Archive for January, 2012

Librarian for Discovery Services & Technology: Andrew Welch

Andrew Welch
You may have seen his alter masked persona on the SuperSearch Posters. Since joining the Library Faculty in 2010 – Andrew Welch has been forging new connections for access to scholarly resources. He earned his Master of Arts in Library and Information Science from the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science in 2003, and served as a Systems Librarian for the Aurora Public Library system in Aurora, Colorado.

Mr. Welch serves as an Assistant Professor of Librarianship as at Cowles Library. He is responsible for the Library’s integrated library system (ILS), a suite of software that manages the acquisition, circulation and display of the Library’s collections. In addition, he oversees the configuration of SuperSearch and is involved with a number of other systems projects involving on-demand book, e-book and article delivery.

His research interests include usability of online library resources and the integration of third-party services into the library discovery interface.

By JoVE! Library Partners with Pharmacy to bring a New Type of Journal to Drake

Are you a visual learner? Do you like science? Would you rather see the experiment than read about it? Then take time to look at JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, now available through Cowles Library!

Jove Logo

JoVe is the first scientific video journal, but it also two attributes of more traditional journals: it’s peer-reviewed and it’s indexed in PubMed. JoVE has been around for five years, and there is already an impressive backlog of visualized experiments. Its January 2012 issue marked the 59th issue. All of its videos are professionally produced. Unlike a traditional journal, however, JoVE also offers users the ability to interact. Users may leave comments and ask questions.

JoVE also separates its video articles into sections, including neuroscience, immunology and infection, clinical and translational medicine, bioengineering, and basic protocols. Funding for this resources is shared by the College of Pharmacy and Cowles Library.

Library Launches New Web Site

Cowles Library has been at the forefront of change in the world of electronic information for many years (the first Cowles Web site was launched in 1994, for example)  As the provision and accessibility of electronic information has continued to evolve, so have the services and electronic offerings of Cowles Library.

Library's New Web Site

The new site improved the finding tools for article databases

Now, in a major step forward, Cowles Library’s Faculty and staff have developed a new Web site, which they are launching in “beta” (i.e., available for public viewing and comment):  http://library.drake.edu.  Employing the widely-used WordPress platform, this new version has many advantages over the current Library Web site: 

A dynamic and descriptive list of databases in each Drake discipline, ready links to information about the library and where to get help, and “site search” and “SuperSearch” abilities on every page (to name but a few!)

This new site has been carefully developed by Cowles faculty and staff, and subjected to usability testing by Drake students.  It consists of four major sections:  The “main” site is the Research, Study and Learning, which is designed to make it easier to access the Library’s services and resources; the Newsletter, launched in Fall 2011 (which you are reading!) is a digest of the Library’s latest happenings; “Our Purpose, Our People” has in-depth information about the life of Cowles Library; and “Collections at Cowles” contains both historical information about Drake University, as well as the collected research output of Drake’s faculty, staff, and students.

Keep in mind, the “official” Web site continues to be at http://library.drake.edu ; this site has served us well, so we will not replace it with the “new” site until we’ve given our users time to try out (and comment on) the new site.

This, of course, is just an overview; we invite you to kick the tires!  There are feedback links on almost every page, so we’d love to hear what you think!

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