Author: Patti Avellanet

Webinar Alert: APA Style CENTRAL® Trainings for September & October 2017

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Librarians, For Students

 

APA Style CENTRAL® is the newest member of the APA Style® family, launched in July 2016.

APA’s training specialists have developed several webinars for librarians, instructors, and students that include a content overview and a live demonstration of features.

Click on any session link to register (all times are EDT).

APA Style CENTRAL Online Introduction introduces librarians, faculty, and students to the platform:

Teaching with APA Style CENTRAL details how faculty, librarians, and other instructors can use APA Style CENTRAL in teaching APA Style:

Writing Papers in APA Style CENTRAL teaches end users how to create and save papers using APA Style CENTRAL:

For more information, including the full training schedule, visit the APA Style CENTRAL webinars page.

Request a Customized APA Style CENTRAL Training Webinar

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Librarians

Do you need to train faculty and instructors on how to incorporate APA Style CENTRAL® into their classrooms? Or show a group of students how to use it to write their papers? Are you interested in a more tailored introductory webinar covering the unique tools and services available in APA Style CENTRAL for a wide variety of institutional users?

We can arrange a customized APA Style CENTRAL training session for your class or colleagues. Talk to us! Tell us what you’re looking for and let us help you get started.

APA Style CENTRAL’s exclusive platform for writing in APA Style supports learning throughout all stages of the research and scholarly writing processes, from idea generation to publication. We can help your users to better understand everything that APA Style CENTRAL offers and begin using it to their advantage for research, writing, and teaching.

APA Style CENTRAL: Learn-Research-Write-Publish

Our training specialists can schedule a session specifically tailored for your audience and learning objectives. We have experience providing training for librarians, faculty, students, writing center tutors, Learning Management System (LMS) administrators, and other potential users. If desired, we can break up the training into multiple sessions, which facilitates more participation, makes it easier to coordinate schedules, and enables us to further customize the material. Our training sessions are interactive, remotely accessible from multiple locations, and can be recorded for later viewing by anyone who is unable to attend.

If an existing APA Style CENTRAL training session seems perfect, we will work with your schedule to arrange a convenient time. A live platform demo with a few slides often works well, but you can tailor the format. If you have a list of specific questions and features you want to know more about, we’ll work with you to create a fully customized training session.

We can also schedule a phone call with a few key people if trying to get all stakeholders in the same place is like herding cats. (We understand.)

Interested? Email us at Support@APAStyleCENTRAL.org with some dates that work well for your group.

APA Librarian Conference Travel Award: Reflections on ALA 2017

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Librarians

The most recent recipient of the APA Librarian Conference Travel Award, Rachael Elrod from the University of Florida, used the award to defray the cost of attendance at the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual conference in June. Patti Avellanet in APA’s Databases & Electronic Resources Customer Relations group recently talked with her to get her impressions of the conference. The following transcript of their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and context.

Photo of Rachael Elrod presenting her research at ALAPatti: Welcome back from ALA! Was the conference as valuable as you had hoped?

Rachael: And how! I gave my first national conference presentation at the LIRT (Library Instruction Round Table) preconference event on Friday. The presentation introduced attendees to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant project I am working on called “Researching Students’ Information Choices” that aims to understand how students from grade 4 through graduate school assign credibility to online resources and how they identify those resources. Participants in the study are presented with a STEM-related research prompt and a simulated Google results list, and then answered questions about whether they would find the resource helpful, whether they would cite the resource, how credible they think it is, and what type of resource it is (i.e. a book, a journal, a blog, etc.). Later during the conference, I was also happy to be able to meet with an IMLS staff member to share updates on the grant’s progress. If you want to find out more about the grant, see our LibGuide at http://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/RSIC.

Patti: Your first presentation to a national audience — that sounds exciting!

Rachael: It definitely was! This research takes on a critical role in the literature in the face of current emphasis on fake news and how to determine what one is looking at in an online environment. Unfortunately, the grant specifically does not support funding to present at ALA. I have never had the chance to present at ALA before and was excited about this opportunity.

Patti: I’m glad that we were able to help you cover that gap in the cost of attending so that you could present your grant project’s research. Were there any specific events or groups that you found particularly beneficial?

Rachael: The Education and Behavioral Sciences Section (EBSS) events! This was my first year serving as Chair of the EBSS Reference Sources and Services Committee, and my first time at ALA where I was Chair of an EBSS Committee. I was able to meet two of the committee members face-to-face for the first time. We were able to begin planning a project for the coming year for the committee that we hope will help us understand how education faculty and students use resources — and hopefully lead to a publication! It’s very exciting to be a part of something like this.

Patti: I remember that one of your objectives for attending ALA was to continue strengthening your professional network in specific ways, and it’s clear that you enjoyed some unique opportunities to do that. Are there any other takeaways that you can immediately put to good use?

Rachael: I got to meet informally with so many other librarians. I actually met someone while on the escalator who was very interested in the IMLS study — he remembered me from the presentation and waved me down later on to chat! We talked about his research project on studying the citations of undergraduate students, which could be important for my team’s grant. Based on what they are finding, they are learning what students find trustworthy enough to cite.

In addition to presenting my research, the other primary reason I wanted to attend ALA is that my library is preparing to undergo a major $3 million renovation next year. I’d hoped to be able to meet other librarians as well as vendors who can assist me in everything from planning, procedures, policies, assessment, user satisfaction, finding furniture, and so much more.

Patti: I love the escalator story! You never know when and where you might meet someone who is interested in your work. It sounds like this was a terrific conference experience for you, and I’m getting the sense that you would recommend attending ALA to other librarians.

Rachael: Absolutely! There is something here for everyone, whether you are new to the field or a seasoned veteran. Whether you are a school librarian, academic librarian, or public librarian. It’s a place for everyone to come together and learn, share, and fellowship with one another.

This travel award enabled me to connect with others engaged in similar research, as well as people who have valuable insights into successfully planning an amazing library renovation. It was terrific to be able to attend this important conference without breaking the bank as I continue working towards earning my doctorate and becoming an academic library leader.

Patti: I’m glad to hear you enjoyed such a great experience at ALA, and that APA played a part in helping you to achieve that. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today.

Would you or a librarian you know benefit from receiving an APA Librarian Conference Travel Award? Now through November 30, 2017, the APA Librarian Conference Travel Award is accepting applications for conferences taking place from January – April 2018. Please visit the website for more details on eligibility, deadlines, and application materials.

Tutorial Thursday: Using PsycINFO Classification Codes on EBSCOhost

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

It’s Tutorial Thursday! In this series, we explore APA’s library of video tutorials available on the PsycINFO® YouTube channel and the APA Style CENTRAL® YouTube channel. Please feel free to link to or embed our videos in your library websites or LibGuides, course management systems, or other locations where students, faculty, and researchers will find them.

We recently updated one of our tutorials: Using Classification Codes in PsycINFO on EBSCOhost.

Screenshot of tutorial title screen for Using Classification Codes in PsycINFO (EBSCOhost)

For a more powerful and precise search, you can include PsycINFO Classification Codes in your query. Searching all fields or the “Keywords” field in a database is an easy way to start your research, but using these numerical codes from the APA Thesaurus will help you retrieve the resources you need more quickly and effectively.

Classification Codes are assigned by APA indexers to categorize documents in the PsycINFO database according to the primary subject matter. They are especially helpful for targeting your results when a search term can mean different things in different contexts, or when you want to search broadly.

This three-minute video demonstrates how to use PsycINFO® Classification Codes when searching PsycINFO (and other APA databases) on the EBSCOhost platform, and includes:

  • Description and examples of PsycINFO Classification Codes;
  • Where to find the complete list of PsycINFO Classification Codes; and
  • How to apply these codes to narrow your search to the most relevant results on the EBSCOhost platform.

This tutorial is a great resource to link from a LibGuide or course module for any class working with APA Databases on EBSCOhost, and can be helpful in answering email or chat reference questions.

The previous version of this tutorial will remain available, but if you have embedded or linked to it anywhere, we encourage you to update your materials to link to this new version.

Related Resources:

Webinar Alert: PsycINFO Sessions for Students & Faculty – August 9-11, 2017

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

Our next series of PsycINFO® webinars for students and faculty will run on August 9, 10, and 11 from 11 – 11:30 a.m. EDT. The sessions may be attended separately, but we encourage those who are interested to take all three, so we offer them on consecutive days:

We will provide information relevant to all search platforms including APA PsycNET®, EBSCOhost, Ovid, and ProQuest. The platform demonstrated will be based on the needs of the attendees of each session. For more information on this series, including full descriptions, please visit our database webinar training web page.

These webinars are an ideal way for students to get a refresher on PsycINFO if they have had a previous training session. Please help us spread the word to interested students and faculty!