Watch Full-length Plays Online with Theatre in Video
by Jon Ritterbush, Assistant Librarian

Regent University Library has added a new collection of full-length online videos, accessible to Regent students and employees anywhere 24-7.

Theatre in Video contains more than 50 definitive performances of the world's leading plays, online in streaming video. This first release represents hundreds of leading playwrights, actors and directors. Included are landmark performances such as The Iceman Cometh, Hamlet, Othello, Awake and Sing, Long Day's Journey Into Night, She Stoops to Conquer, and others. Later this month, another three dozen BBC performances of Shakespearean plays will become available online.

To access Theatre in Video, visit the Library’s Databases page or follow this shortcut link: http://tinyurl.com/2zn45s. Theatre in Video is optimized to operate with either Internet Explorer 6.0+ or Firefox 1.0+, in conjunction with the free Flash Player 8.0+. A broadband connection (DSL, Cable, LAN) is also required to view these streaming videos.
Please contact the Reference Desk by phone, e-mail, or IM if you have any questions or comments at http://www.regent.edu/general/library/services/reference/.

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Executive Briefing
by Harold Henkel, Assistant Librarian

 

Where do you go for your morning business news? CNNMoney? Morningstar? While free sites like these offer some excellent content, consider making use of a database designed for global executives who need to:

• Gain insight into new management ideas
• Learn ways to improve company performance
• Manage career development
• Prepare for technological change

The Executive Briefing is the product of a partnership between the Economist Intelligence Unit and Harvard Business School Press to bring together the best in management and leadership thinking. Each week, the Executive Briefing features new articles designed to change the way executives do business. Sources for articles include:

• Economist Intelligence Unit white papers.
• Timely, topical articles from The Economist.
• Special articles by EIU and HBSP writers.
• Trend-setting articles from the Harvard Business Review.
• Extracts from HBSP’s leading management books.
• Journal articles from leading management schools.

Although Executive Briefing is fully searchable like any research database, its best use may be as its name suggests: a daily briefing that can provide you with some of the best recent thinking on business and leadership. The main area of the homepage features short “must read” reports on the following categories:

• Global Business
• Strategy and Competition
• Sales and Marketing
• Finance and Performance
• Technology and Operations
• Leadership

Each of these main categories is also broken into subheadings allowing you to browse the most recent feature articles on that topic. For example, under Leadership, you will find articles organized under the subheadings leadership style, organization and culture, corporate governance/ethics, managing change, and working with people.

If you are looking for information that can improve your decision-making or leadership skills, including Executive Briefing in your morning briefing will be a good investment of your time.

 

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Undergraduate Research
by Harold Henkel, Assistant Librarian

Better Searching with "Advanced Search"

Anyone who has spent even the briefest amount of time searching online catalogs, databases, or search engines will have come across the terms “basic search” and “advanced search.” These terms are unfortunate, because at first glance, it would appear that the basic search is good enough for most searches, while the advanced search is not only for harder-to-find items, but probably as its name suggests, is more complicated. This is by no means the case, and unless you are familiar with the way a database or search engine processes search terms, using the basic search will frequently retrieve a mass of irrelevant results.

Online Catalogs

One of the most important features of advanced search screens is the limiters, which allow you to filter out most of the database and search only the most potentially relevant items. For example, let’s say you wanted to listen to the Library’s new recording of Hamlet. From the basic search screen, you could do a keyword search, which would retrieve 104 records. You could also do a title search, which would retrieve 19 records. A much better strategy would be to use the advanced search option and limit your search to sound CDs of Hamlet, which would take you straight to the record for the item you had in mind. The following illustration shows an advanced search screen made up of Hamlet as a title search and “sound CD” selected from the material type menu:

Online Databases

In online databases, the advanced search usually shows two important search elements that do not appear on the basic search screen:
1. The Boolean operators to be used
2. The field(s) in the record to be searched

The following illustration shows the “quick search” screen in Sage databases:

Note that it is up to the searcher to know what fields (author, title, subject, source, etc.) are being searched as well as how Boolean operators (and, or, not) will be applied to multiple keywords. In contrast, the advanced screen makes these factors instantly clear:

Search Engines

Even search engines such as Google contain extremely useful limiters for making your searches more precise:

The advanced search screen above allows the researcher to limit the search to pages by language, file format, domain, and other qualifiers. The ability to precisely limit a web search could be quite useful when searching for reliable information on a topic. For example, U.S. government websites contain a wealth of authoritative information that can be cited in a research project. By using the advanced search in Google and other search engines, a researcher can limit results to webpages in the government (ending in .gov) domain.

One final reason for preferring to work in the advanced search option is that over time, using the different limiters and menu options will give you insight into how large databases are organized. This insight in turn will make you a much more effective electronic information sleuth.

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Collection Spotlight--The Henty Collection, by G.A. Henty
Reviewed by Sandra Yaegle, Head of Public Services

An exciting collection of sixty historical adventure novels by the English Victorian author G. A. Henty has recently been added to the curriculum collection of the Library. Henty’s books are unique. His stories feature young heroes, boys, or young men of high personal Christian character. He places the boys or young men within the setting of some important period in human history. The young men experience adventures as they interact with the events of history unfolding around them. The reader learns much detailed history while being entertained and taught by the example of these exemplary heroes. The author’s intent was to write history in a way that would appeal to boys while presenting them with models of Christian character.

An example of one of the titles in the collection is With Lee in Virginia: A Story of the American Civil War. In this story, the hero is Vincent, a young heir to a southern plantation. He serves in the cavalry under Robert E. Lee in the American Civil War. He witnesses the naval battle between the ironclad ships Monitor and Merrimac. He takes part in the battles of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and he sees the destruction caused by Sherman on his march to the sea. He performs daring deeds behind enemy lines, and faces the prospect of being imprisoned in the federal prisoner of war camp in Elmira, New York.

With Lee in Virginia actually belongs to a minority of Henty's work not taken from British history. The majority of his novels are set in famous chapters of British history, from Roman times up to the author's own day. One of Henty's goals was to instill in his young readers feelings of pride for the heroic achievements of their nation. The unabashed patriotism and exposition of Christian virtues have earned Henty's novels renewed popularity among Christian schools and homeschoolers.

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Two Library Faculty Appointed to National Committees

Marta Lee and Dr. Leanne Strum, who recently returned from the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting in Seattle, have been appointed to two national committees for the ALA in 2007. Ms. Lee is a member of the Distance Learning Committee and works with the program planning and research subcommittees. Dr. Strum serves on the LITA (Library and Information Technology Association) National Forum Committee 2007.

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One Free Sale Book

This coupon entitles the bearer to Purchase five (5) books during the January Book Sale and receive one FREE BOOK. Coupon required for each transaction. Not redeemable for cash. Limit two (2) free books. Expires February 16, 2007

 

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