eBooks Part VI: Gale Virtual Reference Library

It’s the first one on our eBook list. It contains over 1,700 full-text encyclopedias, reference sources and other eBooks on a wide range of subjects. You may have heard a librarian refer to it as GVRL. That’s the Gale Virtual Reference Library, accessible right here online for a variety of eBook needs. Follow the steps below as we walk you through the process of finding, viewing and downloading a GVRL eBook.

Find an eBook

Once you click into the GVRL collection, you’ll see several eBook covers on display in each of the 17 subject areas from Arts to Technology. Click the left or right arrows on the display shelves to browse through each category’s titles, or click “View All” to see everything that’s available.

To find a more specific book, you can utilize the “Advanced Search” link at the top of the page. But just typing in the search bar can get you what you need quickly. Entering just a few letters or words causes GVRL’s “Search Assist” feature to suggest terms in a drop-down list that might help you, such as correct spellings and common searches. Even if you don’t know how to spell “Phlebotomy,” the Search Assist will likely find it if you type it incorrectly, or if you just type in the first three letters. Click on your intended term and then click the magnifying glass icon to bring up a page of encyclopedia articles on Phlebotomy, a career eBook about Phlebotomy technicians, and many other options.

You can choose to limit your search further with the options on the left sidebar of your results list: search within your results, check the box to search only for eBooks that have images, or select what type of eBook document you’d like to find such as a clinical skill overview or a biography.

Accessing the eBook

Once you’ve selected the document you need, you’ll be taken directly to the section of the book with the information you were searching for, or to the book’s Table of Contents page if you clicked on the eBook title or cover image. From the Table of Contents, you have the option to search within the publication or click on a chapter/section link to jump to another part of the book. Now you’re inside the text, ready to read and utilize all kinds of features that GVRL has to offer.

For example, you can use “article tools” to print pages, e-mail sections, cite the source, translate the text into another language, listen to an audio version of the text or download the document for reading offline or with an eReader device. These options are only visible if you’re in “text” view (the default viewing mode), where the documents show up in one continuous web page and citation information appears in the pink shaded area below the title.

But you can also click the “View as PDF” icon on the top right corner of the screen to read the book pages online like a print book instead of like a web page. You can’t use the article tools in this view, but you can flip through pages easily or type in a specific page number to jump to. There is also a full-screen option (press the Esc key to go back to the original screen) and magnifying tools that let you zoom in and out.

Download the eBook

Individual eBook articles can be downloaded and viewed on an eReader device as PDF documents. Just click the “Download PDF to eReader” link while in “text” view. It may also be possible to download directly to the eReader if it’s plugged into your computer through a USB cord. You can’t download an entire eBook, but you can save multiple articles as PDF files and even e-mail them to yourself or your eReader (the @kindle.com or @free.kindle.com address, for example). Note: eBooks saved as PDF articles are usually considered “personal documents” on your eReader instead of eBook documents.

For more information on downloading multiple PDF articles, view the GVRL video tutorial here.

You can also download MP3 audio files of an entire document by clicking “Listen” and then “Download MP3.” You’ll be able to save the file with a .mp3 extension.

For more information on audio files, view the GVRL video tutorial here.

Citation Tools

For easy bibliographic citations for your eBooks and articles, take advantage of the “Citation Tools” link in the article tools bar. While in “text” view, click “Citation Tools” and select your preferred Citation Format: MLA or APA. View the citation immediately or save/export the citation to use with another software.

A source citation is also included at the bottom of each eBook’s “text” view page.

For more information on GVRL, click the “Help” tab at the top of the GVRL home page or contact any CSN reference librarian for assistance.

Technology Format Migration: From Videocassette to Video Streaming

It’s happened. That snowy, wobbly-screened educational video you’ve played in class at least 3,000 times has given out at last. Knowing the time of the VHS tape is over, CSN Library Services has removed many videocassettes from each library’s collection to make room for new materials and continue our migration toward a greater storage, 24-hour accessible library online. This is the direction the world transitions toward as well. It might make some sad to see old formats disappear, but others are eager to discover just how many materials can be found online and at a much improved quality. Regardless of your personal feelings on the changes, there’s no denying that the future is definitely digital.

If you’re afraid your favorite video won’t be available through the Library anymore, fear not. From our Library home page (www.csn.edu/library), you can click the “Find Articles and Online Resources” link to access our entire list of databases, including online video collections. Clicking on the “streaming videos” link immediately brings you to the video section of the database list as well.

No need to fear the term “streaming” either if it’s not one you’ve used much before. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “streaming” as a computing term simply means the videos are transferred over the Internet as continuous data. This way, prerecorded material can be accessed and viewed online. If you have Internet access, you’ll be able to watch or share the videos from any of these collections.

What We’ve Got: The Collections

First there’s Films on Demand. Here you’ll find over 14,000 educational videos that can be viewed online by CSN students and professors. This is where many of the library’s PBS documentaries, A&E Biographies, National Geographic clips and History Channel specials can be found. Collections you might recognize from the side of the VHS tape box include American Experience, The Bill Moyers Collection, FH: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, Ken Burns, NOVA, Scientific American Frontiers and more.

Recently added to the Library’s online resources is the VAST Academic Videos  database listed directly under “Films on Demand.” This video database searches across several collections from Alexander Street Press, including American History in Video, Dance in Video, Education in Video, Ethnographic Video Online, History in Video and Nursing Education in Video.

Did you once play that two-hour PBS special Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War on VHS from the Henderson Campus Library? The complete film is now available right here as a digital streaming video. Now you can do more than just watch—you can also view its text transcript, select specific clips or even create your own clips to show only the part of the video that you need. And this is just one video example in a collection of thousands.

Under the Additional Streaming Videos category you’ll next find links to several open websites where anyone—not just the CSN community—can access video content online. These sites include Documentary Wire for educational documentaries, Fedflix for U.S. government-created films, Frontline, NewsHour, NOVA and NOW from PBS and several other sites that can be considered much more scholarly resources than YouTube.

What You Can Do With It: Adding Videos to ANGEL

Another advantage that streaming videos have over VHS tapes (and even DVDs) is your ability to embed them directly onto an ANGEL course page for students to find and view from the site. If the video is from an outside web address such as PBS (http://www.pbs.org/), you’ll just enter that URL in to create a link. You can click on the following link, for example, to watch the PBS NOVA video entitled Fabric: The Illusion of Time: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html#fabric-time

To add a video from one of the library’s databases, however, there’s just one additional step: make sure you place “http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=” directly before the video’s URL when you type it into ANGEL. This “ez proxy” URL is important to include so that CSN students or faculty/staff can log in to the database using their NSHE ID number or username and password. That way Library content that is only available for CSN can be accessed by the CSN community.

It may sometimes sound more complicated than it actually is. Want students to view that PBS special Crucible of Empire: The Spanish-American War from the VAST Academic Video database? Once you’re in the video’s record, click the “Embed/Link” icon (the one with the globe and chain) and you’ll be able to copy and paste this link “http://vasc.alexanderstreet.com/view/572150” into ANGEL. Now simply add the ez proxy (http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=) in front to get one direct link to the video: “http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=http://vasc.alexanderstreet.com/view/572150”

http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=http://vasc.alexanderstreet.com/view/572150

To use a video from the Films on Demand database, it’s even easier. Go to the video’s page, scroll down and copy and paste the “Title URL” into ANGEL. The ez proxy URL has already been added for you.

These links don’t have to be embedded into a course ANGEL page either. They can be e-mailed out to students or, in the case of videos from VAST Academic, even sent to a mobile device such as the Apple iPhone, iPad or an Android phone on a 3G network or better. Click the cell phone icon on a video’s page and choose the sending option that works best for you. Then students with mobile devices can view the video immediately as well.

Since the age of the VHS tape, there have been major discoveries in the field of science and new lessons from the past unearthed in the field of history. There’s certainly been more updated clothing and hairstyles than those worn in films from the ’80s and ’90s. But more importantly than that—you now have such amazing technology and so many features available right at your fingertips. You have the opportunity to provide your students with the best quality and most up-to-date resources out there. That’s reason enough to migrate with us to a brand new format for showing films.

While not all films are available in streaming format, the Library is also happy to look for a comparable resource for you, such as a film that covers the same topic you’re covering in class. And if there’s still a VHS tape you swear by that still works like a charm, let us know and we can make sure we hold on to it. Contact a CSN reference librarian by phone or in person. But if there’s a digital version out there that we can find for you, you probably won’t even need that VHS tape anymore.

eBooks Part V: Rittenhouse

The Rittenhouse R2 Digital Library contains over 250 health science eBooks divided into Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health collections. You can find the collections here, and follow the steps below as we walk you through the process of finding and viewing a Rittenhouse eBook.

Find an eBook

The Rittenhouse database immediately offers links to browse its three collections by clicking on the Medicine, Nursing or Allied Health book icons on its homepage. From each collection you can then pull up a complete list of titles in alphabetical order or sort them by author or ISBN number.

Indexes on the left and tabs on the top of the page also let you search for eBooks by “topic” or by a specific “drug” name. You can utilize the Quick Search bar at the top of the page or click “advanced search” to narrow your results even further, such as by discipline: “dentistry” in the Medicine library, for example, or “Ethics” in the Nursing library.

If you don’t need a whole book but you’re just looking for an image, type your search terms in the Quick Search bar and select “Image” from the drop-down menu. eBook results featuring related photos and figures will be listed with an “Image Information” link below each title. By clicking the “plus sign” next to Image Information, you’ll find the image copyright date, original publication, and a direct link to the image as well.

Accessing the eBook

Once you’ve found the right eBook for you and selected it, you’ll be able to view its contents on the screen and click the chapter or section headings on the left of the page to read through it. It will look more like a web page than a traditional paper page, but the content is just as comprehensive as a print book. Sometimes more so—certain words throughout Rittenhouse eBooks are highlighted as links you can click to automatically search the entire eBook collection for the highlighted term. Many of the books in the collection are also actually electronic versions of existing print books as well, including certain nursing textbooks used at CSN.

Rittenhouse eBooks can’t be viewed offline or downloaded to mobile devices, but their information is still fairly easy to save. The user tools at the top of the online eBook let you print the section you’re currently reading or e-mail it to yourself or a colleague. Any content can be printed—including in-line tables, figures, and images—so long as you adhere to copyright regulations. Basically, under the terms of fair use, the content may be printed for personal use only—it cannot be sold or redistributed since it is still copyrighted by the publisher.

You’re also able to store your searches and bookmark useful eBook sections to view a little later on during your online session. The information you store, however, will be lost once you end that session (log out, sign off a computer, etc). To keep everything saved for the next time you log on, you’ll need to register for a free “MyR2” account first.

Signing up for Rittenhouse’s individual “MyR2” account allows you to personalize your entire experience—save searches, view your search history and access bookmarked resources from session to session. Just click the “Register” link in the left sidebar of the homepage and fill out your name, e-mail address and department (allergy, dermatology, nursing, pediatrics, etc.). Then create a username, a password and set up your e-mail notification preferences. The information is not shared with any third party. But even without an account, you’ll still have access to the same health science eBooks every time you log into the Rittenhouse database from a CSN computer or from home.

If you’re not trying to save information from the eBooks but just reading chapters online, it’s important to know that your session will time out after 15 minutes of inactivity—so be sure to keep those pages turning. A session timeout window will appear as warning before Rittenhouse logs you out of the book. Once you’ve been timed out, the book is released to another user to access since only one user can read a Rittenhouse eBook at a time. However, if no one is waiting to read the eBook you’ve been looking at, simply close out of the database and click back into it to log in and find the book again.

For more information on Rittenhouse, visit their FAQ page, or view a video tutorial on how to use the database here.

You can also contact any CSN reference librarian by phone or in person for troubleshooting tips and friendly advice to make the most of your eBook experience.

eBooks Part IV: Safari Tech Books Online

The Library’s collection of technology books from Safari Books Online provides access to over 12,400 software, digital media and other technology books, as well as videos. View the Safari collection here and follow the steps below as we walk you through the process of finding and viewing a Safari eBook.

Find an eBook

If you know the title of the book you want to search for or the general category it might fall into, start with the search bar at the top of the home page. Then you can narrow your results by category, publication year, authors, and publishers if need be. You can also choose to view all the books in the collection if you want to see everything Safari has to offer, or browse by the categories on the left of the page: from Web Design to Game Programming, Animation to Photo & Graphic Manipulation, Civil Engineering to Trigonometry and so much more.

Having found a book, the reading part is easy! Select the title or cover image and you’ll be taken to a page with tabs for the “Table of Contents” or “Search This Book” that let you find specific information in the text. Otherwise, you can select the blue “Start Reading” button to view books in Safari’s online reader and go through your selected eBook from the beginning.

The online reader opens your eBook in a separate window to the right of the Table of Contents. You can scroll down through the pages or click the left and right arrow buttons to turn each page as well. The reader’s toolbar at the top of the window also allows for zooming in and out, changing the page size, or switching to an html view of the book (only for some titles), which allows you to highlight and copy/paste selections of text. The reader’s toolbar also has two buttons in the upper left-hand corner for e-mailing a link to the book or printing individual pages (only one at a time).

While online, only two users can read the same book at the same time, but a single user can have up to nine books open at once. Reading sessions only time out if there’s been over 20 minutes of inactivity, so you can take your time and read at your leisure as long as you’re connected to the Internet.

Accessing the eBook

What if you don’t have an Internet connection? Unfortunately, the only way to access Safari books offline is to print individual pages. Safari does not allow eBook downloading or offline viewing for library users—only for those with personal Safari accounts or premium subscriptions. But accessing eBooks through the library means you don’t have to pay for an individual subscription (no monthly fees!), so it’s ultimately worth the tradeoff. And you’ll still be able to take advantage of the thousands of eBooks in our collection from home through our website (www.csn.edu/library). Click the “Safari Tech Books Online” link on our database page and log in using your NSHE ID number and password. Just make sure your computer has one of the following browsers: Internet Explorer Version 7 or 8, Firefox Version 3.x or newer, Safari Version 3 or newer, Chrome Version 7 or newer. Books can be viewed on Windows XP, Vista, or 7, and Mac computers running Tiger, Leopard, or Snow Leopard. Flash Version 9 or above is also required.

For more information on Safari eBooks, you can visit Safari’s help page here.

You can also contact any CSN reference librarian by phone or in person for troubleshooting tips and friendly advice to make the most of your eBook experience.

eBooks Part III: Ebrary eBook Collection

The Ebrary eBook collection offers dozens of books from leading publishers in Nursing and Allied Health, as well as a few additional categories including agriculture, recreation, history, military science, psychology, political science and social sciences. View the Library’s collection of Ebrary books here and follow the steps below as we walk you through the process of viewing and downloading an Ebrary eBook.

Find an eBook

You can perform a simple search of the Ebrary collection using the search bar at the top of the page or click the “All Subjects” link to the right of the search bar to pull up a list of books in each of 12 categories. Once you’ve selected a book, view it in Ebrary’s “QuickView” option by selecting the title or clicking the “ebrary reader” button to install Ebrary’s reader software. The QuickView toolbar allows you to turn pages with the left and right arrow buttons, magnify a page and take notes in the book if you’re signed in to an Ebrary account. Using the “InfoTools” button at the top of the page viewer also allows you to perform searches, copy text or print up to 60 pages in PDF format.

You might also see a button on the toolbar that says “Release This Title” at the top right of the page. That means the book is a “single-user-only” document. Only one person can view the eBook at a time. Clicking the “Release This Title” button frees the title so another user can access it right away when you’re done. Otherwise, the eBook is available to you for as long as you like until there’s been at least 15 minutes of inactivity (no page turning, printing, etc). Once you’ve been idle for 15 minutes, you lose access to the book if another user is waiting in the queue to read it. A user will receive a message if you’re using the book they want to read, and then receive the option to wait in the queue for it at that time. Once you’ve given up access to the book, the new user has five minutes to start reading it before it goes to whoever is waiting next.

Don’t see the “Release This Title” button? That means the book is a “multi-user” document—more than one person can access it at the same time and the book can even be downloaded to read offline.

Download the eBook

All Ebrary eBooks can have up to 60-page selections downloaded and saved to a PDF for offline viewing, but not all Ebrary eBooks can be downloaded in their entirety (For a list of publishers that prohibit full-document downloading see here). Unlike the EBSCO eBook database, Ebrary always shows the “Download” button on an eBook record—you just have to click on it to find out if the publisher has actually allowed the book to be downloaded or not. Single-user-only books can only be read online. But if you’ve found a multi-user eBook that is available for download and you’d like to read it offline, you’ll just need to create an Ebrary account.

If you’ve clicked the “Download” button without creating or signing in to an Ebrary account, a window will appear and let you know to do so. Clicking the “Sign In” link from the upper right-hand corner of any Ebrary page prompts you to sign in to your account or create a new one from the “Create an account” link below the login. All that’s required is a username, password, your name and your e-mail address. Once logged in, you can take notes on the books you read in QuickView, or download your selected muti-user title.

Once you’ve clicked the “Download” button and signed in, you’ll be able to either create an image PDF of a chapter (again, up to 60 pages), or download the entire book for a 14-day checkout period using the free Adobe Digital Editions software (For more information on Adobe Digital Editions, see our previous blog post here). Adobe Digital Editions lets you read eBooks on your computer when you’re not connected to the Internet, transfer them to a mobile device (except for the Amazon Kindle e-reader) and return them early if you need to check out more. Just keep in mind that returns can take up to one hour to be recognized, and up to 10 Ebrary eBooks can be checked out at one time.

For more information on Ebrary eBooks, you can visit Ebrary’s help page to see an overview of download options and Ebrary readers.

You can also contact any CSN reference librarian by phone or in person for troubleshooting tips and friendly advice to make the most of your eBook experience.

eBooks Part II: EBSCOhost eBooks

Want to access nearly 21,000 eBooks from EBSCO but don’t know where to start? Click into the Library’s EBSCOhost eBook collection from here and follow the steps below as we walk you through the process of viewing and downloading an EBSCO eBook.

Find an eBook

Using the search bar at the top of the EBSCO eBook Collection page, you have the ability to look for specific titles, authors, subjects, and more, or you can browse through the 20 categories listed on the left of the page until you’ve found the eBook you need. If you plan to read the book online immediately, select your title and click the “eBook Full Text” link found on the Result List or on the left of the book’s Detailed Record page. This opens the book in a page viewer with tools to zoom in or out, arrow buttons to turn the pages, and a variety of options on the right side of the screen such as searching the book, taking notes in it, or saving up to 60 pages in PDF format.

Note: If you’re using a Mac computer, you’ll need to install a PDF Browser plugin in order to use the eBook Viewer. The Schubert-it plugin can be downloaded here.

You then have two hours to read your selected eBook online (or listen to the text if an MP3 audio file is available) before the session times out. If you need more than two hours, you might what to think about downloading the book for future reading offline.

Download the eBook

From the “eBook Full Text viewer,” you can choose to print up to 60 PDF pages of the eBook you’re reading, e-mail the pages, or save them to your computer to read offline. If you want to download the entire book for a limited period, you’ll need to create an EBSCO account. Not all publishers allow their eBooks be downloaded, but EBSCO makes it easy to see if access is available. Just look for the “Download this eBook (offline)” link on a book’s Detailed Record page. If it’s there, you can click it and sign in to EBSCO in order to start the download process.

Creating an EBSCO account is as easy as clicking the “Sign In” link and choosing “Create a new Account” on the right side of the Sign In page. All that’s required is your name, e-mail address, a user name and a password of your choosing.

Then, if a copy of the eBook is not already checked out to another user, you’ll be able to select your checkout period (generally up to 14 days, though some publishers only allow seven days) and be prompted to open or save the book in Adobe Digital Editions.

Adobe Digital Editions is a free software required for downloading eBooks (learn more about it in our previous blog post here) that allows you to read eBooks from your computer, transfer them to a mobile device and return them early if you need to check out more. Up to 35 EBSCO eBooks can be checked out at one time.

Place a Hold

If a copy of the eBook you need is not available—another patron may have checked it out or is currently using the last copy—a window will appear to let you know that the book is in use. But you still have the option to place it on hold using your e-mail address.

Your EBSCO account allows up to 20 holds, and you have three days to check out a hold once it becomes available. Hold requests expire after 15 months.

But as soon as a copy of your requested eBook is returned, you will receive an e-mail notification and see the title appear in the “Checkouts” area of your EBSCO account folder for you to download from there. Follow the steps from our Adobe Digital Editions blog post here, and your book will be saved to the computer and ready for offline viewing until its checkout period expires.

For more information on EBSCO eBooks, you can visit EBSCO’s help page from the eBook database, view tutorials for Windows PC users or view tutorials for Mac users.

You can also contact any CSN reference librarian by phone or in person for troubleshooting tips and friendly advice to make the most of your eBook experience.

Introduction to eBooks

When today’s tech-savvy students search for books, they aren’t limited to the hard copy tomes lining our Library shelves. If the right print book can’t be found, if the library building can’t be used in person, or if students just want to expand their research across even more mediums, the CSN Library eBook collections fills a distinct need from their virtual shelves.

The eBooks can be found on our website (www.csn.edu/library) under the “Find Articles and Online Resources” link. Clicking “eBooks” from our home page or scrolling down to the “eBook Collections” list on our database page instantly brings you to thousands of digital texts that range from encyclopedias to classic literature to technology handbooks. You might also come across an eBook when searching the CSN Library catalog in the “Find Books, eBooks, DVDs/Videos” link on our home page. The eBook collections cover government and politics, legal information, nursing and allied health, science, medicine, computer programs, digital media, art, history, and even pop culture. It all depends on where you search and what you’re looking for.

 Reading eBooks: Online and Off

All of the Library’s eBook collections allow for easy reading while online. To view books in the EBSCO eBook database, you can select the “eBook Full Text” link on the book of your choice and start clicking through pages immediately. Books in Ebrary open on the computer in their own page viewer as well. The Gale Virtual Reference Library provides encyclopedias and reference books to view or download to a PDF document or even listen to in an MP3 audio file. But what if you want to access a book when you’re not connected to the Internet? Not all digital books can be downloaded, but some databases do allow you to borrow eBooks to read on your computer or transfer to mobile devices like the Nook e-reader or iPhone for the duration of your checkout period. There are a few more steps involved in downloading eBooks, but the results are well worth the freedom of being able to read eBooks offline.

All About Adobe Digital Editions 

The first extra step for offline reading is downloading Adobe Digital Editions if you don’t already have it installed on your computer. This free software ultimately makes the eBook experience easier, providing a single place to save books from multiple databases as you borrow them. Adobe Digital Editions monitors download time periods for you and causes the eBook to become unreadable after the checkout period is over. But it also allows you to transfer eBooks to mobile devices (except for the Kindle), organize your library of eBooks, search the books, annotate them, and return them early if necessary so you can borrow more.

To start utilizing eBooks offline, download Adobe Digital Editions 1.7.1 or higher from Adobe’s website. It can be installed for Windows 7, Vista, or XP here or for Mac OS X here . Click “Install” and follow the prompts to complete the download. You will then be asked to create an Adobe account as well (Note: if you plan to read the device on a Nook, use the same e-mail address you used to create your Nook account for your Adobe account).

Once your account has been set up, Adobe Digital Editions is ready for use on the computer where you installed it for all your eBook needs!

So now it’s time to view your eBook. After the book has been downloaded, it will open in Adobe Digital Editions to be read on the computer or saved to your e-reader, usually by connecting the device to your computer via USB cable and dragging the cover of the eBook into the e-reader folder that appears. When you’re completely done with the book, you can return it early by clicking on the “Library View” icon in the upper left-hand corner of Adobe Digital Editions and selecting “Return borrowed item” from the book’s menu. Otherwise, the book will expire after the designated checkout period and return itself automatically.

More Help

Need further eBook assistance? Our upcoming Tech Talk posts will walk you through the steps to access books from several of our eBook platforms so you’ll be able to successfully utilize whatever resource you need and count yourself among the tech-savvy library users too.

Click the links below for details on using each collection:

-EBSCOhost eBooks: nearly 21,000 books on a variety of topics

-Ebrary eBook Collection

-Safari Tech Books Online: technology, software, and digital media books and videos

-Rittenhouse Health Science Electronic Book Collection: for Nursing and Allied Health

-Gale Virtual Reference Library: full-text encyclopedias and reference sources

-Coming Soon: SpringerLink eBooks: nearly 48,000 books on a variety of topics, particularly science and medicine

-Coming Soon: ABC-CLIO eBook Collection: subjects include art, music, history, pop culture, and more

For more guided help on Adobe Digital Editions, check out the screenshots offered on http://library.ellibs.com/help/ADE or talk to any CSN reference librarian!

On the Go! The Library’s Mobile Website

If you have a smartphone, accessing all your research needs from the CSN Library couldn’t be easier. Using the phone’s Internet browser, visit the library’s website at http://library.csn.edu/ and you’ll be taken to a simplified version of the site optimized for viewing on a small screen. But that doesn’t mean the depth of information available to you is any smaller.

What you can find

 Select “Find Books” and you’ll be directed to search the full library catalog at CSN or outside collections such as materials at UNLV. “Find Articles” brings up a list of databases that have also been optimized for viewing on a mobile device, including:

• EBSCO Complete (searches over 20 EBSCO databases and subject collections)
• JSTOR (full-text articles from scholarly journals in a variety of subjects)
• Encyclopedia Britannica
• Biography Reference Bank
• Issues: Understanding Controversy and Society
• Legal Information Reference Center
• Science (Journal)
• The Chronicle of Higher Education

While on campus, your phone can access the CSN wireless network and search these databases immediately. To use them from home or anywhere off campus, select a database and then log in using your CSN username and password. If you have an active CSN account, the username is your 10-digit NSHE ID and the password is what you created when you validated the account (the same password for accessing ANGEL and on-campus computers).

Custom Online Libraries

Customized subject guides are also making their way onto the library’s mobile site. If you need research assistance in areas from business to education to various health sciences and more, a variety of resources are literally at your fingertips.

For example, if you’re working on a business assignment, selecting the “Business” subject guide opens a page on your mobile device with search boxes that will look through business databases only. Links to business-related eBooks, finance videos, marketplace podcasts, and articles in the Las Vegas Business Press and Las Vegas Review-Journal are together on the same page as well. This subject guide even has resources and templates for creating your own business plan. Right on your phone! The mobile site provides the same subject-specific information found on the “Library Research Guides” page of the library website (http://libguides.csn.edu/cat.php?cid=43949), but in one simple package that can be taken on the go.

Differences between mobile and full site

While the library’s mobile site is an easy way to access information off campus, you’re still going to find more research tools offered on the full site:

An expanded database list

Research tips for the entire process, from choosing a topic to citing your sources

Course specific and assignment specific research guides

Schedules for library workshops

Contact information for library staff on each campus

Have questions? Need help accessing/navigating the mobile or full library website? Feel free to e-mail or call any of the CSN reference librarians. For the Charleston Campus Library, call 651-5729. For the Cheyenne Campus Library, call 651-4419. For the Henderson Campus Library, call 651-3039.

Google Scholar: Challenges & Solutions

Google Scholar is a search engine that can connect you to research on just about any topic.  It searches items including articles, technical reports, dissertations, and books from a wide variety of scholarly sources, providing links to both full text and pay-per-view content.  Like a regular Google search, you will usually get plenty of results.  The challenges come up when you look at your results more closely.  Here are three common challenges and what to do about them:

The results are full of technical and scholarly jargon

Google Scholar indexes and links to peer reviewed, scholarly articles and books that researchers read to stay up-to-date on a topic.   Article writers assume their audience consists of professional researchers who share the technical vocabulary used in these types of publications.   Before using Google Scholar, make sure that you need this type of article for your assignment.  If you do, they are also available in library databases, such as EBSCO Complete, ProQuest, and JSTOR.  An advantage of using these library resources is that they have a variety of built-in software, including tools for translation and citation, and downloadable audio versions of articles, to help you understand and use the content.

Google Scholar is not where you will find the variety of less jargon-filled sources that strengthen a research project, such as reference materials, articles from magazines or newspapers, websites, and videos.  This full range of resources, as well as peer-reviewed, scholarly articles, is linked to Jumpstart Your Research, a College Library Services web page set-up as a step-by-step guide to doing research.

There are many results, but they don’t seem relevant

As with a regular Google search, Google Scholar uses a relevance ranking that should cause the most useful articles to go to the top of your results.  To further improve relevance you can use Google Scholar’s Advanced Search, allowing you to limit your results in many ways, including by topic, year of publication, and author. 

The relevancy problem may occur if what you are looking for is an overview of your topic, not Google Scholar’s highly focused research articles.   In that case, you may want to use subject specific background information, article and eBook databases, and websites linked to the Jumpstart Your Research course subject web pages.

It’s hard to figure out how to get the full text version of a pay-per-view article

Google Scholar searches many free sources.  Still, the majority of results link to resources that are pay-per-view.  You should never pay for an article as long as you are a CSN student, faculty, or staff.  Here’s how to get a free copy of a pay-per-view article:

   1. On the article’s citation, find the name of the journal that published the article, and the article’s volume, issue, page numbers, and date of publication.   You will also need to know the author(s) and title of the article later in the process.
   2. On the Library Services’ Articles and Online Resources page, click on the Find Print and Online Journals link.
   3. Type the journal’s name in the search box.
   4. If College Library Services has the journal through a library database or an electronic or print subscription, links to these sources will appear on the screen.  If you get “0 records retrieved for the search,” skip to step 7, below.
   5. Click on an option that includes in its year range your article’s publication date.
   6. Find the volume and issue; then within the correct issue, find the article.
   7. If College Library Services does not have the article, click on the Request an article from Interlibrary Loan! link, just below the Find Print and Online Journals link.
   8. Fill in all the requested information.  If you provide your e-mail address, the article will be e-mailed to you when College Library Services locates a copy.

You can immediately read articles, avoiding the process of locating the free copy of a pay-per-view article, by choosing the “full text” option in any of the library databases.

If you would like help at any point, you can always e-mail or call one of the CSN reference librarians: Charleston Campus Library: 651-5729, Cheyenne Campus Library: 651-4419, or Henderson Campus Library: 651-3039. 

CSN Library Services is exploring options that will make it easier to find full text copies of pay-per-view articles.  Check back for updates!