Access Alert - AWS outage
Tue, February 28, 2017 12:00 AM
Due to an Amazon Web Server outage, many websites (including our LibGuides and JSTOR) are currently unavailable. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope access will be restored shortly.
Due to an Amazon Web Server outage, many websites (including our LibGuides and JSTOR) are currently unavailable. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope access will be restored shortly.
With the SAGE Premier 2017 journals renewal, CDL purchased a 6-year license to SAGE Research Methods (SRM) with updates through 2022. SRM comprises the SAGE Research Methods Base Model, Case Studies and Datasets. SAGE Research Videos are not included in the CDL purchase.
The SRM Base Model grants access to more than 1,000 books, reference works and journal articles from across the social sciences. These resources encompass every aspect of research skills training and can help users at all levels through every step of the research process.
SRM Cases provides more than 500 case studies, showing the challenges and successes of doing research. Cases are peer-reviewed and come with instructional tools including learning objectives and discussions questions.
SRM Datasets is a collection of teaching datasets and instructional guides that give users a chance to learn data analysis by practice. Indexed by method and data type, these sets can be used in classroom exercises or in exam papers.
Find out more about this new resource at About SAGE Research Methods.
UC Merced instruction librarians and several faculty members from the Merritt Writing Program (MWP) met Jan. 5 for a one-day Teaching Research and Information Literacy (TRAIL) workshop.
This is the fourth group of faculty members from the writing program to attend the workshop with the intent of integrating TRAIL activities, readings and tutorials into their Writing 10: College Reading and Composition sections.
Beginning Saturday, February 18th at 11pm PST and continuing for up to seven hours, OCLC will be performing systems maintenance which may make online catalog services like WorldCat Local unavailable to our patrons. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope this interruption will create minimal disruption to our users’ research.
BYU Radio host Matt Townsend interviewed Deputy Librarian Donald Barclay about the challenges libraries are facing in the era of fake news. He addresses questions such as: how do we choose what information to consume in a world where there is essentially limitless information?, can we avoid an ‘echo chamber’ and find objective truth when different sources offer “alternative facts?". Donald then explains how libraries are trying to help people evaluate information for themselves.
Listen to the full interview here.
On Saturday, February 4th at 9pm to Sunday, February 5th at 5am PST, OCLC will be performing systems maintenance which will make online catalog services unavailable to our patrons. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope this interruption will create minimal disruption to our users’ research.
Beginning Saturday, January 28th at 11pm through Sunday, January 29th at 5:30am PST, OCLC will be performing systems maintenance. During some or all of this time frame, online catalog services may be unavailable to our patrons. We apologize for any inconvenience and hope this interruption will create minimal disruption to our users’ research.
My name is Lisa Vallen, I am the UC Cooperative Extension Project Archivist. I realize that not everyone is familiar with Cooperative Extension, so for this first post I’m going fill everyone in on the who, what, when, where and why of this special project!
In 2015, the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the UC Merced campus signed a memorandum of understanding to launch the first phase of a project to preserve the history of the UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE). The Library’s Digital Assets unit is leading the project and I began my job as the project archivist in August 2016.
I have my Masters of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a concentration in Special Collections and Archives. While at UIUC, I worked in both Preservation and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. I graduated from Lake Forest College with a BA in Art History and Politics.
The UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) was established in 1914 by the passage of the Smith-Lever Act with the purpose to develop and provide science-based information around agriculture, youth development and natural resources to local audiences. This was done by establishing a Cooperative Extension office in almost every county in California! UCCE is still active today, with 57 local offices throughout California. Their goal to serve as a “bridge between local issues and the power of UC research” has not changed. If you are interested in a more in-depth look at the history of UCCE, these articles by Rose Hayden-Smith here and here are a great place to start.
Cooperative Extension has been active in California for over 100 years and our belief is that these county offices hold a cache of information that can be extremely useful to researchers and the public. Currently, these materials are not very accessible to researchers and the public, as there is no inventory or organizational scheme. In this first year, while we are in our pilot program stage, we are focusing on three county offices: Merced, Ventura, and Humboldt. Our goal for this year is to create an inventory for the three offices, assess and identify materials of historical value, preserve and organize historical materials, and make these materials accessible to researchers and the public.
The county offices hold valuable materials that highlight the work and research done by the farm advisors. These materials run the gamut from annual reports between 1915-1970, research reports and trial data, to 4-H scrapbooks and photographs. These materials also cover a wide range of subjects from water rights and the development of irrigation districts, climate data, pest management, a wide variety of information about crops and trees, to youth development and nutrition. Our job is to ensure that the information contained within these offices will not be lost and will be preserved for future generations of researchers.
The first half of this year we will finish our inventory at the Ventura County Cooperative Extension office and begin organizing and re-housing materials from the Merced and Ventura county offices. I will also be making a trip up to the Humboldt County office to begin inventorying their materials.
I’ll be posting a new blog post once a month with updates on the project progress. You may learn about my trip to one of the county offices, get behind-the-scenes glimpses into our work and progress, or the 4-1-1 on interesting material that we have uncovered.
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