Tweet tweet! GHL is now on Twitter!

Attention all social-networkers: GHL has joined Twitter! Follow our tweets posted under the name "askghl."

What is Twitter, some of you may ask? Ellyssa Kroski explains in the Online Education Database blog, iLibrarian:

What is it
Twitter is a free communication and social networking tool which allows you to convey short messages of up to 140 characters to your circle of friends via the Twitter website, SMS, email, IM, or other Twitter client. Messages appear not only within your profile on Twitter, but are sent to your community of followers who have signed up to receive your updates. Often referred to as microblogging, this new phenomenon has caught on with over 300,000 users on Twitter alone including Barack Obama and John Edwards. Twitter recently made the cut as one of Time’s Best 50 Websites of 2007. Librarians are using it to communicate at conferences and events and to keep up with developments in the field, and libraries have begun using it to promote their services."

How to use it
Check out some of these great how-to guides which will have you twittering in no time:

The 12 Minute Definitive Guide to Twitter
WebJunction: Mobile Instant Messaging Meets Social Networking: Twitter - A Beginner’s Guide, Part 2
Newbie’s guide to Twitter
David Lee King: Twtter Explained for Librarians, or 10 ways to use Twitter

Screencasts:
David Free: Welcome To The Twitterverse
David Lee King: Twitter, part 2: the “fluff

Read more of Ellyssa's post at: http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2007/a-guide-to-twitter-in-libraries/


Happy Twittering! :o)
Sarah

June New Materials

The June new materials list is now available. We added 68 books, DVDs, and other items over the last month, thanks to the impressive efforts of our faculty selectors and the library staff.

We added a total of 1228 items to the collection this year. A few more of the items ordered this year are still working their way in, but many of that total have arrived. We hope that we'll be able to pursue a similar amount of items next year (depending on how the budget ends up).

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

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

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.

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

Information Literacy Workshop, June 17, 2009

MUM Faculty and Staff are invited to participate in a Wednesday morning workshop from 9 am to 12 noon with brunch at the Gardner-Harvey Library, which will be facilitated by Sarah Frye and Beth Tumbleson. Participants will review the results from Project Information Literacy Progress Report which targets where students struggle with course-related research. We will discuss ACRL national standards and individual solutions to providing instruction in information literacy. Finally, attendees will have the opportunity to rework an assignment to incorporate one such information literacy skill. This strengthens student academic achievement.

Watch "Prometeus the Media Revolution", Part I, 5 minutes to review changes in the information world over the centuries.

Everything's working now - search at will!

Library databases and services are fully working again. Both on-campus and off-campus access are restored.

Library servers down Tues. evening - alternate route

Miami University Libraries servers will be down this evening from about 6pm until 5:30am due to an electrical outage. The Gardner-Harvey Library website will not be affected by the outage.

If you need to access our databases and electronic resources during the server outage, many of them are available through remote access at OhioLINK. Go to http://auth.ohiolink.edu/ to login and then choose your database or resource using the alphabetical or subject-oriented lists of resources.

The OhioLINK Central Catalog will also be operating while the Miami catalog is down: access it at http://olc1.ohiolink.edu/search/.

The Gardner-Harvey Library closes at 5:00pm tonight and does not reopen until 8:00am on Wednesday morning. If you have any difficulties in between those times, please email us at midref@lib.muohio.edu

Beth's Beach Bag of Books

Are you headed for the beach this summer? Lake shore or seaside? Even if you remain seated by a stream in Ohio, you may still linger over leisure reading. Here are the titles I plan to stuff in my summer“beach bag”. It’s an eclectic mix of fiction and nonfiction by winners of the Pulitzer Prize of Fiction, authors of New York Time best-sellers, world class authors, and the spiritually attuned.

Jiles, Paulette. The Color of Lightening. William Morrow. 2009.

McCall Smith, Alexander. Tea Time for the Traditionally Built. Pantheon Books. 2009.

Robinson, Marilynne. Home. Farrar, Staus, & Giroux. 2008.

Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kittredge. Random House. 2008.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. HarperOne, 2009.

Summer Offerings @ Your Library

Spring semester exams conclude the year, but don’t let that stop you from visiting the Gardner-Harvey Library throughout the summer months. Academic libraries have much to offer all year long. Job-seekers may want internet access to check job postings online and rework resumes using Microsoft Office. Readers may want to browse for good reads in the New Books collection which includes fiction and non-fiction. Film fanatics may want to scan the latest DVDs added to the IMC collection. And then there is the STAR Lounge for Wii gamers and presenters who wish to practice in private. So come by the library Monday-Thursday 8 AM to 7 PM and Friday 8 AM to 5 PM. The library staff will be on hand to guide you through the information universe.

Public scanner available in the library!

The library has just purchased (and Technology Services has installed) a scanner in the library for anyone to use. It's located on the wall with the copiers and printers, just before you get to the STAR Lounge.

It does a great job with photos, documents, and other items (even cell phones - I tried it 8-) ). You can save scans in a variety of file formats, including PDF.

There is no charge for the service, and we're happy to help you get your scanning done.

Extended open hours on Saturday

The library is open for extended hours this coming Saturday, May 2, from 11:00-5:00 if you need help or a quiet place to study. Our IM reference service will also be up and operating during this time.

Good luck on finals!

February/March New Materials

The February/March new materials list is now available. We added 210 books, DVDs, and other items over the last month, thanks to the impressive efforts of our faculty selectors and the library staff.

I expect that April will be a big month for new items as well - many books and DVDs are appearing in the back room each day and heading out to the shelves.

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

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

John

Celebrate @ Your Library!

National Library Week, April 12-18, 2009

The Gardner-Harvey Library invites you to celebrate National Library Week with us. We will hold a Wednesday Wii Tournament On April 15 for all-comers in the STAR Lounge throughout the day. Prizes will be awarded to the 3 top bowlers. We will also run a Quotations Quiz to identify the author/speaker of a number of quotes from Monday, April 13 to Thursday, April 16 at noon. Prizes will be awarded to 3 winners. Throughout the week, we will offer lifesavers, bookmarks, and pens for those who visit the Miami University Middletown Library. Join in the fun and find a good read while you are here.

EJC is back!

The good folks at OhioLINK have notified us that the Electronic Journal Center (EJC) is now up and running with all publishers' journals included. As you work through our databases and click on the Find It! link, full-text articles that are located in the EJC will now click through correctly (please let us know if you see any remaining issues). You may also search the EJC directly. Thank you so much for your patience with this situation.

GHL Librarians Go West

While some head south to bask on sunny beaches, the Gardner-Harvey Librarians will be heading west over spring break! Destination: Seattle to attend the Association of College and Research Libraries biennial meeting over four days. Why would they travel so far? "To Push the Edge: Explore, Engage, Extend!" Naturally they will return with wild, wild west ideas to implement right here at Miami University Middletown. Watch and see.

New Playaway Titles Added

Now is the time to see our new list of Playaway digital audio devices! We have added 41 more titles to our collection, taking us toward 212 titles in the collection.

Read more on what these devices are and how they work, or take a look at the new list (just click on the titles for a summary of the digital audio book and to request us to hold one for you).

EJC Restoration Update

From the good folks at OhioLINK:

While content in the Electronic Journal Center remains unavailable, OhioLINK is working diligently to provide access to the same content on each publisher's Web site. Available publishers’ sites are listed here and we continue to update this list as needed. Project Muse has been added to the list today and their content is now available. Links to the listed publisher sites work for both on and off campus users.

Over the weekend OhioLINK staff were able to restore EJC content from 2008-2009 for most publishers, except Elsevier, Springer and Blackwell. We continue to work to restore the remaining EJC content as quickly as possible, but do not have all the reload processes in place yet nor the experience to provide a useful time line for full EJC restoration. We hope to be able to share a schedule in the near future.

Since we have a growing body of available content, we restored the alphabetical title links on the EJC home page. These links show only those journals that are currently available, for other journals or issues please continue to visit the publishers’ sites.

New materials for December/January

The December/January new materials list is now available. We added 61 books, DVDs, and other items over the last month, thanks to the impressive efforts of our faculty selectors and the library staff.

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

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

John