NEIU Libraries Research Guides: History Research Guide: For Faculty

The Textbook Issue

When planning your class, please remember that the Library does not purchase course textbooks and many students have difficulty affording them. What can you do? You have some options:

Put one or more of your personally owned copies of the textbook on Course Reserve at the Library. This allows your students to check the textbook out for a short borrowing period (from two hours to overnight, for example) so that multiple students can access the book(s) (and make photocopies, if need be) over a short period of time.
If you require your students to purchase the course textbook, please be sure to order it well in advance of the beginning of the semester. Check to make sure the campus bookstore has your textbook in stock before you start assigning readings from it. Students come to the Library's Reference Desk in desperation each semester because their reading assignments have begun and the campus bookstore doesn't have their textbook in stock.

Do you have other suggestions? Let me know at e-remus@neiu.edu.

Research Your Publishing Impact

Check out these resources for more information about journals before you submit your research for publication:

Eigenfactor
Eigenfactor is a free online resource that calculates the importance of a given journal to its community of users, as well as the likelihood that an article published in that journal will make a significant impact on later research. The scores may initially be difficult to interpret, but once that hurdle is cleared, this is a powerful measure of journal impact. Eigenfactor, however, specializes in the sciences -- given history's position bridging between the humanities (which Eigenfactor does not consider) and the social sciences (which it does), Eigenfactor scores for history journals are not always perfectly representative of their influence and relevance.
"Publish or Perish"
"Publish or Perish" is an app for Windows or Mac users that will generate statistics using citation analysis: if you enter the name of an author (e.g., your own name) or a journal, it will use Google Scholar's index to return extensive statistics about that author's work or the journal you named, and how frequently it's cited, including Hirsch's h-index, Egghe's g-index, the contemporary h-index, the age-weighted citation rate, and two variations of individual h-indices. It's designed to help you advocate for yourself regarding the impact of your published work, especially if you often publish in journals that are not included in an index like Eigenfactor's. Information about the app, as well as links for downloading it, are available at the site linked to.

What's the Latest?

Want to see what we've added to our collection recently? Try our New Materials search or visit the New Books area on the first floor.
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