The Bentley Library will be closed for the Fourth of July holiday weekend – Saturday, July 2 through Monday, July 4. The library will resume regular summer hours at 8:00am on Tuesday, July 5. For more information about our hours please view our online calendar.
Have a safe and happy Fourth of July holiday!
What does vacation reading mean to you? Perhaps it means that you read a different type of book, trading your textbooks for historical fiction, abandoning the business how-to titles to indulge in celebrity memoirs, or putting aside your research to pick up the latest Swedish crime novel. Perhaps it means that you get to do more reading, polishing off two or three books during your time away instead of struggling to read a few short chapters before bed.
No matter what it means to you, we’re here to help you select some great books for your next vacation. Our current display features our newest popular reading arrivals and includes many recent New York Times bestsellers. We’ve also thrown in a few favorites from past seasons. Stop by to browse before your next getaway. We suggest that you keep checking back – we will be adding the July and August releases as they arrive!
A very warm welcome to those members of the Class of 2015 attending orientation this week!
We know you have a busy schedule, but come on in when you need a break. Our welcome table is stocked with sweets, we have computers you can use to catch up on email and Facebook, and there are lots of comfy chairs where you can put your feet up and enjoy the quiet. Don’t hesitate to ask us questions about the library or the campus while you’re here. Most importantly, have a great time exploring and making new friends. The staff of the Bentley Library looks forward to meeting you!
Anyone who has ever submitted an article for publication in an academic journal has no doubt heard the phrase “impact factor”, but do you know what an impact factor is, how it is calculated, and where you can go to find a journal’s impact factor? The Journal Citation Reports (JCR) answers those questions. JCR calculates and provides the impact factor for thousands of scholarly journals, helping you identify the top-tier journals in your field.
JCR allows you to evaluate and compare journals using citation data drawn from 9,100 scholarly and technical journals from more than 2,200 publishers in over 78 countries. It includes all areas of science, technology, and social sciences. JCR is published in two editions – JCR Science Edition and JCR Social Sciences Edition. JCR complements the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index (SCI) databases.
Authors can use impact factor to identify the most appropriate, influential journals in which to publish, while students and researchers may use impact factor to discover the most important journals in a field.
“The journal Impact Factor is the average number of times articles from the journal published in the past two years have been cited in the JCR year. The Impact Factor is calculated by dividing the number of citations in the JCR year by the total number of articles published in the two previous years.”
JCR also includes the following impact and influence metrics:
More information about Impact factor, Eigenfactor and Article Influence scores can be found in the Help section of the JCR database. For a great explanation of what the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is and is not, I recommend reading
Holsapple, C. W. (2009). Journal Self-Citation II: The Quest for High Impact — Truth and Consequences?. Communications of AIS, 25, 11-19.
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) is included in the Library’s ISI Web of Knowledge subscription databases – Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and Science Citation Index (SCI). Access JCR here, or by selecting Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) or Science Citation Index (SCI) from the Databases page. Once in SSCI or SCI, click on the “Additional Resources” tab to get to the JCR Collections.
For additional faculty resources, see Nick Albaugh’s Publishing Resources for Faculty library research guide.
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Database of the Month provides a very brief introduction to an important research database, highlighting key features of the database that you should know about. If you would like more information about this database (or any of the library’s databases) please contact the Reference Desk. If you would like a demonstration of this database for a class, please contact our Coordinator of User Education, Elizabeth Galoozis.
The library printer system is undergoing an upgrade tomorrow, June 14. All library printers will be offline from 10:00am until 2:00pm. If you have an urgent printing need during the downtime please stop by the Reference Desk for assistance.
Come on in out of the heat this afternoon to the opening reception for our new art gallery exhibit – In the Flow. Artist John Redick will be on hand from 4:30pm to 6:30pm, and light refreshments will be served. Hope to see you there!
Located on the main floor of the Bentley Library, the Caturano and Company Art Gallery is free and open to the public. Check the online hours calendar for information about the Library’s hours.
Earlier this year, the library’s Research Essentials tutorials were chosen for inclusion in PRIMO (Peer-Reviewed Instructional Materials Online), a database of online tutorials and other instructional resources, maintained by the Association of College and Research Libraries. The library’s tutorials were recently featured as PRIMO’s May 2011 Site of the Month, for which reference librarian Elizabeth Galoozis, who created the tutorials, was interviewed. You can find the interview here.
PRIMO reviews materials twice a year for selection; the list of the other seven projects accepted during Fall 2010 can be found here, and includes projects from everywhere from Sacramento City College to the University of North Carolina. PRIMO’s goal is to showcase high-quality online learning resources; the PRIMO committee “hopes that publicizing selective, high quality resources will help librarians to respond to the educational challenges posed by still emerging digital technologies.”
The publicly posted Research Essentials tutorials are versions of three tutorials created for students taking GB112, and cover concepts of company and industry research. If you’d like a refresher or introduction on how to use the library’s resources to conduct company and industry research, take a look!
What did the Bentley Library look like when you were a student? If you graduated before 2005 you may remember the bright red carpet, endless rows of towering shelves, and the so-called “Search Suite”, which housed a Bloomberg terminal (connected to a phone line, oh my!), some CD-ROM databases and a couple of cantankerous dot-matrix printers. Thankfully, those days are long gone… Come see what we look like now! Join us for a tour on Friday, June 3 between 2:00pm-3:30pm, or on Saturday, June 4 at 10:00am or 11:15am. We’d love for you to stop in and share your memories of the Bentley Library with us.
Unable to attend a tour? Please feel free to stop by and take a walk through the library; we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have. We look forward to seeing you!
