The mysteries of daylight saving time and other conundrums

In this issue, we unravel a few mysteries concerning: students and their use of IT; the size of the web; magazines and journals in your subject area; social bookmarking; a new search engine, and daylight saving time. Also, some info about the magical, mystery information discovery tour.

1) Two Exciting Studies Released
October saw the release of two interesting studies for us here in AcademiaLand. First, the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) released its ECAR Study of Students and Information Technology, 2005: Convenience, Connection, Control, and Learning. From the site: “this 2005 study is based on quantitative data from more than 18,000 freshman and senior students at 63 higher education institutions. It focuses on what kinds of information technologies today’s students are using, with what levels of skill they are using them, how IT use contributes to the undergraduate experience, and what value the use of IT adds in terms of learning.” The report also covers the use of Course Management Systems by students and what students like and dislike about these systems (systems such as those that we use here: MoCoMotion Course Tools, FRED and WebCT). Sure, the focus is the U.S. and university rather than college students, nonetheless some relevant info for those of us who work with students and need to know what they are really doing when they duck behind their laptops in the classroom.

Also, in October, the BBC released a report on the size of the Internet. In the year to October the web grew by more than 17 million sites, monitoring firm Netcraft states in the story. “This figure exceeds the growth of 16 million sites seen in 2000 when net fever reached its most intense pitch”, notes the report. Some more interesting tid bits: There are 74.4 million addresses on the Web. Netcraft’s first survey in 1995 found only 18,957 sites. Yikes! You know what that means?! Now, there’s more info than ever before to wade through when you’re looking for good, quality web resources to use for your research! Which leads me to my next point…the raison d’etre for us here in LibraryLand! Our sole mission in life is to guide you through the morass of meaningless and questionable information to lead you in the end to a glorious dawn of relevant, fulfilling and stupendous information resources! [sigh] Or something similar. But truly our mission is to “connect you with the right information at the right time” so if you need some guidance on the Information Highway, we’re here to help!

2) BRAINWave of the Month: Deep thoughts about magazines and journals
Have you been wondering lately exactly what magazines and journals we have in your subject area in our online collections….or perhaps you are pondering over a particular magazine or journal title, scratching your head, ruminating over the possibilities, cogitating over whether or not it is indeed included in one of the Library’s many subscription databases? Well, speculate no longer and head on over to the E-Journal Portal!
To find out what magazine and journals we have in your subject area:

1. Click E-Journal Portal on TheBRAIN’s navigation bar.
2. Scroll down a tad to the heading: Browse e-journals by subject and click on the subject category drop-down.
3. Select your subject from the drop-down. These subjects are very broad so your exact subject might not be listed. Choose a broad subject to see narrower subcategories. For example, “Journalism” is listed under “Humanities and Reference” and “Civil Engineering” is listed under “Technology and Applied Sciences/Engineering”.
4. Click on the appropriate narrower subject category from the list that appears. Check out the handy number in brackets – this tells you how many titles are available in our collection!
5. A list of journals in that subject area displays on the next screen.
6. If you’d like to take a gander at the issues available for a journal, click on any database link next to the title. Examples of databases you will see are: ProQuest Science Journals, Academic Search Premier, etc. Once you do this you will be entering the database. Note: If you are accessing E-Journal Portal from home or offsite, you’ll be asked to log in with your faculty/staff/student number and PIN. Don’t have? No problemo! Get in touch and we’ll set you up!

Now let’s say you are looking for a particular magazine or journal:

1. Click E-Journal Portal on TheBRAIN’s navigation bar.
2. The first box on the screen lets you search by Title. You can enter words with which the title begins, enter the exact title or enter words in the title. If you know the ISSN, you can enter that too.

Easy peasy? If not, get in touch, we�ll show you all the in�s and out�s! (P.S. if you can�t find the title you need, try recommending a title. While we can�t promise we will purchase all recommendations, we will seriously consider all requests!)

3) The Magical Mystery Information Discovery Tour!
…is coming to take you away, take you away, take you away. Ok, it’s not magical or mysterious, and it isn’t quite a tour and has nothing really to do with The Beatles or magic �shrooms. But it is all about information discovery! Hop onboard! This bus is hitting the highway, the Information Highway, that is! (Sorry, couldn�t help saying that.) On Wed., Nov. 23rd between 12pm and 1pm I’ll be in Room i204 to take you on a little tour of some new sites in the world of Internet search. There will be Google, Yahoo!, and MSN but there will also be some newbies on the scene, and some nifty information management tools! And if I can dig up some Beatles tunes, there will be that too. Plus, it would be positively dreamy to meet some BRAIN_blog readers, so come on out and show your faces! (Special thanks to the IAR for including us in their most excellent “IAR Presents…” series!)

4) More Social Bookmarking Tools Exposed!
A while back on the BRAIN_blog, we reviewed social bookmarking tools. These little babies are gaining in popularity and now PCMag has followed our lead (well, not really, but we can dream) and published a review of more social bookmarking tools. We reviewed one of their featured tools in our expos� (del.icio.us) but the other reviewed tools are pretty new and exciting so check them out in their article: Share and Play Tag on the New Web Playground..

5) Exciting Exalead
Yes, I�ve used the word �exciting� yet again in this issue�and I don�t throw that word around lightly! The search engine Exalead has been around for a while but has never really caught my attention. Well, wowee…it pays to take a second look!
Here are some of the neat-o-keen features:

• three cool ways to view your results: with thumbnail pictures, with thumbnails and text, or with only text. Click on a thumbnail and a 1/4 screen preview of the site displays;
• add bookmarks to save results you are interested in returning to later;
• add shortcuts to the main page to save links to sites you go to most often…and it’s easy – click the “add shortcut” box and add your shortcut!
• Bookmarks and shortcuts are saved in your browser…no need to login (of course this means that you can’t save your settings to access on a different computer);
• Related terms show up in the left sidebar…and they are actually pretty helpful!
• Related categories also display. Very useful when there are different applicable categories for your search. For example, I performed a search on salmon and related categories such as cooking, biology, business and recreation displayed. All useful when you want to zero in on those yummy salmon chowder recipes.

6)Daylight Saving Time: What is it, anyway?
If you are anything like me, you obediently put your clocks back in the fall as instructed and wonder silently to yourself what this �daylight saving time� thing is really all about, why we do it, and why on earth it�s called �daylight saving time� all the while struggling to remember how one actually adjusts the car clock. Well, at last the answers to these burning questions have been found in a handy dandy little web site from the Institute for Dynamic Educational Advancement. And in addition, the CBC has a concise and useful overview and history of DST. At last! Except for the car clock, that mystery remains unsolved.