Recently in Library Resources Category

The University Libraries recently purchased the online backfile of the conference proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineering going back to the mid-1800s up through the 20th century. That means that these historic Civil Engineering documents are now available to you without coming into the library--you can access them anywhere that you do research, as long as you've linked to the University Libraries through authenticating at www.lib.umn.edu (just like all of our other online resources).

These papers should also appear via FindIt...so if you find one of these articles when searching Engineering Village or Google Scholar you should be able to access the full text by following the FindIt button ().

The Libraries have a new site to highlight information and resources regarding copyright.  It has been put together by our Copyright Librarian, Nancy Sims.

On November 11, my colleague, Kate Peterson, and I gave a Pecha Kucha Presentation on the collaboration tools that the Libraries offer and support, as part of the Office of Information Technology's 20 By 20 Event.

The format of Pecha Kucha gives the presenter 20 slides, each timed at 20 seconds.  So it's a quick (about 6.5 minutes) introduction to a lot of tools.

If you're interested take a look.  If you want to learn more about any of the tools and services mentioned in the presentation, feel free to be in touch.

On Monday I met with the new graduate students and gave a short presentation highlighting the services and collections offered by the library.

If you interested to see (or review) what was covered you can access the PowerPoint Presentation here:

Here are all the links that I mentioned in the presentation:

• University Libraries Website
• Science and Engineering Library Website
• Civil Engineering Resources
• Library Tools and Widgets
• Google Scholar
• Google Books
• InterLibrary Loan
• Workshop Registration
• RefWorks

Also if you want a refresher on connecting Google Scholar to U of M Library Resources you can find that information on the Orientation Handout.

For the past two academic years I've been creating webpages to provide course-specific suggestions of library tools and resources. Those pages looked something like this:

Recently the libraries have developed a new model of course-level support which we're calling the Library Course Page.







Some new features include:

• Tabbed structure that brings together course resources and reserved readings in one spot


• A chat box to ask a reference librarian a question


• Easy navigation to other course pages

Take a look at the new pages...you can view them on the libraries homepage.







If you're interested in customizing a page for an upcoming class or want to learn how you can put items on reserve (books, articles, homework solutions) just send me an email!

(Image from davesag via Flickr.  CC.)

From Engineering Librarian, Jan Fransen:

Suppose you'd like to review some article citations and you're off campus. If you're feeling lucky, you can just search Google Scholar and find PDFs of the articles you want. But what if full text isn't freely available online?

If University Libraries has purchased access to the journal you want, you can go to the Libraries website and either find the journal in the E-Journals list or fill in citation information with the Citation Linker. In either case, you'll be prompted for your X.500 credentials and recognized as an affiliate once you get to the publisher's website.

But if you prefer to go straight to IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Elsevier ScienceDirect, or another publisher site, just drag the bookmarklet below to your browser toolbar. When you're on a publisher's webpage, click the UMN Access button. The code will update links on the page to use the University Libraries's proxy and you'll be able to download full text just as if you were on campus,

We've recently created a new tutorial to assist you with your patent searching.

So if you're looking for patents and are stuck on getting started...give this a look.

I'm also happy to assist and answer any questions you may have.

Check out our other tutorials (including our Patents and Patentability Tutorial)

Are there any tutorials that you think would be especially helpful in conducting library research. Leave a comment or send me an email.

(Image from S.C. Asher via Flickr. CC.)

As you plan out your syllabus for next semester I just wanted to make sure that you're aware of services the library provides to help instructors make required readings available to students.

Print Reserves
Instructors who would like a full book put on reserve can fill out this form and bring it in to the library or send it through campus mail. You're also free to get in touch with me and I can make sure that your information gets to the correct person.

Reserve Books are held in a special collection behind the circulation desk and the check out period is usually limited to two hours. This makes high demand books available to the widest number of students.

If you'd like a book placed on reserve and we don't currently own a copy, send me an email and I'll look into purchasing a copy.

Electronic Reserve (E-Reserve)
Another option for required readings is electronic reserve. Items of a shorter length...an article, an excerpt of a book, lecture notes, practice exams, etc can be placed on E-Reserve (copyright permitting). E-Reserve makes materials available to students all at the same time and they can access the material remotely--without coming to the library.

To learn more or submit an E-Reserve request, check out the E-Reserves Website.

If you have any questions about Print Reserves or E-Reserves...please let me know or get in touch directly with those departments through their websites and forms.

The library purchases a lot of books that are available on in an electronic format via Springer E-Books.

Here are some books that have recently become available via our subscription. If you're affiliated with the University of Minnesota then you can access these books from anywhere that you have an Internet connection.

This database is a great resource!

Advanced Finite Element Method in Structural Engineering
By Yu-Qiu Long

Computational Structural Engineering
Edited by Yong Yuan

Coping with Water Scarcity
By Luis Santos Pereira, Ian Cordery and Iacovos Iacovides

Coupled Site and Soil-Structure Interaction Effects with Application to Seismic Risk Mitigation
Edited by Tom Schanz

Damage Assessment and Reconstruction after War or Natural Disaster
Edited by Adnan Ibrahimbegovic

DESider - A European Effort on Hybrid RANS-LES Modelling
Edited by Werner Haase

Earthquakes and Tsunamis: Civil Engineering Disaster Mitigation Activities Implementing Millennium Development Goals
Edited by A. Tugrul Tankut

Impacts of Megaconferences on the Water Sector
Edited by Asit K. Biswas and Cecilia Tortajada

Information Technologies in Environmental Engineering
Edited by Ioannis N. Athanasiadis

Large Eddy Simulation for Compressible Flows
By E. Garnier, N. Adams and P. Sagaut

Limit States of Materials and Structures: Direct Methods
Edited by Dieter Weichert

Mercury Fate and Transport in the Global Atmosphere: Emissions, Measurements and Models
Edited by Nicola Pirrone

This list represents just a selection of the many, many books available on Springer E-Books!

I've gone through and made a page of course-related resources that may help as you do research for any Civil Engineering class that you're taking. These pages link to resources like our Knovel E-Book Collection (that allows you to search and read entire engineering reference books online) and RefWorks (a citation manager you can use for free).

You can search for these pages by course number at http://www.lib.umn.edu/libdata/courses.phtml

Sometimes the vast number of resources the library subscribes to can be overwhelming...hopefully these pages will help narrow down your selection. If you have questions about using these tools or you can't find the information you need send me an email and I'll try and help you out.