Archives for April 2014

Hours for Finals

The Ross Pendergraft Library & Technology Center will have extended hours this week and part of next week for finals.  Stay up and study with us:

Mon.-Tues. (Apr. 28-Apr. 29)
7:00 AM – 1:00 AM
Wed.-Thurs. (Apr. 30-May 1)
7:00 AM – 12:00 AM
Friday (May 2)
7:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Saturday (May 3)
10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Sunday (May 4)
2:00 PM – 12:00 AM
Monday (May 5)
7:00 AM – 12:00 AM
Tuesday (May 6)
7:00 AM – 10:00 PM

After finals, beginning May 7th through June 1st, the Library will begin “Summer Interim Hours”:

Monday-Friday, 8:00 AM — 5:00 PM
Saturday-Sunday, CLOSED

In addition, the Music Lab will close at 10:00 PM on Tuesday, May 6 for the Interim, reopening Monday, June 2 for Summer Session I.

Good luck on your exams and remember:

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.

Film on Tuesday

Could you get on the bus?  In 1961, a group of  people, both black and white, decided to travel through the segregated South on a Greyhound bus challenging Jim Crow laws prohibiting racial mixing.  Their radical strategy?  Walk through the door of a “white’s-only” establishment and sit together.

Their fearless idealism and commitment to non-violence in the face of arrests, brutal mobs, and attempted murder challenged America to see the inhumanity of segregation and pushed the Civil Rights Movement to the forefront of national conversation.

On Tuesday, April 22nd at 7:00 p.m., join our conversation about the Civil Rights at the screening of the PBS documentary, The Freedom Riders.  Before the film, Barbara Lackey (Horace Mann HS-LittleRock ’60, ATU ’68) and Dr. V. Carole Smith (Russellville HS ’65), will also discuss their life experiences in the River Valley and beyond.

Even if you can’t stay for the film, you won’t want to miss opening panel discussion for a once in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear history from the people who lived through it right here in the River Valley.  There will be a short break after the discussion before the movie begins.  You can also find the film at the library or online for viewing at home.

The film is the last of our Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle series produced in partnership with the National Endowment for Humanities and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, created to encourage public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in America.

For more information about this film, the panel discussion, or the Civil Rights Movement, give us a ring at 479-964-0569 or send us an email at askalibrarian@atu.edu.

Swim the Stream

Fans of the library already know we have a fantastic DVD collection, but lately, we’ve been dipping our toes into the world of streaming video.  From now until April 23, we’re hosting a trial of Kanopy Streaming Video, one of the largest educational video streaming services in the world–considered the “Netflix” of the educational video world.

Our current trial consists of 366 educational films and lectures in business and the social sciences that you can watch for free from your laptop, mobile device, or iPad.  The videos are organized into four distinct collections:

1. Documentary Education Resources: New Releases 2013

This collection includes 34 full-length documentary videos exploring cultures and social science topics from the United States and all over the world.

2. Psychotherapy.net Counseling & Therapy Online

Since 1995, Psychotherapy.net has been producing videos in the fields of psychotherapy, psychology, and addiction.  Videos in this series include interviews from renowned counselors and psychologists discussing their practice, theories, and experiences.

3. Media Education Foundation (MEF) Collection

These documentary films encourage critical thinking about the social, political, and cultural impact of American mass media. Faculty and students in journalism, sociology, race studies, psychology, and many other disciplines will find something worth watching and thinking about in this collection of 138 videos.

4. Standford Executive Briefings Collection

For twenty years, Stanford University has hosted a monthly business forum featuring prominent CEOs, professors, and authors who shared their expertise and research in finance, leadership, public speaking, and organization strategy.  Think of it as a collection of TED talks just for business.

The Kanopy service can be used at home or broadcast in a lecture hall or classroom for teaching purposes.  Individual videos can also be embedded into Blackboard using the “Embed in LMS” button at the top of each video.  There’s also a tool that allows you create a playlist of portions of each video, in case you just want to show a clip or several clips of videos.

Kanopy will only be available until April 23, but if you want to see this service stick around longer, give us a shout at askalibrarian@atu.edu.  In addition to these videos, the Kanopy service contains thousands of other videos in art, health, science, and teacher education—some of which we would normally purchase on DVD.  Feel free to browse their collection and recommend a title (or two or five).  Remember, it is your money, your collection, and your education–how do you want to learn?

 

The Loving Story

Imagine living in a time when it was considered illegal to marry the person you loved.  Imagine knowing that your wedding ceremony could be followed by a trial, conviction, and imprisonment for the simple act of tying the knot.   Sixty years ago, Richard and Mildred Loving changed history when they said “I do” in defiance of the law against inter-racial marriage and faced prosecution and jail-time in a state penitentiary, culminating in the landmark Supreme Court Case, Loving v. Virginia.

Join us this Thursday, April 10th, for the screening of the documentary film, The Loving Story, at 7:00 p.m. in Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center, room 300 south.  Following the film, Dr. James Moses, professor of history at Arkansas Tech University, will lead a discussion about this pivotal Supreme Court decision.  Admission is free and open to the public.

This film is presented as part of the Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle series, which represents a special initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities to mark the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.  The Loving Story represents the third part of a four-film series documenting the Civil Rights struggle in America, ending with the screening of The Freedom Riders on April 22nd at 7:00 p.m.

If you can’t make it to Thursday’s event, never fear—you can always come by the library and check out the film for home viewing.

For more information about this film or the film series, give us a call at 479-964-0569 or email us at askalibrarian@atu.edu.

 

 

 

There’s Still Time

If you haven’t flipped over to the survey, you still have until this Friday, April 4, to let us know what you think of the library, its collections, services, and people.  In 5-10 minutes, you have the power to shape what books we buy, what formats we buy them in, what services we should offer, and what policies we should adopt to improve the library as a place to study, relax, and check Facebook learn important things about the world.

When we hosted the spring survey last year, over 500 students, faculty, and staff took the survey and gave us their suggestions, complaints, and praises for Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center.  We highlighted the most common suggestions earlier last year, and have worked hard ever since to enhance the library in those areas where we could.

Because of your responses, we have made progress in updating our book collection, increasing the number of full-text journals, creating new research guides, and adding new databases (like Mango Languages, Library PressDisplay, and Statistical Abstract of the U.S.).  We even put together a new online course reserve form for faculty, and a new library and research guide specifically for online-only students.

Factors like temperature, study space, and 24 hour service are still out of our control, however.  Additionally, we had to scrap some of the more creative suggestions for how to improve the library, such as:

  • A sugar-daddy to leave a million or so to grow the collection.
  • Have a nap room.
  • Play some classical music throughout the public areas of the building and in the elevators.
  • Move it closer to my dorm.
  • Get rid of the apple computers.
  • Get some more MACs.

While we cannot implement all of your great ideas, we’ll do our best to make sure your research-related needs are met.  Keep the feedback coming by taking the survey or by emailing your strongly agreeable librarians at askalibrarian@atu.edu.  Remember, it is YOUR library–help us make it  a better place for YOU.

http://techlibrarysurvey2014.questionpro.com/