Find it

5 Free Things at the Tech Library

Posted on August 27, 2019 Written by Angela Black

The new fall semester has begun, and for many of you, this will be the most expensive four years of your life. To alleviate the wallet stress, the Library is here to help stretch your dollar and expand your mind with five free things you can borrow from the Ross Pendergraft Library.

1. Gen. Ed. Textbooks

Through a pilot program launched last year, the Library been obtaining copies of textbooks required for the General Education classes offered at Tech. Currently, any student can borrow a general education textbook for up to two hours of in-library use. To see if we your required book, search our online database under Course Reserves:

To see ALL the textbooks in the program, search for the word “Textbooks.” You can also ask the friendly faces at the Circulation Desk for help.

2. Calculators

Need a TI-30X for an upcoming test? Borrow one for 24 hours at the Library. Not only do we have the TI-30X, we also have TI-83’s, TI-84’s, and other graphing calculators which have inexplicably not gotten cheaper in twenty years.

Stop by the Circulation Desk for help with all your calculating needs.

3. Games (NEW!)

A new collection has been added to the Ross Pendergraft Library over the summer: Games! Table-top, board, role-playing, strategy, and old-fashioned family fun games. The Games section is located around the corner from the Young Adult Fiction collection, on the north side of the library’s first floor.

You can check them out as you would a book at the Circulation Desk. To browse them all, search our online catalog for “Games” in Location “Games”.

4. Space

You can reserve some space. Not outer space, but meeting space within Tech Library. To reserve a room, go to our homepage, and find the giant button at the bottom of our website called “Reserve a Study Room.”

Select up to two green boxes for a 2 hour stay, per day, per person. You can reserve a small study space, a larger room for up to 4 for group meetings, or the Tegrity Room for audio recordings or exams.

5. Help

You can also, at any time, borrow help from any one of the kind, helpful, and super-awesome library staff of experts who are available at the Reference Desk, Circulation Desk, 2nd Floor Help Desk, and wandering the stacks like information roombas.

I swear to you it is a cat, dressed as a shark, on a roomba chasing a small duckling.

We just want to help you find books, stop running away!

We can help you find quality research resources, provide citation guidance, suggest good research topics, locate full-text articles, or show you how to print your assignment from your phone. We are also a text, email, phone call, DM, PM, or online chat away:

Text at 479-802-4876
Call us at 479-964-0570
Email at askus@atu.libanswers.com
Do all the social media stuff at Twitter, Facebook,& Instagram
Live Chat with us here: http://libguides.atu.edu/research/help/askus
OR come by in person to visit us at the Reference or Circulation Desks to ask us anything, like “Where’s the bathroom?”, “How do I find peer-reviewed articles,” or “Who has the best chicken sandwiches?”

Best wishes for Fall 2019!

Filed Under: Library Tagged: Find it, General, Library Collection, NEW!

Frosh News

Posted on August 22, 2018 Written by Angela Black

Are you new to campus? Are you just new to the library? At the RPL, we believe in fast, accurate, and reliable information, so here’s a quick rundown of all the top 5 facts you need to be successful that first day on campus.

1. Find computers, even late at night.

The Library holds the largest general computer lab on campus 119 computers, and the only computer lab open late at night. As long as the library is open, our computer labs are open. Each machine has all the software you need to succeed, including Minesweeper.

2. Find printers, scanners, copiers, and yes, even a fax machine.

You can find printers on all floors in the library, including color printers. Printing is done on ‘release stations” where you login with your TechID or pass your TechID near the scanner.

Just print your document to the “Universal Print Queue” printer and release at any of the stations scattered throughout the library. Black and white copies are $0.10 a page, but if you release the job at a color printer, that’s $0.30. Every Tech Student Starts with a $20 balance every semester. If you run out of money, just add more (cash only) to your TechID using the PHIL station on the first floor.

We also have traditional copy machines for making copies at $.10 a page. Or save money by scanning for free! The library has recently purchased a KIC scanner on the first floor where scanning documents and books is as easy as the press of the SCAN button.

If you need to fax materials (ancient technology still used by doctors, scholarship offices, and utility companies), we have a publicly available fax machine located on the first floor, near the Reference Desk.

Read more about our policies here: http://libguides.atu.edu/services/students

3. Find (Some) Textbooks, Calculators, Headphones….for Free!

If you are enrolled in a Gen Ed course this semester and you don’t have the textbook, check our online course reserves and search for “Textbooks”.

Remember, we do NOT have ALL Textbooks! We have a limited collection of textbooks for General Education courses ONLY. You can also search by course name, title, or ISBN. If your professor has specifically added a book to their course, it might be here, too—just try searching for their name.

Textbooks are available for a limited 2 hour check-out, and you cannot remove them from the building. But if you need to get some reading done before class or photocopy a few pages, these are available to any student with a Tech ID at the Circulation Desk.

We also checkout graphing calculators, headphones, whiteboards, and all other course reserves materials at the Circulation Desk. It’s as simple as walking up and asking.

4. Find Almost Everything Using Find It

Imagine Amazon.com but for library materials like articles, books, videos, ebooks, calculators, headphones, streaming videos, and more—all for free to you, the Tech student. That’s Find It—the library’s search engine. Anything we have available to check-out, watch, print, or download, you can find it here. Try typing in a keyword, and use the facets on the left to limit by type, location, online, or more. Get started by going to http://findit.atu.edu

5. Find Help with Librarians

Probably the best-kept secret in campus support, we are trained professionals whose main job duty is to help you succeed by finding accurate, reliable, and authoritative information. No question is too small or too large. We want to help, and we do it better than Google.

Text at 479-802-4876
Call us at 479-964-0570
Email at askus@atu.libanswers.com
Do all the social media stuff at Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram
Live Chat with us here: http://libguides.atu.edu/research/help/askus
Come by Reference or Circulation Desks to ask us anything, like “Where’s the bathroom?”, “How do I find peer-reviewed articles,” or “What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

Find us so you can find everything else.

Filed Under: Library Tagged: Find it, General, Hours, Welcome

Google Scholar and You

Posted on February 20, 2017 Written by Angela Black

If you are a student at Arkansas Tech University, you may have experimented with Google Scholar. Maybe you heard about it from your friends or tried it once at a party. Maybe you saw results for “scholarly articles” within a regular Google result and decided to click on it, just to see what it was like.

This gateway drug of academic resources can appear like harmless fun—a way to quickly find scholarly journal articles in the same way you can find chicken tikka masala recipes and advice for disobedient cats. But you may not be aware of the pro’s and con’s of this addictive source of scholarly research. Let the Ross Pendergraft library help you get your facts straight about Google Scholar.

PRO’S

Size: The exact number and sources for Google Scholar indexing is unknown, but one study concluded that it indexes over 160 million documents ¹. This makes it one of the largest academic databases around. Another study estimated that Google Scholar covers about 87% of all scholarly documents accessible on the web in English ². For most academic resource searching, Google Scholar can make a quick, one-stop research trip.
Ease of Use: If you are unsure where to go to find scholarly articles, then Google Scholar makes a lot of sense. It covers multiple disciplines such as science, literature, nursing, behavioral sciences, and more. Finding Google Scholar is as simple as Googling it. Searching is free and includes no login restrictions. One search box makes the interface simple to use. Advanced search, if needed, is also simple. Just click on the arrow in the search box, and another window allows you to search by author, words in the title, and date-ranges.
Connects to ATU Library: Google Scholar enables you to select a ‘home’ library to connect resources you find in Google Scholar with full-text access through the Ross Pendergraft Library. In Google Scholar, open Settings, and click on Library Links. In the search box, type in “ATU” or “Ross Pendergraft Library” or “Tech”. Click the checkbox and save:

If the articles within your search results are available in full-text at the Ross Pendergraft Library, you will see a link on the right for “Find it At Tech”.

CON’S

No “Peer-Reviewed” Button: Most of the databases you find through the library (such as Find It, Academic Search Complete, PsycINFO, ERIC, etc.) include the ability to narrow results by peer-reviewed articles. This is important to help you drill down to original research that meets the highest of academic standards. While much of Google Scholar contains peer reviewed articles, a lot of it can be conference proceedings, unpublished scholarly articles, master’s theses, legal summaries, blog posts, and book citations. So how do you separate the peer-reviewed articles from non-peer-reviewed articles? There’s no really easy way, unless you are familiar with the publications. You can also copy and paste the article title in our Find It database, then filter by the Peer-Review buttons there. But if you have to go through all that, why not just start from Find It in the first place?
Not Everything You Find is Free: While Google Scholar can index a lot of content, much of it is only available via the publisher for purchase. The title links (left-side) will lead you to the publisher website while the links on the right, if available, will lead you to the free PDF available at open-access sites like Research Gate or through the library’s site through “Find it at Tech”. If you click on the title-level links, the publisher’s website will offer a PDF download for a price, probably between $30-$35. NEVER PAY! If you are a student at Arkansas Tech and the article is not available for immediate download in our Find It database, use the Interlibrary Loan service to quickly obtain the article from another library. No purchase necessary.
Limited Advanced Searching and Inaccuracy: Sure, you can search by words in author and words in the title, but you cannot search or limit results by more sophisticated means like subject searching. You also can’t limit results to available full-text. The databases in the library, however, offer a variety of tools to help narrow down or make your searches more efficient and precise. Library databases have indexing done by professional human beings who can assign controlled subject terms and provide quality control. Google Scholar uses web crawlers to extract data from the publisher websites, and sometimes this data is either incorrect, attributed to the wrong author, or completely false.

Ultimately, Google Scholar can be useful as a source of scholarly information, but it does have its drawbacks. The resources available at the library website like Find It can be your best bet for accessing full-text, peer-reviewed resources available to you as a tuition-paying student.

Craving more information about Google Scholar and scholarly articles? Contact your research dealers and knowledge pushers at askalibrarian@atu.edu. Ask your librarian if Google Scholar is right for you.

¹Orduña-Malea, E.; Ayllón, J.M.; Martín-Martín, A.; Delgado López-Cózar, E. (2014). About the size of Google Scholar: Playing the numbers. EC3 Working Papers, 18(23). Retrieved from: https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.6239

²Khabsa, M., Giles, C.L. (2014). The number of scholarly documents on the public web. PLOS ONE, 9(5), 1-6. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0093949

Filed Under: Library Tagged: Find it, General, Google Scholar

Back to School Basics

Posted on August 19, 2016 Written by Angela Black

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:

Login to OneTech
Click on the STUDENT tab
Scroll down.
Find the green box labeled REGISTRATION TOOLS and click “Student Detail Schedule”
Select your term (e.g. Fall 2016)
Highlight the contents on the screen or press Ctrl + A.
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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

Filed Under: Library Tagged: Find it, Printing

Find It Today

Posted on January 21, 2016 Written by Angela Black

The Library is hosting a small celebration of our new discovery tool today from 11:00-2:00, with special instruction sessions occurring each half hour in RPL 300 North. Join us for cookies, punch, and a little introduction to our new search tool, Find It, now featured on our homepage: http://library.atu.edu/

Use Find It to search scholarly articles, books, ebooks, and DVDs in one place. Narrow search results with left-hand filters by type, location, full-text, and more. This interface replaces our library catalog, and indexes all of our Proquest database content, most of our Ebsco content, Web of Science, Jstor, and more. Our native database interfaces are still available on our A-Z Databases page, but to get quick results in one search, give Find It a try. We believe this will be a much simpler tool for beginners to find academic resources, but it will also be a more convenient tool for the research pros to quickly find and filter the results they need.

The Find It tool also includes access to your library account, so you can check on what materials you have currently checked-out, items on hold, or if you have any messages from the Library. Sign-in with your Tech Username and Password to save searches or add items to an ‘eshelf’ for later browsing and viewing. If you are off-campus, you will need to sign-in to view search results from Ebsco or Web of Science, since these databases require authentication, even for searching. If you are on-campus, however, you will automatically see these results.

Drop by today at 11, 11:30, or every thirty minutes until the last session at 1:30 to learn a little more about the interface (or to simply grab some cookies in the library lobby). There will also be PRIZES at the demos! Come for the cookies, punch, and prizes–stay for the knowledge bombs.

Filed Under: Library Tagged: Find it, NEW!, Presentations