What's New? 2005-2006 Archive

Current news and new resources

June 8, 2006: Library Catalog, Other Library Resources, Unavailable Sunday 6/11/2006. Due to the announced shutdown of CCC Systems this Sunday, most Gordon Library resources also will be unavailable. Details...

May 22, 2006: We now subscribe to Refworks a bibliographic database & citation management tool. Create a database of your references then output them into many formats.

May 11, 2006: MLA International Bibliography Now Covers 1926 to the present. Retrospective content from 1926-1962 has just been added to this database,

Monday May 8th: Library Catalog System Downtime. Details...

May 1, 2006: Encyclopedia of Medical Devices and Instrumentation: Online edition contains 250+ articles including latest developments in medical devices, including nanotechnology, fiber optics, and signal processing.

April 20, 2006: Medical and Healthcare Marketplace Guide Online: Provides access to reports on trends, developments, scientific advancements, and company activities medical and healthcare segments, including the pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology sectors.

April 10, 2006: JSTOR Update: WPI now has access to Arts & Sciences Complement. A minimum of 150 titles will be included by the end of 2008. Also, we've added titles in the Biological Sciences area. Search JSTOR now for access to 100s of full text academic journals brought to you by the WPI Gordon Library with endowed Prouty funds.

April 10, 2006: National Student Employee Appreciation Week: Student employees are center stage! Gordon Library Staff wish to thank all of our student employees for their hard work & their role as integral staff in making the library a great place to study, research, and work.

April 10, 2006: Tax Time Is Here! Find the federal and state tax forms that you need.

April 10, 2006: InfoTrac OneFile: has been added to the Gale PowerSearch interface, brought to you by Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Central Massachusetts Regional Library System.

March 24, 2006: Journals List Downtime: The Journals List will be unavailable for about one hour starting at 9 P.M. on Friday, March 24, 2006 for maintenance on the EBSCO A-Z host site.

March 24, 2006: U.S. government science portal: Science.gov. Also check out the SCIRUS for "scientific information only" search engine.

March 15, 2006: Breathtaking photos: National Wildlife 35 Annual photo contest winners! We get this magazine in the library, visit the second floor to browse our popular magazines.

On this day (March 16th)... Robert Goddard, 1908 WPI graduate, launched the space age.

March 15, 2006: Biography Resource Center: Many new biographies have been added. Use this to search for information about famous people, dead or alive.

March 15, 2006: The latest podcast, Digging into the Deep or Invisible Web: The Molten Core, is available. If you think Google searches everything, think again and listen to the latest clip.

March 15, 2006: Check out our New Acquisitions for the lastest arrivals, including some new popular DVDs (by student request) such as Million Dollar Baby, Finding Nemo, Parrot's of Telegraph Hill, Crash, Fever Pitch, Lord of the Rings, Return of the King and others.

March 7, 2006: LibQual+ Prizes: Winners are: Christopher Bartlett, Donna Davidson, Eric Wilusz, and Khanhvan Nguyen. Thanks to all who participated. Stay tuned for preliminary results. More....

March 3, 2006: JSTOR Update: A quick way to track down a specific article in JSTOR is now available with their Article Locator. Choose Article Locator from their main search menu.

March 3, 2006: Check out EBSCO Business Source's quick Flash tutorial on the Business Searching Interface (2.5 minutes)

March 2, 2006: One Month until National Library Week: April 2-8, 2006. Tell us about authors that changed your world.

February 21, 2006: Visit the Library Table at the IQP Fair Tuesday February 21, 11:30-1:30 in Alden Hall to learn how to search for past Interactive Qualifying and Major Qualifying Projects. Choose Searchable Collections > MQP & IQP Reports > Submit.

February 20, 2006: Celebrating National Engineering Week February 19-25, 2006: Listen to our Audio To Go podcast Bridging the Gap: Discover Engineering with Experiments Using Library Books.

February 13, 2006: Grolier Encyclopedia Americana is back! Search full text of the Encyclopedia Americana and Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia.

February 13, 2006: Like random science facts? Science Online - Facts on File contains background information on all science topics from animal anatomy, to weather and climate. Contains diagrams, definitions, biographies, a timeline, and even experiments.

February 13, 2006: Attention SciFinder Scholar Users! Upgrade now to SciFinder Scholar 2006 to ensure your access to the Chemical Abstracts Service database. SciFinder versions 2002 and 2004 will be retired by CAS and will not work as of April 1, 2006. Details...

January 31, 2005: China? Suriname? Tuvalu? Oman? Whether you are traveling or just in need of useful information on countries of the world, we have a listing of Country Information sites under Searchable Collections › Reference Web Sites.

January 23, 2005: Better web searching is in your future! Learn the latest about search engines. Sign up for the upcoming Advanced Web Searching seminar to discover the magic of Google & beyond.

January 12, 2005: 100% More ScienceDirect Journals. The library just began a new subscription to ScienceDirect that provides WPI faculty, students, and staff access to over 1,800 full text electronic journals published by Elsevier from 1995 to the present. This represents nearly a 100% increase in the number of journals available and at an affordable cost. The new four year deal was negotiated by the NELINET consortium on behalf of WPI and 12 other institutions. Members of the WPI library staff were consulted and provided input during the negotiations. You can find ScienceDirect on the Databases and Electronic Resources pages.

January 5, 2006: Interlibrary Loan in Your Inbox.The Interlibrary Loan Department at Gordon Library is working hard to make your research easier! We are pleased to announce that we have begun to deliver interlibrary loan articles to WPI community members by e-mail.

In order to take advantage of this convenient new service, simply respond YES to the question "E-Mail item to you?" on the article request form and we will make every effort to deliver the item to you electronically. We encourage you to take advantage of this new service and we welcome your feedback to lib-ill@wpi.edu or x5414.

While we hope that most WPI community members will be able to take advantage of this new service please be aware of the following situations that may hinder the successful forwarding of items through e-mail:

Auto-generated Interlibrary Loan e-mail may end up in junk mail folders if your spam settings are too aggressive.
Articles may be lost and require reordering, as the Interlibrary Loan staff can only retain the PDF files temporarily due to copyright compliance issues.
Because all files are sent in PDF format larger articles may cause some problems due to mailbox size.
Some articles arrive at the library through the postal service; these will not be converted to electronic files due to the possibility of copyright compliance issues arising.

January 11, 2006: Go Bananas: Let Your Voice Be Heard. Soon we will be participating in a national survey to chart library service quality. We'll be asking for your participation in LibQual+ in a few short weeks. More...

January 4, 2006: Happy New Year! Make a resolution to stay on top of the latest research in your field. Sign up for the upcoming Current Awareness seminar. Search alerts and table of contents of your favorite journals can be sent to your email on a regular basis.

January 3, 2006: Visuals Improve Learning! Studies show that using visual in addition to oral content during presentations aids in retention. Learn how to search/browse the library's DVD and video collection by checking our new Finding Visual Materials module of our SearchPath library research skills tutorial.

December 5, 2005: Have you noticed the new option in the lower left under the library search for Library Journals? The WPI Journals list is the one stop search for finding all of the journals, magazines and newspapers available through the Gordon Library in print or electronic format.

December 5, 2005: Need to reserve a lab for use on evenings and weekends? We have created a Lab Use Policy for the Anderson Instruction Lab A. Although the primary use is for library instruction, WPI community members may now use the lab for groups of 3 or more when it's not in use. Reserve by contacting x5410 or stopping at the Circulation Desk.

December 5, 2005: Need to cite sources in a research paper? Check out Citation Resources for style manuals and examples.

December 5, 2005: Be sure to stop by to experience nature via Neil Tischler's Nature Photography exhibit. Neil is a mechanical engineering consultant with a passion for photography.

November 18, 2005: CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics : We now have access to the online version of this popular handbook which includes data on properties of inorganic and organic compounds, values for fundamental physical constants, and tables needed by chemists, physicists, and engineers.

November 4, 2005: Encyclopedia Britannica Online: Start here for background information on most topics. Search the web version of the Encyclopedia Britannica or browse by subject, A-Z, or check the World Atlas or timelines of history.

October 26, 2005: SCARE FEST: Library Services & Vendor Fair will be held on Monday Oct. 31 from 11am-2pm. Don't let research frighten you! We beseech you to attend for raffle prizes (iPod, portable DVD Player, optical mice, etc.), to learn about databases, free food and more.

Sip cider while listening to your favorite faculty member read scary stories. Wear a costume if you dare!

Trick or Treat Can drive: The library is partnering with Lambda Chi to do a canned food drive during SCARE FEST, swap cans for treats and tricks!

October 4, 2005: Check out @Gordon Library Fall 2005 newsletter.

September 27, 2005: AccessScience: From abaca to zooplankton: Announcing AccessScience, the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology Online, based on the 9th edition and its yearbooks, and the Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms. Contains 8,000 articles written by the leading figures in their fieldsincluding 30 N Nobel Prize winners, over 2000 science biographies and 13,000 illustrations, news stories from Science News, and editorsselected web sites.

September 20, 2005: Worcester Art Museum Passes: Free passes for faculty and staff to Worcester Art Museum available at circulation desk. Each good for group of four. WPI students can show their student ID for free entry.

September 20, 2005: Announcing Library Audio to Go! Be mobile with library content on MP3 players. Audio offerings include Library Building Tours, eAudio bestsellers, fiction, non-fiction, radio programming, journal content, podcasts of library information.

September 8, 2005: Hurricanes and Disaster Response Research: ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers) has put together a web site called Hurricane Events Analysis, Response and Mitigation, a collection of published ASCE journal and magazine articles and proceedings papers.

August 31, 2005: New Resource! Use LexisNexis Statistical to access statistics and downloadable charts produced by the U.S. government, international intergovernmental organizations, professional and trade organizations, commercial publishers, independent research organizations, state government agencies, and universities.

August 17, 2005: New subscription: Search Hoovers Premium Online for company and industry overviews, and IPO (Initial Public Offering) Central. See also the Encyclopedia of American Industries brief but useful industry overviews within this 2 volume ebook.

Other new electronic subscriptions include: Encyclopedia of Water Science, Encyclopedia of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering and Oxford Reference Online .

August 16, 2005 Library Information Flow: By the Numbers
During the last academic year 2004-2005:

31,000 items were circulated
more than 200,000 people visited the building
instruction was given to more than 2000 users
reference help was provided to more than 4000
our electronic journal collection grew to 25,000 online titles
we borrowed 2032 items from 310 libraries across the nation through Interlibrary Loan. we lent 3127 items to others.
ratio of ebooks to print books expanded to: 1:6
most popular databases by number of searches: Web of Science, FirstSearch, EBSCOhost Business Source, InfoTrac Web

August 13, 2005, Network Outage: On Saturday August 13, 2005 4 A.M. - 4 P.M. there will be no network access from on or off campus to library network services and databases. Details...

July 25, 2005, LIBRARY CATALOG UNAVAILABLE: The library catalog and Voyager system will be down between 2 and 4 hours this Thursday July 28, 2005 starting at 10 A.M. Details are available at IT News and Events.

July 18, 2005, Search Grove Art Online the most comprehensive and authoritative online resource for all research in the history of the visual arts.

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Last modified: Aug 19, 2008, 09:14 EDT