Holiday Weekend Hours

Walker Library will be closed Friday and Saturday, July 3-4, in observance of Independence Day.

The library will reopen at 2:00 pm on Sunday, July 5.
Happy Fourth of July!

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photo credit: ayblazerman on Flickr

CAMIO Art Image Database

MTSU Walker Library now subscribes to CAMIO--Catalog of Art Museum Images Online. CAMIO contains about 95,000 images of fine and decorative art that you can present in the classroom, download for research and study, and use to illustrate papers and other assignments. It includes works ranging from 3000 BCE to the present day, including difficult-to-find contemporary art.

If you are not already familiar with this easy-to-use resource, try it by following this link or visit the Research Gateway Databases A-Z page. For a preview, you can look at sample records here.

Anyone in the library can use CAMIO by following the link above. Off-campus use is restricted to current MTSU students and employees, and requires use of a Pipeline username and password.

If you have questions about CAMIO or our other electronic resources, please ask a librarian.

African American Genealogy Workshop

Award-winning author John F. Baker, Jr., will present a workshop on doing African American genealogy as told through his own genealogical research which produced his recently published book, The Washingtons of Wessyngton Plantation: Stories of My Family’s Journey to Freedom. The workshop will be held on Saturday, July 25, 2009, from 9:00am until 10:30am at the Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA), located at 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville.

The workshop is free and open to the public.

Baker discovered the story of his ancestors quite by accident when he saw a photograph of four former slaves, entitled “Black Tennesseans,” in a seventh grade social studies book. Later he learned that two of them were his grandmother’s grandparents. Baker has lived his entire life just a few miles from Wessyngton Plantation in a town populated by hundreds of descendants of its former slaves. For more than thirty years, he has been researching, conducting interviews, and collecting photographs and information about them and the hundreds of others enslaved on the plantation.

Baker has written extensively on Wessyngton and the lives of African Americans there. The National Historical Home submission, Families and Cabins: Archaeological and Historical Investigations at Wessyngton Plantation included his paper, which earned him a national history award from the American Association for State and Local History.

Those wishing to attend the workshop must contact TSLA to reserve a seat as the number of attendees is limited. Reservations can be made via e-mail to workshop.tsla@tn.gov. Patrons can also register by telephone by calling 615-741-2764. Parking is available in front, on the side, and in back of the Library and Archives building.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
TSLA Public Services
403 Seventh Ave North
Nashville, TN 37243
Fax: 615-741-6471

Moo! It's June Dairy Month

You may have missed the activities at Rutherford County’s June Dairy Day, but there are still a few days left in Dairy Month. Your dairy-loving librarian has a few titles to recommend in honor of Tennessee's official state beverage:

Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (2008, Knopf). Anne Mendelson relates a history of milk and dairy production that spans the globe and dates back to 6000 BC. The second half of the book is devoted to fresh dairy recipes from around the world, each with a short history of the dish.

Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink (2002, New York University Press). E. Melanie DuPois, sociology professor at University of California Santa Cruz, tells the social history of milk in America by focusing on consumption and production. From the rise of cow’s milk as a popular infant food through arguments about bovine growth hormone, DuPois tells a fascinating story.

Chocolate, Strawberry, and Vanilla: A History of American Ice Cream (1995, Bowling Green U Press). Both comfort food and celebratory treat, ice cream hold a firm place in American cuisine. Anne Cooper Funderburg relates how a once expensive indulgence became a fixture in modern society.

For young (and young at heart) readers:

The Amazing Milk Book (1991, Addison-Wesley). Catherine Ross and Susan Wallace provide both instruction and fun facts in this activity book. Generously placed illustrations supplement recipes like leche frita (fried milk) and dairy experiments such as exploding milk.

Ice Cream (2002, Greenwillow). Elisha Cooper tells how ice cream gets “from MOO to you.” Cooper’s watercolors and mix of humor and information make this book a winner for all ages.

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photo credit: striatic on Flickr

Library Privileges for MTSU Alumni

Walker Library serves all of the MTSU community, including alumni. MTSU alumni can check out up to four items at a time, for a period of four weeks. Items may be renewed for an additional four-week period. More information is available on the circulation policies page.

Alumni are also free to use the library's article databases and other electronic resources while in the library. For off-campus access to electronic resources, all Tennessee residents can use TEL, the Tennessee Electronic Library. Just visit http://www.tntel.info.

TEL resources include:

• HeritageQuest Online - Family history, genealogy and census records
• LearningExpress Library - Test preparation, job search and workplace skills
• Tennessee Newspapers - Memphis, Chattanooga and Knoxville papers
• EBSCO Points of View - Essays, articles, and multimedia on controversial topics
• GALE databases - Article databases with access to newspapers, magazines and academic journals. Specialized resources like What Do I Read Next? and Literature Resource Center

The TEL Web site should not request login credentials if you are using an Internet connection originating in Tennessee. Feel free to talk to the library reference desk if you have questions.

Vampires and Manifestos: Featured New Books

Another vampire book by J.R. Ward, Lover Avenged, a scary romance thriller about vampire warriors in......a novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

For those of us of the human species, there are several new books on getting the most out of our mortal lives. The Think Big Manifesto says, Think you can't change your life and the world, Think again. Stand for something before someone stands on you. For a little inspiration, read Showing Up for Life by Bill Gates Sr.

And The Girls from Ames is a wonderful story of eleven childhood friends from Ames, Iowa and their forty-year friendship.

Resources for Visiting Art Students

Students at the Tennessee Governor's School for the Arts are MTSU's special guests this month. And Governor's School visual arts students are even more special. How could that be, you ask?

Well, Mr. Sturgill brought his class of visual art students to visit the library, so we created this research guide to provide links to the resources we discussed during the visit. Happy researching!

ps - The guide is available to any art researcher, not just Governor's School students. If art isn't your thing, try one of our other subject guides or ask a librarian.

Text a Librarian

Heading to campus and want to make sure we're open? Lost in the book stacks and need a call number? Wondering if we have your textbook on reserve? You can now text us your library question. Here are the instructions:

1. Send a text to 265010
2. The message should start with our AIM buddy name (libmtsu) and a colon., followed by your question
3. Example - libmtsu: What is the call number for the book Blink?

You will receive replies as separate text messages. Standard charges apply, based on your cell phone plan.

If we don't answer right away, we may be assisting other users at the reference desk. The quickest way to contact us in that case would be to call us at 615-898-2817.

All of our contact options, including chat and IM, are on our Need Help page.

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photo credit: Pieter Ouwerkerk on Flickr

What is Wolfram|Alpha?

Wolfram|Alpha is a web resource that specializes in providing data and computations on a whole range of topics. “Enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer.”
Check out this demo, and we think you’ll agree that it’s very cool: Wolfram|Alpha demo.
Give it a try and let us know how you used it!

New Room! - Heritage Quest Training session

Due to a high level of interest in this session, the room has been changed to BAS 137 -E, which is in the BAS lab.
The library will be hosting a training session on the Tennessee Electronic Library's ancestry database, Heritage Quest.
The training session will be Tuesday, 6/16/09 from 3:15-4:30 in BAS 137-E. It will be conducted by Linda Cubias of Proquest. If you are interested in ancestry or historical research, we hope to see you there.

Textbook Rentals

Many textbooks are very expensive, and we at the library feel your pain. The library works hard to support MTSU classes with supplemental materials, but we cannot purchase all courses’ textbooks for placement on Walker Library course reserve. It is always disheartening to send away a desperate student “empty-handed” when we know you have a tight budget and possibly an exam the next day requiring access to a textbook.

Recognizing the dilemma that many students face with textbook purchases, new businesses have found a niche in textbook rentals. MyBookHead.com was started by a former MTSU student and offers students an alternative to purchasing expensive textbooks that may only be utilized by faculty one or two times during the course of a semester. MyBookHead.com has partnered with numerous college/campus bookstores throughout the country. Locally, it is partnered with the Blue Raider Bookstore and Beat the Bookstore. Rental fees are usually 10-15% per day of the book’s selling price. For a book that sells for $100.00, a typical rental fee would be $15.00 for three days.

Other textbook rental options include Chegg.com, which mails books directly to a student rather than working through a bookstore and offers discounted semester-long rentals, as does Bookrenter.com.

Angry about high textbook prices? Worried that it's only going to get worse? Feel like it's time for a change? So do governmental groups, university systems, and public interest research groups. Tell someone what you think. Try university administration and your state and federal legislators.

Enjoy! Summer Reading

Enjoy! Summer Reading

Settle down with a nice cup of bush tea and enjoy the latest adventures of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. In this novel, a local football team needs Precious Ramotswe to explain why they are having a dreadful losing streak and Mma. Makutsi discovers an old rival has her sights set on her fiancé.

Or, would you rather visit Bon Temps, Louisiana and look in on the latest adventures of Sookie Stackhouse with her vamp friends and the local Were pack in Dead and Gone.

Read The Language of Bees by Laurie King about Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes solving a case that will push their relationship to the breaking point.

Stone Barrington is back in a tropical thriller, set in Key West, where appearances can be deceiving…and dangerous in this latest from Stuart Woods, Loitering with Intent

As San Francisco’s most glamorous millionaires mingle at the party of the year, someone is watching—waiting…Finally, the killer pinpoints the ideal moment and it’s the perfect murder. Not a trace of evidence is left behind in their glamorous home. The new episode of the Women’s Murder Club by James Patterson, The 8th Confession.

Another book by Lisa Jackson, Malice. The scent is unmistakable…Opening his eyes in the hospital room where he’s recovering, New Orleans detective Rick Bentz sees her standing in the doorway. Then Jennifer blows him a kiss and disappears. But it couldn’t have been Jennifer. She died twelve years ago……and so the mystery thriller begins……

And now for a change of pace in Debbie Macomber’s Summer on Blossom Street where life is a lot like knitting, dropped stitches and all at the new class, called Knit to Quit for people who want to quit something ….or someone…and start a new phase of their lives.