Over 3,800 Videos Now Available Online for Teaching and Research through NJVid

William Paterson University is now providing over 3,800 educational videos in streaming format online for use in teaching and research through NJVid: The New Jersey Digital Video Repository. Faculty and students are invited to explore the NJVid portal to browse and search the many collections and titles available. Both full-length feature films and shorter clips suitable for in-class and online use are offered through NJVid. The current collections include:

• 2,793 educational and documentary clips from INTELECOM Intelligent Telecommunications, covering a wide variety of subjects and with particular strengths in philosophy, oceanography, mathematics, history, politics, health, psychology, environmental science, and sociology


• 390 feature-length videos from Ambrose Video Publishing, including films in world history, religions, science and technology, and environmental science. The Ambrose collection also features all 37 of William Shakespeare's plays in a series produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation


• 360 feature-length films from Films Media Group, covering such subjects as science and mathematics, history, art, economics and business, area studies, education, the performing arts, religion and philosophy, and health


• 49 films produced at William Paterson University, including interviews with music industry figures hosted by the Music Department, a variety of university-sponsored guest speakers and panels on wide-ranging topics, and other materials


• 47 educational documentaries from the Media Education Foundation covering women's and gender studies, communication, media and advertising, consumerism, and sociology


• 25 films from the National Film Board of Canada addressing Native American studies, labor studies, ecology, health, and sociology

In addition to these collections, the WPUNJ NJVid collections also feature-length documentaries from Icarus Films, health care training videos from Medcom Trainex, and films on global studies and politics from ro*co films educational.

All of the films accessible through the NJVid portal can be edited to custom-length clips and assembled into playlists for use in teaching, for in-class presentations, or for other educational purposes using your personal NJVid account. If you have questions about NJVid or the films accessible through it, please contact Jane Hutchison (hutchisonj@wpunj.edu / 973-720-2980) or any member of the Cheng Library staff.

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.

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.

Introducing the Scopus Database: A Powerful Research Tool

Scopus is a comprehensive database providing access to the research literature of the natural and physical sciences and the social sciences. The database currently provides over 45 million citation records and indexes:

• over 18,000 peer-reviewed journals
• over 400 trade publications
• over 300 book series

Also included are citations for:

• over 4.6 million conference papers from proceedings and journals
• over 24 million patent records from five patent offices
• articles in press from over 3,800 journals
• and over 350 million scientific web pages indexed through the Scirus search engine.

Scopus is a major acquisition that will benefit the entire campus population. For the first time we are offering a specialized science index that covers every discipline offered by the College of Science and Health, including biology, chemistry, communication disorders, computer science, environmental science, kinesiology, mathematics, nursing, physics, public health, and a wide array of allied fields. Coverage of the social sciences is also comprehensive and interdisciplinary, and since 2009 Scopus has also begun adding publications in the arts and humanities that now represent over 2,700 titles (or 15 percent of the entire title list in the database).

Links to full-text resources are provided where available. Records for materials published from 1996 to the present include cited references, and Scopus supports citation tracking across this time period, along with other tools enabling students and faculty to track, analyze and visualize research. For example, authors can be evaluated according to documents published, the h-index measure of impact, and citations across time. Scopus' Journal Analyzer offers users six criteria - measuring prestige, citation impact, total citations, documents published per year, percent of documents not cited, and percent of published documents that are review articles - to enable the comparative assessment of journals.

Scopus also provides personal accounts that can used to create alerts for user-defined search criteria, document citations, and author citations. Personal accounts can also be used to create and store result lists built from searches.

On October 11 at 3:30 pm the Cheng Library will be offering a training workshop on using Scopus, but there is no need to wait until then to begin exploring and learning more about the database! There are several online training tutorials (requiring the latest version of the free Adobe® Flash® Player) available for anyone to use, as well as a paper format Quick Reference Guide (8 pages, PDF format) and a more detailed User Guide (24 pages, PDF format). Give Scopus a try, let us know what you think, and please contact Richard Kearney (x 2165 / kearneyr at wpunj dot edu) if you have any questions or would like to set up a training session for your class.

The Cochrane Library: Systematic Reviews and More for Health Care

The Cochrane Library is a collection of six databases containing different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making:

• Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews - The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CDSR) is a leading resource for systematic reviews in health care. A systematic review attempts to identify, appraise and synthesize all the empirical evidence that meets pre-specified eligibility criteria to answer a given research question. Researchers conducting systematic reviews use explicit methods aimed at minimizing bias, in order to produce more reliable findings that can be used to inform decision making. There are three types of Cochrane Review:
  
  
  1. Intervention reviews assess the benefits and harms of interventions used in healthcare and health policy.
  2. Diagnostic test accuracy reviews assess how well a diagnostic test performs in diagnosing and detecting a particular disease.
  3. Methodology reviews address issues relevant to how systematic reviews and clinical trials are conducted and reported.
  
  The CDSR includes all Cochrane Reviews (and protocols) prepared by Cochrane Review Groups in The Cochrane Collaboration. Each Cochrane Review - focusing on a specific topic area - is a peer-reviewed systematic review that has been prepared and supervised by an expert editorial team.
  

• Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials - Provides details of published articles taken from bibliographic databases (notably MEDLINE and EMBASE), and other published and unpublished sources.
• Cochrane Methodology Register - A bibliography of publications that report on methods used in the conduct of controlled trials. It includes journal articles, books, and conference proceedings, and the content is sourced from MEDLINE and hand searches. CMR contains studies of methods used in reviews and more general methodological studies that could be relevant to anyone preparing systematic reviews.
• Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects - Contains abstracts of systematic reviews that have been quality-assessed. Each abstract includes a summary of the review together with a critical commentary about the overall quality. DARE is a key resource for busy decision-makers and can be used for answering questions about the effects of specific interventions, whether such questions arise from practice or when making policy. DARE covers a broad range of health related interventions and thousands of abstracts of reviews in fields as diverse as diagnostic tests, public health, health promotion, pharmacology, surgery, psychology, and the organization and delivery of health care.
• Health Technology Assessment Database - Brings together details of completed and ongoing health technology assessments (studies of the medical, social, ethical, and economic implications of healthcare interventions) from around the world. The aim of the HTA Database is to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of health care.
• NHS Economic Evaluation Database - This database systematically identifies economic evaluations of competing healthcare interventions from around the world, appraising their quality, and highlighting their relative strengths and weaknesses.

A 12-page User Guide and a three-part online tutorial [Part 1: Introduction (8 minutes); Part 2: Searching and MESH (7 minutes); Part 3: Saved Searches and Email Alerts (4 minutes)] are available to provide students and faculty with an orientation to the Cochrane Library. If you have questions about the database, please contact Richard Kearney (x2165 / kearneyr at wpunj dot edu).

Clinical Evidence: A New Resource for Our Health Professions Programs

Clinical Evidence, produced by the BMJ Publishing Group, is a decision-support resource for health professionals providing evidence on the effects of common clinical interventions and systematic reviews of important clinical conditions. Clinical Evidence systematic reviews summarize the current state of knowledge and uncertainty about the prevention and treatment of clinical conditions, based on thorough searches and appraisal of the literature. It describes the best available evidence from systematic reviews, randomized controlled trials, and observational studies where appropriate, and if there is no good evidence it says so.

Clinical Evidence covers common or important clinical conditions seen in primary and hospital care. To decide which conditions to cover its editors review data on consultation rates, morbidity and mortality, take account of national priorities for health care such as those outlined in the UK National Service Frameworks and in the US Institute of Medicine reports, and take advice from generalist clinicians and patient groups. In common with other evidence-based medicine resources, including producers of guidelines, the Clinical Evidence database attempts to answer the "what" questions that doctors and patients might ask. Each systematic review contains a page that lists key clinical questions and interventions and describes whether they have been found to be effective or not.

The questions in Clinical Evidence concern the benefits and harms of preventative and therapeutic interventions, with emphasis on outcomes that matter to patients. Questions are selected for their relevance to clinical practice by section advisors and contributors, in collaboration with primary care clinicians and editors. Each month Clinical Evidence includes new questions as well as updates of existing questions.

In addition to its systematic reviews and summaries, Clinical Evidence provides:

• Drug Safety Alerts - If important information on drug safety is issued from regulatory authorities or any other reputable source before a review is updated, Clinical Evidence aims add a drug safety alert to all reviews mentioning the drug within 72 hours. The alert contains a link to the source of the drug safety alert for more information. The information prompting a drug safety alert is processed together with any new evidence found for the next update of the review.

• Guidelines - To help clinicians put evidence into practice, Clinical Evidence reviews have links to the full text of major guidelines relevant to the review's clinical area. All linked guidelines have been produced by national or international government sources, professional medical organizations or medical specialty societies, and have met predetermined quality requirements. New guidelines are added regularly, and old guidelines are replaced by their revised versions as these are published.

• Updates - Clinical Evidence aims to update its reviews annually. In addition to this cycle, details of clinically important studies are added to the relevant reviews throughout the year using the BMJ Updates service. BMJ Updates is produced by collaboration between the BMJ Group and McMaster University's Health Information Research Unit to provide clinicians with access to current best evidence from research. All citations (from over 110 premier clinical journals) are rated by trained researchers for quality, and then rated for clinical relevance, importance and interest by at least three members of a worldwide panel of practicing physicians. The final content is indexed by health professionals to allow news of studies to be added to all relevant Clinical Evidence reviews.

A 12-page User Guide (in PDF format) is available to help you get started with Clinical Evidence.

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Papers Now Available Online

The National Bureau of Economic Research is the nation's leading nonprofit economic research organization. Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community. Eighteen of the 33 American Nobel Prize winners in Economics and six of the past Chairmen of the President's Council of Economic Advisers have been researchers at the NBER. The more than 1,000 professors of economics and business now teaching at colleges and universities in North America who are NBER researchers are the leading scholars in their fields. These Bureau associates concentrate on four types of empirical research: developing new statistical measurements, estimating quantitative models of economic behavior, assessing the economic effects of public policies, and projecting the effects of alternative policy proposals.

The Working Papers collection makes available online several thousand papers produced by NBER researchers from 1973 to the present. The full text of the papers is available in PDF format. Fifteen different subject-oriented groups produce the papers. The current working groups are organized around the following subject areas:

• Behavioral Economics
• Chinese Economy
• Cohort Studies
• Economics of Crime
• Economics of National Security
• Entrepreneurship
• Household Finance
• Insurance
• Innovation Policy and the Economy
• Market Design
• Market Microstructures
• Organizational Economics
• Personnel Economics
• Risks of Financial Institutions
• Urban Economics

The Working Papers collection can be searched or browsed. Browse options include browsing by major NBER program, by Journal of Economic Literature subject classification, by NBER Working Group category, or by date of release. Students and faculty can also stay current with newly released papers by adding an RSS Feed for one or more NBER Programs to their feed readers. Bibliographic records for all of the papers (with links to the full text) will soon be available in the Cheng Library's catalog as well.

Please contact Richard Kearney (x 2165 / kearneyr@wpunj.edu ) if you have any questions about the NBER Working Papers collection.