What is your favorite browser? IE? Opera? Safari? FireFox? All browsers will get you to the internet, but its often the other things that a browser can do that make us love or hate them. Its also these other things that can make our lives easier. For instance, have you ever given much consideration to all of the add-ons that FireFox offers? If not, now might be the time.
To give you food for thought, there are two add-ons for FireFox that could help you with your research. The Zotero add-on is akin to the RefWorks citation management tool that we offer here at UTA. However, while RefWorks is an internet application, Zotero is a browser based application that allows you manage and capture your citations as you do your research. PicLens is another FireFox add-on that will allow you to search various resources with the search results displayed in images instead of the typical results list. If you are a visual person or looking for images, PicLens is a great way see your search results in a very image centric way.
These are just two examples of add-ons that could make your life easier as you research a topic or track down that one piece of information that you need. Besides browser add-ons, there are many other apps out on the web that can help you in your academic and online life. One of the places that I rely on to find cool new tools is lifehacker.com. iBreadCrumbs, Xobni, Remember the Milk, and other tools that help me manage my online life came to me via Lifehacker. Give it a try and see what new things you can find to help you out.
I tend to shy away from mentioning news events in this blog; doing so tends to date the content. However, this last week there was some news I wanted to make sure that you are aware of. According to News.com Princeton University has joined Yale, Oxford, and the University of California at Berkeley in creating text books for the Kindle reader through their publishing arms. You can find the article that sparked my interest here. Continue reading ‘Will your next text book be on a Kindle?’
So, what are citation counts and why should you care? If you are a faculty member, you are very likely already familiar with citation counts and how important they are. If you are a student, this phrase might not be quite as familiar. Citation counts are literally counts of the number of times someone has referred to a work published by an author. Continue reading ‘Citation Counts’
Genearlly speaking, plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work and implying or indicating that it is original work done by you. You may or may not intend to plagiarize another person’s work, but in the academic world, plagiarism is seen to be a very serious offense with very serious consequences. You can find more about plagiarism and academic integrity at UTA here. Continue reading ‘The Ugly “P” Word - Plagiarism’
Finding the right resource can sometimes be a challenge. While you might know what you want, connecting that back to the title of a book can seem almost impossible. For instance, what if you are looking for a particular chart or diagram or quote? Continue reading ‘New Resource - Google Book Search’
Books. Yes, we have those, but the Science and Engineering Library has more than just books. Continue reading ‘What the library has for you’
How do you see Wikipedia as a resource for your research? There are many differing perspectives on Wikipedia and its use in an academic setting. While I do use it for my own edification, I would likely use this resource with some caution in an academic setting. Why? Well, my first hurdle to overcome would be the authority of any article within Wikipedia. Continue reading ‘Wikipedia’
The word “open” has come to mean so much more than it used to. There’s open source, open architecture, open hardware, and now open courseware. Continue reading ‘Unconventional Resources - Part 3 - Open CourseWare’
It would be impossible for the UTA library to have every book potentially required to support every research project and class assignment going on at UTA. As our community of users, UTA students and faculty are amazing individuals with a wonderful ability to find new and interesting topics to discuss and research. To help accommodate the resource needs of all of these great projects, we provide the interlibrary loan service (ILL). At a basic level, ILL allows you to request that UTA acquire a resource on your behalf from another library for an item that UTA does not own. Continue reading ‘ILL - Interlibrary Loan & So Much More’
I have to admit that I am an authority on very few things in life. In fact, I won’t bore you with the very short list that springs to mind. But I do want to talk to you about authority and what this means for the resources that you use for your research. Continue reading ‘Authority and Resources’
