E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Communication Booknotes Quarterly
• International Journal of Strategic Communication
  
• Management Communication Quarterly
• Philosophy & Rhetoric
• Popular Communication
  
• Science Communication
  
• Space and Culture

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

EveryZing: Audio & Video Text Search

EveryZing, a Boston-based search engine formerly known as PodZinger, offers the ability to search online audio and video files for specific words or phrases that appear. Unlike most video search engines that search tags or other information about the videos, EveryZing uses speech-to-text technology to make it possible to search the actual words spoken.

Content varies widely, but include such mainstream news media sources as NBC's Meet the Press, ABC and CBS News podcasts, as well as several local newscasts, sports radio, selected YouTube videos, and more.

Search results not only present the matching audio and video files, they let you go to the point or points in a program where your search terms appear. You can also click on "More from this source" to search a particular program.

Last Minute Help with Citation Styles

Are you having trouble with APA or MLA citation style for that end-of-semester paper? Help is available in a number of ways.

First check out the excellent online guides to APA and MLA from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. You'll find instructions and examples there for the most common types of references and in-text citations -- and for some less common types, as well.

You can also find the full APA and MLA manuals in O'Neill Library. Just ask for them at the reference desk. If you're still stuck, send me a message. I'm not an expert, but I'll check my sources and try to find the answer you need.

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Atlantic Journal of Communication
• European Journal of Communication
  
• International Journal of Cultural Studies
• Journal of Communication Inquiry
  
• Journal of Public Relations Research
• Journal of Visual Culture
  
• Journalism History
• Personal Relationships
• Small Group Research
  
• Television & New Media
• Theory, Culture & Society
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Journals in the Library: Where Are They?

Finding the hard copy of a journal or other periodical in the library is not always as straightforward as it would seem. Hard copies of journals, including many that are not available online, can be in one of several places depending on the title, the date, and a variety of other factors.

Here are a few things to keep in mind to simplify the task of finding the journal you need.

1. “Current” periodicals are generally shelved on Level 3 (the main level) in O’Neill Library. Turn right just past the Reference Desk and cross the atrium to the first set of shelves. These periodicals are arranged by call number, not by title, so you’ll need to get the call number of the journal you’re looking for. (More on that in a minute.) Keep in mind that “current” means the most recent issues of a publication, but that can vary from a few weeks for daily newspapers to two or three years or more for less frequently published journals.

2. Older editions of many journals are bound into books and then mixed in with regular books on shelves throughout the library. You’ll find them under the same call number – but in a different location – as those in the Current Periodicals section. Past issues of some periodicals are only available on microfilm or microfiche on Level 1 of the library. These, too, are arranged by call number.

3. To find out exactly where a particular issue of a journal or periodical is located, look up the title in Quest, the BC Libraries Catalog. (You can restrict your search to journals by choosing “Journal Titles Catalog” from the drop-down menu in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.) Once you find the title you are looking for, click on the link that says “Availability.” You'll be taken to a page telling you what we have, by date, and where to find it. If you’re having trouble finding something, ask for help at the Reference Desk.

Copyright and Media Clips in the Classroom

What's "fair use" when it comes to showing films, television shows and assorted media clips in the classroom?

Inside Higher Ed has a nice write-up on the "patchwork of laws and rulings on the use of media for educational purposes" and the efforts of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies to "clarify the boundaries with a new set of best-practices guidelines..."

The creators of the Society's Statement of Best Practices, writes IHE, "hope that it will give professors a tool for interpreting existing law as well as provide a unified set of standards to eliminate confusion between instructors and college administrations."

One issue still to be addressed: the rights of students who need to use film or media clips for class presentations. For now, allowances for fair use -- vague and confusing as they are -- only apply to instructors.

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Argumentation
• International Journal on Media Management
• Journal of Media & Religion
  
• New Media & Society
• Women's Studies in Communication
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Taking Work Home for Thanksgiving?

Are you planning to work on that term paper or project between bites of turkey at the end of this week? Whether you're traveling near or far – or not at all – you can get access to at least some of the research resources you'll need when away from campus.

Most online databases – including Communication Abstracts and Communication & Mass Media Complete – are available from off campus. You'll have to log in with your username and password (unlike on campus) but otherwise they will work exactly the same as when you are here.

Of course, you won't be able to use the books, journals, and other physical resources of the BC Libraries if you're away. But you may be able to find at least some of what you need at a local public library or a nearby academic library. (Some, but not all, college and university libraries allow public access: check with the specific library, if you're interested, about their access policy.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Using RefWorks with Communication Databases

With Communication Abstracts (and other CSA Illumina databases)
1. Do your search and check off the articles you want to save.


2. Click on the RefWorks logo at the top of the list of results.


3. Click on the Export to RefWorks button.


4. Log in to your RefWorks Account.
5. Save the imported results to one of your RefWorks folders.

With Communication & Mass Media Complete
1. Do your search and click on the link that says "Add" or "Add to Folder"

.
2. After you've added one or more articles, click on the link that says "Folder Has Items"


3. Click on "Select All" or check off articles individually.

4. Click on "Export"

5. Click on the Save button
6. Log in to your RefWorks Account.
7. Save the imported results to one of your RefWorks folders.

Note: If you use RefWorks off campus you'll need the group password (in addition to your own username and password) to log in. It is available at http://www.bc.edu/refworks-code.

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Communication Research
• Human Relations
• Journal of Language and Social Psychology
• Journal of Mass Media Ethics
• Journalism
  
• Public Relations Review
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Don't Get Mistaken for Spam

Questions from students get top priority when I check my e-mail -- except when I think they're something else.

When e-mailing me to ask for help, be sure to include something descriptive in the subject line. It can be as simple as "research question" or "research help" or the name or number of the course. But if I don't recognize your name and you leave the subject line blank or say something generic like "Hello," I'm liable to think it's one of the growing number of spam messages that get through the BC filters.

Don't let that happen to you. Make sure I know it's a request for help, and you'll go to the top of my list.

Setting Up a RefWorks Account

Are you having trouble keeping track of journal articles, books, Web sites, and other resources you've found while doing research for a paper? Get to know RefWorks, a Web-based personal database provided by the BC Libraries that lets you collect and organize citations and access them from any computer with a Web connection. RefWorks will even take your list and generate a bibliography of references, using APA, MLA, or another format that you select.

1. To set up your account, go to the BC RefWorks home page at http://www.bc.edu/refworks.

2. Click on "Sign up for an Individual Account" in the User Log In box on the left

3. Follow the instructions for creating an account. (Your username and password can be anything you choose.)

NOTE: You have to be on campus to sign up for RefWorks, but once you create an account you can use it from anywhere.

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies
  
• Discourse & Society
• European Journal of Cultural Studies
  
• Health Promotion Practice
  
• International Communication Gazette
• Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
  
• Journal of Social & Personal Relationships
  
• Media, Culture & Society
  
• Telecommunications Policy
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

What Do You Mean "No Ads"?

Online access to thousands of newspapers and magazines has been a great boon to researchers in communication and other fields.

Unlike most academic journals, however, many of these publications are available online in text only. That means no ads, and that can be a problem if it's advertising that you want to study.

There are exceptions, and you'll find links to some good sources of ads in the Advertising & Public Relations research guide.

But for many newspapers and general and special interest magazines access to ads means going to the print (if we have it) or to microfilm (where color and quality are lost.)

If you need help finding ads from a particular publication or of a particular type, just ask.  There may be other ways to find what you need.

Can You Say "BOO!" in APA Format?

Care to mix a little academic research with your trick-or-treating tonight?

As a Halloween treat -- and a break from the usual research tips -- here's a look at some of the ways scholars have looked at All Hallow's Eve. (All citations have been verified and most are available from the BC Libraries -- if you dare.)

• * "Reactions of zoo animals to 'disturbing' Halloween masks" (Master's Thesis, University of South Alabama, 2003)
• * "Size of Halloween witch drawings prior to, on, and after Halloween" (Perceptual Motor Skills, February 1963)
• * "Assembling processes in a periodic gathering: Halloween in Athens, Ohio" (Sociological Focus, May 1992)
• * "The pink dragon is female: Halloween costumes and gender markers" (Psychology of Women Quarterly, June 2000)
• * "Jack O'Lanterns and integrating spheres: Halloween physics" (American Journal of Physics, June 2006)
• * "Dressing in costume and the use of alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs by college students" (Adolescence, Spring 1993)
• * "The Halloween Effect and Japanese equity prices: myth or exploitable anomaly?" (Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, December 2003)

So have a good time tonight, but be careful: there may be a scholar lurking behind that bush.

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Discourse Studies
  
• Health Communication
• Journalism & Communication Monographs
• New Media & Society
  
• Presidential Studies Quarterly (Special Issue: Shadows of Democracy in Presidential Rhetoric)
• Television & New Media
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Red Sox Win World Series!

Find all of these original articles and more in Boston Globe, 1872-1924, one of several historic newspaper databases available from the Boston College Libraries.

(And, yes, I know they won the Series in 2004, too [and now 2007]. It's not included for two reasons: 1) It's outside the dates covered by the database; and 2) I'm a Yankee fan.)

“Ask-A-Librarian” in Communication & Mass Media Complete

Having trouble finding information you need in Communication & Mass Media Complete (CMMC)? Send a message directly from the database, and I'll get back to you with help.

Here's how it works: at the top right of every page in CMMC, there's a link called Ask-A-Librarian.
Click on that link and you'll get a form to enter your name, your e-mail address, and your question. Hit the Send button and your question will get e-mailed to me along with details of any searches you've tried. (You can uncheck a box if you don't want me to see your searches.)

I can only e-mail you back, so it might not be instantaneous, but at least you can ask the question at the point it comes up.

Of course, you can contact me outside CMMC at anytime, by e-mail, phone (617-552-2183), Facebook, or live chat from my home page.

Communication Abstracts: October Update

The October update of the Communication Abstracts database is now complete, with 340 new journal articles, book chapters, and books. Use the links below to view all of the new entries or to browse them by major topic area: All New Abstracts

New Abstracts by Topic Area

1. Communication Processes
2. Interpersonal Communication and Relations
3. Economics and Communication
4. Communication, Culture, and Society
5. Education and Communication
6. Health Communication
7. Political Communication
8. Communication, Regulation, and the Law
9. Organizational Communication
10. Public Relations
11. Advertising, Marketing, and Consumer Behavior
12. Mass Media
13. Journalism and News Media
14. Communication and Information Technology
15. Telecommunications
16. Communication Theory and Research

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• American Journalism
  
• Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
  
• Discourse Processes
  
• International Journal of Listening
  
• Journal of Consumer Culture
• Journal of Family Communication
• Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
  
• Media Psychology
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

E-Journals and Online Databases: What's the Difference?

Are "E-Journals" the same as "Online Databases"? No, they're not, and students often click on one of these from the library's home page when they should use the other.

The "E-Journals" link lets you look up a particular journal to see if BC offers electronic access to the publication. This is useful if you have identified a specific article and know where it appeared. You can also use Electronic Journals to browse a particular publication online or to search for articles in that publication -- and that publication only.

The "Online Databases" link, on the other hand, will take you to a list of databases (Communication Abstracts, PsycINFO, Business Source Complete, etc.), that allow you to search hundreds or even thousands of publications all at once.

Use the "E-Journals" link, then, when you know an article appeared in a particular journal and want to see if we have it electronically. (If not, check Quest to see if we have it in print.) Use "Online Databases" to find the right database or databases to search for articles from many publications that will be useful in your research. And, as always, let me or one of the librarians at the Reference Desk know if you need help.

Learn to Use RefWorks: Hands-On Workshops

Are you having trouble keeping track of journal articles, books, Web sites, and other resources you've found while doing research for a paper? Get to know RefWorks, a Web-based personal database provided by the BC Libraries that lets you collect and organize citations and access them from any computer with a Web connection.

You can save references directly from Communication Abstracts, Communication & Mass Media Complete and other databases. RefWorks will even generate a bibliography of references, using APA, MLA, or another format that you select.

I'll be offering hands-on workshops on RefWorks several times this semester, beginning with three sessions this week and next. Here are the dates and times. (All sessions are in O'Neill 105):

Thursday, October 4th - 10 am
Thursday, October 11th - 4 pm
Friday, October 12th - 10 am

Space is limited to 10 per session. I don't expect to fill them all up, but let me know if you're planning to attend at one of these times.

--

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Discourse & Society
• Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics
• Journal of Media Economics
  
• Journal of Popular Culture
• Men & Masculinities
• Personal Relationships
• Public Opinion Quarterly
• Theory, Culture & Society
  
• Visual Communication
• Written Communication
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

WGBH's New Building and Video Archive

Not far from the BC campus, the new headquarters of WGBH, Boston's public television/public radio station, opened this week to much fanfare. Much of the attention has focused on the media element of the building itself, a "digital skin" presenting changing LED images over the cars on the Massachusetts Turnpike passing beneath it.

(See "Three new buildings about communication are also designed to communicate" for more on the WGBH headquarters and two other communication-related buildings all designed by the same architectural firm.)

WGBH has also introduced the WGBH OpenVault, a selection of streaming video clips and interview transcripts from several of the station's current and past programs.

Designed to encourage educators and scholars in higher education to incorporate these materials into classroom curricula and outside study [says 'GBH in a press release], Open Vault includes over 500 streaming video clips and more than 1,000 interviews....

Among the programs drawn from for the OpenVault are:

• *New Television Workshop, an experimental video art series on the air from1974 to 1993
• *Say Brother (now Basic Black), an African American public affairs series with programs from 1968 to 1982
• *the Ten O’Clock News, a Boston-based nightly news program including stories on the African American community and busing from 1974 through1991
• *interviews from two WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, originally broadcast in 1989, andVietnam, A Television History, first presented in 1983

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

Two years after making parts of its Web site -- including its columnists -- available only to paying customers, the New York Times is abandoning its subscription-based TimesSelect service at midnight tonight.

All parts of the site, as well the Times archives from 1851-1922 and from 1987 to the present, will be available at no cost. (BC users have access to the Times via various databases, including scanned images of every article from 1851 to 2004 via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.)

The Wall Street Journal, the only major paper still charging for access to most of its Web site, is discussing whether to continue that practice, says the Times, noting that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. is taking over the Journal, has mentioned the possibility of making the online version of the paper free.

• Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site, New York Times
• 'All the News That's Fit to Print' for Free, Forbes
• Times Ends Fee on TimesSelect Content, Washington Post
  

Have Fun! Win Prizes! Learning Something New!

The Communication Collage @ BC

The Communication Collage is a Web page with more than 100 images relating to various forms of communication. Each month that school is in session, I create links on selected images sharing a certain theme. Click on the right images to find theme-related Fun Facts, Research Tips, and Puzzle Clues.

Put all of the clues together, doing a little research in the process, to get the final answer. This month's theme? Public Speaking. The first five BC Communication majors to respond correctly will win copies of "Addressing the State of the Union: The Evolution and Impact of the President's Big Speech" by Donna R. Hoffman and Alison D. Howard (courtesy of Lynne Reiner Publishers).

Give it a shot and have fun!

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Communication Booknotes Quarterly
  
• Communication Research
• European Journal of Communication
  
• International Communication Gazette
  
• Journal of Communication Inquiry
• Journalism
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Washington Post Issue Coverage Tracker

The Washington Post Web site has introduced an Issue Coverage Tracker that graphically displays the amount of coverage each of the presidential candidates is receiving on the campaign trail.

The version below, which the Post makes available for posting on blogs and Web sites, lets you see a breakdown of stories, issue-by-issue, about each candidate over the past two months. Go to the full version for different options and more advanced features. It's worth a look.



The application, according to the Post, draws from the Web sites of "a wide variety of sources across the political spectrum [including] news organizations, political parties, interest groups, bloggers, unions, trade organizations, candidates, activists, and more."

CDC Webcast: Health Communication, Marketing, and Media

Selected Webcasts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's first National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media are now available online.

The conference, held in Atlanta August 29th-30th, was designed "to provide a scientific and professional forum for researchers and practitioners to share insights, research findings, and best practices to advance the fields of health communication, marketing and media."

The following programs can be viewed from the CDC Web site.

Opening Plenary: Understanding Customers/Consumers

• Using Metaphor to Understand and Communicate to Your Audiences
  Mary Beth Jowers, Managing Director of Olson Zaltman Associates

• Self-Invention and Self-Care: A Yankelovich MONITOR Perspective on Understanding Health Consumers In the Emerging Era of Consumer Empowerment
  Dr. J. Walker Smith, President of Yankelovich, Inc.

Special Keynote Presentation: Dr. Jeff French

• Applying Social Marketing Strategically: Lessons from England
  Dr. Jeff French, Director of the National Social Marketing Centre in London, England

Closing Plenary: Reaching Customers/Consumers

• Health Communication Challenges in the Digital World
  Speaker: Dr. Esther Thorson, Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, Director of Research, Reynolds Journalism Institute, University of Missouri – Columbia

• Developing a Collaborative Distribution Channels Strategy
  Speaker: Dr. Robert Spekman, Tayloe Murphy Professor of Business Administration, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• European Journal of Cultural Studies
  
• International Journal of Cultural Studies
• Journal of Language and Social Psychology
  
• Journal of Media and Religion
• Media Culture & Society
• Simulation & Gaming
  
• Space and Culture
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

We've Launched! LibGuides @ BC

LibGuides @ BC, a new generation of research guides from your Boston College Librarians, launched today. Check us out at http://libguides.bc.edu.

Update: More about the LibGuides @ BC project on my tracking changes/changing tracks blog.

New Communication Books @ BC

See what's been added to the collections over the summer. New Communication Books @ BC
presents a categorized list of titles in all areas of communication that have come in since the end of the past academic year. Click on a category to see a list of titles, then click on a title for more information. (A link in the "Review" box will bring you to the Quest Library Catalog record for the book.)

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Health Communication
  
• Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
  
• Journal of Visual Culture
• New Media and Society
• Public Relations Review
• Science Communication
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Communication Abstracts Update

The August update of the Communication Abstracts database is now complete, with 640 new journal articles, book chapters, and books. Use the links below to view all of the new entries or to browse them by major topic area:

All New Abstracts

New Abstracts by Topic Area

1. Communication Processes
2. Interpersonal Communication and Relations
3. Economics and Communication
4. Communication, Culture, and Society
5. Education and Communication
6. Health Communication
7. Political Communication
8. Communication, Regulation, and the Law
9. Organizational Communication
10. Public Relations
11. Advertising, Marketing, and Consumer Behavior
12. Mass Media
13. Journalism and News Media
14. Communication and Information Technology
15. Telecommunications
16. Communication Theory and Research

New Journal: Communication Methods and Measures

The first two issues (issue 1; issue 2) of Communication Methods and Measures, a new journal from the publisher Erlbaum, is now available electronically via the BC Libraries.

Here's the publisher's description of the journal:

The aims of Communication Methods and Measures are to bring developments in methodology, both qualitative and quantitative, to the attention of communication scholars, to provide an outlet for discussion and dissemination of methodological tools and approaches to researchers across the field, to comment on practices with suggestions for improvement in both research design and analysis, and to introduce new methods of measurement useful to communication scientists or improvements on existing methods. Submissions focusing on methods for improving research design and theory testing using quantitative and/or qualitative approaches are encouraged. Articles devoted to epistemological issues of relevance to communication research methodologies are also appropriate. This journal welcomes well-written manuscripts on the use of methods as well as articles illustrating the advantages of newer or less widely known methods over those traditionally used in communication.

Access to Historic Television Materials

An interesting essay in the latest edition of Cinema Journal looks at the availability of historic TV footage for scholars and what they can do to help assure that more is collected, preserved, and made accessible for research.

"The truth is that a great deal of television's history has been lost over the years," writes Margaret Compton of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, "but, despite this, more programs exist than you may know of...."

Archival TV collections in places outside the major centers of New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, says Compton, preserve "thousands of obscure, non-prime-time, or local shows [that are] vitally important in studying the full history of television."

Archivists, she says, "want to save as much television material as we can, whether 'low' culture (cable access) or 'high' culture (PBS, Bravo), public service spot or prime-time sitcom."

Their efforts, Compton writes, are hampered by the massive volume of television content, by the technical challenges of obsolete formats and equipment, digital conversion, file migration, and data storage, and by budget and staff cuts at libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies.

Scholars, for their own benefit and for that of television history, can help, she says:

"[I]n order for archives to succeed in their missions, they need the patronage and support of scholars. The number of annual research inquiries and visits can drive or enhance existing archival budgets. Scholars' interest in and demand for rare materials can spur partnerships (and justifications) for funding grants."

The alternative, adds Compton, may be to rely for TV scholarship on those programs that commercial interests and rights holders determine will be released on DVD.

"Yet if scholars write only about the programs that are available on DVD or currently being broadcast, then they miss out on most of television's history."

Compton's article, "The Archivist, the Scholar, and Access to Historic Television Materials" (BC login required) is part of a special "In Focus" section of Cinema Journal on "The Archive in the 21st Century."

(Thanks to my colleague Sharon Black at UPenn's Annenberg School for Communication Library for pointing out the essay)

Communication Abstracts Update

The June update of the Communication Abstracts database is now complete, with 639 new journal articles, book chapters, and books. Use the links below to view all of the new entries or to browse them by major topic area:

All New Abstracts

New Abstracts by Topic Area

1. Communication Processes
2. Interpersonal Communication and Relations
3. Economics and Communication
4. Communication, Culture, and Society
5. Education and Communication
6. Health Communication
7. Political Communication
8. Communication, Regulation, and the Law
9. Organizational Communication
10. Public Relations
11. Advertising, Marketing, and Consumer Behavior
12. Mass Media
13. Journalism and News Media
14. Communication and Information Technology
15. Telecommunications
16. Communication Theory and Research

New Journal: Electronic News

The first issue of Electronic News, a new journal from the publisher Erlbaum, is now available electronically via the BC Libraries.

Here's the publisher's description of the journal:

Electronic News is a quarterly journal devoted to advancing knowledge and understanding of news as disseminated through electronic media platforms. This journal will promote and publish readily accessible research and ideas that have clear relevance to the content, practice, and administration of electronic news, especially radio, television, and the Internet, and related areas, such as station Web sites. The journal will also provide articles for those who practice and/or teach broadcast/electronic journalism and related topics. The journal will provide both scholars and industry practitioners the opportunity to publish and read applied research, and will include research articles, invited essays, and reviews of books relevant to electronic news as an evolving and dynamic practice.

A Note of Thanks

As the academic year comes to an end, I want to offer thanks to all of the students I've had an opportunity to work with on research questions, big and small, throughout the year. The topics you've come up with and the ways in which you've approached them have kept me on my toes and reinforced my sense of how interesting and diverse a discipline this is. I hope you've learned some tools and techniques for communication research -- and information gathering in general -- that you'll carry with you whether you're moving on or coming back for more. Congratulations to all of the graduates, and I'll see the rest of you in the fall.

Awards & Rewards

Each of the three academic years I've been at BC, I've attended the annual Communication Department Honors Dinner. It's a great opportunity to see students I've worked with -- and others -- be recognized for their accomplishments. This year it seemed a particularly high number of award winners were students I had worked with individually at some point in their time here, so I decided to do a quick count.

I offer the results below, partly as self-congratulation (I'm not above that), and partly to reinforce the idea that getting help from the librarian can be part of your success as a comm major. No, I'm not guaranteeing that if you come see me your GPA will go up, but don't be one of those students afraid or embarrassed to ask for help. That's what I'm here for; let me know what I can do for you.


Percentage of Communication Award Winners Who Contacted the Communication Librarian for Individual Help
Dorman Picklesimer Jr. Outstanding Major Awards (Top 25 GPAs)
60% (15/25)

Majors Registered for Honors Classes
63% (26/41)

Communication Department Academic Excellence Awards (recognizing excellence in writing and creative work)
67% (4/6)

Junior Scholar Awards (Students presenting original research at a Communication conference)
73% (8/11)

Majors Graduating with Communication Honors
75% (21/28)

Phi Beta Kappa Communication Majors
86% (12/14)

24-Hour Study

Both the O’Neill Library Reserve Reading Room and Gargan Hall in the Bapst Library will be open for 24-hour study through the evening of Monday, May 14. See Library hours for more on which libraries are open when.

Blackwell Reference Online

Several new electronic reference books of value in Communication Studies are now available via Blackwell Reference Online. These include: A Companion to Media Studies; A Companion to Television; A Companion to Cultural Studies; The Handbook of Discourse Analysis; and many others in psychology, sociology, race and ethnicity studies, and other disciplines.

In Media Res

In Media Res is an experiment from the Institute for the Future of the Book's Media Commons project that uses short video clips and comments about them to "promote an online dialogue amongst media scholars and the public about contemporary media scholarship."

A fuller description of the experiment is quoted below. You can view the posted videos and commentary on them on the In Media Res site.

Each day, a different media scholar will present a 30-second to 3-minute clip accompanied by a 100-150-word impressionistic response. The goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst media scholars and the public about contemporary media scholarship through clips chosen for either their typicality or atypicality in demonstrating narrative strategies, genre formulations, aesthetic choices, representational practices, institutional approaches, fan engagements, etc.

In Media Res is envisioned as an experiment in just one sort of collaborative, multi-modal scholarship that MediaCommons will aim to foster. Its primary goal is to provide a forum for more immediate critical engagement with media at a pace closer to how we typically experience mediated texts. In Media Res hopefully will:

• Give scholars the opportunity to critically engage with the media in a more immediate and timely way.

• Promote discussion within the media studies community through virtual interactions around contemporary media artifacts.

• Enable a lively debate in which the sum total of the conversation will be more valuable than any one particular voice.

• Bridge the divide between academic and non-academic communities, inviting a critically-engaged and/or curious public to join in.

• Lead to the emergence of new scholarly and pedagogical ideas about studying and teaching media.

• Work toward reinvigorating the academic’s role as public intellectual by presenting media scholars no just as informed experts with valuable ideas to impart about critical media literacy, but as fellow citizens in a mediated society.

Citation Confusion?

Are you putting together a list of works cited for a research paper and having trouble with citation formats? There are several places you can turn for help.

1. The Writer's Resources section of the BC Libraries Web site includes links to several helpful tools. Among the most useful: online APA and MLA citation guides from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Writers' Workshop.
   
2. Style manuals at the O'Neill Reference Desk. Ask for manuals on APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian at the desk. These are the official manuals and can help figure out the right way to cite common and uncommon resources.
3. RefWorks. If you're already using RefWorks, you probably know about the bibliography tool. If not, it might be a little late to learn everything about RefWorks, but get in touch with me and I can give you some tips on how to make the most of it in a short time.
   

Finally, don't be afraid to ask for help from me or from any of the librarians at the Reference Desk.

JibJab Animation: What We Call the News

Communication Abstracts Update

The April update of the Communication Abstracts database is now complete, with 640 new journals articles, book chapters, and books. Use the links below to view all of the new entries or to browse them by major topic area:

All New Abstracts

New Abstracts by Topic Area

1. Communication Processes
2. Interpersonal Communication and Relations
3. Economics and Communication
4. Communication, Culture, and Society
5. Education and Communication
6. Health Communication
7. Political Communication
8. Communication, Regulation, and the Law
9. Organizational Communication
10. Public Relations
11. Advertising, Marketing, and Consumer Behavior
12. Mass Media
13. Journalism and News Media
14. Communication and Information Technology
15. Telecommunications
16. Communication Theory and Research

Are You Paying Attention?

Who has a greater attention span, people reading news online or those reading it in print?

Some surprising results from a new study by the Poynter Institute.

The Newspaper is Dead: Read All About It!

If newspapers, as we so often hear, are dead or dying, why are there so many of them in the BC Libraries? And why should you care?

Check out my article in the latest edition of ugrads@bc.library, the Libraries' undergraduate newsletter, to learn how newspapers can help you and how new kinds of access make them usable in ways that couldn’t have been conceived just a few years ago.

Also in this edition:

- Plagiarsm, Cheating, Academic Integrity. What's It All About: Online Tutorial to Debut in Fall of 2007

- Stephen Walsh: Student, Athlete, Library Employee!

- The O'Neill Library Media Center: Things You Didn't Know About It

- O'Neill (Thomas P.) at the O'Neill

....and more.

The Communication Collage @ BC

Have Fun! Win Prizes! Learning Something New!

The Communication Collage (http://www2.bc.edu/~lissk/collage) is a Web page with more than 100 images relating to various forms of communication.


Each month that school is in session, I'll create links on selected images sharing a certain theme. Each link will bring up a page with:

1. Fun Facts related to the current communication theme.
2. Research Tips on communication sources and strategies related to the theme.
3. One of a series of Puzzle Clues. Put all of the clues together, doing a little research in the process, to get the ultimate answer.
   

The first five BC Communication majors to send me the answer will win a prize.

The kickoff theme is "digital communication." That's "digital" as in the fingers at the end of your hand. Find six images in which someone is using a finger or fingers to convey a message. (Simply pointing or waving a hand doesn't count.) Have fun!.

Public Lives and Private Illnesses

Today's New York Times has an article on the impact on presidential campaigns of public disclosures of health issues affecting candidates and their family members. John Edwards' open discussion of his wife's cancer (and other recent examples) are contrasted with earlier presidents and presidential contenders who "dissembled...lied...covered up or simply kept their mouths shut."

In weighing the age-old question of how to confront serious illness [says The Times], presidential candidates and their spouses are increasingly opting to come clean. Many are tossing aside traditional notions that have suggested that public airings of such conditions might sink a campaign or derail a presidency.

Some say the shift reflects the greater freedom candidates have in modern times to portray themselves as more human and vulnerable. Others say the public confessions are driven by a desire to control the political message before reporters do. With Internet bloggers, cable news channels and around-the-clock news cycles, keeping such conditions safely buried in the closet is close to impossible, they say.

One thing the article does not address is the impact of such public illnesses on the health awareness and behavior of the general population. That's the topic of a new book recently added to the BC Libraries collections: When Illness Goes Public: Celebrity Patients and How We Look at Medicine.

The book, by Barron Lerner, professor of medicine and public health at Columbia, looks at 13 cases, from Lou Gehrig to John Foster Dulles to Steve McQueen to Lorenzo Odone (subject of the movie Lorenzo's Oil).

Here's an excerpt from the book's blurb: "While celebrity illnesses have helped to inform patients about treatment options, ethical controversies, and scientific proof, the stories surrounding these illnesses have also assumed mythical characteristics that may be misleading."

Another, older (1952), book along the same lines in the BC collections is Medical Biographies: The Ailments of Thirty-Three Famous Persons.

New Communication Books at BC

There's been a large influx of new communication books in the libraries these past few weeks. Take a look at a selection of the new titles via the New Communication Books page. (Screen shot below.)


Clicking on a tag on the new books page takes you to a page in a service called LibraryThing where I have gathered books on that topic that have been added to the BC Libraries since the beginning of the semester. (Clicking on MOST RECENT ADDITIONS show the very newest titles in all categories.)

Once you’re in LibraryThing, there are several kinds of information available about each book, including:

* A link to Amazon.com, including descriptions, excerpts, and any other details that are available.
* Tags that have been applied to the book by me or by others who have included the book in their own LibraryThing collections.
* A link (in a box under Member Reviews - the most convenient place I could put it) to the Quest catalog record for the book at BC.
* Any ratings or reviews that LibraryThing users have submitted about the book. (Not many with these academic titles.)

New books continue to arrive almost daily. I'll post another update in a couple of weeks.

The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric Online

(From Books & Bytes in Major Mail)
The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, "a comprehensive treatment of the art of persuasion," is now online through April 6th as part of a new electronic trail of the Oxford Digital Reference Shelf. The Encyclopedia brings together expertise in classical studies, philosophy, literature, literary theory, cultural studies, speech, and communication for a wide-ranging reference work combining theory, history, and practice, with a special emphasis on public speaking, performance, and communication. Log in to the Electronic Resources Trials page to access this and other trial databases.