Atomic Age Apocalypse

Posted on November 18, 2013 Written by

If living in close proximity to a nuclear power plant has made you paranoid of atomic, mutated arthropods, you won’t want to miss Mike Bogue’s presentation entitled, “Atom Age Apocalypse: Mutants, Monsters, and Mushroom Clouds.”

The presentation will be on November 21st, in Ross Pendergraft Library, Room 300 at 7:00 P.M.

Picture of Them! DVD cover

Mike, an alumnus of Arkansas Tech University, will present a tribute to the 1950’s science fiction movies that inspired the works of such film-making giants as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

Mike worked on the Russellville Campus of Arkansas Tech University from 1993 to 2011, and is currently Coordinator of Student Success on the Ozark Campus.  His work has appeared in Scary Monsters Magazine, G-FAN, Castle of Frankenstein, Wonder, Space & Time, The Lookout, and Daikaiju! 3: Giant Monsters vs. the World.  He also recently published a book titled Atomic Drive-In (also available at the Library).

If you want to start preparing for the lecture (or the apocalypse / giant reptile attack), the Music Lab at Ross Pendergraft Library has a selection of 1950’s science fiction movies waiting to grab you:

picture of The Blob's DVD cover

Or, if you want to view in bulk, the Sci-Fi Classics collection features 50 classic, science fiction movies on 12 discs.

For more information about the presentation or our film collection, contact the atomic librarians from outer space at askalibrarian@atu.edu or 479-964-0569.

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Nursing Resources

Posted on November 4, 2013 Written by

This week, we’re spotlighting the medical resource, OvidSP—a full-text database containing over 67 journals in the field of Nursing, Public Health, Pharmacology, Patient Education, Clinical Medicine, and more.

You can find OvidSP though our Library homepage, under Research–>Tech Databases.  Scroll down to find it in our alphabetical list of database titles.

Main search box of OvidSP

OvidSP4

What makes OvidSP different from of the other databases is its ability to retrieve multimedia files, including video, charts, and photographs, to help give life, movement, and color your research results.  Imagine preparing presentation for your topic, and having access to charts and images to include in your slides?  Just search a topic and check the box for “Include Multimedia.”  If the full-text articles include pictures, OvidSP gives you the option of exporting all images into a PowerPoint file.

OvidSP is also able to manage your citations by allowing you to export in your preferred style—such as Chicago, APA, MLA, and many others—into your email, a word document, or other citation management systems.  Send articles to yourself via email or create a personal login to save your searches and search results.

You can also limit search results by publication year, article type, journal subjects, and relevancy (also known as “star ranking).  Avoid the information overload and try limiting to results published just in the last year or just within one or more sets of journals.

Having trouble with too little information?  Change the resource selection in Ovid SP to include the Abstracts and Table of Contents for Ovid Journals as well as the Arkansas Tech Full Text resource.

Displays 2 resource types

This will broaden your search to include the abstracts and table of contents of hundreds of other journals.  However, you may have to use Inter-Library Loan or search for journal titles in our A-to-Z electronic journal list to retrieve full text of the articles.

For more information about OvidSP, view this quick tutorial available on Youtube:

You can also contact one of your friendly neighborhood librarians at the Reference Desk or through email at askalibrarian@atu.edu if you have any more questions about this database, other databases, or research of any kind.

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Fright Night

Posted on October 31, 2013 Written by

If you’re looking for that perfect horror flick to turn on tonight, look no further than the Library’s horror collections on DVD.  The selection is rather frightening:

Didn’t see your favorite flick?  Try searching through the library’s catalog of videos through the Music Lab’s homepage.   You can also browse for titles using the keyword “Horror”.   Some films like Shaun of the Dead, The Exorcist, Halloween, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre are on temporarily on reserve in the Music Lab Control Center–they can be checked out, but only for viewing in the Music Lab.  But the Library has many other classic and modern horror films you can take home  to frighten, horrify, disgust, and shock your friends.

The Music Lab is open until midnight, so creep, lurch, or shamble on in today and grab a film.

 

 

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Tech Yearbooks Online

Posted on October 14, 2013 Written by

Travel back in time 100 years to the very beginnings of Arkansas Tech University through the pages of the yearbook, Agricola—newly digitized and now available through the Library’s website:

http://libguides.atu.edu/research/tools/othercollections/agricola

The Agricola was published from 1912-2006, as Arkansas Tech University’s yearbook.   Each yearbook features images and scenes of daily life, clubs and organizations, faculty members, athletics, and the buildings of Arkansas Tech when it was  known as the Second District Agricultural School (1909-1924).  Several include poetry, short stories, schedules of school events, and advertising from local businesses in the surrounding communities.

The online PDFs for the years 1912-1915, 1918, 1922-1924 can be full-text searched as individual PDFs, and a number of the original covers are also available online.

The physical copies of the yearbooks are currently housed at the Library, and most from 1912-2006 are still available for browsing and check-out.  Search our  online catalog for more details.  While not all of the yearbooks have been digitized, we have plans to add more to this collection as the year goes on.

In the meantime, travel to these first few years of Arkansas Tech history as told through the photographs, writings, jokes, and hairstyles of the students who were living it.  No Tardis necessary.

agricola2

From Agricola, 1915, page 89.

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The Shutdown Breakdown

Posted on October 2, 2013 Written by

If you are currently conducting research using government-provided statistics, reports, articles, images, or other information, you might hit some roadblocks due to the U.S. Government shutdown.  Effective Oct. 1, many of the government websites and databases we take for granted are now unavailable or available in a more limited way.  This could impact your research, as well as the research of faculty and students across the country.  Here’s a short list of some government-based databases and websites affected by the shutdown.

shutdown2

Government websites unavailable:

  • ERIC — The Library has four different interfaces for this important educational database supported through the federal government.  The interfaces through OCLC, EbscoHOST, and Proquest will provide article searching to find citations.  However, full text is unavailable from the actual ERIC.gov site, and the direct interface at the ERIC website is completely offline at the time of this post.  We have selected older ERIC documents available on microfiche, and some will be available in other publications at Tech Library by selecting the “Linksource” icon in the citation.  The friendly librarians at the Reference Desk will also be able to assist you in finding these resources from other sources, and Interlibrary Loan can also help provide you with documents during the shutdown.
  • Census.gov — Census websites are now closed, and all services associated with them.  This includes American Fact Finder, Federal Statistics, and other government statistical websites.
  • Bureau of Economic Analysis
  • Business.gov
  • CDC Wonder — a comprehensive on-line public health information system of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Data.gov
  • Disability.gov
  • FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
  • FTC (Federal Trade Commission)
  • NASA
  • National Center for Education Statistics
  • National Parks Service
  • USDA (United States Department of Agriculture)
  • United States Copyright Office

Government websites with limited functionality or limited updates

Government websites with full functionality:

  • THOMAS — This government website contains a fully searchable database of congressional bills and legislation.  The site continues to be updated as events in Congress unfold.
  • Statistical Abstracts of the United States (via Proquest)–A comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
  • HealthCare.gov–This site features information for the new national health insurance program provided by Affordable Healthcare Act.  The first day to sign up for the service was October 1st, and while there have been reports of glitches and crashes, the site appears to be functioning…for the moment.
  • All websites and information necessary to protect lives and property.
  • Most of the direct-links to government documents as found in our online catalog.

Some Arkansas-related websites and places affected by the shutdown include all of the national parks within the state, the Clinton presidential library, and other nationally funded museums and historic sites.

For more information about the government shutdown, visit the USA.gov site which describes in more detail the  ramifications of the government shutdown on national services and agencies.

As the list grows or shrinks, we’ll keep updating this post as we are informed.  If you have problems locating information, contact the librarians here at Ross Pendergraft Library at askalibrarian@atu.edu, and we’ll help you find the work-arounds to the shutdown.

noaa

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Banned Books

Posted on September 20, 2013 Written by

banned books

Every year in the United States, books are challenged, banned, and removed from school and public libraries.   Banned Books Week is the national book community’s annual celebration of the freedom to read.  Since 1982, hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country have drawn attention to the problem of censorship by creating displays or exhibits of challenged and banned books.

locked up books

First floor display of the ATU Library.

This year, Banned Books Week is Sept. 22-28th, and to highlight this event we have created banned book displays on the first floor of the library.  You’ll be able to view some of the frequently challenged or banned books, and discover the reasons why they were or, in some cases, continue to be removed from libraries.

You can find seven of the top ten most challenged books of 2012 right here at Ross Pendergraft Library:

  1. Thirteen reasons why : a novel by Jay Asher.   Reasons:Drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group
  2.  Fifty Shades of Grey, by E. L. James.   Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit
  3.  And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.  Reasons: Homosexuality, unsuited for age group
  4. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini.   Reasons: Homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit
  5. Looking for Alaska, by John Green.  Reasons: Offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group
  6. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz.   Reasons: Unsuited for age group, violence
  7. Beloved, by Toni Morrison.  Reasons: Sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence

While a book may be banned from a library in the United States, governments around the world ban and punish the sale, writing, publishing, and even ownership of certain books.  For more information about banned books around the world, visit Beacon for Freedom of Expression, an international database of nearly 50,000 titles of censored works.  It also includes literature about  censorship and freedom of expression.

Celebrate your freedom to read–visit the ATU Library to learn about banned books weeks or take home one for yourself . . . if you dare!

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Avast ye mateys!

Posted on September 19, 2013 Written by

September 19th is National Talk Like A Pirate Day, and to celebrate, we’re highlighting our new language learning tool Mango Languages to help you brush up on your Pirate speech.

Mango features five chapters on Pirate, including cultural notes, Pirate grammar, and conversational Pirate–as spoken (presumably) by real pirates.

pirate2

First time users to Mango Languages will have to create a login username and password to use the system, as well as to save progress through the courses.  After that, it’s smooth sailing.

pirate3

Mango Languages offer 60 other language course in addition to Pirate such as Spanish, French, Latin, Chinese, and Arabic.  So once you become fluent in Pirate, you can try your hand at other languages.

If you want additional practice in conversational Pirate, see our selection of Pirate movies available on DVD from the Music Lab on the second floor:

For more Pirate-culture materials, check with the land-lubber librarians over at the Reference desk or send a message via parrot or email to askalibrarian@atu.edu.

 

 

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New Additions

Posted on September 13, 2013 Written by

Calculator announcement pngIIIBreaking news: we now have graphing calculators for check-out at the Ross Pendergraft Library!  They are available at the Circulation Desk in three flavors: TI-82 , TI-83 Plus, and TI-84 Plus Silver.  You can check them out for 2 hours at a time, but they cannot leave the library.  However, you can renew them if you need them longer.

Just bring your Tech ID to the Circulation Desk to check one out.  Don’t let high calculator prices keep you away from such an integral part of most college-level math courses.

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Lost in the Library?

Posted on September 5, 2013 Written by

If you’re new to Tech or just new to the Ross Pendergraft Library, we want to invite you to our Library Resources Workshop on Friday, Sept. 6th.  We are hosting two workshops that day:

  • Student Workshop at 1:00 in room 334
  • Faculty Workshop at 2:00 in room 334

These are hands-on workshops designed to teach you how to get the most from Library services, databases, and other collections.  If you are struggling with research or just want to know what tools we have to make your academic library easier, pop in for a quick demo of some our most useful services and collections.

Can’t make it to one of our workshops?  No problem–we have video tutorials on our library catalog, online resources, the Dewey Decimal system, and ILL.   We also have some research guides geared towards particular subjects and classes.

Still lost?  Contact your friendly neighborhood librarian: askalibrarian@atu.edu.  We can also schedule individual consultations, as well as classroom instruction for faculty members.

 

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Changes

Posted on August 30, 2013 Written by

For many of you, this week is all about change–a change in lifestyle, a change of address, and a change in sleeping patterns.  The Library has made some changes, too.  Here’s a summary of some of the new things we’ve added, along with some of changes we’ve made to our existing collections over the summer break:

New Databases

We added two new databases to our collection that is sure to appeal to anyone interested in current events, international studies, foreign languages, or just about anyone trying to brush up on their Spanish.  Mango Languages is our new language-learning system which can help you learn over 60 different languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, or even Pirate.   Library Press Display is a digital newspaper database featuring newspapers from around Arkansas, the United States, or from 97 other countries around the world.   Learn more about both services from our summer blog posts from July 12 and July 17.

New Research Guides

The Librarians have been hard at work this summer creating new study guides for various subjects and courses to get you prepared for researching using Library resources.  This summer, we added research guides for Art, Biology, Distance Learning, E-Tech 101, and many more.  You can view them all by directing your browser guns here: http://libguides.atu.edu/.  They can also be found under the Help menu from our homepage.

New Mobile Site

Get help from Library whenever and wherever you are with our new mobile site: http://library.atu.edu/m/.  Get quick access to our databases, online catalog, and our contact information from any mobile device.

Audiobooks Moved To the 1st Floor

We’ve moved the Audiobooks to the east of the Reference Desk, in the first section of shelving.  Last year, they were in the Music Lab, which made it difficult to browse for your favorite titles.  Now they are on the shelves near the Reference desk, available for check-out and browsing any time the library is open.

Youth Moved To the 1st Floor, Too

The Youth collection, comprising books for children and young adults, has moved to the first floor as well, directly across from the Periodicals section in the “short” shelves.

Reference and Index were shifted

Looking for a familiar book in a familiar place in Reference?  Can’t find it? Never fear–we have shifted the Reference and Index collections so not everything is in their usual place anymore.  If you still can’t find it, it is possible the item is missing or was removed from the collection.  If so, tell us about it: askalibrarian@atu.edu.   We might be able to acquire another copy for the library.

So how do you like the changes?  Let us know by commenting below, on Facebook, or send us an email.  It’s your library–what would you change?

 

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