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Home > Mardigian Library News
Entries from May 2008
Tuesday, May 27. 2008
GreenFILE is a bibliographic index of scholarly and general interest titles, as well as government documents and reports. By drawing on the connection between the environment and disciplines such as agriculture, education, law, health, and technology, GreenFILE offers a unique perspective on the positive and negative ways humans affect the environment.
GreenFILE
Orbis has information about 40 million companies worldwide, including companies in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, South and Central America, Japan, China, and Africa. Orbis also includes information about 30,000 banks and 8,000 insurance companies.
Orbis
Zephyr provides information on business mergers, acquisitions and venture capital deals. More than 500,000 transactions are included in the database with up to 100,000 new deals added each year. Coverage goes back five years for international deals and back to 1997 for deals involving European and American companies.
Zephyr
Mergent EventsData delivers real-time and historical information about events affecting public corporations. These events include dividend declarations, corporate milestones, and leverage acquisitions.
Mergent EventsData
Mergent Horizon provides capabilities for finding, filtering, and organizing information about companies and industries. Comprehensive coverage is provided for all companies that are actively traded on the NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ, with enhanced product-level detail for 3,700 companies in the Healthcare, Technology, Media, and Finance sectors.
Mergent Horizon
Thursday, May 8. 2008
The Mardigian Library surveyed UM-Dearborn students during the Fall 2007 term to learn about their awareness and use of library services. Over seven hundred students responded to the online survey.
Key findings from the survey include:
- Most students learned about the library and its services from campus orientation (49.6%), followed by the library’s website (48.8%), or from a friend or classmate (38.6%).
- A faculty member had the most influence on how effectively students used the library’s services for academic work (30%), followed by the library’s website (29%), or a friend or classmate (25.4%).
- When asked how frequently they used library services in the building or online, 20.9% report using the library several times a week, 16.3% once a week, 21.7% every couple of weeks, and 14.4% once a semester.
- 33.4% of students found it easy to use the library’s online resources, 26.3% found it somewhat easy, and 14.4% found it very easy.
- 90.5% of students preferred that the library communicate with them via email.
- 94.8% of students would recommend the library and its services to other students.
Library staff members met in early 2008 to interpret these data and to recommend actions we can take to improve service to students. Recommendations include:
- Review orientation handouts to ensure clarity and remove jargon. Consider creating discipline or school specific handouts.
- Increase number of electrical outlets for laptop users.
- Review hours of service; consider longer weekend hours.
- Create more multimedia tutorials.
- Partner/collaborate with faculty members who teach online courses to find ways to better support their students.
A similar survey was conducted in 2005. We are pleased to see that some of the concerns reported by students in the 2005 survey did not appear in the 2007 survey. The library plans to periodically survey students and collect data that can be used to make informed decisions regarding services provided by the library.
Friday, May 2. 2008
A change will soon take place in the way the Mardigian Library offers UM-Dearborn alumni access to electronic databases. Since early 2006, the library has conducted a pilot project to provide UM-Dearborn alumni free, off-campus access to four online research databases: ABI/INFORM, Ethnic NewsWatch, GenderWatch and ProQuest Research Library. Under the new program, the UM Alumni Association will provide its members access to a suite of seven electronic databases. This is a significant enhancement of the package the Mardigian Library has been offering.
All members of the UM Alumni Association will be eligible for this service under the new program.
UM-Dearborn alumni who are currently registered for database access through the Mardigian Library's program, but are not paying members of the UM Alumni Association, will receive a complimentary one-year UM Alumni Association membership, which will provide access to a subset of the suite of seven electronic databases available to paying members of the UM Alumni Association.
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