APA style guide to electronic references

We have just received the APA style guide to electronic references. It comes as a download from the catalogue entry.

As it says on the website:

Expanded and updated from the Electronic Resources section of the Fifth Edition of the Publication Manual, this comprehensive yet succinct style guide in PDF format offers up-to-date information on formatting electronic references in APA style. With more than 40 example references, the APA Style Guide to Electronic References outlines for students and writers the key elements to include in references to electronic sources, with numerous examples.

Among the new examples are dissertations and theses; bibliographies; curriculum and course material; reference materials, including Wiki; gray literature, such as conference hearings, presentation slides, and policy briefs; general interest media and alternative presses such as audio podcasts; and online communities, such as Weblog posts and video Weblog posts. Students and writers will find this guide indispensable as well as convenient to download and use when citing electronic references.

New Libguide on curriculum resources

I have just created a new Libguide to the different types of curriculum resources available at the Bundoora Library to assist students on professional practice. The Library doesn’t have a separate curriculum collection so it is especially important that students know how the resources in our various collections can assist them.

The new Libguide format is still on trial and there is a comments box on the ‘Home’ page if you want us to let us know what you think. As mentioned previously we have transferred our Primary education guide across as part of the trial but probably won’t transfer the others until we have decided to go ahead with the product. (At the urging of one keen lecturer ESL will be first cab off the rank when we begin tranferring these.)

The one glitch we have found is that some pcs on campus are having problems accessing the libguides because of their proxy settings. We will eventually load them on our server, which should solve the problem, but for the moment you will have to try a different pc or access off campus.

Along with pointers about using and accessing the collection, this guide incorporates a clip of ‘Where the wild things are’ from YouTube, RSS feeds from sites like Edna and Enhance TV, as well as a tag cloud collection of curriculum sites.

Library resources and services for postgraduates

I spoke to new postgraduates recently at their induction session. I thought I would just mention some of the services and resources available to postgraduate students.

Sonya Hartnett wins richest children’s book award

… says the Guardian headline reporting on Hartnett’s win of the Atstrid Lindgren award worth AUS $880, 000. There is also coverage locally in The Age. See our catalogue entry for library holdings of Hartnett’s work. You can also look her up in resources like The Source and Austlit.

Children’s literature: The Source

 
We have just gained access to The Source, which is an online reference guide to children’s books, poetry, short stories and literary awards, indexing:

• over 14 000 books from Australia and New Zealand, and also the US and UK.

• more than 15 000 poems from 300 anthologies. Full text of poems is provided where copyright has expired.

• over 1800 short stories including fairytales, myths and legends.

Brief biographical information about authors, illustrators and poets is
also included.

Recent reports, surveys, briefs

The last couple of editions of ACER News refer to a range of reports, briefs and so on that might be of interest to people within the School. We can create catalogue entries and links for any of this type of material on request.

• An ACER policy brief on Australia’s School Funding System.

• A study of ICT proficiency of Australian students

• ACER study of Teacher education courses in Victoria: Perceptions of their effectiveness and factors affecting their impact

• A briefing paper on Physical activity and bodyweight among 17 year-olds

• The Australian Country Background Report to the OECD Improving School Leadership Activity

• The Staff in Australian Schools Survey 2007

Easier Endnote download

Up until now staff and students wanting to obtain Endnote for their computers off-campus needed to obtain a CD copy or use the ITS Remote Dial in Service.

ITS have now organised for Endnote to be accessible directly via the Web. You just need go to the ITS Endnote page and login using your normal RMIT NDS login. This should make obtaining Endnote much easier.

The Endnote download is a very large file so let us know if there are any problems with this and we will alert ITS.