and South Libraries use this login.

For the Podiatry library use this login.
If you have any questions about this service please feel free to contact Penelope Myers at pmyers@temple.edu or 215 204-0749, or Justin Hill at jhill@temple.edu or 215 204-0752.

Solve 3 problems using Knovel, a database of online engineering books. Enter to win a Wii, iPod Nano, or Free Music.

Access the Contest Rules. Competition closes on November 7, 2008.

Enter the Challenge Here:

Gretchen Sneff
Engineering Librarian
gsneff@temple.edu

I am delighted to welcome Thomas Heverin to the Temple University Libraries. Thomas started Monday, September 22nd, in the position of Science Librarian/SEAL Instruction Coordinator.

Prior to arriving at Temple, Thomas worked at the Carlson Science and Engineering Library at the University of Rochester and the Center for Natural Language Processing at Syracuse University. Additionally, he served several years as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Thomas received a MLIS from Syracuse University and a B.S. in Meteorology from Penn State.

He will provide research and instructional services for science, engineering, and architecture students and faculty. Thomas will also serve as the coordinator of SEAL’s instructional program and its integration into the Libraries' information literacy initiative. Thomas' subject responsibilities will include mathematical sciences, earth and environmental science and physics.

Please join me in welcoming Thomas to Temple Libraries.

Sincerely,

Larry P. Alford
Dean of University Libraries

Are you registered to vote? The deadline to register in the State of Pennsylvania is Monday, October 6th! Find out how to register and more at Temple Library's new Voter's Information Guide - Election 2008. Easily keep up with information on the candidates, the issues, fact checkers, news feeds, commentary, election history, and political humor. Comment on positions, candidates, and resources. There's even a guide for first-time voters. All the info that you need to make the right decision on November 4th is in one place, at the touch of your fingertips, @ your library!

A new report discusses the different ways in which scholars find articles and other materials of interest. "How Readers Navigate to Scholarly Content" is published by Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner for a consortium of scholarly publishers, including the Nature Publishing Group. It examines how scholars start their search for content and how they navigate different search resources. Current articles are extremely important to scholars in helping them keep up with the latest research in their field, and faculty use different strategies to do this. For keeping up with those journals for which they have no personal subscription many faculty rely on Table of Contents (TOC) alerts. Many faculty may not be aware that nearly every major aggregator database and e-journal collection to which the Temple University Libraries subscribe has this feature. It is fairly easy to create a TOC alert for any one of the thousands of journals accessible electronically through the Libraries.

Among the survey questions faculty were asked I found "How often do you follow links to a publisher's e-journal web site from these starting points" of particular interest. Figure 5 (pg. 18 of 32) shows a number of strategies to get to the e-journal and TOC alerts is far and away the top starting point.

Temple Universities librarians are well versed on the many different databases and e-journal collections that offer TOC alert services, and can advise faculty on how to efficiently register for and set up the alerts. We encourage our faculty to take advantage of this valuable feature. As the study shows, TOC alerts are not only a great way to access scholarly content, but are also the much preferred way that faculty have discovered as the starting point for their "keeping up" regimen. For more information about getting started with TOC alerts please contact Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services.