Editorial: What Are Libraries Good For Anyway?

So I get this question sometimes.  Here's my answer.

The library does make its resources available on the Internet.  All you need to do is use our databases or if you are not affiliated with the university, you can get access through your local public library.

The library has a public institution, democratic mandate to make its resources available to all people. This is not true of for-profit companies, like Google, who have no ethical responsibility at all or legal mandate to provide you access to information.

When you find a good academic information on the Internet, it's because a library or a similar nonprofit institution put it there. Google didn't put it there.

You cannot depend on random people to post resources on the web.  First, they could take it down, die, or very likely do not own the copyright and will be forced to take the material down. Besides, random people more than likely do not own the back issues of important academic journals or rare historical material.

It's a really bad idea to digitize everything and then destroy the physical copies.  First of all, overcentralization leads to the risk of unforeseen system failure.  Then you have the risk of
cyber-terrorism.  Finally you have the risk that powerful forces decide to alter the historic or scholarly record in ways that will be undetectable to many people.  Or god forbid choose to destroy the cultural record of the people, as has been done many times throughout history.

Finally, print will always be relevant.  Internet-based databases are a wonderful finding tool.  But computer screens are not conducive to high level thinking and reflection.  When's the last time you spent more than 20 minutes reading something on a computer screen line by line?  Print and literacy produce higher-level abstract thinking and higher cognitive function.

What is Google Scholar?

Google Scholar searches the contents of many (but not all) academic journals. However, it does not provide access to the fulltext material. If you are off-campus, you will be prompted to log in or buy the article.

If you follow the Alkek Library link to Google Scholar here, you will have to sign in ONCE with your NET ID and then it's all clear sailing. 



In any case, please don't buy the article - you can get it through us.  If you hit a dead end, use interlibrary loan.

Google Scholar does not search ALL the scholarly literature because some publishers restrict access. 

Impact Factor

The impact factor is a measurement of how influential a journal is.

Researchers use it to determine how important an article might be or whether getting published in the journal carries any weight.

Quoting ISI (originators of the impact factor):

Definition

The JCR provides quantitative tools for ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing journals. The impact factor is one of these; it is a measure of the frequency with which the "average article" in a journal has been cited in a particular year or period. The annual JCR impact factor is a ratio between citations and recent citable items published. Thus, the impact factor of a journal is calculated by dividing the number of current year citations to the source items published in that journal during the previous two years

Here is the detailed explanation from the impact factor people, Thomson Reuters/ISI themselves.


At Alkek Library:

Here's how you get the impact factor.


Go to an ISI Citation Analysis database (different ones for different disciplines).


After you find a citation, look over to the right.




Which then takes you to this screen.

Don't Pay Extra For The Harvard Business Review

Reposted from the Library Blog:

Yes you can! Harvard Business Review assigned reading

Save your pennies, students! Alkek Library has just acquired rights for you to use the Harvard Business Review in EBSCO's Business Source Complete for your course assignments and research.

Rest assured that the 'Notice of Use Restrictions' that displays at the end of the articles does NOT APPLY to Texas State University students thanks to those Library Fees collected at the beginning of each semester.

We can't do anything about that notice, but we have posted messages of our own in the Periodical List and in the Database listings to ease your mind.

Happy downloading!