Add an embedded librarian to Niihka for Winter Term or Spring Semester

Would you like, in one of more of your classes, to participate in the Embedded Librarian service in Niihka in Winter Term or Spring Semester 2014?  Whether you are teaching face to face, hybrid, or online courses, you may collaborate with a learning management system (LMS) embedded librarian:

•          To strengthen your students’ online research skills
•          To enlarge their understanding of the resources and services available through Miami University Libraries
•          To provide learning objects like screencasts or planning and citation tools to aid students at various stages of the research process

As you know, students feel overwhelmed with research which entails so many starting points and long lists of results.  They struggle getting started as well as knowing how to navigate a complex university library system.  As one economics student working on a group project admitted:

"This assignment was very difficult for us as a group. I had a hard time finding state specific research so for the first time I utilized the online librarian through Niihka. What a great service. The librarian helped to find me more specific and updated information, as I had found some data but felt it wasn’t recent enough to use. "

Students appreciate working with an accessible librarian who “gets” the assignment and research landscape, offers help in framing a research question as well as suggesting databases and search terms. After an email exchange, one relieved family studies and social work student shared:

“This is beyond excellent! I thank you so much for your help.”

The Gardner-Harvey embedded librarians were embedded in 42 course sections in Fall Semester 2013, collaborating with 22 instructors, reaching 1,000 students.  To see what embedded librarianship looks like, visit http://tinyurl.com/embeddedsandwich to watch brief video introductions by the librarians and view sample pages of resources placed in Niihka courses.

These partnerships also lead to:

•          information literacy sessions in the classroom
•          individual research consultations
•         creating customized learning objects for the class
•          keeping current with the libraries’ latest databases, acquisitions, and discovery service

To get started with an embedded librarian in 2014, please reply to this email with the following information:

•          Name
•          Course Section(s)
•          Research Assignment Described/Attached
•         Concepts/Skills to Teach:  (See suggestions from the Information Literacy Menu)
•         Time:  Startup Only, Research Period, Full Semester

Your embedded librarian will be in touch to talk with you about creating requested content and interacting with your students.

John Burke burkejj@miamioh.edu

Jessie Long longjh@miamioh.edu

Beth Tumbleson tumbleb@miamioh.edu

NBC Learn: Video clips for all subjects

We've just added a new resource:  NBC Learn.  NBC Learn contains more than 12,000 stories from the NBC News archives—one of the largest news archives in the world, dating back to the 1920s. In addition, collections are updated with current events every day, Monday through Friday, with stories from such celebrated programs as NBC Nightly News, the TODAY show, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, as well as the networks of MSNBC, CNBC, and Telemundo.

You can find information on many topics, link videos in Niihka for students to review, or share part of a video in a class presentation.

It only works on campus for the moment, but we will update this shortly.  Enjoy!

Faculty: need to place items on reserve?

The Library is pleased to help instructors give their students access to class reading or viewing materials. We can keep books or DVDs at the InfoDesk in the Library for students to check out and use, we can encode library-owned DVDs and videos to stream online through our Video on Demand (VOD) service, or we can help you get a link to an article or e-book to place in your Niihka course site.  More explanation of these options is available on our Reserves page.

Three key points to remember:

(1) Sufficient lead time is extremely helpful to us in ensuring that items are added in a timely fashion. A minimum of two business days is needed for physical reserves, and, particularly at this point in the semester, three days for VODs.

(2) Faculty need to fill out a reserve request form to ensure that the reserve is processed correctly. The form is available online.

(3) Regarding placing course textbooks on reserve, if you have a spare copy of a textbook for one or more of your courses, we would be happy to add it to our list of textbooks on reserve.  We can also purchase copies of textbooks for courses using library funds that are budgeted to your department or academic area.  More information on that program is available here.

Please contact Chris Mull, our Circulation and Reserves Supervisor, at mullcr@muohio.edu or 513-727-3291 if you have any questions.

Creating Persistent Links to Articles and More

If you want your students to link directly to an article, image, or other item in one of the library’s databases, you must create for them what is called a persistent link. A persistent link is a specific URL that will link straight to the item that you want them to access. The method to create a persistent link varies somewhat among the different databases the library provides, but here are two commonly used collections of full-text articles as examples. If you need help creating a persistent link to an article in a database not listed here, or if you have any questions about this process, please contact your Gardner-Harvey Library staff.

EBSCOhost Databases

1. Locate the article by searching an EBSCO database such as Academic Search Complete.

2. When you have located an article, click on the title to access the article display page, where you can view the full citation record of the article. On the right side of the screen there will be a button labeled "Permalink." Click on this button to display the permalink. Copy the exact link that is provided.

Example: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=70245062&site=ehost-live

3. The link you just copied will work for any student who is on-campus. If you want students to have off-campus access to the article, you need to add the proxy server login to the front of that URL. Just add the following text to the link you created in Step Two: https://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=

Using the example link in Step Two above, your link now looks like this: https://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=70245062&site=ehost-live

This link will work fine both on or off-campus (students clicking the link on-campus will not be prompted to enter their Unique IDs and passwords).

4. You can then paste this link into your Niihka course site for students to access the article.

Electronic Journal Center

1. First, find the article you want in the Electronic Journal Center: https://journals.ohiolink.edu.

2. Open the article description by clicking on the title of the article to which you wish to link.

3. Copy the link of the article description page from the address window of your internet browser.

Here’s a sample URL:  https://journals.ohiolink.edu/ejc/article.cgi?issn=02664909&issue=v28i0002&article=114_olmsapmfhe

(Do not copy the URL of the PDF or HTML full text itself, because this URL changes.)

4. The link you just copied will work for any student who is on-campus. If you want students to have off-campus access to the article, you need to add the proxy server login to the front of that URL. Just add the following text to the link you created in Step Three: http://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=

Using the example link in Step Three above, your link now looks like this: https://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=http://journals.ohiolink.edu/ejc/article.cgi?issn=02664909&issue=v28i0002&article=114_olmsapmfhe

This link will work fine both on or off-campus (students clicking the link on-campus will not be prompted to enter their Unique IDs and passwords).

5. You can then paste this link into your Niihka course site for students to access the article.