What is your first or funniest memory of a library or librarian? If you don’t remember anything pertinent, you’ll get points for creativity if you develop a great storyline from your imagination.
You can write short bits in comments below or write an article for this blog.
I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to write about this…duh!
Last spring a UF graduate student, Joel Hartter, now an Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire, brought a project he’d become involved with during his doctoral work in Uganda, Books Open the World, to the Smathers Libraries.
As the website describes it, “Books Open the World (BOTW) is a non-profit, secular organization that seeks to promote and encourage education and opportunity in rural communities to children and women through community libraries, literacy classes, vocational training, support groups, and by supporting all levels of education.”
Here at UF, a group of librarians and some other folks have written articles for library magazines, garnered money from grants, inspired a young librarian to help develop the libraries in Uganda, and developed BOTW’s website. We’re also collecting books for the libraries, getting non-profit status, and looking for more grant money.
We are sending many books from here, but the communities also want many books in the native languages. Those can only be bought in-country, so for that cash and grants are needed.
If you are interested in helping in other ways, contact the organization. It’s all quite exciting.
In our catalog before, if you only knew the beginning of the title of a book or had a spelling problem, searching for the book might be futile or it appear anywhere on the list. Perhaps even on the second or third page! However, now we allow you to search for a title or author and get what librarians call a “browse” results list.
To use the the browse search, I click on the middle radio button on the library catalog search screen (Search begins with (browse)). I’ll search for a book I’m reading: Wikenomics.
See how cool? Even though I don’t know how to spell, I still find my book! (Actually, depending on the misspelling, this issue is often resolved in the basic search as well. You can get a “Did you mean ‘wikinomics’?” question that will lead you to the correct record.”)
But the browse should help you find books and authors when you know them already! Have a go at it!
Recently, I’ve thought a lot about social networking sites, especially comparing Facebook with Ravelry.com (a site for Knitters, Crocheters, and Spinners) and how they relate to wikis and blogs by librarians and for libraries.
I wonder if I’m more comfortable at Rivelry because 1) it’s more structured or 2) it revolves my great obsessions. Facebook feels too amorphous to me; I can’t seem to get settled. But at Rivelry, I jumped in right away, setting up my own group — Guerilla Knitters (knitters who perform public art with knitting or crochet), writing to others, setting up projects I’m working on, and contacting people I know from other cities who are obsessed with knitting and spinning, too.
Ravelry allows each member to organize his or her knitting or crocheting projects, library, yarn, needles/hooks, and design plans online. Furthermore, each of these can link to other people’s projects that are using the same materials or patterns. So, you can find people doing similar work as you.
And you can find people in groups that others have founded based on geography, love of a yarn, a pattern, a style of knitting, spinning, or a movie that has great handknits in it (like A Christmas Story!)
Knitting becomes even more collaborative through the Internet. It’s how I became a spinner years ago through listservs and bulletin boards.
Social networking and collaborative work are both hot topics. Here are some sources:
Can our library work become even more collaborative in the same way? Students can communicate with each other about their research experiences — what works, what doesn’t — everything becomes richer and easier. Is structure the answer?
Could students set up their research projects with links that connect them to other students who use the same databases, methodologies, topics, or books? Is this already done with current classroom websites? But if it’s done across universities, there could be much more collaboration and students could learn research much like real professors and researchers do.
September 4, 2007 NPR reported on both the unequal distribution of mental health services around the world and the good results gained when treatment for depression is provided. Their “I’ll shock you awake” statistic: “in Africa, there’s one psychiatrist for every 2 million people; while in Europe, there’s one for every 10,000.”
The Lancet launched a series on Global Mental Health, describing the poor coverage of mental illness all over the world, but of more extreme concern in middle and poorer countries. The panel also impressed on the journalists the concept of “No Health without Mental Health” by describing the difference in physical health treatment of mentally healthy and mentally ill persons. The press briefing, including questions and answers from journalists to the panelists, is available online at the Lancet.
NPR interviewed a Chilean psychologist, Roberto Araya, who found that poor persons with depression failed to be treated because health professionals blamed their depression on poverty. However, Araya found that treatment could alleviate depression even if poverty still existed. This allowed previously debilitated individuals return to their work, caring for and providing for their families, becoming contributing members of their communities.
Getting Weird Results When Searching by Author in PsycINFO?
A psychology faculty member emailed me about a bug/problem/interesting he found when searching for articles by a specific author. Even though he typed in the author’s entire name, including middle initial, the results included articles written by everyone with the same first and last names. I repeated the search, enclosing the name in quotes and then in parentheses and got the same results.
But they probably do that because middle initials are pesky things that are often wrong in citations. Still..
Use the Author Lookup. Click on the link below the search boxes.
Then, type in as much of the name of the author as you know.
You’ll get a list of authors indexed in PsycINFO. Check those that might be your author; they’ll be added to a list on the right hand side of the page.
I was interested in finding Carol A. Padden. I entered “padden” into the Author Lookup. Several “paddens” were found. I clicked on Padden, Carol and Padden, Carol A. They were placed on the right hand side. If I want to remove either, I can just click on the trash cans.
Click on the red “Add to Search” button, and they’ll be placed in the search boxes on the search page, as below.
(Padden, Carol A) OR (Padden, Carol) have both been added to the search box in the “author” field. I can limit the search further any way I want and get articles only by Prof. Padden.
It’s very specific and focused, but requires a few more steps.
Choose a Topic that interests you
Walking in the dog park the other day, I started thinking about the different treatments I’d been hearing about for my friends’ dogs’ fears of thunder and lightening storms. No one seemed to want to use boring, old (time-comsuming) desensitization techniques. (Letting their dogs listen to soft thunder sounds and giving them treats for the moments they were calm. Then increasing the sounds and adding flashes of light as they were able to maintain their calm.)
Gotta show you a picture of my darling new doggy, Audrey 
– who is quite scared during thunderstorms.
No, my friends suggested using flower essences, cloth wraps, TTouch, message, acupuncture. Things that only my nutty friends used in California during the 1970’s. Many of these techniques have now integrated into regular medicine. How has this happened? Massage therapy was never covered under insurance of old. Now acupuncture is covered by most insurance. Why and how has this happened?
2) Find Background Information from Subject Specific Encyclopedias
To find background information and to get a theoretical perspective on the issues involved, look in the index of the encyclopedia, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology.
Now, since this is an encyclopedia of sociology, each of the 56 articles you find slant the topic from a sociological viewpoint — not psychological, not medical. Just what you want for a sociology class and for your question. Cool beans.
Use the first article, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, by Hans Baer to help you
3) Find Books in the library catalog
Next, you can look for the books and articles at the end of the article in our library catalog. Hans Baer’s book is there.
4) Find Articles in subject databases
A couple of different databases may help you find articles that interest you. The Sociology Subject Guide lists several different databases, including Sociological Abstracts, PubMed, and Web of Science. Sociological Abstracts includes journals particularly from a sociological point of view, so that’s a good place to start.
Use the terms from the encyclopedia article:
(complementary medicine OR alternative medicine OR medical pluralism OR holistic medicine)
AND professionalization
If you use the thesaurus, the results will mostly hit right on topic!
Now what can you do? Read through these abstracts and see which really answer your question and which are off topic.
If they look good, click on the 
and follow the instructions for getting e-journals.
5) You might check out PubMed. Included are journals directed at bioscientists and physicians, so there should be interesting material here. Do similar sorts of searches. You might want to look at these as primary sources, as the object of research — analyze some of the articles from a sociological perspective.
Complementary Medicine[MeSH] AND “medical pluralism”
6) Perform a Citation Search; Find Related Records using Web of Science
Choose an older, pertinent article from your previous searches. Then see who has written a more recent article on a similar topic and cited that article.
Another technique is to search for articles in Web of Science and then to look for Related Records.
When you click on the link, you get this record. On the right hand side of it, you see a link to “Related Records.” I’ve circled it in red and marked it with a red arrow.
If you click here, you’ll get other articles that share the same references and so probably are on the same topics. The articles at the top will share the most references — they should be the most closely related.
I clicked on the red circle and got the following results:
The articles that share the most references appear at the top of the list. Lots of these articles are on the topic you’re interested in.
Clicking on the purple circle, I got more recent articles that cited this one:
Keep reading and thinking. Soon you’ll be writing and turning in your paper.
Come visit me, email, or call any time you need help!
The Reference Universe indexes articles from our online and print reference sources. 
Can you believe it? This should be a big help for you. But it’s a big help for us as librarians, as well. Our reference section is huge and articles about different topics are EVERYWHERE! Articles about gay adoption, for instance, are in
Kuersten, Ashlyn K. (2003). Women and the law : leaders, cases, and documents. Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO.
KF478.K84 2003
Law Library
There’s even an article about the law that forbids gay and lesbian couples from adopting children in Florida and the cases that have challenged it, online at
Gender Issues and Sexuality: Essential Primary Sources
2006 Gale [HQ21.G359 2007]
Florida-ban page(s) 1:170-171, 1:176
Anyway, even though as a student I was dedicated to the library, I had no idea the greatness of the reference section. It has still been difficult to determine what is where in the reference section, unless you’ve been a reference librarian for 20 years. Now those of us who don’t stalk the stacks can find wonderful articles.
