Practising with a Stats Question

Sent by Laine, after her session at the Gerstein Librarians Meeting on March 23:

"When I got back to the office yesterday after the Gerstein event, there was a perfect question waiting for me:

The user wanted annual smoking rates for Ontario, from about 2000 to the latest. We checked CANSIM, but each time series from the Canadian community health survey seemed to consist of only one year per series, and it would have required 'gluing' together a series of numbers from disparate CANSIM tables.

So we went to the Canadian tobacco use monitoring survey. Selecting (in
SDA) each annual person file, and doing a cross-tabulation of the smoking status question (Q10 or Q010 in most years) and province, and noting down the % of daily smokers, occasional smokers, and non-smokers.

I encourage you to try the same thing, in SDA, and in to see the differences.

One major difference: in SDA the resulting table is by default weighted to the population, while in Nesstar (ie ) you need to add the weight variable. If you do not use the weight, you can only talk about the prevalence of smoking _in the sample_, while if you do use the weight, you are generating estimates of and can talk about the prevalence of smoking _in the Ontario population_ 15 years of age and over."

Qualitative Research Nursing assignment

My email response you can use for Masters of Nursing students looking for qualitative research in CINAHL:

"Hi _______,

I am attaching a handout with some tips for using CINAHL. Feel free to email ask.gerstein@utoronto.ca if you need any assistance with it. [CINAHL 2010 handout is located in the sidebar of the blog])

As for finding qualitative research articles you can copy and paste this text and search for it in CINAHL (**Make sure you UNCHECK the box that says 'Suggest Subject Terms' before searching for this. That will allow it to be searched as a phrase**)

(MH "cluster sample+") or TX life experiences or TX human science or TX discourse* analysis or TX narrative analysis or TX lived experience* or TX field research or TX field studies or TX field study or TX giorgi* or TX husserl* or TX merleau ponty* or TX van kaam* or TX van manen* or TX spiegelberg* or TX colaizzi* or TX heidegger* or TX participant observ* or TX data saturat* or TX semiotics or TX heuristic or TX hermeneutic* or TX etic or TX emic or TX focus group* or TX purpos* sampl* or TX constant comparison or TX constant comparative or TX grounded research or TX grounded studies or TX grounded study or TX grounded theor* or TX phenomenol* or TX ethnon* or TX qualitative or (MH "ethnological research") or (MH "ethnography") or (MH "phenomenology") or (MH "focus groups") or (MH "discourse analysis") or (MH "theoretical sample") or (MH "field studies") or (MH "constant comparative method") or (MH "thematic analysis") or (MH "content analysis") or (MH "observational method+") or (MH "purposive sample") or (MH "qualitative validity+") or (MH "grounded theory") or (MH "ethnonursing research") or (MH "phenomenological research") or (MH "ethnographic research") or (MH "qualitative studies")

This will look for all qualitative studies. If you want to, you can modify it and take out any of the terms that you are not interested in finding.
Then you can combine these results with your search subject terms (__[suggest some relevant terms based on their topic]__) in the search history screen.

These terms were found here: http://www.library.vcu.edu/tml/bibs/nursingevidencefilters.html (scroll to bottom)

There's also a good article on search strategies here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2288/4/5 for your information."

email dated March 25, 2010

Door Alarm Procedures

If door alarms go off we typically look for Peter Gurney to turn it off as he can resolve all issues. Also, if necessary most of the alarms can be turned off by anyone with a spare minute. The key and hearing protectors are in the key cabinet behind the Circ Desk.

Exceptions are the " English Wing" (i.e south end, 2nd floor) and "7 King's College". This set of alarms also sound at the Circ Desk and can only be turned off by Peter, Vidya, Bonnie or Renata. Alternatively, in the evening Building Patrol can also turn them off. (Note that these alarms are programmed to turn off after 3 minutes if nobody is available to attend to them.)

Please leave a note for Peter Gurney of all instances of alarms going off. (location, date, time, and any other specifics you think may be important)

Printing - Document Queue

The public printer system will retain jobs for only two hours.

This is occasionally a problem for alumni or other researchers who may sit at a computer for hours at a time. If you help anyone that fits this description, please let them know to print out their documents every 2 hours (at least).

Public Equipment Updates

March 2010 Update: T-Cards getting stuck in readers (Public Equipment Blog)

-Other computing facilities on campus: http://life.utoronto.ca/get-online/internet-access.htm (scroll down)

USB monitor ports active

At the Reference Desk (standing and sitting) computers, Stephen has activated the USB ports on the left-hand side of the monitors. You should be able to plug in your USB memory sticks/drives without bending down to use the USB ports in the computer box.

Arts and Science Online Exams

From Sian, December 2009:

I've just introduced a new feature to the Library Resources feed [in Blackboard] for St.George Campus Faculty of Arts and Science courses -- for courses that have previous exams online, a link to the course's old exams now appears in the Library Resources feed ....

The collection so far includes Faculty of Arts and Science exams for the last three years (December 2006 - August 2009).

Finding NTIS Documents

You can search by accession number from the following NTIS database:
http://search3.scholarsportal.info/ids70/advanced_search.php?SID=bcc0d51ef3990af9dfd2947de5ca9b49

Sam-chin
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I just did a title search in WorldCat--sort of banking on someone cataloguing it. Two records appeared, one was a dissertation record (probably could get it, then, from DissFT, the other record had the direct link to the .mil site.

Sheril Hook
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google gets you there as well.

Cris Sewerin