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!

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.

With the last month of the semester approaching, many of you are likely working on major papers and projects. I thought that this would be a good time to review what plagiarism entails and the importance of citing your sources properly.

Plagiarism is using the words, thoughts, or ideas of someone else without giving credit. It can take many forms and can be intentional or accidental. Below are some guidelines to follow:

• Quoting an author's exact words often strengthens your argument. When you do so, you must provide a citation for the source of those words immediately after the quotation.
• Sometimes you will paraphrase an author's words using your own words and phrasing. You must still provide a citation when you paraphrase in order to avoid plagiarism. So as not to plagiarize accidentally, you should compare your paraphrased writing with the author's exact words to make sure you have not copied phrases or sentences from the author​ without stating that you have done so.
• The original source must be cited even if the borrowed information is used for different purposes from those intended in the original source. If you organize your ideas in the same way in which an author organized his or her ideas, cite the source of the organizational scheme.
• Information drawn from personal communications, speeches, conversations, interviews and other spoken words must be documented with a citation.
• If multiple students write a paper as a collaborative group project, one of the authors cannot submit or reuse the paper for another assignment. Any information borrowed from a paper that you write collaboratively should include citations for the information taken from the original paper.
• Information that is commonly known by the public or the intended readers of a paper does not need to be cited. The general rule is that if you can find the information in at least five separate sources, a citation is not necessary. However, if you are not sure whether an idea is common knowledge, use caution and cite the source.

Five different citation styles are used at Harcum: APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), ASA (American Sociological Association), AMA (American Medical Association), and NLM (National Library of Medicine). APA is generally used in the social sciences with ASA being specific to sociology. MLA would be used in English courses and some of the humanities. MLA and NLM are used in the health sciences.

Typically a brief in-text citation is included at the end of a directly quoted or paraphrased comment in a paper, and a full citation is then listed in the References or Works Cited page at the end of the paper. Each citation format is different in terms of the placement of information as well as the rules regarding the use of italics, punctuation, capitalization, and whether to use a hanging indent. Ask your instructor or consult your syllabus to determine which style to use for your paper.

The Library has print manuals for each style on reserve behind the front desk. You may also consult our Cite Sources guide for tips and examples. Purdue OWL is another good resource to use for citation help. In addition, we created modules as a non-credit course in Canvas called Information Literacy & Library Resources. These are quick PowerPoint presentations and ungraded quizzes that are available for you in order to review and test your understanding and knowledge of each citation format used at Harcum. The PowerPoints are also available in the Information Literacy library guide, which you may access under the Getting Started menu on the Library's homepage.

If you have any questions about citations or any other research matter, please reach out to us. You may visit us in person during the posted Library hours, send an email to library@harcum.edu, use our chat service when it is available, or call us at 610-526-6085.

This week we are going to profile a library database that would be especially useful to students in the Dental programs at Harcum: Lexicomp for Dentistry. This database will provide you with drug information that you may need for your studies and your career. In it you will find tools to help answer prescribing, diagnosis and treatment questions, with dental-specific pharmacology on prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, and natural products. Although this version of Lexicomp contains material that is focused on the needs of people in the dental profession, students in other Allied Health programs should be able to find useful information in this database as well.

To access Lexicomp for Dentistry, click on the Databases icon under Quick Links on the Library’s homepage. This will bring you to an alphabetical list of all of our databases. Scroll down to Lexicomp and select it. Since Lexicomp is a subscription database, you will need to enter a username and password if you are off campus. To find this information, log into Harcum Hatch and you will see a purple icon for Library Database Passwords on the righthand side of the bottom row. Click on this icon and choose the username and password for Lexicomp.

To do a drug search in Lexicomp, simply enter the name of the drug into the search box, click on the blue search button, and then click on the link under Dental Lexi-Drugs in the upper left-hand corner of the resulting screen. You will be brought to a screen that contains a Dental Lexi-Drugs monograph record, the main record in the database. The following are some features of a Dental Lexi-Drugs monograph record:

• Brand names
• Generic availability
• Pharmacologic category
• Use, including off-label if applicable
• Allergy considerations
• Adverse reactions
• Effects on dental treatment and on bleeding
• Dosing for various categories of patients
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding considerations

The following is an image of the top portion of the Dental Lexi-Drugs record for Penicillin G Procaine (You would scroll down to view the rest of the record):

As you can see in the blue bar and hyperlinks across the top of the record, Lexicomp contains a number of other useful features. Some include:

• Drug alerts and interactions
• Drug I.D. (Enter characteristics of an unknown drug to help identify it.)
• Drug images
• Adult and pediatric patient education (Answers common questions patients may ask)
• Various types of calculators, including those for dosage and unit conversion
• Toxicology of substances

More detailed instruction on the contents and use of Lexicomp for Dentistry can be found in our video database tutorial. Choose Database Tutorials under Quick Links on the Library’s homepage and then select Lexicomp.

Remember that if you have questions about this resource or any other, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library during the hours posted on the Library's homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, or call us at 610-526-6085.

If you are looking for topic ideas or general information about a particular subject, the Credo Reference database is a good one to use. It contains full-text entries from a multitude of reference sources, including encyclopedias, dictionaries, manuals, handbooks, and more.

To access Credo Reference, click on the A-Z Databases icon under Quick Links on the Library’s homepage. This will bring you to an alphabetical list of all of our databases. Scroll down to Credo and select it. Since Credo is a subscription database, you will need to enter a username and password if you are off campus. To find this information, log into Harcum Hatch and you will see a purple icon for Library Database Passwords on the righthand side of the bottom row. Click on this icon and choose the username and password for Credo Reference.

Credo is easy to search. Simply enter the database and type your topic into the search box.

You will then be taken to a page with a list of results from various reference works. There are drop-down menus that you can use to limit your results by subject, date, length, and media type. An advanced searching option is also available that will allow you to do a more refined search with your keywords. The links on the results page contain information about the topic that you entered, and many also feature a bibliography. You can track down the sources listed in the bibliography for further research. Credo also provides you with the citation of your chosen item in APA or MLA format.

Articles can be saved, printed, or shared (by link or email). In addition, they can be read aloud or translated into different languages.

Another useful feature that you will find on the results page is a Mind Map of your topic. The Mind Map contains the term that you searched at the center with related terms branching out from it. The related terms are hyperlinked to their own list of resources, which can provide you with additional topic ideas, more aspects of the same topic, or ways of narrowing your focus. Find the Mind Map for the subject of Nursing below:

More detailed instruction on the contents and use of Credo Reference can be found in our video database tutorial. Choose Database Tutorials under the Research Services menu on the Library’s homepage and then select Credo Reference. Note that while Credo Reference is a good database to use to begin your research, the information that you will find in it will tend to be basic. You should always search further for more in-depth and/or academic resources.

Remember that if you have questions about this resource or any other, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library during the hours posted on the Library's homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, use our chat service when it is available, or call us at 610-526-6085.

Google Scholar is a popular search engine for scholarly sources. It can be frustrating though when you cannot immediately view the full text of an article. You can add more full-text results to Google Scholar by connecting Google Scholar to Harcum College Trout Library resources to access material available from our databases. Follow the steps below to configure Google Scholar. 

Go to Google Scholar on your device. Click on the menu icon on the top left of the screen and select Settings. 

In the Settings menu, select Library Links. Use the search box to search for Harcum College. 

Put a checkmark in the box in front of Harcum College/Trout Library - Available from Library, then click Save. It is important to note here that this setting uses your browser's cookies to remember your new library links. If you clear your browser cookies, you will have to set this up again. 

Go back to the Google Scholar search page and try a search. Your search results will now show you when the full text of an article is available through the Harcum College Trout Library. Notice in the screen capture below that you will see links with the words Available from Library. These links will take you to the full text of the article when it is available from the Trout Library. Click directly on the Available from Library links to be directed to the full text. 

An additional note: You will still need to input the passwords to the databases when prompted. Those passwords are located in your Harcum Hatch. Look for the Library Database Passwords icon (see below) in Harcum Hatch. 

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

February is Black History Month, a time when we bring to light the central role that African Americans have played in our history and highlight the achievements of the Black community as well as prominent figures within the community. Trout Library has many resources to help you learn about Black history.

We have created a Black History Month Research Guide. This guide contains links to many useful websites, including some to African American history museums, one to the 1619 project from the New York Times, one to the Rosa Parks Collection from the Library of Congress, and more. The guide features many relevant videos from the Kanopy database.

Trout Library also has an Anti-Racism Resources Research Guide. In this guide, find many useful websites, Kanopy videos, and TED talks on the topic, as well as books in the collection, eBooks, and articles. A special tab contains links to articles that will help you teach anti-racism. Links to these guides and others can be found on our Research Guides page.

On the slatwall just inside the Library entrance, we have displayed 12 books in the print collection, both old and new, that are relevant to Black history. We encourage everyone to peruse this display, as you might find something rewarding to read! The following are some of the books on display:

Find a link to the Black Life in America database in the A-Z Databases list as well as under the Databases tab of some of our research guides. Off-campus access to Black Life in America requires the username and password for NewsBank that can be found in the Library Database Password List under Quicklinks in Harcum Hatch.

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