Library Tours in September & October

Take a tour of the Melville Library's main public service areas. Learn about our collections and services and get some freebies while you're here. Meet us @ the Central Reading Room, Melville Library. All tours run about 25-30 minutes. Check the Instruction website for more details.

Currently scheduled tours:

Tue, Sep 5 @ 9am, 11am, 1pm, 4pm
Fri, Sep 8 @ 11am
Mon, Sep 11 @ 6pm
Tue, Sep 12 @ 1pm
Wed, Sep 20 @ 11am
Thu, Sep 28 @ 2pm
Fri, Oct 6 @ 10am
Wed, Oct 11 @ 1pm

Important NetID announcement

More Computer Services to use NetID for Authentication

On August 23, 2006 at 8:30 AM the following computer services will change authentication routines to use NetID and NetID password as the only method of authentication:

• Dial in modems Connection to the University

• Campus Wireless service AirNet wireless network (open till 9/1/2006)

• Work-At-Home (VPN) service Encrypted connection to Campus network

• EZ-Proxy Library research databases from off Campus

• STARS Library My Account

To set your NetID sign on to SOLAR and click on Set Your NetID Password.

General information about NetIDs can be found on this Client Services page:
http://clientsupport.stonybrook.edu/public/netid/

Specific information about finding and setting your ID can be found here:
http://clientsupport.stonybrook.edu/public/netid/psswd.shtml

Collection Spotlight: Korean Studies

About the Korean Studies Collection
by Kyungmi Lee

The Korean Studies Collection was established in 1987 to support the teaching and research of faculty and students in the Korean Studies Program at Stony Brook University. Starting with only 100 books, the Korean Studies Collection has steadily increased through the years and now includes more than 20,000 monographs and periodicals. The collection is comprised of a wide range of subject areas including Korean arts, anthropology, folklore, history, linguistics, literature, musicology, religion, philosophy, political science and sociology.

The majority of the collection is in Korean, with large portions in Japanese and Chinese and some European languages; all relate to Korean studies. The collection contains scholarly journals, research papers, and reports as well as dictionaries and historical resources. In addition, there are many North Korean publications, out-of-print publications and rare books.

All of the Korean collection materials are searchable both in English and Korean in STARS. The Melville Library has recently purchased a full-text online database (KISS), the Choson Ilbo Newspaper Archive and an E-book collection to better serve users of the Korean studies collection.

About Korean Studies Online databases

Koreanstudies Information Service System (KISS) is one of the major scholarly databases in the field of Korean studies. This full-text database consists of more than 800,000 journal articles, dissertations and research papers from over 1,200 academic research institutions. Available only to students, staff and faculty of Stony Brook University. http://kiss.kstudy.com/ksikiss.asp

Choson Ilbo Newspaper Archive provides full-text PDF of the Choson Ilbo newspaper (one of the most widely subscribed newspapers in Korea). It is a great reference tool for any Korean studies researchers as it covers happenings from 1920 to present. Available only to students, staff and faculty of Stony Brook University. http://kiss.kstudy.com/archive/Main.asp

E-books: Provides over 1,500 monographs in humanities, social sciences, medical science, etc, Titles in E-book collection are available at http://kiss.kstudy.com/ebook/list.asp

For more information about the Korean studies collection, please visit the Korean Studies Collection Website at http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~kyllee/index.htm

Using Library Resources Saves You Time and Money

by Karen Kostner

When that research paper is assigned do you ever wish you had better resources than those Google often retrieves? While you may get about 30,000,000 hits, seldom are they of much substance for academic research. Sure, sometimes you hit the jackpot right away, but other times you end up wasting your efforts sifting through an endless number of websites or you’re asked to pay to access that perfect article. How can you tell if that article is even good enough to include in your paper, when you know anyone can publish anything on the web? And what if your professor says you cannot use the internet? Then what? Shouldn’t research be easier?

Well it can be easier and quicker if you have the right tools-and the Melville Library has those tools for you. The library subscribes to many, many article indexes and full-text databases where perhaps the exact article/s that you were looking for can be found quickly and easily and probably in full-text. That means the whole article is there for printing or downloading free of charge to you. These databases are often searched differently* than Google, retrieving results that are much more focused and precise thus saving you time and money. We also have e-books and many other resources. Excited? To learn more, read on and also check out our website.

The library not only provides the resources, but also gives you the know-how to use them. Throughout the semester there are many opportunities to take workshops that increase your awareness of what the library has and to help make your lives easier when conducting research. Whether you want to know how to find articles in the databases, how to use the internet more effectively, how to avoid plagiarism or how to manage your research using a software program called EndNote, we have a workshop just for you. If you do not see a workshop convenient to your schedule, we can arrange one for any group or class of 5 or more. In addition, we are dedicated to providing help on an individual basis at the reference desk or through a private consultation.

Any finally, for those do-it-yourselfers out there, we have an in-depth tutorial describing the whole research process, step-by-step. You may also check our Instruction page for links to other resources like research guides and tutorials.

Hope to see you at the library! We always welcome questions or comments:

Karen Kostner, Assistant Instruction Librarian.

* Just remember when using the databases think in terms of concepts and keywords. Do not type in a sentence. Join the keywords together using Boolean operators: AND, OR and NOT.

AND retrieves records that contain both terms, therefore it narrows your search.
For example: cats AND dogs. All articles retrieved must contain both cats AND dogs.

OR retrieves records that contain either term; thereby broadening your search.
Example: cats OR dogs. Results are all articles with cats and all articles with dogs.

NOT omits records that that you do not want, narrows your search.
Example: cats NOT dogs, retrieves all articles with cats but omits those that also contain dogs.