Friday, November 18, 2011

Trial Access to Ebrary's Academic Complete Through December 7: Over 70,000 Titles

To date the Cheng Library has purchased over 630 electronic books on the Ebrary platform. But Ebrary offers much more, and from now until December 7 students and faculty are invited to try Academic Complete, Ebrary's major collection for academic libraries. Containing over 70,000 full-text ebooks from more than 700 publishers, Academic Complete is one of the largest sources for high-quality ebooks. The Ebrary platform offers a variety of features for using ebooks, including:
  • Support for mobiles devices: iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and Sony Reader
  • Contextual linking across multiple online resources
  • The ability to create notes and highlight text within any ebook you use
  • Personal bookshelves that automatically store links to highlights, notes, and more, providing an archive of research
  • Multiple options for searching and navigating
  • Automatic citations when text is printed or copied and pasted into Word or any text applications
  • the ability to transform text into a hyperlink to a URL of your choice
  • Text-to-speech and other keyboard shortcuts to assist end-users with special accessibility needs
A brief online training video will provide you with a quick orientation to the Ebrary platform, and a two-page paper Quick Start Guide is also available online.

 We urge all students and faculty to give Academic Complete a try during the trial and let us know what you think. If you have any questions or comments, please contact Richard Kearney, Electronic Resources Librarian.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Try PsycTESTS - Trial Access Now Available Through December 9

The Cheng Library is currently providing trial access to PsycTESTS, a bibliographic database published by the American Psychological Association. PsycTESTS provides access to psychological tests, measures, scales, surveys, and other assessments as well as descriptive information about the test and its development and administration. The citation records include a summary that describes the test, with its purpose and some history of its development. Most records also link to a variety of materials describing the test in peer-reviewed literature, technical reports, or dissertations as well as links to related peer-reviewed literature describing test development, review, or use.

In addition to information on the number of items, the test format, the administration method, and so forth, 88 records in the database contain supporting documentation, such as answer sheets, instructions, guides, check lists, or record sheets. A permissions field alerts users to the tests they can use for research or teaching without formal permission. Other options include contacting the author and/or the publisher. The majority of tests in the database can be used without formal permission.

The subject areas covered in the database are wide-ranging and diverse, including:

  • Developmental Measures
  • Scales for Beliefs, Relationships, or Expectancies
  • Aggression, Coping, or Functional Status Questionnaires
  • Racial and Ethnic Identity Scales
  • Resilience, Anger Response, or Substance Abuse Inventories
  • Physical Health Related Assessments
  • Personality Assessments
  • Educational Measures
  • Neuropsychological Assessments
  • Aptitude and Achievement Measures
  • Competency Measures
  • Occupational Measures
  • Intelligence Tests
  • Military Tests

Updated monthly, the database currently contains over 2,400 records. We invite you to try PsycTESTS during the trial and let us know what you think. Please contact Bill Duffy, Library Liaison to the Psychology Department, or Richard Kearney, Electronic Resources Librarian, if you have questions about PsycTESTS.