Friday, August 30, 2013

What's YOUR Zone? Group or Quiet?


QUIET ZONES -- Designated quiet zones on the 3rd and 4th floors, from the elevators back.






GROUP ZONES -- Areas for groups in rooms 248 and 446 feature large tables and movable white boards. Group study rooms for 4-8 people are located throughout the building.



GROUP COMPUTERS -- Movable chairs and computer desks to accommodate two people (behind Reference Desk on the 1st floor). All group study rooms are equipped with computers.

INDIVIDUAL COMPUTERS -- There is a large computer lab on the 1st floor, right inside the front doors and to the left; computers are also located on each upper floor past the elevators.

Learn more about library spaces at this website.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Reserves... what's that?

Does your syllabus say "on reserve in the Library"? Do you know what that is? 

The Reserves department supports the instructional needs of University faculty by providing greater access to limited resources like course packets, instructor's personal copies, copyrighted materials, books, etc. Most items on reserve must be used within the library on a 1-3 hour loan. You can make copies (where allowable by copyright) at the copy center or on library scanners.




Materials in the Reserves collection may be borrowed and returned at the Circulation Desk located to the left when entering the atrium of the Library. The Circulation Desk is staffed during all hours the library is open. You can also access some items on e-reserves. Let us know if you have questions: 615-904-8539. 

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Welcome New Freshmen!

...and everyone else!


Finding your way on campus the first few days can be confusing. Even if you were here last semester over the summer there have been lots of changes on campus. If you are on campus Monday the 26th or Tuesday the 27th, look for the Walker Library Question Tent in the quad in front of the library. We can answer any questions you have. We will be outside 7:30 am-1:30pm  on both days. Of course, you can come in and ask questions at any desk whenever the library is open. To help you get sorted here are some links of interest-

ID office (remember you can't check out materials without an ID)

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Catalog Downtime, part 2


On Friday, July 26 at 6pm, the library catalog will go offline for 2-4 hours for a bug fix related to our recent upgrade

Here's how this will effect the user experience:
  • The classic catalog at http://library2.mtsu.edu will be completely offline.
  • The Search box on the library homepage will let you search for books, and it will show location information, but it won't show whether the item is here or checked out. 
  • Some ebooks and online videos may be inaccessible through the Search box during this time. See our Ebooks page and Media Resources page for alternate access.
  • You will not be able to login to your Library Account during this time to pay fines, renew books, or look up checked out items.
The Library will close at 6 p.m. before the catalog goes offline, and when we reopen at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, everything should be back to normal. We apologize for any disruption to your research activity.

If you have any questions, contact a librarian.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Library Orientation for Grad Students

The James E. Walker Library will offer a "Library Orientation for Graduate Students" workshop on Thursday, August 22 from 3:00-4:00 p.m. in Meeting Place 4 (on the 4th floor near Special Collections). This workshop will cover library basics for graduate students in all disciplines, including information on:



  • Online periodical indexes
  • Circulation and interlibrary loan
  • EndNote Web citation management tool
  • Personal graduate student carrels
  • Library assistance and help
Librarian liaisons will also be on hand to give short library tours.
No registration is necessary. Contact Jason Vance (Jason.Vance@mtsu.edu) or Kristen West (K.West@mtsu.edu) for more information.

Friday, July 12, 2013

Catalog downtime, July 18

What: Catalog offline
When: July 18: 10:00am-2:30pm
So what? locating books and other library items will be a little trickier during this time


On July 18 we are making some upgrades on the back-end of our catalog, so the catalog will be down from 10am-2:30pm. Here's how this will effect the user experience:

  • The classic catalog at http://library2.mtsu.edu will be completely offline.
  • The Search box on the library homepage will let you search for books, but no location information will be displayed
  • You will not be able to login to your Library Account during this time to pay fines, renew books, or look up checked out items.

If you can't wait until the system comes back up, here's what you can do during this time.
  • You will be able to check out books at the Circulation desk.
  • Looking for a book? Visit the Reference desk on the library first floor, and we may be able to approximate location information for an item held in the library.
  • If you need to pay a fine or fee, you can go directly to the fee payment site, but you must already know the exact amount of your fine. Library staff will not be able to look it up during this time.

We expect this upgrade to go quickly and smoothly, and that we will be back in business by 2:30 pm on the 18th. If you have any questions, contact a librarian.

Friday, June 28, 2013

Tons of online videos to use for class

Alexander Street Press is a great streaming video collection that the Walker Library subscribes to. Some of the great features are: 
  •  Watch videos on the go with mobile access via most handheld devices.
  • Searchable transcripts run alongside each video.
  • Permanent URLs let users cite and share video.
  • An embeddable video player lets libraries and instructors deliver video content to other users on secure Web site pages or via course management systems (D2L).



1,000 film scripts with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts--more than 100,000 scenes of human experience. Search by character, scene, race, nationality, age, subject, year of writing, and other elements. Titles licensed for the collection include: From Here to Eternity, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Casablanca, American Gigolo, Raging Bull, The China Syndrome, The Maltese Falcon, The Gold Rush, Unforgiven, Blade Runner, State and Main, Hotel Rwanda, Span’glish, Gods and Monsters, Ararat, Black Hawk Down, The Last Temptation of Christ, To Sir With Love, Witness, In the Line of Fire, The Last Detail, Taxi Driver, Out of the Past, JFK, Platoon, Boogie Nights, The Big Chill, Night of the Hunter, The Searchers, Rebel Without a Cause, The Hustler, The Magnificent Ambersons, Fury, The Sting…



1,300 hours of teaching demonstrations, lectures, documentaries, and primary-source footage of students and teachers in actual classrooms.  Videos frequently used in university-level education programs are part of the collection, including Thoughtful Reading: Teaching Comprehension to Adolescents (Stenhouse), Successful Teaching Practices in Action: New Media in the Classroom (Teachers Network), Inclusion, I.E.P. and Special Needs Laws: What Teachers Should Know (Learning Seed), Race in the Classroom: The Multiplicity Of Experience (The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning), and Teaching Reading 3-5 Workshop: Classroom Program:  Close Reading for Understanding (Annenberg Learner).



756 hours of classic and contemporary documentaries produced by leading video producers in the discipline; previously unpublished footage from working anthropologists and ethnographers in the field; and select feature films. Includes footage from every continent and hundreds of unique cultures, and is particularly rich in its coverage of the developing world. Thematic areas include: language and culture, kinesthetics, body language, food and foraging, cooking, economic systems, social stratification and status, caste systems and slavery, male and female roles, kinship and families, political organization, conflict and conflict resolution, religion and magic, music and the arts, culture and personality, and sex, gender, and family roles



307 videos created by Medcom-Trainex, specifically for the education and training of nurses, nursing assistants, and other healthcare workers. Video is the ideal training medium for one of the most practical of professions, giving nursing students a way to observe highly technical procedures and complex patient interactions before practicing in a clinical setting.



High-quality video (750 hours by the end of the year) for the study of disease management, injury treatment, nutrition, special populations, fitness and health assessment, medical fitness, exercise adherence, sport science, worksite wellness, and much more. More than 90 percent of the content in the collection is less than five years old, and more than 100 hours of new content are added each year.