The Library Comes to You

Welcome to Library Notes for Political Science, a site designed to promote communication between the McGill University Library and the Political Science department.

Here you will find:

• links to new resources
• materials for use in the classroom
• announcements about library collections and materials

Comments and recommendations are welcomed.

New home!

This blog has now moved to http://blogs.library.mcgill.ca/polisci. Please update your links and feeds accordingly!

Free e-books

Mark open access week by perusing some of the millions of e-books that are free online. Check out some collections of freely available books in this list compiled by the McGill Library.

What is open access?

A quick introduction to the concept of open access in universities.

For more information on how you can make your research more visible, visit:
http://www.carl-abrc.ca/projects/open_access/oa_carl_members-e.html

This video was produced by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and McGill University Library.

Licence by Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Open Access Week: October 24-30

Why does open access matter for researchers? Here are some thoughts cross-posted from the McGill Library website:

What is open access?

“Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.” – Peter Suber

Why should I care?

Open access

• …gives your work more exposure.

  By making by making your work openly available on the internet, it can be found via most search engines (like Google).

• …provides universal access to your work.

  It is no longer hidden behind subscription barriers, and it can be accessed by everyone not just those who can pay.

• …meets the requirements of many funding agencies.

  Many funders stipulate that research be made publicly available since it is being funded by the public. eScholarship@McGill meets this requirement.

Copyright and your scholarly work

Your rights as an author

• the author holds copyright of a work unless they transfer it to someone else in a signed agreement
• assigning copyright to someone else matters, as they can do anything with your work, and can prevent you from using it in course work and reusing it in subsequent work
• there are tools available where you can transfer copyright while holding back key rights – publishing agreements are negotiable

SPARC Canadian Author’s Addendum

The SPARC Canadian Author’s Addendum is a legal instrument that helps you modify the publisher’s agreement and keep key rights to your article.

Authors

• retain your rights
• reuse your work without restrictions
• receive proper attribution for your work
• make your work openly available through an open access repository

…Read more!

Hill Times online

The library now subscribes to The Hill Times, a Canadian newsweekly that covers government and politics.

Read more about the publication and its foreign affairs companion Embassy here.

Political Science collection analysis

Inquiring minds might be interested in this graph that shows a rough analysis of McGill’s political science collection according to subject subdivision. Of course, books that are relevant for political science research fall into separate categories such as history, law, or sociology, but it’s interesting to see the balance of broad subject interests in our collection.

Please contact me if you’re interested in further analysis according to elements like publication year or language.

EndNote X5 for Mac

The McGill community can now download the newest version of EndNote (X5) for Mac from the McGill software website. For more information, please visit the library’s citation software web page: http://www.mcgill.ca/library/library-using/endnote/

International Studies Encyclopedia

A new title has been added to Blackwell Reference online: The International Studies Encyclopedia.

Published in association with the International Studies Association, the encyclopedia is also known as the International Studies Compendium Project.

According to the official description:

“This resource is the most comprehensive reference work of its kind for the fields of international studies and international relations. 

Key features:

• A-Z: Presented in an A-Z format
• 400+: Specially-commissioned, peer reviewed essays of up to 10,000 words focusing on the most important topics and issues
• Diverse: Written and edited by an international team of the world’s leading scholars and teachers
• Up-to-date: Essays quickly bring readers up-to-date on the nature of the questions asked, past attempts at formulating responses, and the current state of debates
• Accessible: Aimed at students, scholars, and practitioners
• Online: International Studies Online will be updated annually and enhanced by live links to archives, datasets, cases, pedagogical aids, and other relevant materials.”

MyResearch workshop series

Registration is now open for the library’s MyResearch seminar series. Module 1 covers the basics of the citation software program EndNote.

MyResearch is a suite of workshops tailored to graduate and postdoctoral students that are designed to better equip you with essential research skills and knowledge about the various ways the library can support your research.

The series consists of four interactive seminars that will be held three times this year (Fall 2011, Winter and Summer 2012) at five different locations and covering the following subject areas: Agriculture/Environmental Sciences & Nutrition, Health & Biological Sciences, Humanities, Science & Engineering and Social Sciences. Political Science students can attend either the Social Sciences or Humanities sessions. Each of them is two hours long with plenty of hands-on practice.

Topics cover the beginning of the research process, including refining of research topic, right through to ways to enter the research community, all the while highlighting the library’s resources and services.

Module 1: EndNote Essentials
Module 2: Graduate Research Tool Kit
Module 3: Search Strategies & Techniques
Module 4: Getting Your Research Out

EndNote X5 for Windows

The McGill community can now download the new version for Windows from the McGill software website. For more information, please visit the library’s citation software web pages: http://www.mcgill.ca/library/library-using/endnote/. It is expected that version X5 for Mac will be released sometime during fall 2011.

What’s new in EndNote X5 for Windows?

EndNote users will notice few changes in the update from version X4 to X5. However, here are some new features, explained in full on the EndNote website: http://endnote.com/pr-enx5win.asp

Add and Transfer File Attachments to the Web
EndNote X5 users now attach files, such as images and PDFs, to records in EndNote Web. File attachments can be added directly in EndNote Web or transferred from a library saved locally on a computer. The EndNote Web storage capacity is 5,000 references and 1GB for file attachments.

View and Annotate PDF files within EndNote
A new PDF viewer enables users to view PDFs within the library window. It also has basic annotation functions. and edit a record in one place. Users can search the entire PDF including comments.

Update References Automatically
Existing references can now be updated easily with a new option that lets EndNote search online for more complete reference detail. When a match is found, EndNote highlights the differences in a side-by-side comparison of the new and existing reference. While any field can be updated, the new feature saves time for existing references that now require article identifiers such as PMCID.

The latest version of EndNote also enables users to:

• Use new conditional formatting in journal styles that substitutes data for empty fields automatically.
• Review differences in duplicate records quickly with auto-highlights.
• Select a new citation style—Author (Year)—in Microsoft(R) Word.
• Use a new reference type—Music—and new fields in the Journal Article reference type—Article Number and NIHMSID.