Archives for December 2015

Not-So-Silent Nights

As finals wind down and thoughts return to the upcoming holidays, nothing sets the mood better than music.  Arkansas Tech students, faculty, and staff can stream holiday music, commercial free, through the Library’s online streaming music collection, Naxos Music Library.

This streaming music database contains over 1.7 million full-length musical recordings and more than 100,000 albums.  The bulk of the collection is made up of classical music, but you can find many blues, jazz, folk, and international music recordings as well.

Search by title, author, composer, or other keyword for specific selections, or browse by various genres, including Blues, Jazz, Pop, Gospel, World, and Instrumental.  Naxos has even gone to the trouble to create playlists centered around themes, films & television, instrument style, and yes Virginia, even holidays.  Navigate to the Naxos Music Library Playlists–>Holidays and Special Occasions to select from one of four Christmas music playlists.

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If those playlists don’t get the job done, create your own playlists by signing up for a student account within the Naxos Music Library database.  Once logged in, you can add songs and entire albums into your playlist.

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Worried about being tied down to the desktop?  Download the mobile app for Naxos and stream music from anywhere—even on your way to grandma’s house.

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Additionally, check out the Naxos Spoken Word Library–our collection of 6,700 hours of streaming spoken word content.  Get a fire going and listen to the unabridged, full-cast radio production of Charles Dickens’s, A Christmas Carol.  There’s also an anthology of Christmas stories, music, recipes, sermons and carols called The Christmas Collection.

But if you just want to hear Benedict Cumberbatch perform in the Tempest, you can do that, too.

Cumberbatch smiling, dreamily

We hope you enjoy the well-deserved break over the holidays.  The Library will begin reduced winter interim hours on Wednesday, Dec. 16 through Dec. 23rd.  We will be closed from Thursday, Dec. 24th through Sunday, January 3rd.  The reduced hours continue until classes resume on January 11th.  See our full schedule of hours at the library website.

For questions about the Naxos Music Library, Naxos Spoken Word Library, or suggestions for great holiday music, contact your festive librarians at askalibrarian@atu.edu.   Have a great winter break, and may your days be merry and bright.

Club Pendy Open 24/4

Come get your study on at the Ross Pendergraft Library the week of Dec. 6th-Dec. 11th as we go 24-hours for finals.  This year marks the third semester of remaining open all night long, and if you haven’t taken advantage of our extended hours, you are probably studying in the wrong place…or sleeping.  As always, we provide the coffee–you provide the dedication and fortitude to plow through those papers and late-night study sessions.

The complete schedule is as follows:

  • Sunday, Dec. 6th: Open at 2:00 PM

  • Friday, Dec. 11th: Close at 9:00 PM

We will hold to our regular hours from Saturday, Dec. 12 to Monday, Dec. 14.  After that, we will throttle it back down to interim hours (closing early on Tuesday, Dec. 15th, at 6:00 PM with an 8:00 to 5:00 schedule thereafter until classes begin next semester).

During finals, we plan to offer the same services we normally do, except that the Music Lab, Inter-Library Loan office, and certain circulation services will be unavailable late at night.  You will still be able to check-out materials, return items, borrow headphones, and ask Reference questions.  However, no fine payments or new library applications will be accepted after midnight.

We would also like to take the time to remind students of some of our policies and helpful hints for late-night studying at the library:

  • Keep in mind you are not allowed to eat in the library, and there will be no food provided for finals this year.  We do apologize, but we had some messy eaters in the past, and this created a trash problem. If we catch you with food, you will be told to take it outside or hand it over to the staff because we are seriously starving by three AM.
  • Also, please do not put up your bare feet on the tables.  Sometimes students illegally eat off those tables.
  • We believe students should get plenty of rest before their final exams.  That’s why we only offer coffee to students without exams the next day, who just want a little help to stay up late and watch cat videos on the internet.
  • If you fall asleep in the library, please don’t snore or drool on the tables.  It is too sore a temptation for the librarians to prank you.
  • We urge you to not sleep on the floors.  The excellent custodial staff frequently come around to vacuum early in the morning, and they hate it when sleeping students get stuck in their machines.
  • If you need last-minute, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, by all means, use our excellent collection of academic databases.  Just promise not to tell the other students you can access them from home.  Then no one would want to visit us, and who would drink all this coffee?
  • Come to the Reference Desk and tell us when you need help.  There’s no need to openly weep alone.  Besides, it upsets the other library patrons.

Good luck to all taking finals this year, and remember to send us an email, keep up with us on Facebook, or follow us @ATULibrary for news, announcements, or pictures of the library study scene during finals.

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