Documentaries & Discussions

The Gardner-Harvey Library has been awarded a grant in the last year by the National Endowment of the Humanities and The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.  The Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle grant (http://createdequal.neh.gov/ ) will make possible four public screenings and discussions of documentaries, facilitated by a Miami scholar. 

Dr. Brian Domino will launch the series with The Loving Story which explores the legislative ban of interracial marriage until one couple’s story reached the U.S. Supreme Court, on Thursday 2/13/14 from 6-7:30 PM, CCC 142. 

Then Dr. Caryn Neumann will facilitate Freedom Riders, the second documentary which explores the story of volunteers who challenged interracial segregation practices on interstate travel in 1961 by sitting where they pleased on buses traveling to the Deep South, on Thursday 4/3/14, from 7-9 PM, CCC 142. 

Please join us for these and additional programs in 2014, sponsored by the Gardner-Harvey Library.  If you would like to screen all 4 documentaries in abbreviated form, please watch these clips, with total running time of 43 minutes:  http://createdequal.neh.gov/community/excerpt-reel

Free Journal Articles?

The ways of publishing affect your searching.  All you want is to find a complete (full-text) article.  Your go-to search strategy is Google, the search engine...

Problem:  But wait one minute; that approach won't work.  Why??  Publishers are in business to make money; they are providing a service but not for FREE.  The academic journals with full-text articles that you need for your research project are only available for a price and are sold to academic libraries who are willing to pay big money for access.  Miami University Libraries negotiates electronic journal and eBook deals with publishers like Elsevier, Oxford, Sage, Wiley .  OhioLINK at the state level negotiates deals with publishers.  These prices go up yearly while library budgets flatten or decrease so maintaining access is a big deal.  Actual journal titles you may access change with changing rights and deals.

But wait, what about open access where everyone has free access to everything.  Not a reality, yet.  Yes, the publishing world is in transition and more content is available online free at various sites and using Google Scholar.   But NOT everything.  And often Google Scholar links back to Miami University Libraries' holdings for full-text access!

Solution:  To get the complete journal article, go to The Gardner-Harvey Library website.  Search one ore more library databases in Databases A-Z or use Articles & More (EBSCO Discovery Service), funded by Miami Libraries, to make access available to you.

Once you locate the journal articles you need, click the HTML or PDF full-text link which takes you magically to the complete article in that database or in another one via a "link resolver."  All you do is enter your Miami ID and Password, when prompted, in order to search the library database and get the full-text article. Yes, these electronic resources are password-protected when you are off-campus, because these electronic resources are not free, as you now know.  Google is no help at all here, sad but true.

Add an embedded librarian to Niihka for Winter Term or Spring Semester

Would you like, in one of more of your classes, to participate in the Embedded Librarian service in Niihka in Winter Term or Spring Semester 2014?  Whether you are teaching face to face, hybrid, or online courses, you may collaborate with a learning management system (LMS) embedded librarian:

•          To strengthen your students’ online research skills
•          To enlarge their understanding of the resources and services available through Miami University Libraries
•          To provide learning objects like screencasts or planning and citation tools to aid students at various stages of the research process

As you know, students feel overwhelmed with research which entails so many starting points and long lists of results.  They struggle getting started as well as knowing how to navigate a complex university library system.  As one economics student working on a group project admitted:

"This assignment was very difficult for us as a group. I had a hard time finding state specific research so for the first time I utilized the online librarian through Niihka. What a great service. The librarian helped to find me more specific and updated information, as I had found some data but felt it wasn’t recent enough to use. "

Students appreciate working with an accessible librarian who “gets” the assignment and research landscape, offers help in framing a research question as well as suggesting databases and search terms. After an email exchange, one relieved family studies and social work student shared:

“This is beyond excellent! I thank you so much for your help.”

The Gardner-Harvey embedded librarians were embedded in 42 course sections in Fall Semester 2013, collaborating with 22 instructors, reaching 1,000 students.  To see what embedded librarianship looks like, visit http://tinyurl.com/embeddedsandwich to watch brief video introductions by the librarians and view sample pages of resources placed in Niihka courses.

These partnerships also lead to:

•          information literacy sessions in the classroom
•          individual research consultations
•         creating customized learning objects for the class
•          keeping current with the libraries’ latest databases, acquisitions, and discovery service

To get started with an embedded librarian in 2014, please reply to this email with the following information:

•          Name
•          Course Section(s)
•          Research Assignment Described/Attached
•         Concepts/Skills to Teach:  (See suggestions from the Information Literacy Menu)
•         Time:  Startup Only, Research Period, Full Semester

Your embedded librarian will be in touch to talk with you about creating requested content and interacting with your students.

John Burke burkejj@miamioh.edu

Jessie Long longjh@miamioh.edu

Beth Tumbleson tumbleb@miamioh.edu

Coffee is coming! (and tea and cocoa)

The Library will offer free coffee, tea, and hot cocoa all during finals week, starting on Monday, December 9th.  It will be set up in our entrance area from roughly 8:00am to 9:00pm, Monday through Thursday, and from 8:00am to 5:00pm on Friday.  Please drop on by and enjoy a cup!  

It's our way of making your last minute studying and paper/project preparation a bit more relaxing.  Thanks for being a part of our library community!