Archives for August 2016

Back to School Basics

As you can imagine, the Library one of the major stops for new students and newly returning students trying to get ready for the new year.  We get asked a lot questions during this time, and–as librarians–finding answers is well…kind of our ‘thing’.  So we have assembled some of our top FAQ’s for starting the new semester:

How Do I Print My Schedule?

Believe it or not, the OneTech interface is not always the most intuitive for printing, but here’s your lifehack of the day:

  1. Login to OneTech
  2. Click on the STUDENT tab
  3. Scroll down.
  4. Find the green box labeled REGISTRATION TOOLS and click “Student Detail Schedulestudentdetail
  5. Select your term (e.g. Fall 2016)
  6. Highlight the contents on the screen or press Ctrl + A.
  7. Right-click the mouse and select Print.

How Do I . . . Print?

When you get ready to print a document, you may have more than one choice of printer.  The Universal Print Queue is the name for the printer you want.

Screenshot of printer choice.

After you submit a print job, go to any of the printers in the library and login to the print station either by typing in your Tech username and password or swiping your Tech ID.  These are special computers sitting beside the printers used only for releasing print jobs.

Photograph of our print stations, located directly across from the Reference Desk.

Once you are logged in, click on the job you want to print.  This ‘releases’ the print job, and the printer next to the computer will print your papers.

The print station will also tell the cost of the print job and your available balance on your Tech ID.  Every student begins each semester with $20 on their account for printing/copying purposes only. Once you run out, you can add more to the card using the PHIL station on the south end of the Circulation Desk.  Each printed page costs $0.10, and color copies cost $0.30.

There are black-and-white print release stations located on each floor.  To print a color copy jobs, you have to go to the special color print release stations, located on the first and third floors of the Ross Pendergraft Library and Technology Center.

Where is [Building XYZ]?

The library is standing by with stacks of paper maps of the campus, along with helpful, knowledgeable people who can help point you in the right direction.   The Campus Map is located on the University’s homepage.

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If you have a smartphone with GoogleMaps installed, you will be able to view the buildings and their names after you zoom-in far enough.

Screenshot of GoogleMaps featuring RPL on an Android phone

How Late is the Library Open?

We begin regular hours on Wednesday, August 24th, when the library will be open from 7:00 A.M. until 1:00 A.M. from Mondays through Thursdays.  On Fridays, we close at 6:00 P.M.  On Saturdays, we’re open from 10:00 A.M. until 6:00 P.M., and on Sundays, we are open from 2:00 P.M. until 1:00 A.M.  For our full schedule, including holiday and interim break hours, see our website: http://library.atu.edu/about/hours/.

How Do I Search for Articles, Books, DVDs, and More?

Find It is our Google-esque library search designed to connect you to everything the library has to offer, from academic resources like peer-reviewed journal articles to the latest season of Dr. Who.  Start with any basic search, and limit results to items with a certain format, location, publication year, or full-text online.

find it Have more questions?  Email them to your friendly neighborhood librarians at askalibrarian@atu.edu.  Also, check out our growing repository of commonly asked Reference questions at our Ask A Librarian page.  Welcome back and good luck!

Library Facts for Faculty

Welcome back, faculty!  Or, in the case of brand new faculty—welcome to Arkansas Tech!  The Ross Pendergraft Library offers many services to support the research, curriculum, and curiosity needs of faculty, on or off-campus.  Here’s a list of a few of top-requested services and resources from the faculty to help introduce you to the Library.  For an abbreviated summary of our resources, check out our Library Resources for Faculty guide.

Course Reserves

Would you like to set aside a book, a textbook, or a DVD for your students at a Circulation Desk?  Faculty can share their own copy or select a library item to put on course reserve for limited-checkout to their students.  To get started, fill out the form that best describes your material:

Once the items are placed on reserve, they can be searched by course number, professor name, or title using our online catalog, course reserve drop-down.

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Library Instruction

If there’s a research paper or project on your course syllabus, and you are already bracing yourself for Wikipedia citations, consider inviting one of our librarians over for a quick tutorial on library resources.

In 50 minutes or less, a librarian can help de-mystify searching, finding, and citing for basic scholarly research.  In addition to classroom instruction, we can provide tours, short overviews of library databases, or more focused tutorials on subject-specific projects and papers.  If you are teaching a Research Methods class, this service can be particularly valuable.  Contact us at askalibrarian@atu.edu to schedule a session.

Resource Guides

Don’t have time for dedicated instruction on library materials?  The librarians are hard at work building online research guides devoted to specific subjects, majors, and even specific courses.  Custom guides can be built for use with specific projects, or generic guides tweaked to include added information.  These are great places to start students down the right path to subject-specific databases, journals, citation help, and more.  Browse our current collection for research guides to share in class or send us an email with your own suggestions and requests.

RefWorks

If you are producing scholarly research, this tool is invaluable for managing citations, importing references, and creating bibliographies.  Most commonly described as “something I wish I had known about when working on my PhD”, use Refworks to access and organize your citations from anywhere. Find embedded links within our databases and online catalog to quickly add references to your lists.  Export directly into Microsoft Word your fully-formatted bibliography in whichever citation style you choose.

The Chronicle of Higher Education

Want to read it?  For free?  The library has a subscription.  Follow this link:

http://bit.ly/2bBGzcl 

Click on “View Online” to see the link for full-text for current articles and older content back for two years.  You can also search the title in our library catalog to find the print issues, the electronic archives, and specific articles.

Interlibrary Loan

The library has expanded our collection tremendously in the past few years, but as academic material costs continue to rise, we struggle sometimes to meet all the research needs of faculty.  Enter the twin engines of speed and customer service:  ILLiad and the outstanding department of Interlibrary Loan.

Our Interlibrary Loan services help you obtain full-text articles and books not held in our own collection.  The ILLiad software makes requesting materials from our databases a breeze.  Look for the ILLiad logo every time you see a citation without full-text access:

illiad

Use our WorldCat database for requesting books not held in our collection—you’ll find the ILLiad logo there, too.   Login to ILLiad directly with your Tech username and password to track requests, view received articles, and more.

Have a problem or a question?  Get in touch with our Interlibrary Loan specialist (a.k.a. your new best friend) who will go to the ends of the earth to find what you need.  You can also call or stop by the ILL office in RPL 124 during regular office hours.

Citation Measurement

On occasion, we are asked for help finding citation metrics to help faculty measure the number of articles referencing their work.  Here are a few tools to assist in obtaining these numbers:

  • Web of Science: This is the most authoritative source for citation metrics in the sciences and social sciences. You can find Web of Science in our list of A-Z Databases.   Search for your article or yourself as an author to view the number of times your work has been cited.  Arkansas Tech currently subscribes to the Science Citation Index only, however, so analysis in other disciplines (e.g. arts and humanities) will be limited.

webofsci

  • GoogleScholar: This a free service offered by Google, and considered the largest collection of citation metrics.  Google’s web-crawler has captured millions of citations from publisher sites, institutional repositories, and individual author sites.  However, it is prone to over-inflated metrics at times because it includes so-called “ghost citations’ like duplicate foreign language translations and falsely attributed citations.  Be careful using these numbers for true indications of research quantity and quality without verifying the sources of the citations.

googlscholar2

  • Publish or Perish by Harzing: This software tool can perform citation analysis using information from Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic (still in early development stages).  The software not only provides a citation analysis of individual works, but also of the scholarly output and measure of a single author or an entire journal.  It is capable of calculating metrics like H-Index, G-Index, and other citation ranking statistics.

Did we leave something off this list?  Contact your factual, faculty-friendly librarians at askalibrarian@atu.edu.  You can also keep in touch with new library news through our Facebook and Twitter.  Happy New Year!

Olympic Throwback

Tucked away in the rare book collection of the Ross Pendergraft Library is a curious piece of Olympic history.  Inside the library’s Special Collections is a volume documenting the history of the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles,  Die Olympischen Spiele in Los Angeles 1932

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Published in Germany in 1932, shortly after the games have ended, the book contains 200 black and white and hand-colored photographs.  What makes this particular book so special is the fact that it is a completed cigarette card album.

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Cigarette cards originated in the 1870’s to stiffen cigarette packs.   Advertisers quickly realized the potential, and they started printing pictures and other information on the cards for people to collect.[1]  The most famous example of this were baseball cards, which first became popular in the 1880’s and continue to be collectors’ items today.[2]  The tobacco companies would sell special albums for particular sets into which you could paste your collection of cards.

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Not only is this book unusual in form, it is also worth noting that the text was produced in Germany—by a German cigarette company, Reemstma—during the build-up to World War II and the rise of Nazism.   This is a primary source of their impression of these multi-cultural games held in the United States.  Germany was to host the next Olympic games in 1936.

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In this volume, the cards have been securely pasted onto the yellowing pages, and feature beautiful glimpses of athletes, dignitaries, events, and venues in stunning detail.

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Read more about the 1932 Olympics, Cigarette Cards, the astonishing story of the 1932 women’s 100 meter gold medalist, Stanislawa Walasiewicz, in our history database, Historical Abstracts with Full Text.

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Special Collections contain the library’s rare books, Arkansas materials, Arkansas Tech publications, and the master’s theses produced at ATU.  You can discover this collection in our online catalog by limiting to location “Special Collections”.

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These materials do not check-out, but you may read, touch, and smell these rare items within the library by making an appointment.  To do this, send an email to the keepers of the Olympic torch at askalibrarian@atu.edu or pole-vault over to the reference desk where our friendly staff still hold the world record for 100 meter customer service while wearing a cardigan.

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[1]Archer, C. (2004, Apr 22). PRINT’S PAST: Cigarette cards. Printweek, , 62. Retrieved from https://libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/230399621?accountid=8364
[2] “Library of Congress Web Site Offers More than 2,100 Early Baseball Cards on-Line.” U.S.Newswire, Sep 30, 1998. https://libcatalog.atu.edu:443/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/451185971?accountid=8364.