Academic Resources - 10 Takeaways from Library Learning Event

The Library Fest and LearnERS Day 2019 or L2 for short, was a day of discovery of academic resources, library services and facilities by new students and staff.

Held at the start of a new semester on 15 August 2019, the event aimed to connect students to the rich variety of electronic resources such as e-books, journals, conference papers, newspaper articles, videos, and more at their disposal. The highlight of the event was booths set up by 11 prominent publishers and information providers.

In case you missed it, here are 10 takeaways from this year’s edition of the event.

1. Exploring Academic Resources the SG Bicentennial Way

Based on the Singapore Bicentennial theme, the event was a throwback to the past with nostalgic childhood games such as 5 Stones and Pick Up Sticks. Learning trails led participants to booths named after Singapore icons such as Gardens by the Bay, Fort Siloso, Henderson Wave, Chijmes or Botanic Gardens etc. Students also tested their knowledge of Singapore’s history in the SG Trivia Quiz.

2. Diverse Reserves Collection

The Reserves section, located beside the service counter, houses one of the most diverse collection of materials in the library. Notable for the Red Spot collection located within this section, it also contains the Big Books collection, audio-visual materials such as CDs, DVDs as well as music scores from the Singapore Music Collection.

3. Publishers, Information Providers

While most of us may have heard of established publishers such as Springer, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, Sage and World Scientific, how many get a chance to engage with their representatives directly? Visitors to these booths got to discuss ideas for potential publications, find out more about the publishing process or seek advice on how to get published.

Providers of major information platforms such as ProQuest, Emerald, Gale Cengage and Igroup shared updates on new features. Students who visited their booths were able to delve more deeply into the contents and coverage of resources under the guidance of product specialists. For new students, this presented a unique opportunity to sample the rich array of academic resources available to them at the start of the academic term.

4. Digital Scholarship Tool: Topic Finder

This is a visualisation tool available on databases such as Academic OneFile and Psychology Collection on the Gale platform. It is a visual representation of most frequently occurring terms from the result list, helping searchers to uncover connections between information and ideas that they may not be aware of.

5. Usage, Citation and Altmetrics Data

Journal articles available on Taylor and Francis Online (T&F Online) provide readers with data on how well used or popular an article is. While accessing the journal article, users can click on the “Metrics” tab to see the number of views, the number of citations the article has on databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and CrossRef. Besides citation counts, the T&F Online platform also shows the visibility of the journal article on social media platforms under the “Altmetrics” category.

6. A Dictionary and More - Meaning and History of Words

For those into etymology, or who are simply curious, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is not merely a dictionary of meaning. This well-regarded online compilation of 600,000 words and 3.5 million quotations also traces the history of the words, and the frequency of usage through time. It shows a graphical timeline tracing number of words first recorded by the OED, thus giving insights into the history of the language.

7. Ebooks, Scholarly Journals, Videos on ProQuest

The ProQuest platform provides access to a wide variety of academic resources including:

Ebook Central, Education Database, Global Newsstream, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA)‎, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Abstracts & Index‎, Psychology Database‎ and Sports Medicine & Education Index‎.

Access all the databases on the ProQuest platform here.

8. Integrated Search for Library Resources

We find that most visitors to the library portal booth had good feedback on the simple and easy-to-use search interface. Some became less certain when navigating the results list page. An often neglected way of browsing a long result list is to filter the results by publication type. For example, choosing to display only journal articles in the result list would eliminate less useful results such as book reviews, or the abstracts of theses and dissertations.

9. Keen, Competitive NIE Learners

Every booth was a designated station in the SG Heritage Trial. Event participants can choose to embark on any of the six trails which were spread over 3 levels. Not one to back down from challenges, we saw that when students were presented with the choice of completing any number of trails, many chose to complete the maximum number, tenaciously staying on their tasks. These same students broke out into pure glee when they conquered all the challenges.

10. Full Article Retrieval Service

Do you give up when you find only the abstracts of journal articles, but not the full-text? You can request for the full journal article by using the NIE Document Delivery service. This service, which sources for full articles and delivers them via email to the requester, is available to all NIE students and staff.

Simply submit an online Document Delivery Request form from the Library portal.

Library Fest and LearnERS Day 2019 Photo Gallery

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