Bing.com

Check out bing.com as an alternative to Google.

Browser Tips: FirefoxTabs and Shortcuts

Firefox is a browser with great functionality for Web research. One way to take advantage of this functionality is to use keyboard shortcuts. My favorite is the Ctrl+T keyboard shortcut. This opens a new tab. Why use this? Say you are searching in a database, but want to look up a journal title in the A to Z list to see what our holdings (electronic or print) are for that title. Use Ctrl+T for PCs or Cmd+T for Macs to open another tab, click over to the tab and go back to the Access Databases Page. You haven't lost your database search and now you can check holdings for journals whenever you need it during the search session.
More browser tips coming soon.

High Wire Press on the Web

High Wire Press is "a division of the Stanford University Libraries; [it] hosts the largest repository of high impact, peer-reviewed content, with 1185 journals and 4,976,465 full text articles from over 140 scholarly publishers. HighWire-hosted publishers have collectively made 2,005,740 articles free. With our partner publishers we produce 71 of the 200 most-frequently-cited journals." The passage from the site seems to say it all.

Document Delivery on the Web

For those of you working on big documents--like, say, a dissertation, you might need a way to get those documents over to committee members. There are a bunch of online document storage/delivery options that you can try. Infopeople put together a list of a few to try. Let us know if there is one that you try and that works for you.

Cooliris (formerly known as PicLens)

In search of images that will add visual interest to your work?
Interested in visual researching?
Cooliris can help.
This Firefox add-on is easy (and fun) to use. Once installed,
images are presented as a 3D wall that you can effortlessly zip along.
Just click on the image to bring it to the fore and zoom in.
Each picture has a small globe icon which you can click on to
jump to its corresponding website.You can easily share the images by clicking the envelope icon which allows you to email them to others. Cooliris is a great time saver as it taps into the image resources of many popular websites and search engines including Google, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, deviantArt, Photobucket, and Yahoo.

Firefox can be downloaded free from: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/.
The Cooliris add-on can then be installed from: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=cooliris&cat=all .

Web Discovery Tool: Stumbleupon.com

Stumbleupon.com uses human power to help you get more out of the Web. Members contribute links to the most interesting and worthwhile sites they have discovered. You can also make your own contributions.
Although it isn't scholarly in focus, it is a great place to get the curiosity and brainpower going.
You don't need to join to stumble upon something interesting.

Second Life

Second Life is a virtual Web environment where you create an avatar who moves and interacts with others on various virtual islands. I have been watching this environment develop for some time now. It takes the psychological nature of fantasy to a new level. You can be whoever or whatever you want to be. You can fly. You can interact with people around the world. You can create a perfect space. And people do.
Are any of you in Second Life? Please share your thoughts about the transpersonal aspects, if you see there are any, of this new kind of environment.

On the ITP Site: A Collection of Audio and Video Treasures

ITP was founded in 1975 guided by the inspiration of a holistic model of education and the emerging field of Transpersonal Psychology. Over the years, the library has collected a vast number of audio and video recordings of campus presentations. Slowly, these resources are being digitized and posted on the Web for worldwide access. Thanks to John Axtell and Hayden Reynolds for all their work in this.
The audio collection includes the following:
Hillevi RuumetA Chakra-Based Theoretical Model
Luisah TeishCarnival of Spirit: The Budding of the Erotic in Nature and Human Nature
Jeremy TaylorThe Psychology of Dreams and Sacred Narrative

The video collection includes TV interviews with ITP faculty:

Kate Wolf-Pizor on military families during the holidays
Dr. Fred Luskin and Forgiveness
Dr. Charles Tart on Near Death Experiences

You can choose from three different digital formats!

Collaboration on the Web: Thinkature

Do you want to brainstorm with colleagues about your ideas? Check out Thinkature for an online collaborative environment that allows you to use images, text, drawing, and voice/text chat.

Finding Scholars

Researchers sometimes forget that people are a great resource too. When you notice that several articles are by a particular scholar, you might consider checking the Web to see if they have their own Web site about their area of research.

Use Google or another search engine to search for the scholar of interest. Search on their name in quotes (for Google) - "Firstname Lastname" - and if their name is not unusual you might consider adding a keyword for their area of expertise.

On some sites, all you may get is a contact email address, while others may include a CV, full text articles - both published and in press, and other resources.

Consider emailing a scholar whose work resonates with yours. Most of the time, you will have a positive experience and a contact for the future. Be sure you are clear about who you are and your affiliation (e.g. graduate student at ITP working on your dissertation) and positively frame any questions you may have. And expressing gratitude goes a long way.

New Library Web Site

We are moving to a fabulous new Web site. If you haven't visited yet, check it out:

http://www.itp.edu/library

We value your input. Please let us know if there is something we can improve on!