Bulletin Updates

Tech Tip Tuesday: Replace Your Background in Google Meet

In Google Meet, you can replace your background with one supplied by Google, or even upload your own.

This feature is now available in both Google Chrome and the Android app.

A brief moving image showing a user selecting from among several background images in Google Meet.

You can also upload your own images to use as a background.

Using Chrome on desktop, you can even use a video. Google offers three videos to choose from, with more on the way. Google also plans to make video backgrounds available for mobile in the future.

Learn more about using Google Meet.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Remember to Clear Your Browser History

David Nield of Popular Science offers a great explanation of Why and How to Clear Your Web History in Any Browser. In short, routinely clearing your browser history (also often referred to as “clearing your cache”) can help protect your privacy, speed up your browser performance overall, and help you avoid mysterious glitches with web pages displaying incorrectly or behaving in odd ways.

LITS offers brief instructions on clearing your browser history on Microsoft Edge or Safari, or in Google Chrome or Firefox.

UPDATED: Please be aware that, depending on your choices in this process, you may be logged out of your accounts, and will have to log back in when you revisit them next. In some cases, you may lose custom settings for some sites as well.

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Research Thursday: Saving Magnified Images in Artstor

An important feature of the Artstor tool is the ability to zoom in to examine images in greater detail. Artstor also provides the functionality to download magified sections once you have zoomed in to a specific part of the image. For example, perhaps you would like to examine an illustration from a medieval manuscript in greater detail. Follow these instructions to download a zoomed in section of the image.

  1. Use the zoom icons in the top left corner or zoom in with your mouse or keypad. Zoom in to your area of interest.
  2. Click the Download button in the menu on the right side of the page (desktop view) or below the image (mobile view).
  3. Select Download detail view.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Show Editors of a Google Doc

From the Google Workspace Updates blog:
“You can now view richer information on the edit history of a particular range of content in Google Docs. Simply highlight and right-click on a range of text and select Show Editors from the dropdown menu. Here, you can view a list of editors and their latest edit along with time stamps. You’ll also have the option to open the Version History of the document.

Screenshot showing a segment of text selected in a Google Doc and a list of previous editors of that segment.
This makes it easier to track edits made by multiple collaborators, giving greater insight into who the recent editors were, what changes were made and when.”

Learn more about seeing changes in Drive files and folders.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Google Alerts

Sign up to receive personalized alerts in your Gmail inbox for various topics of interest to you.

  1. Make sure you are logged into your Allegheny College Gmail account.
  2. Go to Google Alerts.
  3. Fill in the search terms for the topic you wish to monitor, and other details in the Create Alert box.
    Screenshot of the search dialog box in Google Alerts with the phrase "Allegheny College" typed in
  4. Click on Show options.
  5. Choose your preferred frequency, language, and other options.
    Screenshot of the "Choose options" dialog in Google Alerts
  6. Click on Create Alert.

Based on your choices, you will receive emails alerting you to new Google search results using the terms you entered in the search box.

You can run a number of alerts concurrently, and revisit your Google Alerts account to modify/add/remove alerts.

Learn more about Google Alerts.

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Research Thursday: Viewing Senior Projects in DSpace

Allegheny College has collected and stored over 6000 individual senior projects in its Institutional Repository (DSpace) over the years. This collection of student research is a valuable asset to members of the Allegheny Community. Many of the student projects are only availabe to faculty and students who have logged into DSpace. Follow these instructions to view the senior projects collection in DSpace.

  1. To log into DSpace, go to DSpace, and click Login in the top-right corner or in the left-side menu and sign in with your Allegheny College username and password.

  2. image of DSpace homepage

  3. To find the Senior Project collections, scroll down to Communities in DSpace and click on “Senior Projects”. At this point, you can choice to browse senior projects by the academic year they were submitted or by department. At the top of the page, you can also browse by author or first reader name.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Assign Tasks in Google Workspace

When you’re working with others in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, you can assign tasks and action items to specific collaborators.

  1. In a web browser, open a shared Google file.
  2. Select the text, images, cells, or slides you want to comment on.
  3. To add a comment, click the plus sign to Add comment.
    Screenshot of "Add comment" option in a Google Doc
  4. Somewhere in your comment, add the email address of the person you want to assign it to, and add a plus sign (+) in front of it.
  5. Click the box next to Assign to [name].
    Screenshot of a comment assigned to infodesk@allegheny.edu
  6. Click Assign. The person you assigned the action item to will receive  an email.
  7. Once the action item has been resolved, then return to the document. In the top right corner of the comment, click Done.
    screenshot of the "Mark as done and hide discussion" option in a comment on a Google Doc
Tip
If someone has set their status to “Out of office” and you have permission to view their calendar, you get a notification in the comment as you assign it to them.

You cal also see what tasks have been assigned to you:

  1. Go to Drive and click the arrow next to Search to show the advanced search options.
  2. At the bottom of the advanced search box, there is an dropdown menu for Follow up.
  3. Select Action Items Only from the Follow up menu, and click Search.
    Screenshot of the advanced search options in Google Drive, with "Follow up" and "Action Items Only" selected.
  4. You will see a list of all the documents where you’ve been assigned action items in one place.

Learn more about using comments and action items in Google Workspace.

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Research Thursday: Proquest Spotlight – ABI/INFORM collection

Proquest Central is a tool many of us are familiar with, but it is so huge that it’s difficult to know where to start sometimes. If you’re interested in business or economics research, ABI/INFORM collection is a great place to start. The ABI/INFORM collection contains thousands of articles from scholarly journals and popular publications in the field of economics and business, including full-text articles from The Economist and the Wall Street Journal.

Key ongoing full-text journals include:

  • Journal of Business Ethics
  • Journal of Economic Literature
  • Journal of International Business Studies
  • Organization Science
  • Journal of Economic Perspectives
  • American Economic Review
  • Asia Pacific Journal of Management
  • Supply Chain Management
  • MIT Sloan Management Review
  • China Quarterly
  • Review of Accounting Studies

Key ongoing full-text periodicals include:

  • Wall Street Journal
  • Christian Science Monitor
  • The Economist
  • Fast Company
  • Financial Times
  • Maclean’s
  • U.S. News & World Report
  • Women’s Wear Daily (WWD)

Key ongoing full-text analyses include market and industry reports from:

  • Economist Intelligence Unit
  • Hoovers/Dunn and Bradstreet
  • Business Monitor International
  • Oxford Analytica
  • Oxford Economic Forecasting
  • Emerging Markets Direct
  • Experian
  • Euromonitor
  • Acquisdata

Subject coverage:

  • Business
  • Economic conditions
  • Corporate strategies
  • Management theory
  • Management techniques
  • Business trends
  • Competitive landscape and product information
  • Accounting
  • Finance

Research Thursday: How to export groups as Powerpoint presentations in Artstor

Artstor is an image database featuring a range of images from some of the world’s leading museums, photo archives, scholars, and artists. In a previous Research Thursday post, we covered how to create groups of images in Artstor. So let’s say you’ve created your first group of images in Artstor. Now what? Maybe you want to save all of the images in one place or maybe you want to use the group of images for a course assignment. You can now download groups in Artstor as Powerpoint presentations.

  1. First, create a group. View to our previous post about creating groups in Artstor if you need a refresher.
  2. Next, view your groups in Artstor and select a group to export.
  3. screenshot of Artstor groups interface

  4. Click the Export button and select the Powerpoint option. Alternatively, you can export your files as a ZIP file. You need to be logged into Artstor to successfully download the Powerpoint file.
  5. Screenshot of the Arstor group export menu

  6. Finally, agree to the Terms and Conditions. Artstor users may download up to 2000 images in 120 day period. For groups larger than 150 images, only the first 150 images will export to Powerpoint. If your group is larger than 150 images, we recommend separating your group into smaller subsets. After you agree to the terms and conditions, Artstor will export your files to your desktop.