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.

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.

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://libtest.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!

As with last year’s launch of SuperSearch, there’s a lot of more changes coming soon at the library. Additional knowledge access pilot projects are getting underway. Planning has also started for a series of multi-year renovations to the library building. And Cowles will also launch a brand new web site soon.

There’s a lot happening! Stay tuned and stay connected.

Co-Editors:

Rod Henshaw
Dean, Cowles Library

Carrie Dunham-LaGree
Librarian for Digital Literacy

This workshop will cover the basic functions of RefWorks, including the new features added this fall. You will learn how to import and export citations from library databases, how to create bibliographies in seconds, how to organize sources in folders and subfolders, and how to manually create references. RefWorks novices and current users are welcome. Holding this workshop in the electronic classroom will allow users to practice using RefWorks.

This workshop is open to students, faculty and staff. Because space is limited in each session, registration is required. You may register for the November 28th session or the December 7th session. If you have specific RefWorks questions or would like to work one-on-one with a librarian, please contact Carrie Dunham-LaGree at carrie.dunham-lagree@drake.edu or (515) 271-2175. This workshop will also be offered during the spring semester. Look for more information on dates in January.

For more information on RefWorks, please take a look at our post on RefWorks 2.0.

Carrie Dunham-LaGree joined the Cowles Library Faculty in June 2011. She completed her Master’s of Science in Information Studies at The University at Albany (NY) in December 2010. Before coming to Drake, she worked as an Information Literacy and Reference Librarian at the University at Albany and taught Information Literacy courses there for three semesters. During graduate school, she interned at Siena College and at the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Library in Cooperstown, New York.

Ms. Dunham-LaGree serves as an Assistant Professor of Librarianship as the Librarian for Digital Literacy and General Education.  This fall, she and Professor of Librarianship Bruce Gilbert will co-teach the First-Year Seminar “Digital People, Digital Lives,” which will explore concepts of citizenship and humanity through technology and information literacy.

Her research interests include the influence of technology culture on the information-seeking behavior of academic library users and the influence of popular culture in undergraduate library instruction.

RefWorks automates the tasks of citing information & creating bibliographies for research papers. Allows you to create your own citations or import from online databases. For remote access, call the Reference Desk at 271-2113 and ask to speak with the librarian on duty to obtain the site code.

DynaMed has undergone a significant transformation including new features and enhanced functionality.  We are pleased to announce that the transformation is complete and users will begin to notice some of these new features:

•  Cleaner, more simple user interface
•  Alerting feature allows users to be notified when topics are updated with new evidence
• Updates can be filtered to view by specialty and if they are “practice changing”
• Search results can be configured to include results from other EBSCO database subscriptions
• Enhanced navigation functionality in both search results and topics allow users easily find information

Complete list of the new features.

Encyclopedia of Popular Music – 4th Edition

Now Online!  This encyclopedia’s 30,000 entries cover all genres and periods of popular music from 1900 to the present day, including jazz, country, folk, rap, reggae, techno, musicals, and world music. The expanded Fourth Edition includes thousands of new entries on trends, styles, record labels, venues, and music festivals. Key dates, biographies, and further reading are provided for artists covered, along with complete discographies that include record labels, release dates, and a 5-star album rating system.

Access the Encyclopedia of Popular Music from on-campus.

Cowles Library has archived and cataloged an extensive collection of jazz materials collected by C. Pat Place and his brother, Robert “Bob” Place (Drake ’48).  The collection was gifted to Cowles Library by son and nephew, Richard Place, also a Drake University alum.

Several binders of personal notes and commentaries resulting from years of researching the world of jazz reflect the Place’s passion for this original, American musical genre.  Accompanying the binders, are nearly 700 jazz-related items, including: books, CDs, cassettes, LPs & 78s, as well as movies.

Access the Finding Aid to the archived notes and commentaries.

Access the list of cataloged books and media.

The Dorman Hundling Silent Film Sheet Music Archive

Cowles Library has archived a unique and significant collection of music written or arranged to accompany silent film.  Founded in 1981 at Drake University, this archive contains over 6,000 titles with scores and parts, the nucleus of the collection coming from the Hundling family’s Capitol Theater in Newton, Iowa.

The scores (in folders) are in order by number assigned by the longtime curator of the collection, Drake University professor emeritus of music, Dr. James Luke, and taken from the collection’s digital database identifying title, composer, arranger, publisher, date of publication, place of publication, mood, and provenance.

Access the collection’s Finding Aid.