New Databases

Alkek Library added many new databases in July and August:

Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals from CSA
indexes journal articles on architecture and design, including topics such as the history and practice of architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, historic preservation, and interior design and decoration.

Computer and Internet Law Integrated Library from CCH
covers a variety of computer and Internet law issues, including intellectual property, software licensing, computer crime, privacy and security, electronic commerce and online contracts. The database contains laws, proposed legislation, significant court decisions, sample internet agreements, as well as news and current commentary.

Education Research Complete from Ebsco
covers all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing. It includes curriculum instruction as well as administration, policy, funding, and related social issues.

Educational Administration Abstracts from Ebsco
indexes and abstracts journal literature on all aspects of educational administration. Sample topics include community development, counseling and guidance programs, curriculum development, educational facilities, parent-school communications, performance and program evaluation, personnel management, school choice, staff development, target programs for high-risk and special-needs students.

ENGnetBASE from Taylor & Francis
contains over 700 engineering reference books that cover a wide range of engineering disciplines, as well as some computer science and physical science areas. The text is completely searchable and hyperlinked.

Environment Complete from Ebsco
provides articles on agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy resources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, and urban planning. Coverage is international and goes back to the 1950s.

Index to Legal Periodicals & Books from H. W. Wilson
covers all areas of jurisprudence, including recent court decisions, new legislation, and original scholarship. The periodicals indexed include law reviews, bar association journals, and university and government publications.

Literary Reference Center from Ebsco
contains detailed information on the most studied authors and their works. Completely full-text, it covers literature from antiquity to the present day.

Los Angeles Times - Historical from ProQuest
provides digital reproductions of every page from every available issue from 1881 to 1985.

USASearch.gov from U.S. General Services Administration
provides official information and services from the U.S. federal government, including forms, jobs, federal aid and benefits, historical documents, statistics, etc. Multidisciplinary.

Printing Tips

There are questions that come up in the reference area pretty frequently and the most common computer/printer related questions deal with printing two different types of documents that have been downloaded.

The first question is How do I print out Power Point slides in the handout style? In order to do this, you need to open up the print options of the PPT document you are viewing. Go to File>Print. Once the options are open, look down on the left hand side and find where it says: Print What. Change it from "slides" to "handouts" and when you do, you will see the option to modify the handout from 6 to 3 which will then change to 3 slides per page, including an area for notes.

The second most common printer question people have is why won't the .pdf document print? It usually means the document has been created by scanning a document and saving it as an image file rather than a document. This increases the file size tremendously. I've seen some pdf articles with a file size of 530mb (large compared to what we used to use in the old days a "floppy disk" that was 3.5 mb. ) Even today's flash drives are typically only 128-528 mb so imagine what this is doing to the computer memory (especially on older computers.)

So, another simple trick is to open the print options by clicking on the printer icon in the pdf document. When the options box opens look down at the bottom. Click on the Advanced button and when the Advanced box opens up check the "print as image" box and click OK. This will help the pdf document print a little faster. You will usually find the large pdf documents in eReserve and as articles from some of the databases.