Trout Library Blog

EBSCOhost has just released a browser extension that makes it easier than ever to connect to full-text materials.  EBSCOhost Passport browser extension shows you when the material is available in full text when you are searching on virtually any web page where DOIs are present. This means when you are searching on PubMed or Google Scholar, you'll see an icon that will allow you to click through to the full text if it is available via the Charles H. Trout Library. 

The browser extension is currently only available for Chrome but more browser extensions are coming soon. To install the browser extension, visit the Chrome web store listing. Click Add to Chrome. Search for Harcum College when prompted to select your institution. If prompted for a password, see our one-minute video on how to access passwords.  

Once the extension is installed, just search PubMed, Google Scholar, or the web as you normally would. When an article is available in our EBSCOhost databases, you'll see an icon alerting you that the material is available. Simply click on the icon and the full text will open in a new tab. 

When searching in PubMed and Google Scholar there will be an additional more results icon near the search box that will show additional results available in EBSCOhost 

To learn more about EBSCOhost Passport and how to install it, click here.

Happy searching! If you need assistance with your research, please reach out to us!

With Earth Day coming up on April 22, I invite you to peruse my Climate Change, Energy & Sustainability library guide and also have a look at our book display on the slatwall just inside the Library entrance. A link to the guide can be found by Clicking on Research Guides on the Library's homepage and then clicking on the Special Topics tab.

The guide contains tabs for relevant websites, databases, videos and podcasts, books, articles, reports, and more. The website tab is broken down into the following categories: Climate Change Research & Data, Climate Change News, Weather, and Sustainability & Renewable Energy. Among the many interesting and informative websites that you will find are: Climate Central, which provides research and reporting by leading scientists and journalists about climate change and its impact on the public; Skeptical Science, which explains climate change science and rebuts misinformation; World Weather Attribution, which details studies that examine the extent to which climate change is responsible for individual weather events; and a link to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Below are some highlights from the book display. All books on the display are available to be checked out:

As April is National Autism Awareness Month, I would like to detail some of the resources that Trout Library has to offer on the topic. I have created an Autism library guide, the link to which can be found by clicking on Research Guides on the Library's homepage and then selecting Special Topics. The guide contains a tab that lists autism related websites, such as the Autism Society and Autism Speaks as well as information about the condition from organizations such as the CDC and the WHO. A video tab will lead you to Kanopy films, Ted Talks, and a number of useful YouTube videos. Other tabs in the guide provide you with articles on the topic, print books in our collection, eBooks from EBSCO eBooks Academic Collection, open access books, and podcasts.

I have also put together a book display, which is located on the slatwall just inside the Library entrance. The following are some books on the display, which are available to be checked out:

We are reaching the point in the semester where you are likely working on research projects. The Trout Library is here to help you with that! 

We subscribe to many databases that you should find very useful as you pursue your research. A significant number of these databases use the EBSCO platform, which provides a uniform appearance as well as very similar search options and methods. In this blog post, I am going to list the EBSCO databases that we have and briefly explain their features.

Our EBSCO databases cover a wide range of subject areas. The following is a list of the ones that are available through links on our A-Z Databases page:

• Academic Search Complete (Multidisciplinary – All Subjects)
• Business Source Premier (Business articles as well as market research reports, industry reports, country reports, company profiles and SWOT analyses)
• Business Book Summaries (Business books)
• Regional Business News
• CINAHL (Health-related material, much of it peer-reviewed)
• Consumer Health Complete (Health-related material, much that is not peer-reviewed)
• Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source (Dentistry and Dental Hygiene)
• Criminal Justice Abstracts (Criminal Justice)
• Violence & Abuse Abstracts (Sociology and Criminal Justice)
• eBooks Academic Collection (Full-text eBooks)
• ERIC (Education)
• Teacher Reference Center (Education)
• GreenFile (Environment)
• Library Information Science & Technology Abstracts (Library Science)
• Newswires
• OpenDissertations (Abstracts of dissertations with links to some full text)

The EBSCO databases are subscription databases, which means that they are available only to members of the Harcum community and not to the general public. (Subscription databases are indicated by the lock icon on the Databases page.) As a result, to access these databases from off campus, you will need a username and password that can be found in the Library Database Password List. Find the password list by logging into Harcum Hatch and selecting the Library Database Password icon on the far righthand side of the bottom row. The login information is the same for all the EBSCO databases. If you are on campus, no username and password are needed.

The EBSCO databases are straightforward to search. You may search an individual EBSCO database or multiple EBSCO databases simultaneously. When you enter an EBSCO database, you are brought to a screen containing three search boxes:

You will also see a variety of limiters. The limiters vary from database to database but generally include full-text availability, peer-reviewed articles, published date, source type, and number of pages.

Some of the databases also feature a thesaurus that will help you narrow down your search terms. Once you execute a search, you are able to refine your results further if you wish to do so. Choose an article and you are able to save it, print it, or email it. In addition, EBSCO provides a tool that will generate citations in APA (7th Edition), MLA (9th Edition), and AMA (11th Edition) among other formats. If you use this tool, always remember to confirm the accuracy of the citation using our Cite Sources guide.

For a detailed visual demonstration of how to search EBSCO databases, please visit our Database Tutorials page. There you will find individual video tutorials (5-10 minutes each) for a number of the databases listed above.

Remember that if you have questions about these resources or any others, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library in person during the hours listed on the homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, use our chat service when it is available, or call us at 610-526-6085.