Get In the Car With OverDrive

Cancel your Audible subscription and download the Libby app to enjoy your favorite audiobooks and ebooks now available for free from the Ross Pendergraft Library:

Click Here to Acccess OverDrive

Access thousands of ebooks titles and nearly 100 audiobook titles from the Libby app.  Download the Libby app via Google Play or at the Apple Store.  You can also access the platform using the link above from our A-to-Z Databases page.

Screenshot of a phone with the Libby App open to choosing a new library. The words "Arkansas Tech" are typed into the search box.

After you’ve downloaded the app, you’ll be asked to locate your library.  Type the zip code (72801) or search for “Arkansas Tech University”.  You will be asked to authenticate as a Tech user.

Once you’ve logged into your account, enjoy up to two books at a time.  Selecting a book will download it for 14 days to your account.  If 14 days is too soon, you can renew it once for another 14 days.  If 14 days is too long, you can return the book early and check out another.

Is your must-read of Fall 2023 checked out?  Just like our regular collection in Find It, you can also place Holds on titles that are currently checked out.  Find the title you want, and click the option “PLACE HOLD.”  Once the title is available, you will get a notification that your item is ready to borrow.

Screenshot from a phone showing the Libby app, where a title is checked out, with the option to "Place Hold" below the text: "Sorry all copies of this title are out on loan. Try again soon, or place a hold instread."

What if you already have a Libby account at another library, like the Pope County Library?  No problem–just choose the option in your account settings: “Add Library”.

Do you prefer to consume your fiction and non-fiction with eyeballs instead of earlobes?  Thousands of titles–including new, best-sellers–are available on Libby, too.  You can either read via the app or push your ebooks to the Kindle app for tablet reading.  While the Library has offered access to hundreds of thousands of ebooks, this is our first foray into more popular, Kindle-friendly collections.

The addition of OverDrive ebooks and audiobooks via Libby represents another request made by students on our annual library survey from Spring 2023.  If you prefer the old-fashioned, analog experience, our current physical audiobook collection is still located on the first floor, next to the DVD collection.  These audiobooks are searchable in Find It, but you can also browse a list of titles here.

Screenshot of a phone showing the Libby app, displaying covers of the popular fiction titles available through the app like "Demon Copperhead", "Covenant of Water," "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy", and many more

However, with the decline of CD-players in car stereos, e-audiobooks are fast becoming the format of choice.  The library already hosts another streaming audiobook collection called Naxos Spoken Word, available also through our A-Z Databases page.  It features thousands of literary classics–perfect for those English class reading assignments you can listen to while on the treadmill.

But now that the Library is finally getting into the driver seat with OverDrive, newer and more popular titles can now be delivered via an easy-to-use app on any mobile device.

If you need help getting started, Ask Us via text, email, Instagram, or face-to-face during our expansive Fall 2023 hours.  There’s also a handy webpage featuring step-by-step instructions and a video.  Take it for a spin today!

Gifts from Japan

The Ross Pendergraft Library wishes to say “Domo arigatou gozaimasu” to the Read Japan Project for the donation of 162 books about Japanese studies to the library’s collection.  The books were received last week from the Nippon Foundation through the Japan Science Society as a token of friendship between the United States and Japan.

Dr. Kae Hashimoto Reed stands next to Philippe Van Houtte with award letter from the Nippon Foundation

Philippe Van Houtte, Systems librarian and visiting French instructor, applied for the book grant with Dr. Kae Hashimoto Reed, visiting instructor of music and Japanese.  Together, they worked on a proposal which highlighted Arkansas Tech University’s current efforts at showcasing Japanese culture to the Nippon Foundation by including examples such as the International Film Festival and the Light the Night Festival.  Their efforts culminated in the recognition of the Ross Pendergraft Library as a recipient of the Read Japan Project.

The books cover a wide range of subjects including literature, art, science, history, economics, and culture.  Most of the volumes are in English, though a few Japanese language titles were also included.  This collection is meant to promote the understanding of Japan around the world through the donation of books.

A row of books on Japanese history and culture

As books are added to the library, they can be searched in Find It by using the phrase “Read Japan Project”.  You can also find a list of some of the donated titles at the Nippon Foundation website: https://www.nippon-foundation.or.jp/en/what/projects/readjapan/.  Once the books are processed, they will be available to the entire campus community for borrowing.

For more on Japanese culture, be sure to check out the next installment of Dr. Kae Hashimoto Reed’s Manga Lecture Series: “Demon Slayer” on November 15th at 7:00 P.M. in RPL 300A.

 

 

The Time of Your Life

Are you experiencing FOMO watching all your friends travel to distant places for their summer vacation?  Too broke or too busy to fly?  The library has just purchased two first-class tickets to the most exotic and hard-to-reach destination of all: the past.  Travel back in time with our new archive collection: Time Magazine Archive and Life Magazine Archive.

These two American magazines covered news events, popular culture, and daily life for Americans during most of the twentieth century.   They were the most popular weekly news and entertainment magazines of their time, and both were noteable for their award-winning photography and writing.

Cover of Time Magazine featuring portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Cover of Time Magazine, January 3rd, 1964.

Time Magazine began in 1923 as a weekly magazine, and may be familiar to many for their most famous feature story: “Person of the Year.”  It is still in print today, but the archive database provides full cover-to-cover PDFs for every issue published between 1923 and 2000. Between its pages, you’ll find interviews from the most famous celebrities, world leaders, authors, scientists, and thinkers of the past 100 years.

 

Photograph of navy sailor kissing woman in a nurse uniform on VJ day, 1941 in Times Square

“Victory Celebrations.” Life Magazine. August 27, 1945. p. 27

Life Magazine, published from 1883 until 2000, is best known for its photographic excellence in documenting American life and world events during the 1930s through the 1970s.  If you’ve ever seen the iconic World War II victory photograph of a nurse being kissed by a sailor, it was first published in Life magazine.

That photograph and many others are fully searchable and delivered through the archive database.  You can browse and keyword search all available issues from 1936-2000.

The landing page for both databases features the familiar search box of an Ebscohost Database.

Screenshot of main search box for the database, featuring "Arkansas Tech University" as a search term in quotation marks

You can search by keyword, author, subjects, or article title.  You can limit results by illustrations, as well as date and subject.  If you would rather browse issues by date, click “Publications” at the top of the search page in the blue border.  Then click the title of the magazine to navigate by issue.

Screenshot of a browse publication menu for Life magazine, list all available issues.

If you search for “Arkansas Tech University” in the Life Magazine Archive, you’ll find a feature story on the university published February 3rd, 1941.  The magazine was photographing a farewell party the university organized for 104 students who were leaving for National Guard training—not knowing at the time if they would be sent to the war raging overseas.  Pearl Harbor had not yet been bombed, and the article remarked, “Of all sections, the South is ready to fight Hitler, readiest to risk war to save Britain.”

Photograph of students in 1941 dancing a jitterbug

Unlike other article databases that only display text in html, results for Life Magazine and Time come complete with fully rendered PDFs of the original pages—ads and all.

Photograph of students sitting in football bleachers from 1941 beside an advertisement for Vicks inhalers, featuring an illustratrion of a 1950's man and woman holding what looks like lipstick containers to their noses.

A photograph of a group of male students dressed in military uniform sitting on the grass, gazing at female student standing under a tree. From 1941.

Want to learn more about these databases and others?  Ask Us via chat, email, phone, text, or some ancient form of letter writing.  Be sure to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook to learn about more new collections or events as we return to our present destination on the sacred timeline.

Safe travels this summer—wherever or whenever you go!

photograph of Neil Armstrong on the moon wearing full astronaut suit

“A Giant Leap for Mankind.” Life Magazine, July 20, 1969, p. 7

Borrow Laptops, Webcams, Headsets, and More at RPL

The Ross Pendergraft Library is here to help you with virtually everything virtual in the spring 2021 semester.  We are now offering laptops, webcams, and headsets for free checkout to all students at the Russellville campus.  Here is a rundown on the new services we are offering to help students stay connected during the crisis:

  • Laptop Checkout – 1 week
  • Webcam Checkout – 4 hours, in-house use only, with the ability to renew for 4 more hours
  • Headset Checkout—Microphone and headphones for 4 hours, in-house use only, with the ability to renew for 4 more hours.

Laptops are being provided by the Office of Information Systems.  The first time you borrow a laptop, you will be asked to sign a user agreement acknowledging the policies of OIS and the replacement costs before you can borrow the equipment.  Each laptop is a Dell laptop running Windows with a built-in camera and microphone.

Laptops will be offered first come, first serve, but if we run out, you can place a hold request on a laptop to be notified when one is available signing in to your library account.  To learn how to do this, watch this quick video demonstrating how to find the availability of our laptops and how to place a hold request.

The library has also recently installed computers in all of the study rooms except 128.  If you need to reserve a quiet room to attend class, conduct an interview, or record a video, you can book a room for 1-hour intervals, up to two hours per day at our Book It link: https://bookit.atu.edu/booking/studyrooms/

Image of a study room with a desktop computerKeep in mind, due to social distancing protocols, only one person is allowed in most study rooms.  Check capacity before you attempt to hold a group meeting.  We have also added two additional study rooms to cope with the current demand for quiet, enclosed spaces due to the pandemic.

 

In the meantime, stay safe, wash your hands, wear a mask, and fight on!

Stream Into Fall 2020

The Ross Pendergraft Library is preparing for the fall by finding more online resources for whatever the future brings.  In anticipation for a potential online environment for some classes, we have added a new collection of streaming films from Swank Digital Campus.

A row of film movie posters such as 3:10 to Yuma, Amelie, the Big Sick, Blade Runner

An initial collection of fifty Hollywood films have been added to the platform and reflect films slated to be taught and discussed for the fall 2020 curriculum.  These include international films, class films, and critically acclaimed films from a variety of genres.  Search for individual films in the search box or browse by genre for comedies, horror, crime films, drama, and more.

To access the films, go to the library’s homepage and select A-to-Z Databases.  From there, navigate to Swank by browsing our alphabetical list of databases or searching for Swank in the search box.

If you are off-campus, you may be first prompted to login with your Tech Username and Password.

If this is your first-time accessing Swank, you may be asked whether to enter as a student or login as a faculty member.  If you select “Student”, it takes you right to the main browse page.  If you select “Faculty,” you will be asked to create a separate account that enables you to request new movies for your class.  However, as a faculty member, you can always contact your librarian liaison to request new streaming films.

If you select a film, you can watch it immediately in the browser window, copy a permanent link, or copy an LMS link that you can use to embed directly into Blackboard:

A film description for "Do the Right Thing" highlighting the copy direct link and copy lms link

Each film includes the ability to display or hide subtitles.  If you want to watch on a mobile device like a phone or tablet, download the Swank Media Player from your app store.  Then navigate to the library’s Swank website on your device.

Swank Media Player app information, including logo that looks like a film reel.

If you need a bigger selection than Swank, the library has three other streaming video platforms from which to choose films and documentaries:

  • Academic Video Online – A large collection of over 13,000 films, documentaries, news reels, tutorials, interviews, and archive footage on a variety of subjects. Search for individual films or browse by channels.  Most of the content will be educational or documentary films.
  • Kanopy – A small collection of individual films requested by faculty for specific courses, for a limited duration.
  • Digital Theatre Plus – A specialized collection of full-length films of Shakespeare plays, modern dramas, and musicals. There are behind the scenes clips from theatre makers and study guides to help students understand plot, character, language, etc. Audio plays from the LA Theatre Works have now been added.

We also have an extensive collection of physical DVDs to check out whenever the library is open.  All are searchable via our online database, Find It.

During the break, we hope you stay safe, stay socially distant, and stay entertained with Swank Digital Campus.  The library is still open, and the librarians are still available to help you with research as well as our preferred ranking of all James Bond films.  Just reach out and Ask Us!

New Online Resources During Coronavirus Pandemic

During this unprecedented time where availability of online resources for teaching and learning is more critical than ever, the Ross Pendergraft Library has taken advantage of database trials and free offers to expand our collections, even if temporarily.

In the last month, we’ve brought online several databases–too many to feature here.  You can find an updated listing of new resources, updated resources, and database trials at our resource guide here: https://libguides.atu.edu/spring2020databasetrials.  A deeper dive into a few of those resources below.  Keep in mind, many of these resources are being offered until the semester is completed.

Kanopy

This is a streaming video platform available at the library through our A-to-Z list. Recently, this platform has been updated significantly and now features new videos such as The Great Courses and 16 other films and documentaries.  This newer content will be available for the next four weeks, but other videos are part of a licensed collection.  If faculty wish to order a film, they contact their departmental liaison or fill out the request form available on Kanopy via search.


Screenshot of Kanopy, featuring the Great Courses

JSTOR

The Ross Pendergraft Library now enjoys full access to all available JSTOR collections from now until June 30th.  JSTOR is a multi-disciplinary database featuring current and archived articles, primary sources, and ebooks.  Previously, we were limited to just a few of their collections like Arts and Sciences and Life Sciences.  But now, our access has expanded to articles in business, ecology, and a variety of disciplines.  We now also have access to primary source collections such as “Global Plants” and “19th Century British Plants.”  There are also several thematic collections on topics like Sustainability, Security Studies, and Lives of Literature.

Screenshot of JSTOR, a multi-disciplinary database

Social Explorer

Social Explorer is an online research tool which provides quick and easy access to historical census data and demographic information. It creates maps and reports to help users visually analyze and understand demography and social change throughout history.  The database will be on trial for the rest of the semester.

Screenshot from Social Explorer database showing that 21% of Pope County persons 18 years or older are smokers

Colonial State Papers

The Colonial State Papers offers access to over 7,000 hand-written documents and more than 40,000 bibliographic records with this incredible resource on Colonial History. In addition to Britain’s colonial relations with the Americas and other European rivals for power, this collection also covers the Caribbean and Atlantic world. It is an invaluable resource for scholars of early American history, British colonial history, Caribbean history, maritime history, Atlantic trade, plantations, and slavery.  This database is currently on trial until April 27th.

Screenshot from a result in Colonial Papers detailing an exchange regarding Salem witch trials from Governor Sir William Phips to the Earl of Nottingham

At this time, many other new resources and database trials are currently being negotiated, and we will continue to update this page as more resources come online.  Check back with us or stay tuned by following us on social media: InstagramFacebook, or Twitter.

In the meantime, stay safe, keep calm, and research on!

Be Discovered With the Online Research Commons @ ATU

Tired of your research not getting noticed?  Worried that your work will not be valued, shared, or read by the rest of the world?  The Ross Pendergraft Library has created Tech’s very own institutional repository designed to showcase ATU faculty and student scholarly research at the Online Research Commons.

homepage of the Online Research Commons @ ATU featuring photo of Patrick Hagge

The Online Research Commons (ORC) is Tech’s repository of scholarly publications, presentations, theses, dissertations, digital collections, and institutional archives.  It seeks to bring together all of a university’s research under one umbrella with an aim to preserve and provide access to that research.  Documents uploaded to the Online Research Commons are indexed in Google and GoogleScholar—making them discover-able and available to other scholars around the world.

GoogleScholar result for an article from Dr. David Blanks on Edward O. Wilson

Under “Faculty Research and Publications”, you can browse the research being produced and published by faculty at Arkansas Tech University, organized by department or discipline.   Users can also browse by Authors or search the repository by keyword.

Since the ORC launched a few months ago, only a few academic departments like Emergency Management, Physical Sciences, and History & Political Science have been populated with publications.  But as the ORC grows, it will contain citations, links to library-subscribed content, or direct PDFs to all faculty work including articles, working papers, conference proceedings, books, book chapters, technical reports, sound files, data sets, images, videos, and more from all areas at Arkansas Tech.

Authors who submit their work to the repository receive monthly reports regarding usage and downloads.  A map summary of downloads for all documents in the repository is freely available on the ORC homepage:

Map of the world detailing locations of users downloading documents from the Online Research Commons

Also included in the ORC are the full-text of all Arkansas Tech student dissertations and theses published since 2016.   It also currently includes selected issues of the digitized Arkansas Tech yearbook, Agricola.

A list of three digitized Agricolas, the official yearbook of Arkansas Tech.If you want your work to be showcased and included in the Online Research Commons, simply send a CV or list of publications to orc@atu.edu.  For more information on the submission process, including what versions of publications can be included, be sure to review the Submission Guide to Online Research Commons @ ATU.  Adding to our repository is free, easy, and can be an excellent vehicle for working papers, presentations, and conference papers not published elsewhere.  So, get noticed, get discovered, and get your legacy preserved at Arkansas Tech’s Online Research Commons.

Submit Your CV

 

5 Free Things at the Tech Library

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:

Screenshot of browsing the word Textbooks in our online database to find all course reserve textbooks

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.

Images of three calculators including a TI-30XS, a TI-84 Plus, and a TI-84 Plus CE all available to check out at the library

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.

Shelf of games

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.”

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.

Schedule indicating study rooms to reserve and which are full.

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:

Best wishes for Fall 2019!

Spring Break!

The Ross Pendergraft Library is going on spring break!  At least for a few extra hours during the week.  Here’s the schedule for our reduced hours during spring break:

  • Saturday, March 16th – CLOSED
  • Sunday, March 17th – CLOSED
  • Monday, March 18th-Friday, March 22nd – 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.
  • Saturday, March 23rd – CLOSED
  • Sunday, March 24th – Resumes regular hours, 1:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M.

If you are planning a long trip, don’t forget the library has a collection of Audiobooks on CD and MP3 that you can pop in the car stereo or download to your phone for bluetooth broadcast. Here’s a few new titles, fresh on the shelf:

book cover of Children of Blood and Bone featuring illustration of upper half of the face of a beautiful, mysterious woman with long white hair rising up behind her.Children of Blood and Bone – Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.

Front cover of Educated, featuring a large illustration of a sharpened end of a pencil with a shadow of a girl on a mountain drawn into the pencilEducated : a memoir – Traces the author’s experiences as a child born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, describing her participation in her family’s paranoid stockpiling activities and her resolve to educate herself well enough to earn acceptance into a prestigious university and the unfamiliar world beyond.

The Good Neighbor : the Life and Work of Fred Rogers – Drawing on original interviews, oral histories and archival documents, the author traces the iconic children’s program host’s personal, professional, and artistic life through decades of work.  Narrated by LeVar Burton.

Stephen King's cover of Pet Sematary featuring a cat so scary I can't even describe it in the alt text.Pet Sematary: A novel – When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job, and moves his family to the idyllic, rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Yet despite Ludlow’s tranquility, there’s an undercurrent of danger that lingers like the graveyard in the woods near the Creed’s home, where generations of children have buried their beloved pets.  This Stephen King classic is narrated by Michael C. Hall.

Front cover of book featuring Eric Idle dressed up as a knight from Monty Python and the Holy GrailAlways Look On the Bright Side of Life : A Sortabiography – From the ingenious comic performer, Eric Idle, founding member of Monty Python, and creator of Spamalot, comes an absurdly funny memoir of unparalleled wit and heartfelt candor.

 

Cover of book featuring a couple clothed in roses.The Greatest Love Story Ever Told – Presented as an oral history in a series of conversations between the couple, the book features anecdotes, hijinks, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery. This is not only the intoxicating book that Megan Mullally’s and Nick Offerman’s fans have been waiting for, it might just hold the solution to the greatest threat facing our modern world: the single life.

 

Redgunk Tales this Monday, April 9th

Cover of book entitled "RedGunk Tales : Apocalypse and Kudzu from Redgunk, MississippiJoin us on Monday, April 9th in RPL 300B at 7:00 P.M. for a presentation from Dr. Bill Eakin, professor of philosophy and German from the University of the Ozarks, on his book entitled, Redgunk Tales : Apocalypse and Kudzu from Redgunk, Mississippi.  Dr. Eakins will discuss his book as well as tips for publishing short stories.

Redgunk Tales features 13 interwoven stories set in the fictional town of Redgunk, Mississippi, where “the predictable lives of the smothering backwater’s residents are touched by shadowy supernatural events” (Publisher’s Weekly).

Critics have said Dr. Eakin’s stories are like “Thomas Wolfe on acid and James Joyce on moonshine,” and “simultaneously a place of prosaic horror and absolute beauty.”  His most recent literary work has been labeled “a stunning masterpiece” by Andre Dubus, III (House of Sand and Fog).

Dr. Eakins currently lives in Arkansas on a cliff above Piney Bay outside of Russellville. Over one hundred of his short works have appeared in most of the big genre zines, as well as in numerous literary journals.  Many of his stories were recommended by Science Fiction Writers of America for the Nebula Award, and have been reprinted in five book collections, which can be found on Amazon.

Monday’s lecture is part of an ongoing local author series presented by the Ross Pendergraft Library every second Monday of each month.  For more information about this event or the series, contact Luke Heffley at lheffley@atu.edu.