News

Welcome to Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not know about!

With so much focus on research and academic writing in our college careers, there is one vital piece of information that is rarely ever brought up: the types of scholarly documents. While this may seem like elementary information for some of you, I doubt most of us entered college knowing about periodicals. Below, I provide a run-down of all the terminology you need to know to make your research much easier.

• A periodical is any publication that comes out regularly or occasionally.
• A magazine is a periodical with a popular focus, aimed at the general public, and containing news, personal narratives, and opinions.
• Magazine articles are the individual stories or reports that are inside the overall magazine. They are often written by professional writers who may not have formal expertise in the subject.
• A journal is a scholarly periodical aimed at specialists, researchers, and students.
• Journal articles are the individual research papers that make up the larger journal. They contain original research, conclusions based on data, footnotes or endnotes, and often an abstract or bibliography.

Though magazines and journals are both periodicals and contain articles, there are vital differences between the two that you must understand in order to complete your research accurately. If you’d like to learn more about these types of documents and the distinctions between them, please visit Diamond’s Hidden Gems – Journals vs. Articles in STARS!

Welcome to Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not know about!

Research is an important aspect of any college career; it is a process in which you are exposed to the questions and information that have captured the attention of your field of interest. For students, this often means searching for and identifying free, online, and relevant research articles. UCF helps to mitigate most of this stress by providing students with databases that help narrow down the field of search.

The University of Central Florida Libraries allows students to search databases owned by a number of different vendors for items like scholarly peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, and magazine articles. Each of these databases contains specific publications with similar topics or subjects. By navigating to the UCF Libraries website, you can search for a database by name or topic, or you can browse the list of databases organized by subject or alphabetically.

If you’d like to learn more about databases and how you can access them, please visit Diamond’s Hidden Gems – Databases in STARS!

Downtown Campus Library is bringing you a series of workshops and study breaks to help you achieve your goals this semester.

Join us on September 5th at 1:00PM at the Downtown Campus Library in room 265 of the Doctor Philips Academic Commons to learn more about bullet journaling and how it can keep you organized.

On September 12th at 1:00PM work with library staff to develop a vision board. This visualization exercise will help you display your future goals in a concrete, tangible way.

Our last workshop in our Froggy Productivity Series will be on September 19th at 1:00 P.M. in DPAC 455. Our staff will introduce you to the productivity software Notion. This app offers free membership to students, and it is a great way to streamline and organize tasks.

If you can’t make it to one of our workshops, the library is providing “study breaks.” These are quick, takeaway activities that will help you with time management and mindfulness. Visit the Downtown Library in DPAC 265 from September 4th through 15th to get a Time Management with Pomodoro worksheet. From September 18th through September 29th, we will be distributing worksheets for our mindfulness challenge.

Any UCF or Valencia student who participates in three events or study breaks will be eligible for a prize drawing. Attend more events and study breaks to increase your chances of winning!

LibTech items due on Wed 8/30 or Thurs 8/31 will have loans automatically extended to Friday 9/1 at 7:00pm

• LibTech Hours:
  • Tuesday 8/29: Close at Midnight (12am)
  • Wednesday 8/30: 3:00pm – 1:00am
  • Thursday 8/31: 7:30am – 2:00pm (GameDay)
  • Friday 9/1: 7:30am – 7:00pm (Normal Hours)

The recent reopening of the third floor of the John C. Hitt Library has been long anticipated by students. In addition to containing new seating, study rooms, and Genesis (a colorful stained glass window you can relax in front of – I highly recommend it), the third floor also contains the Academic Engagement Suite.

What kind of help can you get in the Academic Engagement Suite?

• How to search for articles
• How to locate books
• Help with citations
• Answers to general questions about the library

The suite includes consultation rooms where students, faculty, staff, and the local community can meet in-person for one-on-one appointments with librarians for research assistance. If you’d like to schedule an in-person or virtual research consultation, visit the Appointment page on the Libraries’ Schedule website.

For additional information or questions, please visit the Academic Engagement Suite, located in Room 330 on the third floor of the John C. Hitt Library.