Hot, hot, hot!

It is hotter than Hades outside which means it�s time to seek out air conditioned facilities and lounge about in them for hours on end �and guess what? The Library @ Mohawk is air -conditioned! Yes, not only do we offer books, computers, expert assistance, but also nice, cool, refreshing air! While you are here, why not try out some of the hot, new trial databases we have on offer, check out our sizzling new Info To Go pathfinders, test out this week�s hot library tip or read the latest EDUCAUSE Quarterly (all of which are detailed below!) And hey, if you are one of the blessed who have a/c at home, then you can try all of these online resources from the comfort of your own air-conditioned home! Yay!

1) Hot, new trial databases!
For a limited time only we have a plethora of delightful online databases to try out�check them out and let us know what you think! Here is the list:

The Scientific & Medical ART (SMART) Imagebase is a collection of 10,000+ high quality illustrations and animations depicting anatomy, physiology, surgery, diseases, conditions, trauma, embryology, histology, and many, many other topics. SMART Imagebase users may download images for educational, non-commercial use in lectures, presentations, slide shows, web sites and more.

Business Source Premier is the industry’s most used business research database, providing the full text for more than 8,800 serials. Business Source Premier provides full text back to 1965 and searchable cited references back as far as 1998. Coverage includes virtually all subject areas related to business

Communication and Mass Media Complete provides access to journals in communication, mass media, and other closely-related fields of study to create a research and reference resource of unprecedented scope and depth encompassing the breadth of the communication discipline.

SocINDEX with Full Text is the world’s most comprehensive and highest quality sociology research database. The database features more than 1,600,000 records with subject headings from a 15,600 term sociological thesaurus designed by subject experts and expert lexicographers. SocINDEX with Full Text contains full text for 253 “core” coverage journals dating back to 1895, and 72 “priority” coverage journals. This database also includes full text for 547 books and monographs, and full text for 6,711 conference papers.

CINAHL with Full Text provides indexing for 2,737 journals from the fields of nursing and allied health. CINAHL with Full Text also contains searchable cited references for more than 1,150 journals and provides full text for 329 journals, plus legal cases, clinical innovations, critical paths, drug records, research instruments and clinical trials. PDF backfiles to 1982 are also included.

Mental Measurements Yearbook provides users with a comprehensive guide to over 2,000 contemporary testing instruments. Designed for an audience ranging from novice test consumers to experienced professionals, the MMY series contains information essential for a complete evaluation of test products within such diverse areas as psychology, education, business, and leadership.

SPORTDiscus with Full Text offers comprehensive, bibliographic and full text coverage of sport, fitness and related disciplines. This database contains over 230 full text titles. In addition, SPORTDiscus with Full Text also contains over 650,000 records with journal and monograph coverage going back to 1800; over 20,000 dissertations and theses and reference to articles in 60 different languages.

Country Watch is a database of information on every country in the world and includes: CountryReviewsTM, an up-to-date series of publications for each country including demographic, political, economic, business, cultural and environmental information; the CountryWireTM, which provides daily news coverage for every country in the world and a significant news archive made up of the compendium of regional news carriers; and the CountryWatch ForecastTM, a five-year macroeconomic forecast for each country. (Password required, contact Library staff for access.)

2) Sizzling New Library Service: Info To Go
Need info in a hurry? Try Library take-out! Info To Go is the name of the library’s guides to finding information in a particular subject area. The guides contain links to web sites, books and/or online magazines, journals and articles on a subject. Print them off and take them to go! So far, Info To Go guides are available on the following topics: Writing Guides, Medical Terminology, Public Relations, Labour Market Information, Job Search Resources and Active Citizenship. More are on the way! To access, click the Info To Go link on the blue navigation bar on TheBRAIN. No chopsticks required!

3) Hot Library Tip: Narrow your search to Canadian content only in BRAINlinks!
Looking for free and reliable Canadian content on the web? Well, we can help! Use BRAINlinks to narrow your search to Canadian content only! On the BRAINlinks search page, click on the Canadian Content Only checkbox, type in a keyword and you�re off to the races!

4) Blazing News @ EDUCAUSE!
The latest issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly has been released! This issue features a great article on the use of social software in academia, (aptly titled Social Software in Academia). I touched on some of this info at my Connections Conference session, Get Social! If you�re hungry for more info on social software and applications in education, check out this comprehensive article that covers blogs, wikis, VoIP, social bookmarking and social networking!

Something for everyone

These week we feature nothing but research resources that are crammed to the rim with excellent and useful content. Mmm�savour that meaty content goodness. There�s something for everyone�s tastes! Featured are: 1) a new blog search engine, 2)free statistics, 3) new health resources, 4) new features in Safari Tech Books Online, and 5) a free newspaper archive going back to 1759.

1) New blog search engine: Sphere
Searching for blogs on a particular topic is like entering a crowded party and trying to listen for a certain word in the chatter�difficult, no? Especially when there are lovely little hors d�oeuvres to be eaten and wine to be drunk, and cocktails with those pretty umbrellas� but I digress. There are gobs of text in blogs and not all of it can pertain directly to your topic�which is why searching for your topic can be frustrating (and not nearly as fun as the crowded party.) Well, there�s a new engine called Sphere in town and it improves on the other blog search engines in several ways:

> do a search and each search result links to a “profile” of the blog, which offers additional information including stats like average posts per week, average length of posts, three recent inbound and outbound links. This saves you the time of going to the blog and hunting around for this type of info.

> click on the drop-down menu to search for posts within the last four months, last day, last 12 hours or hour. This is great if you are looking for blog discussions on a particular, timely topic.

> check out the custom range search! This search opens up a histogram that lets you plot activity of your search terms, with a slider that allow you to limit your search to posts in any period over the last four months. Wowsers!

> a nice touch is the Featured Blogs link. Enter a broad topic (like education) and see a list of blogs on the topic. Not perfect, but pretty good.

2) For the statistics buffs�
I know you are out there. You who like to pore over statistics about the median household income in rural Saskatchewan, the spending habits of the Canadian male, aged 30 � 39, farm crop reporting�.yes, I know you are salivating just thinking of the graphing possibilities, the spreadsheets, the tables! Well, do I have exciting news for you � Stats Canada Downloadable Publications is now free!

Statistics Canada Downloadable Publications used to be available only within the Library � now you can access it for free from any computer with the Internet! Check out such popular titles as The Daily, Canadian Social Trends, Historical Statistics of Canada, and Canada at a Glance all from the comfort of your own home computer!

3) For the health researchers�
The National Library of Medicine released two exciting new resources at the beginning of this month. �Users are now able to search the Household Products Database and the Bookshelf, a growing collection of full text biomedical books.” Check out the Household Products Database for information about common household products, their hazards and what exactly they are made of.
In addition, the excellent health source MedLinePlus added 14 interactive body maps this month! Click on a body location/system to see an image�then, click on a body part to retrieve a list of resources on that topic. Not only useful but fun!

4) For the techies�
Just a reminder that the Library�s online database Safari Tech Books Online is always developing new features just for you as part of their Safari Labs. As a refresher, Safari Tech Books Online is the name of the Library�s electronic book collection that has a huge array of books in the fields of e-commerce, business and technology. The Labs part is �where users can discover prototypes or betas of new features. These previews will focus on new developments designed to enhance the content, search, and product offerings of the Safari Books Online service.� Some examples of these new prototypes are: the Safari Guides, which briefly introduce a topic and include links to specific book chapters, Related Articles, which feature articles from O’Reilly Network and IBM developerWorks and links to additional reading. Wow�it’s not just ebooks anymore!

5) For the news junkie�
The NewspaperARCHIVE is not new but it�s a goody that we haven�t had a chance to mention yet on BRAIN_blog. It is what it says�an archive of newspaper articles that features scans of the actual newspaper pages�some of these going back to 1759! It is� the single largest historical newspaper database online, containing more newspaper pages from 1759 to present than any other service. � Check out the Free Archives for newspaper articles organized by subject and today in history. Some parts require a fee but the FreeArchives are free, free, free!

Escape Plans

Now that spring is here and the semester rush has subsided, we can turn our thoughts to methods of escape. With that in mind we feature resources to aid in this endeavour: map tools, language resources, and translators! We also feature some great new learning resources in the Digital Dish because, well, that�s just the way we are. This issue of BRAIN_blog will be a tad short as we in the Library gear up for this year�s Connections Conference: The e-Learning Conference at Mohawk College! Tune in next issue when we will feature a run down of some of the sessions from this popular annual conference!

1) The Map: Tool of Choice
If you are one of those types who needs to know where s/he is going then the map is definitely the tool of choice. Here are some new online mapping tools and some oldies that have new features:

Ask.com provides some great maps and to get to them you need only go to the search page and type in a location (or go to the maps page.) Recently they�ve added physical maps to their street maps. Type in a location and select the �physical� link in the top left of the map. (Note that physical maps are only available from a great height � you�ll have to zoom out a few times to see them.) Check out the mountains, greenery, oceans and little people that look like ants!

Heading to Europe? Check out these resources for street level maps and directions (go ahead, check them out, be my guest, I’m not jealous, you just go right on ahead. hmph.)
Mappy.com provides maps, gives you costs for travelling by car from one point to another, lets you search for hotels, provides city maps and then allows you to map hotels, tourist offices and tourist attractions over the city map, and more! You can even reserve hotel rooms from the site! It�s almost too easy!
Multimap provides directions between cities, allows you to find and book hotels, and offers a great London tube map. Jolly good!
If you are heading to France or Spain, Pages-Jaunes offers maps of the countries, cities within the countries and street-level photos of select cities.
Google Maps now includes many city maps of European cities! Use the handy �Find Businesses� tool to locate hotels, restaurants, tourist offices and more!

2) Translate online
Get lost in translation with Yahoo!�s Babel Fish. Babel Fish has been around for a while but was just recently taken over by Yahoo! It�s the same great language translation tool wrapped in the Yahoo! brand. Or, as they say in Germany, Es ist das gleiche gro�e Sprachen�bersetzungshilfsmittel! Gosh, I love those long words!

3) Language Dictionaries and more!
Did you know that you can access the full-text of many language dictionaries and travel books from TheBRAIN? Go to TheBRAIN�s ebook collection and click netLibrary. Enter a search for a country or language. Check out titles like Adventure Guide, Tuscany & Umbria, The Companion Guide to Paris, Cayman Islands Alive! and more!

When travelling in a foreign land, it is sometimes useful to understand what people are saying to you so when you nod and smile you are doing so for the right reasons. If you agree, check out the online language resources! Not all languages are represented in the collection but there are some handy tomes such as Countdown to Spanish : Learn to Communicate in 24 Hours, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Learning Italian On Your Own, Schaum’s Outline of German Grammar, and CliffsQuickReview French I! I’ve got dibs on the Outline of German Grammar – hands off! (H�nde weg!)

4) Digital Dish
If you want to learn about the cycles of life, just take a look around outside. This is the time that it�s all starting! But if you happen to be stuck indoors, there is another place you can look, and it�s no farther than your desktop. The Vega Science Trust aims to create a platform for broadcasts on the natural sciences, as well as for the disciplines of engineering and technology. They are taking advantage of new TV and Internet opportunities to enable scientists, teachers and students to communicate on all aspects of their fields of expertise. To date, Vega has created more than 80 broadcasts, all of which are categorized by discipline and available for viewing on their website.

Brace yourself for some real lecture theatre…Princeton University�s IT Division has made available a collection of streaming media files captured from a wide range of invited guests and lecturers. Some examples of timely topics include �The Energy Crisis�, �The Appeal of War�, and �Challenges in the Middle East�, to name a few. If you have an avid interest in what it means to be a global citizen, then this is the site to visit, (and you don�t even have to pay Ivy League tuition!).