Leddy Library Reference Desk Blog

A couple of strange things to report about the Globe and Mail and the CBCA. As most of you know, the CBCA was produced by Micromedia which has since been bought out by ProQuest, and if you click on the link from the Journal Databases by title, you will be brought to the new CBCA interface.

Peter's page -- reference resources --- still points to the WebSPIRS interface, which appears to still be active, in that we have an update for mid-October. So currently we have two different versions available, although probably not for long as the WebSPIRS access is probably just an oversight on their part.

Now, here's where it gets weird. The ProQuest version does not seem to index the Globe and Mail at all. I then checked Canadian Newsstand as I was told that ProQuest had decided to move all the newspapers out of CBCA and into Newsstand. However, it's not indexed in Newsstand either as far as I can tell.

It is still selectively indexed in the WebSPIRS version, but of course I don't know how long we'll have access to that version. Of course the online Globe and Mail that we now carry has indexing and fulltext from1844-1999 -- but it would seem like currently we are without indexing for this paper from 1999 to the present.

I have reported this to Art, who's going to take a look under the hood -- please let me know if any of you figure something out, it's entirely possible that I've missed something.

best
L.

This week's desk schedule.

If a student inquires about the DOLQ, they mean the Dictionnaire des oeuvres littéraires du Québec

The links to CBCA Business and CBCA Reference no longer work as they are being replaced by the Proquest version of CBCA which is on the Journal Article and Database By Title page

I will take the dead links off of the website soon.
CBCA Education remains on ERL.

Joan has a list of all the courses with electronic course reserve and their passwords. They are:

1. biol 55-350 - chromosome
2. geog 42-249 - water
3. phil 34-260 - reason
4. polsci 45-100 - parliament
5. socwk 47-303 - policy
6. socwk 47-520 - leadership
7. educ 80-302 - draw

A copy will be kept at the reference desk.

Nicole

From an email from Cathy:
"Scholar's workstations 26 - 37 (the two pods just east of the reference desk) will be taken apart any minute now and will be out of commission until approx. 6 p.m. tonight.

The reference desk will be moved tomorrow morning first thing so the first two hours on the desk will most likely have to park somewhere else to do reference."

From the most recent DH minutes, re: the Scholar's Workstations

"Students are allowed 6 hours of access in a 24 hour period (on a dynamic clock). They accumulate only the time they are logged on so if they sign up for 2 hours but only use 1 hour they only accumulate 1 hour of use. The average time on a work station is 45 minutes and we average 1200 bookings a day."

We currently have limited printing in the library. Scholar's Workstations in the Main Building can print and the computers in the basement of the West Building can print.

The electronic journal list has been updated. It's got direct links to all the fulltext titles in Proquest as well as mentioning which Proquest titles are under embargo.

More server stuff. A number of links to journals in the library catalogue will not work even when the catalogue is working.

When you click on them, the page will say: "Page Cannot Be Displayed" and the URL will begin, http://resolver.uwindsor.ca/

To get around this, search the list of electronic journal list for the title and strip out the EZ proxy prefix as described below.

Just to let you know - during times in which the library catalogue and the journal databases are not available, one can still search our indexes (from on campus) by removing the ez-proxy link to the database.

For example, right now if I click on the link to WilsonWeb I get a 'Page Not Displayed' message. Now, look at the Address Bar in the browser:

http://janus.lamf.uwindsor.ca:18010/NET/LEDPROXY/open?url=http://hwrelay.hwwilsonweb.com

Remove the ez proxy link so that it now reads
http://hwrelay.hwwilsonweb.com

If you hit enter, you should get access to the database. This will not work off campus.

Another note re Jyotika Virdi's film class. I saw a number of reviews (popular and critical)in the paper Film Literature Index on Hearts and Minds. The Learning Tree (dir. Gordon Parks also know for Shaft!) came out in 1969 or '68, and the FLI doesn't go back far enough. There may be things in FLI though, later on as a number of people writing about blaxploitation flicks have talked about Gordon Parks in the last 10 years or so.

Anyway, there's also an "Index to Critical Film Reviews", two vol. set on the shelf above FLI. There are two articles on The Learning Tree referenced in vol. 1, and at least one of them is in a journal we have called Take One.

best
L.

If you are ever of need of historical photographs (for one of those 'primary document' type of assignments) you may want to try Corbis.com. Corbis is one of the largest stock photography companies in the world and owns the copyright of many historic and artistic photographs.

And then, there is also Google Images.

whoops, sorry .... their there they're ... i've been having the same problem since grade school.

L.

Hi all. Jyotika Virdi's film class (344) is looking for film reviews of various things and it's proving difficult. Some of them will be insistent that she said they have to use Elsevier or JSTOR. This ain't true -- I spoke with her yesterday and she wants them to find scholarly material on these films, and does not care which tool they search in. She also said that if they cannot find journal articles/reviews, she would accept material book chapters -- as long as they were scholarly.

So a couple of tips.... of course the Film Literature Index (in paper) is worth checking. Make sure to check starting from the year the film came out and forward. Also, try checking in FLI for the director's name, as they may find something useful that way.

Also, the Film Archive database through WebSpirs may prove helpful. I found 18 articles on Hearts and Minds in their, albeit through a circuitous route. Using the Indexes for the database, select the field FIX (Film Description). Type in your film name and search. I tried a search all on my film and got 0 hits, but using the FIX field got 18, so who knows what the heck is going on.

Another place to search is the MLA -- I found one article on the Learning Tree, and 2 on Hearts and Minds, searching by director.

And finally, don't forget that they can try searching for books as well -- you may expand the search to the general area ... like "African American films" or something, as they may find something on their director and/or film this way.

Godspeed....

yours in struggle
Lisa

The Library Services pages have been updated. I think that the pages now better explain how undergrads, grads, and faculty can borrow items from other libraries in Canada and the US. But if they are still unclear, let me know!

upcoming Literary Quickies that will be held in Leddy:

Oct. 10 ‹ Tom Dilworth
Oct. 24 ‹ Mary Ann Mulhern
Oct. 31 ‹ John B. Lee
Nov. 14 ‹ Laurie Smith/Lenore Langs