Credo Reference

What is Credo Reference?  Why should I be interested?  How can I make use of this tool?

Credo Reference is a publisher who specializes in reference titles.  A reference title is a book that is known to be a good source of information for research papers and is typically kept in the Reference section of the library.  Usually Reference books are available for in-house use only.  However, since Credo Reference is offered online, you are now able to access this material from the comforts of your own home.

The Ritz Library recently purchased a subscription to Credo. Per Credo's website, "Credo Reference puts the world's best citable information at your fingertips."  What does it mean at the Ritz?  In short, we now have access to 100 book titles that you can use for research online.

To take a look at the titles that we have access to, check out the Ritz Library Guides which may be found by logging onto myDCC --> Library tab --> How do I find information for research projects? --> Ritz Research Guides.  On most of the pages, the widget to access Credo can be found in the upper left hand corner listed under the title "Basic Information".

PDF Creator

In an effort to minimize printing and cut down on fileable materials, I've recently taken to using PDFCreator which can be downloaded from sourceforge.net for free.  An open source software,  the user is able to select PDFCreator from the valid printer list on your computer once installed.   Once selected from the drop-down list, a grey box opens up with saving options.  Name your document and hit save, specifying a destination.  A neat function of PDFCreator is that you can combine saving a document and emailing a document in one step using the Email button.   I particularly like this tool for documents that I want to store, but don't necessarily want to print. Give it a try!

How is the readability on that page?

Have you ever found yourself wishing that the web page that you are on was a little less busy? Sometimes it's difficult to follow an article through the haze of advertisements, links to additional articles, searches and quizzes. There's a nifty tool called Readability which was created by the Arc90 Lab experiment group. Readability cleans up the screen so that you are looking at a 14 pt. text file with a white background and are able to focus on reading the article with no distractions. It is an easy tool to install; simply drag the button onto the browser that you are using. Installation is slightly different for IE users, but I was able to activate it in Google Chrome, Flock and IE in a matter of seconds. According to the documentation, it also works in Firefox and Safari without any problems. There are certain limitations: it does not translate a home page well, and should not be used for that purpose. It also eliminates any images and multi-media unless they are embedded in a particular fashion, and I am unsure as to what that fashion may be so you may or may not get images relating to your page in the Readability format. Each time you go to a web page, your original web page is displayed, so it does not automatically default to "readability" mode, so you must click the tool bar button again. There is also a print and email function. The email sends a link linking you to the original web page but the print option prints out in the "clean" format.

Got the programming blues?

Tired of having to manually check every link in a webpage you've designed? Frustrated with using a website whose links seem tenuous at best? Check out this Firefox extension called LinkChecker: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/532

Ok, so you've downloaded it - now what? Go to View --> Toolbars --> Customize and look for the check mark. Drag and drop the button onto your toolbar. Go to any webpage, click on the check and see what happens. If a link is valid, it will highlight in green. If a link is invalid, a reddish pink highlight occurs, and if a link is a forwarded or forbidden link, it will appear in yellow.

Instead of spending hours verifying links, LinkChecker will check them all for you in seconds!

Color your world

Dress up Firefox or Flock with a little color when using tabbed browsing! The colorful tabs extension brings a little spice to the look of your browser. ColorfulTabs for Firefox is located at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1368 and ColorfulTabs for Flock is located at http://binaryturf.com/software/colorfultabs-for-flock/


You can select a specific tab color by right clicking on the tab and selecting "ColorfulTabs" and "select a color". If you right click on ColorfulTabs and select "options", you can then choose to use a default palette for color generation, you can generate colors by URL or you can stick with teh default to generate colors randomly. Enjoy giving your browser a splash of color!