Mural Competition Deadline Extended!

Been to the library lately? You may have noticed that we are making a few changes to how the library looks and we want your help. Gardner-Harvey Library is expanding on our previous Mural Painting competition to add some color and art to another part of the library. The competition is open to all Miami University students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members. Participants have the option of submitting an individual or group design.

Artwork will be judged based on color scheme, design, originality, and ability to express a theme associated with libraries or Miami University Middletown.

All submissions must be returned to the Info Desk in the Gardner-Harvey Library or e-mailed to longjh@muohio.edu by Friday, April 20, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. The winner will be notified by email on Friday, April 27, 2012 by 5:00 p.m.

Rules and entry forms may be downloaded or found at the Gardner-Harvey Library Info Desk. An editable version in Publisher is found here.

*Please note that by entering the contest, you certify that your design is original and does not infringe on copyright laws.

The E-Book Story, Part 3: What's next for e-books?

100,000 e-books is a decent start, but the Gardner-Harvey Library, Miami University Libraries, and OhioLINK are not stopping there.  Before I discuss some of our ongoing plans and future endeavors to add more e-books, let's talk a little about why we might add more e-books.

For an individual library, e-books are appealing in much the same way that full-text periodical articles are:  they are convenient for our patrons.  They can be used on- or off-campus (just like print books), but they do not require going to the library to check them out.  They are available 24/7, whether the library is open or not.  Depending on the collection, they may be able to be used by multiple people at one time, which multiplies their usefulness.  E-books lack physical presence, which makes them easier to haul around and far easier to shelve.  They can also be easily linked in Niihka for class use.

Of course, there are downsides to e-books.  People need to have some sort of device to view them on, and the cost of the device and Internet access may be prohibitive.  They lack the appeal for some of holding a book and turning pages.  Some e-books may lack the diagrams or illustrations of the same book in print, and for others the quality of those illustrations may suffer.  As noted with the Kindle in the previous post in the series, sharing e-books between devices may be difficult or impossible (and if e-books are bought by one library for its patrons, licensing agreements prohibit sharing them with patrons of other libraries). And some publishers do not offer multiple, simultaneous user access to their titles, meaning that only one person can use the book at a time (like print books).

Nonetheless, e-books are becoming a crucial and growing resource for libraries.  Publishers and libraries are making major moves.  Much like the shift from primarily print-based periodical collections to primarily full-text online periodicals, there are incredible gains in access to be had for little or no increase in investment.  This is true for an individual library, where an e-book and a print book may be available at the same price (though, unfortunately, not always at the same time:  an e-book may only be released some time following the print publication).  It is even more so for groups of libraries buying e-books, where making e-books available to multiple simultaneous users at dozens of libraries saves thousands of dollars that can be spent on other resources (print and DVD as well as digital).  And while libraries often wonder how many of the items we purchase will be used, the early data on e-books is that the majority of e-books we have purchased through OhioLINK are being used (for the last fiscal year, July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, nearly 80% of the e-books in the Electronic Book Center were used).

So what's going on right now, and where is this leading for the libraries you can use?  Miami University Libraries has purchased many e-books that are available in the MU Catalog.  They have also added a number of titles into the catalog that are available for purchase, but are only actually bought if multiple people access the book (this is known as demand-driven acquisitions, or DDA).  The Gardner-Harvey Library has purchased a small number of e-books that are available in the MU Catalog, and we're happy to buy more as they are requested.  And OhioLINK is considering a new statewide plan to add more e-book collections (perhaps some through DDA).  No one is ending the purchase of print books, but we are definitely expanding our e-book collections.

As this moves forward, we would like to suggest five ways you can start experiencing e-books and also how you can provide us with some feedback:

1. Visit our e-book collections (linked back in the first post in the series) and take a look at some titles.  Browsing or searching through the collections and looking at the content will help you get a feel for these books.
2. If you have questions about whether reading e-books can really work for you, try out some of our e-books on your mobile device (or give our Kindles a try).  We would be happy to help you make this happen.
3. Suggest some titles or topic areas for which you'd consider having us buy e-books.  Our job is to match people's needs with sources of information, and there might be an e-book out there for you.  One way to do this is to use our online ordering form, but you may also contact me or a member of the staff. 
4. If you're a faculty member, think about whether you could use library e-books as textbooks or sources for class readings.  A license for multiple simultaneous users would be best for a textbook, but even single user access to e-books could work for assigning students to read portions of books. 
5. Take a moment to fill out an extremely brief and completely anonymous survey on e-books which will help us as we make future plans.

The image above was provided under a Creative Commons Attribution License by d.billy.

The E-Book Story, Part 2: How else can I read e-books?

So now you know we have a bunch of e-books and where to find many of them.  You might wonder, though, whether you must be in front of a computer to read them.  Well, the answer to that is yes - by their nature, e-books may only be viewed digitally.  However, there are a lot of mobile devices around today that can serve the role formerly occupied by desktop computers alone.

Any device (smartphone, laptop, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, tablet device, Kindle Fire, etc.) that can browse the Web will let you access and view the e-books we discussed in the last post (as long as you have WiFi available or a 3G or 4G connection).  You just go to the library catalog or the collection in question (or to our library website) and navigate to the book (you'll need to login with your UniqueID and password when off-campus).

But what other ways are available to use these e-books apart from WiFi and more costly connection charges?  Well, one option is to download an e-book to your device.  The problem is, many of our e-books cannot be downloaded (due to the wishes of the publisher in the license agreements).  But one collection is available for download:  EBSCOhost E-books  There are a few requirement for downloading the books:

• You have to set up a free EBSCOhost account within the e-book database (you'll be prompted to do so when you choose to download a book
• You have to download Adobe Digital Editions in order to view the titles or download them to your mobile device.  
• Books are available for a three-day checkout, and you can only have 10 books checked out at one time.

Additional questions about downloading may be answered in the user guide or the FAQ, or by contacting the library.

Another option is to use an e-book reader.  Two things are true:  (1) there are many different e-book readers out there, and (2) we do not yet have a way to have people download e-books from a library collection to their personal e-book readers (other than through the EBSCOhost E-books collection).

However, we have purchased four Amazon Kindles that you can check out from the library for seven days at a time.  We also have five iPads that can read Kindle books through the Kindle app.  More information on these devices is available, along with a list of the Kindle books that we have purchased so far.  We hope you will use them to experience e-book readers and also to enjoy some great books.

Just to note, that group of Kindle books has been built by library patrons who took us up on our offer to purchase a Kindle book when using the Kindle (as well as by library staff testing the devices).  We want you to be able to do the same - Kindle books tend to be quite inexpensive, and they also have many public domain titles available at no charge.  We also envision using the Kindles to retrieve books that are unavailable in OhioLINK libraries (we've had a few opportunities to do that already).  It can really bolster the speed of our interlibrary loan operation.

Kindles do offer some limited abilities to lend titles to other Kindle owners, and the library has also become an Amazon Prime member, which allows us to borrow a single Kindle book each month for no charge.  But this is no way to run a library - you need to have a sizable number of items that you can easily share with people.  We're trying the Kindle experience out, though, and, in my humble opinion, it is a nice reading experience.

So we do have some ways to make e-books a bit more portable.  But what's ahead with e-books?  What plans does the library have for them in the near term?

Be sure to read our next and final entry in the series for some answers.


The image above was provided under a Creative Commons Attribution License by Pen Waggener.

The E-Book Story, Part 1: What are e-books and where can I find some?

E-books:  do you know that we have them?  Do you know the options you have for using them?  Do you know what we're planning to do with e-books in our collection?  If any of these questions interest you, please read on through this series of short posts on e-books.  


E-books are books that are fully available in digital form.  They generally offer the ability to search their texts by keyword, which can make it easy to find concepts throughout the book and jump among them.  They can be read straight through, consulted for key facts, or some combination of the two.  Our expectation with them, as with full-text journal articles, is that they will contain the same illustrations, images, and other content included in the print versions of the books (and this is often true).  They can be read off-campus as well as on, possibly by multiple people at one time.  As we'll see in the series, they appear and are experienced in a variety of ways.


Let's start with the e-books we have.  Miami University and OhioLINK have been buying e-books for several years, both in pre-set collections where we do not choose individual titles and in other arrangements where we do pick the titles.  In some cases, this involves the outright purchase of e-books (such as the reference titles in the Gale Virtual Reference Library).  In other cases, this involves subscribing to services that give us access to e-books (such as Safari Books Online).


There are two primary ways to find our e-books:

1. Browse a collection of the books, like the two mentioned above, or the largest combined collection that we have, the OhioLINK E-Book Center (which searches several collections along with its own e-books).
2. Use the Miami University Catalog to search for items on a topic, and then limiting your search using the categories on the left to the Format "Electronic Resource" and the Material Type "Books."  You will also just come across e-books as you search for your topic in the catalog.

How many e-books do we have?  This is an interesting question, and one that will be expanded on as the series continues.  But of the e-book sources mentioned so far, here are some numbers:

• The OhioLINK E-Book Center has more than 62,000 e-books (on a wide variety of topics, but mainly of a scholarly and reference nature, including works from the publishers ABC-CLIO, Gale, Oxford University Press, Sage, and Springer)
• Safari Books Online includes 16,020 e-books (mainly on technology, digital media, and business from publishers including O'Reilly, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, Sams, and Que)
• EBSCOhost E-Books contains more than 15,000 e-books (on a pretty wide variety of topics from many different publishers)

Adding in a number of the smaller collections (like Gale Virtual Reference Library) gives us right around 100,000 e-books.  You may seek them intentionally by looking in their collections, or they may just appear in catalog searches as you come across them.  

But, do you have to read them on your computer?  And what if you want to add more e-books to our collections?  Aren't there any more e-books out than this?  

All of these questions will be answered as the series continues.




The image above was provided by Safari Books Online.

New library materials added in February

The February new materials list is now available. We added 85 books, DVDs, and other items during the month,thanks to your selections and suggestions.  The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

We’ve added a total of 461 items to the collection in this academic year.  We'll keep posting new item lists through the end of the fiscal year on our blog (this tag will show you all of the prior lists).

Have a suggestion of something to order? Acquisitions money is still available (we’ve spent about 40% of the total budget so far), allotted to academic departments and coordinatorships with faculty selectors and units with staff selectors.  We also have some general funds available for anyone to order materials. 

Use our online request form, email one of our staff members, or drop by the library with your request. Our deadline for ordering this year is April 1.

Thanks again for keeping our collection vibrant and your information needs met!

Bring the 3D world to a screen or projector

We have just added four IPEVO Point 2 View document cameras to our reserve collection.  We have a more heavy-duty camera on reserve for faculty or staff use, but these four items are very light-weight, easy to install and use, and available for students to check out as well (3 day loan).  There is a CD-ROM for installing the viewing software (which also allows for screen capture of images).  They capture any object or item you place in their lens and display it on a monitor or on a digital projector.  An interesting use of our other document camera in the library was by our mural artist Allison Singhoffer, who connected the camera to a digital projector to project a sketch of her mural drawing onto the wall to guide her artwork.

A rather messy image is below of my desk, the IPEVO camera, and my monitor displaying a live image of one of our new Kindles.

Thanks to interim Regional E-Learning Director Janet Hurn for suggesting this purchase from her library funds.

Make Your Mark on the Library

Been to the library lately? You may have noticed that we are making a few changes to how the library looks and we want your help. Gardner-Harvey Library is expanding on our previous Mural Painting competition to add some color and art to another part of the library. The competition is open to all Miami University students, faculty, staff and alumni. Participants have the option of submitting an individual or group design.

Artwork will be judged based on color scheme, design, originality, and ability to express a theme associated with libraries or Miami University Middletown.

Gardner-Harvey Library will begin accepting submissions for our Mural Painting competition on Monday, February 13, 2012, at 8:00 a.m. All submissions must be returned to the Info Desk in the Gardner-Harvey Library or e-mailed to longjh@muohio.edu by Friday, March 23, 2012 at 4:00 p.m. The winner will be notified by email on Friday, March 30, 2012 by 5:00 p.m.

Rules and entry forms may be downloaded or found at the Gardner-Harvey Library Info Desk.  An editable version in Publisher is found here.

*Please note that by entering the contest, you certify that your design is original and does not infringe on copyright laws.

New materials added from November 1 to January 30

The November, December, and January new materials list is now available. We added 179 books, DVDs, and other items over those months, thanks to the impressive efforts of our faculty and staff selectors and the library staff.  The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

It includes 39 new Playaway audio book titles.  For more information on these, please see our blog posts. To browse the list of Playaways (with the newest 39 listed first), please see this search in the catalog.

We’ve added a total of 356 items to the collection in this academic year.  We'll keep posting new item lists through the end of the fiscal year on our blog (this tag will show you all of the prior lists).

Have a suggestion of something to order? Acquisitions money is still available (we’ve spent about 1/3 of the total budget so far), allotted to academic departments and coordinatorships with faculty selectors and units with staff selectors.  We also have some general funds available for anyone to order materials. 

Use our online request form, email one of our staff members, or drop by the library with your request. Our deadline for ordering this year is April 1. 

Thanks again for keeping our collection vibrant and your information needs met!

Wikipedia Down Wednesday in Protest...

In protest of proposed legislation, Wikipedia English will be down on Wednesday January 18, 2012.

"Wikipedia English version only and several other sites are going dark intentionally on Wednesday for 24 hours to protest the anti-piracy bills before Congress."

See NPR news item linked above.

So users, please plan to find background information and start research using Miami University Libraries' resources like Gale Virtual Reference Library, Oxford Reference Online, World Book Online Reference Center, and the many research databases academic libraries make available from their Websites: Gardner-Harvey Library Website

The Spring Newsletter is here!

See what's happening this fall at the Gardner-Harvey Library by viewing our newsletter here.  Then come into the library to view our new layout in progress, check out our mural to inspire your design submission for this spring's contest, and use our many comfortable study areas and helpful services.  Also, turn to the library website for new databases and all your old favorite information sources.  

Spring has sprung!  Let us know how we can be of help.

New materials added in September and October

The September and October new materials list is now available. We added 106 books, DVDs, and other items over those months, thanks to the efforts of our faculty and staff selectors and the library staff. The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

As you can see, we're off to a relatively slow start on adding materials this academic year.  Have a suggestion of something to order? Use our online request form, email one of our staff members or drop by the library with your request.

Thanks again for keeping our collection vibrant and people's  information needs met!

John

See your message in 'lites'

Do you have an event you want to advertise or a message you wish to share with others? Why not share your message on a giant Lite Brite? Over the summer term the library built the large 3 ft by 4 ft Lite Brite that now sits in front of the Info Desk. Since its placement there we have shared a variety of different messages including information about our textbooks on reserve, joining a reading group and a pirate message on Talk like a Pirate Day. We now invite you to create your own Lite Brite message design.

Please email your design to Jessie Long, longjh@muohio.edu. For best results aim for a message of five words or less.

SearchOhio: Even more books and DVDs!

You may have noticed the icon above in the OhioLINK Central Catalog when your searches carry you there.  SearchOhio is a group of 19 Ohio public libraries that have added the ability to borrow their collections to OhioLINK members (2 of those libraries are already part of OhioLINK).  That means that Miami library patrons can search these libraries collections and order materials from them just as you do with other OhioLINK libraries.

When you run a search in OhioLINK's catalog (or pass into the OhioLINK catalog by clicking on OhioLINK from a search in the MU catalog), you'll see the SearchOhio logo.  Click on that logo to run your search or look for the specific item you are viewing in SearchOhio.  Then request it.  We hope you will find this a useful addition of materials.

There's a library resource for that!

As part of our ongoing mission to get you to the information you need, the Gardner-Harvey Library staff is constantly adding new databases, books, DVDs, and other resources. 

In all the rush of preparing for International Talk Like a Pirate Day on Monday (September 19^th this year and every year), you may find yourself saying, “Wait a minute, how will I be able to learn to talk like a pirate in time?”  No worries, matey!

A new database is available to quickly teach you to talk like a pirate (or help you learn Spanish, French, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Mandarin Chinese, Greek, Italian, Russian and more).  It’s Mango Languages, and it’s available at http://www.lib.muohio.edu/indexes/redirect/835  Just click Start Learning, and you’ll be “Arrrrrr”-ing with the best of them before you know it.

We hope this information might be helpful to you.  If you still need a little practice on Monday, come on over to the library and say “Ahoy!”

New materials we added over the summer

The May through August new materials list is now available. We added 386 books, DVDs, and other items over those months, thanks to the impressive efforts of our faculty and staff selectors and the library staff. The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

This list catches us up with the final additions that gave us 1312 new items in the collection during 2010-2011, and adds a few more items that came in during July and August.  We're ready to start adding items to the collection for 2011-2012 and meet the information needs of students, faculty, staff, and community borrowers.

Have a suggestion of something to order? Use our online request form, email one of our staff members or drop by the library with your request.

Thanks again for keeping our collection vibrant and people's  information needs met!

John

Citation Help

Need help citing sources for your papers and have no clue where to begin? The library can help. MLA or APA, we have the guides and tools to help you out. Check out our new Libguides for help creating bibliographies and in-text citations in MLA or APA style. For more help, you can also check out our updated Citing Sources page for help finding which online Citation Tool, such as EasyBib or BibMe, works best.

All this citation help makes our Citing Sources page the Resource of the Week.

The Fall Library Newsletter is here!

See what's happening this fall at the Gardner-Harvey Library by viewing our newsletter here.  Then come into the library to view the library's new mural, check out the largest Lite Brite in Butler County, and use our many comfortable study areas and helpful services.  Also, turn to the library website for new databases and all your old favorite information sources.  

Fall is here!  Let us know how we can be of help.

Middletown's African American History on Display

The library is hosting an exhibit provided by the Middletown African American Heritage and Cultural Center in our Group Study Area (on the lower floor of the library).

The exhibit profiles 17 individuals from Middletown's African American community and recounts their contributions.  There is also a timeline that displays events from the African American experience in Middletown, the United States, and the world from 1400-2010.

The exhibit was funded by a grant from the Middletown Community Foundation and is presented in cooperation with the Middletown Historical Society.  Sam Ashworth designed the exhibit.

OhioLINK Central Catalog Downtime

The OhioLINK Central Catalog will go down today at 12:15pm to migrate to a new server.  The process should take 6-8 hours.  In that time period, you will still be able to search the MU catalog and request books from other MU campuses, but OhioLINK searching will be unavailable.  Thank you for your patience with the upgrade.

How was the library used in 2010-2011?

With the fiscal year just ending, here are the full annual stats for several of the Gardner-Harvey Library's (GHL) services. I hope you will find them useful to see how people use the library. How do you compare to the average GHL user?

These stats reflect what's happened this year, running from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011. Some stats we keep locally, others we pull from university-wide or OhioLINK-wide systems, and some are provided by database vendors. 

Both a Borrower and a Lender Be
- GHL patrons checked out 5,045 books, DVDs, and videos from us (2,335 from our local collection, 1,756 ordered from other MU libraries, and 954 items ordered from OhioLINK - that means that well more than half of the items used by campus patrons came from libraries beyond GHL).  That is a 3.9% increase over 2009-2010.  We also received 68 articles, books, and audiovisual items from libraries worldwide.

- The GHL collection registered 5,986 checkouts (that's the 2,335 items checked out by Middletown patrons above, plus 2,037 items sent to OhioLINK users, and 1,614 sent to other MU libraries - that means that more than 60% of the uses of our materials came from libraries beyond GHL).  That is a 3.9% increase over 2009-2010.  We also sent 270 articles, books, and audiovisual items to libraries worldwide.

- GHL patrons checked out 4,168 reserve items from us (this includes faculty-placed course reserves, textbooks on reserve, laptops, Wii games, and other equipment).  That is an 8.2% increase over 2009-2010.

- In addition to the printed or physical materials above, Middletown patrons have downloaded 10,026 e-books from the OhioLINK E-Book Center.  That is a 45.4% increase over 2009-2010.

- In terms of building up our collection, Middletown faculty and staff ordered 1,312 items to add to our collection this year.  That is a 22.3% decrease from 2009-2010, due to our mid-year budget reduction.


- We registered a total of 10,154 checkouts of items in our collection (reserves and circulating materials).  The circulating items at GHL number 41,308, so each item in the collection circulated 0.24 times this year.

The Quest for Information
- Middletown patrons have performed 51,435 searches in databases provided to us by Ebsco and those hosted by OhioLINK. That is a 2.9% decrease from 2009-2010 (possibly due to more library users searching from off-campus, which are not tallied in our campus-specific statistics).  36% of our Ebsco database searches are done in Academic Search Complete (ASC), which is lower than the statewide average of 50% of Ebsco searches occurring in ASC among OhioLINK institutions.  79% of our searches in other OhioLINK databases happen in PsycINFO.


- Middletown patrons downloaded 24,365 full-text articles from the Electronic Journal Center. That is a 19.8% increase over 2009-2010.  This is in addition to full-text articles found right within Ebsco or other databases.

- As part of getting to these databases, 51 people visit our web site every day. That's a total of 18,645 visits for the year, by 5,061 unique individuals.  Visits and visitors are down about 6% from 2009-2010.

A Place for Work, Study, and Remove from the World
- GHL is open 65 hours per week.

- We average 286 visitors per day, for a total of 82,958 visits this year.  This reflects a 10% increase over 2009-2010.

- We regularly schedule the library learning lab (GRD 111) for occasional class sessions. We also had 13 classes meet there weekly during fall semester and 9 met there during this spring. With some breaks in the early parts of the fall and spring semesters, we have been scheduling COMPASS placement testing sessions in the lab on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays for incoming Middletown students since March 2009.

- Our two STAR Lounges have been checked out 239 times this year. STAR Lounge 2 was also used for several weeks in the last half of the semester by two classes for their class meetings in both the fall and spring semesters.

Helping You Find What You Need
- Inside and outside of the library, we gave library instruction presentations in 82 classes this year, reaching 1854 students (an increase of 36% over 2009-2010).  The courses represented were from 17 different departments.

- Our Blackboard Embedded Librarian program reached students in 60 course sections during the academic year (that is a 39% increase over 2009-2010). We reached over 1250 students through the program and helped them with their information needs.


What don't we know about how the library is used?

- One key part missing from these figures is off-campus use of library resources: all off-campus use is tallied as MU-wide use, so we do not know how many Middletown patrons are using databases from home.

 - We don't have stats for all database searches - we're missing uses of Lexis-Nexis and other databases.

 - We did run a survey this year to gather suggestions from the campus population at large on what we can do to improve the library.  We hope you'll continue to let us know what you think about the library, what you need from us, and what materials we should order for the collection.

On Average
Taking these numbers and guesstimating a total Middletown community of 2500 students, faculty and staff members (and including community patrons), here's what can be said about the average person on campus. She:

- visits the library nearly every nine days.
- checks four items out from the library in a year (reserves and local/MU/OhioLINK collection items)
- performs 20 database searches per year.
- accesses the library web site seven times per year.
- views four e-books each year.
- participates in a library instruction session just less than once per year (if she is a student).

Thanks to everyone for making the library and its resources a vital part of your academic lives!