Because even — and perhaps especially — in the electronic age, libraries are still the most organized, reliable places to get exactly what you need to solve a problem or answer a question, particularly when it comes to academic research.

But going to the library can feel something like choosing between making a salad or picking up a bag of chips: You know the salad is better for you, but it seems so much easier to go to the vending machine. Search engines “vend” information, dispensing a mix of garbage, quality and so-so information in each set of results, without much differentiation.

When it comes to adding real sustenance to research, the library still has a lot to offer.

Temple Libraries' staff members are subject experts in many disciplines with advanced degrees in their respective fields. These librarians are responsible for selecting and supervising the collections in their areas of study so that they can help faculty and students find the materials and information they need.

To fully support the university's teaching, research interests and information needs over the past several years, the Libraries have increased book purchases; developed resources to support faculty research; subscribed to additional scholarly journals, magazines and newspapers; introduced a leisure reading collection; and licensed hundreds of new research databases.

You don't need a master of library and information science or an entire afternoon to spend perusing the stacks to find these things. The Libraries, under the guidance of Larry Alford, dean of university libraries, have created several new ways to find good information fast.

Ask a Librarian

This initiative gives students and faculty members the opportunity to get help and advice from their computers via Instant Messenger or Virtual Chat software. While instant chat brings great convenience to reaching librarians, the Ask a Librarian service makes it easy to send questions by e-mail or reach subject experts by phone.

RefWorks

With researchers capturing so much more information, managing it can present challenges. The Libraries offer RefWorks, a personal citation manager. It stores bibliographic information, makes it easy to create citations in dozens of formats and then integrate them into Word documents. Faculty, students and staff can get free accounts by going to the Libraries' web site and selecting "RefWorks: Manage Citations" under the "Find Articles" header.

LibGuide Subject Guides

Subject and course guides pull together good-quality information pertaining to specific topics. LibGuides, newly available on the Libraries' main web site, present a totally new approach to traditional subject guides. For each subject, ranging from Aesthetics to Women's Studies, a LibGuide displays selected Temple databases, web sites, news from the libraries and departments, and chat, phone and e-mail contact information for the subject-specialist librarian for that field.

Additionally, librarians are now creating custom-designed LibGuides for specific courses that point students to research resources that faculty want students to use for their research assignments, said Steven Bell, associate university librarian for research and institutional services.

MultiSearch

This new search interface provides access to 250 databases. It can be used to discover articles from periodicals as diverse as Sports Illustrated to the Journal for Specialists in Pediatric Nursing. Instead of exploring a topic one database at a time, MultiSearch allows users to search across many databases using one simple interface.

The tool also contains an option that gives researchers the ability to customize their search by choosing library databases to be searched in any number of combinations, either those pre-determined by librarian subject specialists or those they select themselves.

TUlink

Some of the Libraries' many thousands of articles are in full text, and others are short abstracts or basic citations. A new tool developed in the fall allows users to find the full-text articles more easily. If you're searching journals through a database and find an abstract or citation for an article you want to read, clicking on TUlink will search the Libraries' holdings to see if the full text of that article is available in another database.

Blackboard

The Libraries' latest project is designed to help students find good information faster by integrating subject-specific information into Blackboard courses. "Packages" of course-specific library content can be imported directly into faculty members' Blackboard course sites.

"This feature, adopted by all spring online courses, gives students the convenience of being just one click away from online academic articles," said Dominique Monolescu Kliger, assistant vice provost and director of Distance and Summer Programs.

The packages create a "library express" area inside the course site, making access to relevant articles, databases and other library resources quicker and easier for students, said Jenifer Baldwin, head of reference and instructional services. The packages consist of resources such as reserve readings, quick-search boxes for scholarly databases, a chat tool used to reach a subject librarian directly and the Subject Guides for topic overviews and guides to starting research.

Additional initiatives

The library web site isn't the only thing undergoing changes; the first floor of Paley itself has been transformed to encourage people to gather and peruse. The print periodicals, all 2,300 of them, are now located on the first floor, making it easier to drop by between classes and pick up a quick read.

Each year, the library system holds more than 100 instructional sessions to make members of Temple's community aware of the academic resources right at their fingertips.

"[Temple] is committed to making these resources available to our students and faculty for the purpose of accessing the scholarly work of their peers and of the experts in their fields," Bell said. "Many people who come to Temple as freshmen are unaware of how to get these resources and how to use them efficiently; a core Library mission is to create awareness of these resources and help our community to maximize their use."

In today's world, there are millions of information sources on the internet, but Temple's goal is to teach students which ones are reliable, high-quality and serious, said Bell, whose blogs on academic librarianship and higher education are occasionally highlighted on The Chronicle of Higher Education's web site. Faculty also benefit when students submit well documented, higher quality research papers; avoiding "garbage" means better writing, better reading and better results, Bell said.

To learn more about Temple's Libraries and the services they provide, visit http://library.temple.edu or contact your subject specialist through the "Subject Guides" icon located on the homepage.

Temple Libraries by the numbers

400-plus electronic databases containing academic journals, thousands of popular newspaper and magazine titles, hard-to-find government documents, e-books, full-text copy from online blogs and numerous trade magazine publications.

40,000 periodicals covering topics ranging from landscape architecture to presidential primaries to music therapy.

250 library databases can be searched at once using MultiSearch

300,000 songs in every style, period and genre can be heard by users of American Song, a newly acquired online streaming audio resource, plus Smithsonian Global Sound and Naxos Music Library

3.5 million searches conducted in 2007 by Temple University faculty, students and staff in licensed database resources (not including the Diamond library catalog)