Monday, April 30, 2007

Special Library Hours — exams and summer

The library will be open extended hours through exams week, and then we will be on limited hours until the beginning of the Summer sessions. Summer session hours are also a bit different than Spring and Fall hours. Please see the Library Hours page for details.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Podcast — Learn Mandarin Chinese

Haven’t you always wanted to know how to buy real estate or talk to your hairdresser in Mandarin? With Serge Melnyk’s free podcasts, you can learn to do that and so much more. There are 63 lessons so far, with more to come.

While the podcasts are free and downloadable, Melnyk does charge for worksheets and transcripts.

Chinese Lessons with Serge Melnyk

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Equal Pay Day

On average, women still only earn 77% of what men earn. For women of color, the gap is even greater. To recognize this inequality, today has been declared Equal Pay Day.

Visit the following websites to learn more about the wage gap and how you can avoid losing out as you move from college to the working world.

(And guys, this affects you, too. If you marry a woman, don’t you want her to be bringing in as much money as possible? Wouldn’t you like for your daughters to be able to put you in the best possible nursing home when the time comes?)

National Committee on Pay Equity
WAGE (Women are Getting Even)
“Over her lifetime, a woman will lose between $700,000 and $2 million. DON’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO YOU.”
– from Getting EVEN by Evelyn Murphy, author, founder, and President of the WAGE Project, Inc.

Apply for summer work in the library

The library is currently taking applications for student positions in the library for the summer months. Positions are available in a number of departments in the building. To qualify, you must be enrolled for at least one class during the summer sessions or show evidence that you are enrolled for the fall semester. If hired in the summer, you will be eligible to continue working in the fall.

To apply, print and complete our online application form (http://library.mtsu.edu/administration/StdApp.pdf) and return it to the service desk near the front doors of the library.

If you have questions, call Joanne Minnick at 898-2612.

Several Database Trials

Go to the Database Trialspage to access several database trials available now. Subject include education, business, literature, and colleges & careers.

Databases currently undergoing trials are:


Through May 27th - CQ Press



CQ Weekly - Congressional Quarterly’s magazine on government, commerce, and politics.

Political Reference Suite - integrates many of CQ Press’s reference titles on government and politics.




Through May 23th- Gale database trials



Demographics Now for Libraries: National w/ Expenditure Data - demographic information including income, housing, race, age, education, consumer expenditures and more.

RDS Business & Industry - content from over 1000 trade and industry publications, regional, national and international newspapers, business dailies and newsletters.

Litfinder - access poems, plays, speeches, short stories and more.

Gale Virtual Reference Library - Xrefer Unlimited - See below for description.

Educator’s Reference Complete - more than 450 full-text academic journals, hundreds of full-text reports, and many reference sources.


Small Business Resource Center - combination of periodicals and reference content.Testing & Education Reference Center with Career Module - in-depth information on colleges and universities, graduate and professional programs, distance learning, corporate training, available scholarships and awards, preparatory entrance tests and much more.


Through 5/31/2007 - Gale Digital Collection



Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945 - fully text-searchable British government documents from the National Archives of the UK, a linked Chronology of World War II, cine film from the Imperial War Museum London and newly commissioned thematic essays to create a primary-source research environment for students, teachers and researchers

Eighteenth Century Collections Online - access the digital images of every page of 150,000 books published during the 18th Century. With full-text searching of approximately 26 million pages, the product allows researchers new methods of access to critical information in the fields of history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, science and more.

Testaments to the Holocaust - this digital resource offers the unique collection of eyewitness accounts from the World’s oldest Holocaust museum, founded by Alfred Wiener as the “Jewish Central Information Office” in 1939. The collection offers fully searchable personal accounts of life in Nazi Germany, along with photographs, propaganda materials such as school text books, limited circulation publications and rare serials in a uniquely flexible format.

Iraq, 1914-1974: The Middle East Online, Series 2 - an essential contemporary resource for the understanding of modern Iraq, using primary source documents from The National Archives of the UK, this online fully searchable collection of British Government files covers the period from the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War and the creation of the new state, to the rise of Saddam Hussein in 1974. General Editor: Dr Charles Tripp, SOAS, University of London.

Arab-Israeli Relations, 1917-1970: The Middle East Online, Series 1 - offers a wide range of original source material, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the Black September war of 1970-1. These materials - letters, minutes, reports, maps - are selected by Dr. Eugene Rogan, Director of the Middle East Centre, University of Oxford - from primary source documents at the National Archives, London.

The Making of the Modern World: Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature 1450-1850 - provides digital facsimile images on every page of 61,000 works of literature on economic and business published from 1450 through 1850. Full-text searching on more than 12 million pages provides researchers unparalleled access to this vast collection of material on commerce, finance, social conditions, politics, trade and transport.

The Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises 1800-1926 - provides digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926. Full-text searching on more than 10 million pages provides researchers access to critical legal history in ways not previously possible.

Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers - With digital facsimile images of both full pages and clipped articles for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers and advanced searching capabilities, researchers will be able to research history in ways previously unavailable. For each issue, the newspaper is captured from cover-to-cover, providing access to every article, advertisement and illustration.

Northern Ireland: A Divided Community, 1921-1972 Cabinet Papers of the Stormont Administration - the Stormont Administration ran Northern Ireland as a province of the UK from 1921-72. This digital resource offers full-text searching of facsimile images of the complete record of Stormont from the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, along with new interpretative essays and resources. “CAB 4″ represents a unique record of “how government actually works” through turbulent and often violent times.

Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 - based on Joseph Sabin’s landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900’s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more. With over 6 million pages from 29,000 works, this collection is a cornerstone in the study of the western hemisphere.

U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1832-1978 - containing nearly 11 million pages of records and briefs brought before the U.S. Supreme Court in the period 1832-1978, this product provides an essential primary source tool for the study of all aspects of American history as well as the U.S. judicial system.

The Times Digital Archive 1785 – 1985 - Researchers can search through the complete digital edition of The Times (London), using keyword searching and hit-term highlighting to retrieve full facsimile images of either a specific article or a complete page. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.

Women, War and Society, 1914-1918 - from the Imperial War Museum, London: a ground-breaking fully text-searchable mixed media archive - press-cuttings, minutes, reports, correspondence and photographs - accompanied by newly commissioned themed essays for researchers and students new to digital primary source historical documents. Use this archival collection to research every aspect of British women’s war effort.




Through May 20th- Xreferplus - an online reference source



Xreferplus is an online reference service featuring 234 full-text reference titles with over 2 million entries from 50 publishers. Includes interactive features such as dynamic table functionality for world, state, and county statistics, an interactive world atlas, and our critically-acclaimed concept map. Xrefer also features over 66,000 images, over 180,000 audio pronunciations, and a citation formatter in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats. See the Xreferplus title list and the Xreferplus Trial Guide for more information.

Save paper– print double-sided

If you’ve been around for a while, you’ll know that the printers in the library had been set to automatically print on both sides of the page. After the last upgrade, we lost this setting, but you can help us out by setting this up yourself each time you print.

To print double-sided, do this:

Print>Preferences>Print on Both Sides

Thanks.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Printing is not actually “free”

On Friday, our systems librarian, David Robinson, posted this comment to a blog post about conserving printer paper. He made some very good points, so I wanted to put it in its own post:

“Contrary to popular belief, and as mistakenly stated in the blog above, printing in University labs is not “free”. Printing is subsidized by a portion of a $100 Technology Access Fee (TAF) that each student pays each semester. The TAF helps to fund the lab, but does not cover everything. About 35% of the cost of printing comes out of the Library’s budget. That means, that your decision to print that Powerpoint presentation, rather than viewing it online, may be the factor that prevents the Library from buying a book that can be used over and over again. Last year, over 6,500,000 pages were printed in the Library. Something to think about.”

Friday, April 20, 2007

Tips for Conserving Paper

Printing is free on this campus, and while that is a great bonus to students, it should be done wisely. We’ve already told you this week how much paper is used just in the library in one year. You’ve also seen how much paper is left on the printers in one week.

You can take advantage of free printing while conserving paper at the same time:

  • Double-sided printouts: the library printers are automatically set to print double-sided, but many people leave these printouts on the machine, preferring single-sided printouts. If you are not required to use single-sided pages for class, leave this setting on. If you need a single-sided printout, change the setting before you print: File>Print>Properties>Print on Both Sides (uncheck this) .

  • Use Print Preview : Make sure your printout will look like you expect it to. Some websites need to be printed in Landscape orientation so that words are not cut off. Go to File>Print Preview to see what you’re going to get.

  • Don’t print everything in the print queue: When you look at the print jobs displayed on the touch screens, ask yourself “do I need all of this?” You may have printed some documents twice, or maybe you went back and made a change to something and printed again. Also, there may be print jobs left from the last person who used the computer. Look at the time stamps and the number of pages on the jobs to determine which you really need.

  • Email or save articles instead of printing: If you’re not sure whether or not you’re going to need an article later, save it to your flash drive or email it to yourself. You can always print it later if you need to. Most of the article databases, and many websites, allow you to email or save an article.
  • Tuesday, April 17, 2007

    6,347,650 = ? miles

    There were 6,347,650 pages printed in the library last year.

    Laid end to end, 6.3 million pages would stretch 1100 miles, or approximately the driving distance from Murfreesboro to Taos, NM.

    Also, it takes 755 trees to make 6.3 million pieces of printer paper.