Get to Know RefWorks

(From Books & Bytes in Major Mail)
30-minutes sessions on making the most of RefWorks, a Web-based tool for managing bibliographic citations, are being offered by library staff at different times over the next several weeks. Learn how to create and organize citations from journals, books, magazines, Web sites, and other sources and to automatically generate bibliographies in APA, MLA, and other formats.

These hands-on sessions will take place in O'Neill 105 on the dates and times listed below. Stop in for a session at a time convenient to you, or let me know that you're interested and I'll arrange special sessions just for Communication majors.

Wednesday, February 21, 11 a.m.
Tuesday, February 27, 4 p.m.
Wednesday, February 28, 11 a.m.
Saturday March 3, 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday March 14, 12:00 p.m
Tuesday March 20, 2:00 p.m.
Wednesday March 21, 12:00 p.m.
Tuesday March 27, 2:00 p.m.

Oprah Transcripts: Gone Before You Knew They Were There?

Transcripts of the Oprah Winfrey show, one of the hidden gems in LexisNexis and Factiva, are no longer being updated in those databases. Older shows, from October 2001 to December 2006, are still available, but nothing new has been added since the beginning of this year.

A note in Factiva says that the provider of these transcripts, Burrelle Information Services, is no longer transcribing the show. That's not quite correct: the Burrelle's Web site offers them for sale through a site called Oprah's Boutique. But new ones are not being made available to LexisNexis or Factiva.

I'll let you if I learn more. In the meantime, contact me if you want to know how to find the older transcripts, useful in many ways for communication research, in the two databases.

Presidential Campaigning 2.0

Which presidential candidate has the most MySpace friends? Which ones post videos of their speeches on YouTube? Who recently had an (unofficial) Second Life campaign site established?

TechPresident is a new site from the Personal Democracy Forum that looks at "how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign."

It's an interesting look at how Web 2.0 changes in communication and technology are playing out on the campaign trail.

The Future of News

What is the future of news?

PBS' Frontline tries to answer that question in News War, a four-part series beginning tonight and a companion News War Web site.

The site will include online viewing of the full series (Parts I & II are now available) as well as transcripts of interviews with 50 major players in the debates over the role of media in U.S. society.

Mass Comm Theory & The Wizards of Buzz

The Wall Street Journal this week wrote about a "new generation of hidden influencers ... taking root online." They're key users of social networking sites like Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, Newsvine, and others, and (says the Journal) they're "shaping what we read, watch and buy."

Is this the venerable two-step flow with a cyber twist? A new kind of agenda-setting? Or are other mass communication theories at play?

Read the journal article, "The Wizards of Buzz", and see what you think?

Creating a Personal List in the Library Catalog

(From Books & Bytes in Major Mail)
How do you keep track of lists of books and other items you find while searching in Quest, the BC Libraries Catalog? Print them out one at a time? Write down the information for each item on a piece of paper?

Here’s a better way:

The “My List” feature of Quest lets you create your own personal list of records you select. You can then print, save or e-mail the selected information for later use.There are two ways to add items to your list:

1. When looking at an individual record, simply click on the Add to My List button at the upper left of the screen; or
   
2. When you have a group of records on the screen after conducting a search, check the check boxes next to the items you want, and then hit the Add to My List button.

You can continue to add records through different searches as long as you are in Quest. When you’re done, click on the View My List button at the top of the screen, and you’ll be offered options to print the list, e-mail it to yourself (or someone else), or save it to your computer.

Super Bowl Ads: Great Online Analysis

The New York Times Web site has a terrific interactive look at Super Bowl ads from 1984 to 2007. Use the slider at the top of the screen to move through the years. For each year, it shows a count of the number of ads in different product categories (vehicles, beverages, travel, food, etc.) plus the percentage of ads each year that featured humor, animals, and celebrities. 2007 had the highest percentage of ads with humor (72%) of any year, though there's no analysis of the quality of the humor. Selected ads can be viewed on screen.