Archives for January 2019

New Year, New Library

Welcome to 2019 at RPL!  While the librarians have not yet been replaced by Alexa or replicants, we have been making changes to welcome the new year with improvements to the collections and services.

Shrinking Print Journals—Growing Online Journals

The excess first floor shelving is in the process of being removed to carve out more space for students to study.  Through a combination of decreased usage, increased costs, and a decline in print publications in general, the collection of magazines and journals on the first floor has shrunk.  While we still have many journals, magazines, and newspapers available for browsing, much of our collection has shifted to online-only formats.  If your favorite magazine or newspaper has disappeared from that location, check our Find It database to find its online equivalent.

Photo of empty, disassembled shelving units

While the paper collection has gotten leaner, the online journal collection has grown fat and richer in content and accessibility.  Last summer, the library added several new Gale databases covering everything from literature to environmental science, and we continue to add journals throughout the year through the purchase of database collections.  The library currently has access to tens of thousands of electronic journals and newspapers.  Find them all in our A-to-Z eJournals finder.

Spark Joy with our DVD Collection

The library holds over 6,000 DVDs, but finding something for the perfect Friday night chill-out or Monday morning class can be a challenge.  To help make browsing easier, the library has reorganized and relabeled the collection to better serve both needs.  Educational films, documentary films, and recorded performances have been moved to the taller shelves, while the rest of the collection—motion pictures, animated, foreign films, etc.—remain where they were, with more room to grow.

Photo of dvd shelves

Audiobooks have also been re-shelved at the end of the DVD collection, providing greater visibility to this underutilized resource.

Photo of audiobook collection

You can also browse our collection virtually by genre using our DVD Genre website.  All results are sorted with newest releases at the top.

New Databases

The library also recently acquired new databases for Education, Engineering and Music:

  • Education Week – An online journal covering K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion
  • Inspec— Includes bibliographic citations and indexed abstracts from publications in the fields of physics, engineering, environmental science, nanotechnology and more.
  • Naxos Music Library World— Listen to music from over 160 countries and 1,500 cultural groups.

Screengrab of front page of Education Week, where there's a headline, "The kids are right: school is boring" as though we didn't already know that.

Save the Date—International Film Festival is back!

The 4th Annual International Film Festival begins next month, February 27th and runs through March 14th with a slate of award-winning and thought-provoking films from around the globe.  View a list of upcoming movies at our website: http://libguides.atu.edu/4iff

Screenshot of International Film Festival website

To keep up to date on all of the new collections and happenings at the library in 2019, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.  In the meantime, happy new year, and if you have questions about any of the above changes or if you would like to know how we did on the Voight-Kampff testAsk Us!