The Time of Your Life

Are you experiencing FOMO watching all your friends travel to distant places for their summer vacation?  Too broke or too busy to fly?  The library has just purchased two first-class tickets to the most exotic and hard-to-reach destination of all: the past.  Travel back in time with our new archive collection: Time Magazine Archive and Life Magazine Archive.

These two American magazines covered news events, popular culture, and daily life for Americans during most of the twentieth century.   They were the most popular weekly news and entertainment magazines of their time, and both were noteable for their award-winning photography and writing.

Cover of Time Magazine featuring portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cover of Time Magazine, January 3rd, 1964.

Time Magazine began in 1923 as a weekly magazine, and may be familiar to many for their most famous feature story: “Person of the Year.”  It is still in print today, but the archive database provides full cover-to-cover PDFs for every issue published between 1923 and 2000. Between its pages, you’ll find interviews from the most famous celebrities, world leaders, authors, scientists, and thinkers of the past 100 years.

 

Photograph of navy sailor kissing woman in a nurse uniform on VJ day, 1941 in Times Square

“Victory Celebrations.” Life Magazine. August 27, 1945. p. 27

Life Magazine, published from 1883 until 2000, is best known for its photographic excellence in documenting American life and world events during the 1930s through the 1970s.  If you’ve ever seen the iconic World War II victory photograph of a nurse being kissed by a sailor, it was first published in Life magazine.

That photograph and many others are fully searchable and delivered through the archive database.  You can browse and keyword search all available issues from 1936-2000.

The landing page for both databases features the familiar search box of an Ebscohost Database.

Screenshot of main search box for the database, featuring "Arkansas Tech University" as a search term in quotation marks

You can search by keyword, author, subjects, or article title.  You can limit results by illustrations, as well as date and subject.  If you would rather browse issues by date, click “Publications” at the top of the search page in the blue border.  Then click the title of the magazine to navigate by issue.

Screenshot of a browse publication menu for Life magazine, list all available issues.

If you search for “Arkansas Tech University” in the Life Magazine Archive, you’ll find a feature story on the university published February 3rd, 1941.  The magazine was photographing a farewell party the university organized for 104 students who were leaving for National Guard training—not knowing at the time if they would be sent to the war raging overseas.  Pearl Harbor had not yet been bombed, and the article remarked, “Of all sections, the South is ready to fight Hitler, readiest to risk war to save Britain.”

Photograph of students in 1941 dancing a jitterbug

Unlike other article databases that only display text in html, results for Life Magazine and Time come complete with fully rendered PDFs of the original pages—ads and all.

Photograph of students sitting in football bleachers from 1941 beside an advertisement for Vicks inhalers, featuring an illustratrion of a 1950's man and woman holding what looks like lipstick containers to their noses.

A photograph of a group of male students dressed in military uniform sitting on the grass, gazing at female student standing under a tree. From 1941.

Want to learn more about these databases and others?  Ask Us via chat, email, phone, text, or some ancient form of letter writing.  Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to learn about more new collections or events as we return to our present destination on the sacred timeline.

Safe travels this summer—wherever or whenever you go!

photograph of Neil Armstrong on the moon wearing full astronaut suit

“A Giant Leap for Mankind.” Life Magazine, July 20, 1969, p. 7

Explore Legal Resources with HeinOnline

Curious about Constitutional law?  Questions about quid pro quo? Head over to HeinOnline’s Government Politics and Law for Academics from our A-to-Z Databases page.

Screenshot of HeinOnline's database for legal resources

HeinOnline is the world’s largest fully searchable, image-based government document and legal research database. It contains comprehensive coverage from inception of both U.S. statutory materials, U.S. Congressional Documents and more than 2,300 scholarly journals, all of the world’s constitutions, all U.S. treaties, collections of classic treatises and presidential documents, and access to the full text of state and federal case law powered by Fastcase.

Browse databases by category or navigate directly to the collections included in HeinOnline.  Noteable collections include:

  • Fastcase – A comprehensive, nationwide law library, including case law, statutes, regulations, court rules, constitutions, and law review articles.
  • Code of Federal Regulations – The Federal Register is a primary source for United States federal government agencies’ proposed rules, final rules, changes to existing rules and notices, as well as executive orders and other presidential documents.
  • The Pentagon Papers – A United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967
  • Gun Regulation and Legislation in America – Brings together periodicals, key compiled federal legislative histories, relevant congressional hearings, CRS Reports, Supreme Court briefs, and more dealing with this difficult and important topic.
  • U.S. Code – This collection includes complete coverage of the United States Code dating back to inception in 1925-1926.
  • U.S. Congressional Documents – features the complete Congressional Record bound volume set (1873-present) as well as its three predecessor titles: Annals of Congress (1789-1824), Register of Debates (1824-1837) and the Congressional Globe (1833-1873).
  • U.S. Congressional Serial Set – Records in this series include House and Senate Documents, House and Senate Reports, and much more. The reports are usually from congressional committees dealing with proposed legislation and issues under investigation. Spans two centuries and includes 17,000 bound volumes.
  • U.S. Supreme Court Library – Complete coverage of the official U.S. Reports bound volumes as well as preliminary prints, slip opinions, and books and periodicals related to the U.S. Supreme Court are included.
  • Democracy in America – A digital, interactive edition of Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic work describing his observations and reflections on democracy in America’s society.
  • And much much more

Searching in the full-text field will bring up articles, cases, ebooks, and more that can be filtered on location, organization, topic, title or date.  You can sort results by times cited by articles, cases, times accessed, and more.

Screenshot of article sorting options like Number of Times Cited By Cases, Scholar Check Rank, Date, Number of Times accessed

Full-text for articles constitute the digital version—complete with photos and formatting found in the original versions.  Each article result also includes tools for citation, saving, linking, and suggesting more articles by topic.

Screenshot depicting Topic suggestions and article saving tools

If you are just searching for case law, including Arkansas cases, use the Advanced Search feature under the tab “Case Law” to search Fastcase to search court cases by keyword, case name, court, date, state and more.

Screenshot of searching options for case law

NOTE: If you are looking the Arkansas Code of 1987 Annotated, please see the freely online version at https://portal.arkansas.gov/agency/bureau-of-legislative-research/service/arkansas-code-search-laws-and-statutes/

For more help using HeinOnline, see their Help menu for live chat, searchable knowledge base, and helpful Libguides that link you to more information by collection.  You can also browse their collection of training videos teaching you how to search and browse the database.

Have legal questions?  You should consult an attorney—librarians are not allowed to give legal advice.  But we can help you search HeinOnline or locate other sources of legal and scholarly information.  Just Ask Us!  It would be a crime not to…

New Databases

The Ross Pendergraft Library is pleased to announce 40 new databases from Gale accessible right now from our list of A-to-Z Databases: http://libguides.atu.edu/az.php

The full list can be seen by visiting our A-to-Z Databases page and scanning all the titles to the right marked “NEW”.

These new databases cover a little bit of everything: business, literature, U.S. history, culinary arts, gardening, criminal justice, and even car maintenance.  While there’s not enough space here to talk about all of them, here’s the highlights for subjects that weren’t previously covered by our older databases:

Chiltonlibrary.com

This database represents the most authoritative automotive repair information available to car owners. If you or someone you know is a gearhead, a Chilton’s manual would have been a required accessory in the garage.  With access to Chiltonlibrary, say goodbye to grease-stained manuals (though, perhaps hello to grease-stained laptops and ipads).  Includes (for some vehicles) labor estimating, maintenance schedules, repair, and recalls.  Some sections include video tutorials. ASE Test prep quizzes are also available.

Diagram of the fuel injection system to a 1972 Ford Pinto

Culinary Arts Collection

Culinary Arts Collection provides access to academic journals and magazines on all aspects of cooking and nutrition. The database includes thousands of searchable recipes, restaurant reviews, and industry information.

Fine Arts and Music Collection

This database provides access to scholarly journals and magazines that support research in areas including drama, music, art history, and film-making. The database emphasizes full-text content for publications included in the Wilson Art Index and RILM bibliography.

Gardening, Landscape and Horticulture Collection

Gardening, Landscape & Horticulture Collection serves horticultural enthusiasts of all levels with more than 3.6 million articles from more than 100 journals, as well as more than 20 reference titles from Delmar, including Handbook of Flowers; Foliage and Creative Design; Computer Graphics for Landscape Architects; and more.

 

A red tulip blooms under the St. Louis Arch under blue skies

Gender Studies Collection

Gender Studies Collection provides balanced coverage of this significant aspect of culture and society. The database offers access to scholarly journals and magazines covering topics including gender studies, family and marital issues, and more.

Student Resources in Context

While primarily geared towards high school students, this resource is rich in curriculum resources for students in secondary education programs. Browse curriculum standards at the state and federal level and find educator resources including lesson plans and worksheets for high school students conducting research and writing papers.

A screenshot of a list of student resources in Context Teacher resources

This list makes up only a small fraction of the resources and databases now available online at our website.  For more information on these databases and how to search them to find what you need, ask us!  Keep checking us out on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more updates as we continue to bulk up our collections and services.

 

 

Thanksgiving Hours

The Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center will be closing early Tuesday, November 22nd, at 9:00 PM and Wednesday, November 23rd at 5:00 PM (or whenever the University closes).  It will not reopen until Monday, November 28th, at 7:00 AM.  See our website for regular hours and upcoming finals schedule.

Despite the holiday closing, you can be especially thankful that many of our services and resources are available online, at any time, whether the campus is closed or open.  Below, we have listed just a few of the resources you can access from wherever your holidays take you:

two handsome plymouth rocks (chickens)

  • Statista – Be prepared for any family gathering with this handy resource for quick facts, statistics, and eye-catching infographics.  This specialized database, available on our A-to-Z database page, contains business, marketing, and population statistics from around the world.  Each chart or graph can be directly exported into Powerpoint, PDF, or Excel for an extra visual boost to your reports and presentations.  Data sources include Nielsen, Euromonitor, Experian Simmons, GfK, Ipsos Affluent Survey, Gallup, US government agencies, private companies, non-profits, and many more.statistic_id208104_average-cost-of-a-thanksgiving-dinner-in-the-us-1990-2016
  • PBS Video Collection—Veg out in your tryptophan stupor by selecting a film from this collection of award-winning documentaries and series.  Watch full-length content from any device on subjects such history, current events, psychology, art, music, and more.  Browse by topic or field of interest, or search for series or videos directly.
  • Research Guides—Get to the meat of library resources using our collection of subject and resource guides.  Find resources of all types in most of the major’s offered at ATU.  Each guide includes tutorials, top databases and resources, as well as citation help to get you through each stage of a research project.  Browse new books in the library our Popular Reading guide:

popular

Need face-to-face help?  Catch us before we close by stopping by at our Reference Desk, calling us toll-free at (855) 761-0006, or sending us a text at (479) 802-4876.  We are also available via email at askalibrarian@atu.edu for all your pre and post-Thanksgiving research needs.  Safe travels and enjoy the break!

There’s a Map for That

Delve into Arkansas History with our latest database collection, “Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970: Arkansas”.  This rich collection of early maps of cities and towns reveal the original footprints of buildings throughout Arkansas.  Sanborn maps were large-scale plans of a city or town, drawn to a scale of 50 feet to an inch.  These were created from 1867 to 2007 to assist fire insurance companies in assessing the risk of fire to various structures and buildings.  Today, they are used for a wide-variety of purposes, particularly for historic research, urban planning, or restoration of older homes and buildings.

A Sanborn map can show you street names, block numbers, sidewalks, railroad tracks, the location of water mains, churches, businesses, windows, doors, and even porches.  These maps–now digitized and available in an easy-to-search, online database—can carry you back in time to show you how a particular place looked over 100 years ago.

The Library owns the Arkansas collection  of digital maps, which include maps on just about every town in the state.  Smaller towns may contain only a few maps, but larger cities, such as Russellville, will contain maps from multiple years, spanning from the mid-1800’s to the mid-1900’s.

sanborn1

Once you have selected a city and a map, download the map for easier navigation and zooming.  There is even an option to print selected areas.

Sanborn map 1886, Russellville

July 1886, Sheet 1. One block on Main Street. The train depot is further left, with what is now Denver Ave. bordering on the bottom. The Central Hotel is now Sportscene.

Googlemaps image of Russellville block, modern day

Same block, circa 2016 Google Maps

Travel back in time today by exploring the Digital Sanborn maps.  For other questions about this resource, the library, or other databases available to you as an Arkansas Tech student, consult your Timelord librarians at askalibrarian@atu.edu.

Fact-check with Statista

Trying to prove your point?  Do it with pictures, colors, charts, graphs, and numbers in Statista.  Visualize complex data by exploring this easy-to-use new database from the Library.  You can find Statista from our Library homepage, under Tech Databases.

alltechdatabases

Many databases accessible in the Library collection are comprised of articles, abstracts, or, in some cases, ebooks and video. In contrast, this database consists of statistical facts and figures delivered as eye-catching, straight-to-the-point graphs and charts.

Statista uses information from the U.S. Census Bureau, Pew Research Center, Gallup, Nielson, ComScore, and more than 18,000 other sources to build relevant, simple data sets and reports.  While most results center on business-related topics, students with any research subject will be blown away by the wealth of information on media, society, and politics.

statistic_id243911_advice-to-us-high-school-students-from-us-graduates-2012

Statista also features over 1,000 industry reports and more than 3,000 market studies, including market forecasts for 42 countries and over 400 industries.  It also includes hundreds of infographics, painting visually appealing pictures out of complicated data.  Statista knows that seeing the data can be much easier—and more convincing—than simply reading the numbers on a page.

chartoftheday_3989_fast_facts_on_americas_nearly_20_million_veterans_n

Statista makes it easier to share that information, too.  Download charts and graphs as Powerpoint slides, Excel charts, image files, or PDFs.  Every chart displays the source of the information, as well as a citation generator* to easily cut and paste references into your bibliography.

To find statistics on a wealth of topics, use the simple search interface on the home screen or browse by topic, industry, country or digital markets.  Filter results by publication, category, or region.  Each result also recommends similar statistics to keep you supplied with more paths to finding facts.

So get your facts straight by heading straight for Statista.  You can also contact the original fact-checkers, your local librarians, at askalibrarian@atu.edu, for help with this database, any database, data, or bases.

*Always check automatic citation generators against official style guides. 

 

Have it all with CINAHL

nurse buttonNursing students: are you tired of zero results?  Tired of submitting ILL requests for articles you needed yesterday?  Tired of wandering endless result pages, looking for full-text?  Look no further than our new and improved CINAHL Plus database with full text.

cinahl4

Recently acquired by the Library to help bolster a growing Nursing Department at Arkansas Tech, this update to our older version of CINAHL includes more full text to nursing and allied health journals and deeper indexing to include allied health literature and bio-medical resources dating back to 1937.

What does this mean to you?  With an expanded index, you have a greater chance of finding articles relating to your topic, no matter how obscure.   In addition, available full-text coverage expanded from 70 journals to 700.  While not every article you find will include full-text, a greater number will, including articles from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses’ Association publications.

In addition, this database offers access to health care books, nursing dissertations, selected conference proceedings, standards of practice, audiovisuals, book chapters and more.

For example, the expanded database also includes 134 Evidence-Based Care Sheets which provide concise overviews of diseases and conditions and outlines the most effective treatment options.

cinahl2

Want to find Evidence-Based Practice articles?  Scroll down from the advanced search screen to limit your results.  You can also limit by Clinical Query type, Peer-Reviewed, Nurse authored, age group, randomized controlled trials, region, and other variables.

If you find yourself still lacking in relevant results, use CINAHL Headings to select appropriate heading terms for your topic.

cinahl3

There’s so much you can do with CINAHL, you might need a tutorial to explore all of the features.  But a dedicated team of friendly neighborhood librarians are standing by to help if you have any questions.  Give it a try today—we promise, it won’t hurt a bit.

On Trial

The deadline for our latest collection trial databases is closing in fast.  Take advantage of these free collections while they last:

Ebrary

Thousands of full-text, academic e-books are at your disposal from now until Wednesday, November 26th.  Browse titles in Business, Anthropology, Science, and more.  For more information about what’s offered, see their libguide, which covers search strategies, video tutorials, and more information about their titles.

PBS Video Collection

Be more with this collection of streaming videos from PBS provided through Alexander Street Press.  Browse your favorite episodes of Nova, or watch one of the award-winning documentaries from Ken Burnes, all from the comfort of your laptop.  Hundreds of documentary films are available through this collection, and each includes scrolling transcripts and the ability to make clips and playlists.  But hurry–this trial ends December 6th.

Birds of North America Online

Ornithologists rejoice!  You have access to the comprehensive life histories of over 700 species of birds breeding in the U.S. and Canada.  Search for birds by keyword or species to get a treasure of information including photos, illustrations, migratory patterns, distribution, and other basic information.  The database also includes video and audio recordings of birds, as well as data tables.  This database is the enhanced, online version of the paper version now roosting in the Reference collection.  You have until 12/15/14 to enjoy.

So let us know what you think through askalibrarian@atu.edu.  Your comments, criticisms, witticisms, praise, or blame help make the Library a better place for you, other students, and for the whole campus.  Email your friendly neighborhood librarian today!

 

 

BioOne

Sometimes, the search results in Academic Search Complete can seem . . . less than complete.  If you are having trouble finding full-text articles in biological sciences, switch over to the BioOne full-text database.  With more than full-text 100,000 articles from 179 journals, BioOne can be a great place to find research in Biology, Zoology, Entomology, Plant Sciences, and Environmental Sciences.

Located in our list of “Tech Databases”, BioOne allows you to search by author, title, DOI, and keywords within the full text of the article or captions from figures & charts.  Unlike many of our other databases, all results will include full-text articles—no Inter-Library Loan necessary.

You can email links to articles, download citations to a citation manager, and even track citations with RSS feeds.  For videos, tutorials, and more information about using BioOne, visit their Resource Guides page.  For more information about BioOne, biological science, or finding full-text articles, contact your friendly neighborhood librarians at askalibrarian@atu.edu.

LION of a Database

One of our featured databases this month is ProQuest’s Literature Online, or, as it is sometimes known,“LION”.  If you’ve seen Literature Online in the past, you may want to look again.  The database has undergone a substantial face-lift, shedding years off its dated appearance and looking nothing like its 18 years as one of the leading resources in the study of English literature.

If you are going anywhere near an English class, be sure to bookmark this database as a go-to for literary criticism, author information, and full-text for over 350,000 works of poetry,  drama, and other prose in English language.

But wait—there’s more!  Literature Online also includes 880 video clips of poets reading their own works, 38 fully dramatized, unabridged audio recordings of Shakespeare plays, and 921 links to historic video and audio recordings of poetry readings at The Poetry Archive.  So if you ever find yourself feeling low, head to Literature Online and take a listen to The Wasteland, as read by T.S. Eliot in his own peppy, upbeat voice.

Navigation in Literature Online is nearly effortless with one “Google-esque” search box for quick keyword searching.  Boolean operators like AND, OR, NOT will still work in this search, but you can find more advanced search boxes once you choose from one of the large resource categories of Authors, Texts, Criticism, or Reference.

screenshot of LION

In addition to the simplified structure, more emphasis has been added to browsing available texts, author profiles, full text journals, and reference works.  This can be helpful if you can’t quite remember how to spell someone’s name or just want to browse the lists for interesting topics.

If you have more questions about this database, literature, or why T.S. Eliot sounds so dog-gone cheerful, contact your upbeat librarians at askalibrarian@atu.edu.