Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Save Ohio's Public Libraries!

The current funding situation for Ohio's public libraries is in a fairly distressing state as our public servants strive to balance the budget. Serious reductions in state funding could close branches within library systems or even entire library systems. I encourage you to inform yourself on the issue and, if you are so moved, act to assist our public library colleagues. The Save Ohio Libraries site provides much useful information.

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries." - Anne Herbert

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The secrets of Google Scholar

Have you used Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) ? Here are a few tips to make your research life a little easier:

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations.

Keep in mind that you have access to many of these same materials in full-text through the Miami University Library system! Setting your preferences using the directions below will help you see if a given resource in Google Scholar is available through the libraries:

•Use “Scholar Preferences” --> Library Links --> enter “OhioLINK” and check the box

When you see an article in your Google Scholar search results, you may find out if the library has full-text access to the article by clicking the “Find it with OLinks” or “OhioLINK OLinks” links.

Netbooks are here!

The Library has added seven Acer Aspire One netbooks to our one-day loan laptops on reserve. The netbooks are small and lightweight (with 8.9" screens, weighing just over 2 pounds), yet powerful and capable of your web-browsing and document-creating needs (a fairly large keyboard, 6 hours of battery time, and includes the full Microsoft Office application suite).

Check one out today to enjoy easy, go-anywhere access to coursework. Netbooks, like our other laptops, check out through the time the library closes on the next day we are open. Check out a netbook on Tuesday at 10:30am, and it's due back on Wednesday at 7:00pm (our summer hours) or 9:00pm (when school starts back in August).

The Library now has 12 laptops available for students and 8 laptops for faculty and staff to check out.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

April/May New Materials

The April/May new materials list is now available. We added 358 books, DVDs, and other items over the last month, thanks to the impressive efforts of our faculty selectors and the library staff.

More orders from this year are still appearing as we enter June. I will post an update for the academic year on our acquisitions with the July new materials list.

You can find our current and previous new materials lists on the left hand side of our web site under "Faculty" or "Students", and then "New Materials Lists."

Have a suggestion of something to order? Email one of our staff members or drop by the library. Thanks!

John