New materials list for December through February

My apologies for the delay in posting a new materials list.  To bring you up to date on what has recently been added to the collection, a new materials list is now available that reflects additions from December 1 through February 19. We added 254 books, DVDs, and other items during that time, thanks to your selections and suggestions. The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

This tag will show you all of the prior lists of new materials.  

Have a suggestion of something to order? Use our online request form, email Jennifer Hicks or one of our other staff members, or drop by the library with your request at any time.  Our ordering deadline is April 5, 2013.  

We've added 479 items to the collection so far this year, and I expect we'll end up at around 1200 items (so long as you keep suggesting items for us to order!).

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

Oxford Islamic Studies Online

As a recipient of the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf award, the Gardner-Harvey Library has a subscription to Oxford Islamic Studies Online through February of 2014. We'll be sharing more about the other resources that we gained through the award, but we wanted to make sure that the word on the database went out immediately.

Oxford Islamic Studies Online features reference content and commentary by renowned scholars in areas such as global Islamic history, concepts, people, practices, politics, and culture, and is regularly updated as new content is commissioned and approved under the guidance of the Editor in Chief, John L. Esposito. Encompassing over 5,000 A–Z reference entries, chapters from scholarly and introductory works, Qur'anic materials, primary sources, images, maps, and timelines, Oxford Islamic Studies Online offers a multi-layered reference experience designed to provide a first stop for anyone needing information and context on Islam.

Access to the database is available both on- and off-campus using the link below:

Oxford Islamic Studies Online

Let us know if you have questions about the database.

New Playaways - Digital Audio Books to Go!

GHL has added 19 more titles to our Playaway collection.  That brings us to a total of 352 audio books, conveniently placed on deck of cards-sized audio players that you can use with earbuds or in your car or wherever you want to listen to a great book.

The new titles include several New York Times bestselling titles, such as:

• Wonder, R. J. Palacio
• The Casual Vacancy, J. K. Rowling
• Hallucinations, Olive Sacks
• Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel

For a list of the whole 19 (and the other 333), see this search in the MU catalog, which lists the titles in the order we've added them (the newest are listed first).

Oh, and if you have questions about Playaways in general, let us know, or take a look at this page on the Playaway site.

Tweet Your Dream

In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the short messages of Twitter, the library invites you to Tweet your Dream.  Travel, school, family, work, there is no end to what your dream may cover. We invite everyone, students, faculty and staff, to write out their dreams in 140 characters and email them to us at midref@lib.muohio.edu.

All participants who submit a dream will be entered in a drawing to win a gift, so don’t forget to include your name and email address with your dream. In February we plan to display submitted dreams in the library. Entries should be submitted by January 31st to be entered in the drawing.

Happy dreaming!  

The Spring Newsletter is Here!

See what's happening this spring at the Gardner-Harvey Library by viewing our newsletter here.  You can learn what students and faculty think of our Embedded Librarian program and read about how to take part in our Tweet Your Dream project.  You are also invited to stop by and say hello to our new Acquisitions and Technical Service Supervisor, Jennifer Hicks.  And, don't forget to 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.

Studying or Relaxing, the Library Offers Both

Whether you need a quiet place to study, a room to meet up with friends to work on a group project, a caffeine boost, or some relaxing downtime, the library has you covered. All this week the library will have coffee, hot tea and hot chocolate available to help you stay alert during your exams.  And if you need a break, stop by STAR Lounge 1 and play a few games on the Wii.

As a special bonus to help everyone relax, Tuesday, December 11th from 1 - 4, we will be having some of the dogs in from PAWS to spread some cheer.  Why not stop by and say hello to our furry friends?

Good luck on finals!

New items added in November

The November new materials list is now available. We added 41 books, DVDs, and other items during the last month, thanks to your selections and suggestions. The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

This tag will show you all of the prior lists of new materials.

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 at any time.

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

Finals Week Refreshments at the Library

The Library will offer free coffee, tea, and hot cocoa all during finals week, starting on Monday, December 10th.  Please drop on by!  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 our library community!

Play Games, Win Prizes

Come down to the Gardner-Harvey Library on Monday, November 5, 2012 to celebrate International Games Day.  A variety of board games and Wii games will be available to play starting at 9am and ending at 8pm.  Don’t miss your chance to compete for prizes in our Wii Frisbee Golf Challenge from 10am – 4pm.  Snacks will be provided to help keep your gaming energy up.

New materials added in October

The October new materials list is now available. We added 75 books, DVDs, and other items during the last month, thanks to your selections and suggestions. The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

This tag will show you all of the prior lists of new materials.

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 at any time.

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

Open Access Week Oct 22-26

What is Open Access?

Open Access to information is the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need.

How does this affect authors?

Check out our updated and revised Author's Rights brochure, which can be downloaded in PDF format.

How does this affect students? 

Information on open access specific to undergraduates can be found at the Right to Research site.

How does this affect the library?

Without Open Access we wouldn't be able to obtain articles from any of these great databases:

Open Access resources which appear in our Databases A to Z list

ArXiv

• Hosted by Cornell University.

• Includes open access to 707,446 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, and Statistics.

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)

• The Directory of Open Access Books is a service of OAPEN Foundation. The OAPEN Foundation is an international initiative dedicated to Open Access monograph publishing, based at the National Library in The Hague.

• DOAB contains more than 1,000 academic peer-reviewed books from more than two dozen publishers.

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

• Currently includes 7,148 journal titles.

• Covers all open access scientific and scholarly journals.

• Journals must be peer reviewed or have editorial quality control.

• All content is free and full text, and none have embargo periods.

• Specific information listed under each title includes publication fees (if any), subject headings, keywords, publisher, ISSN(s), start date, language, license information (if any), and archiving information (if any).

Dissertations and Theses Open (ProQuest)

• PQDT Open provides full text (PDF) of open access dissertations and theses free of charge.  The authors of these theses and dissertations have opted to publish under the open access model.

FDSys 

• FDsys provides free online access to official Federal Government publications. You can search for documents and publications, browse for documents and publications (by collection, Congressional, committee and date), access metadata about documents and publications (in standard XML formats), and download documents and publications in multiple renditions or file formats.

National Academies Press E-Books

• In 2011, the National Academies Press made the vast majority of it's books available for free in PDF format on their website.  These e-books include reports published by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council.  Subject areas include science, engineering, and health.  You will be asked to create a free account on the site at the time of your first download.

NDLTD (Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations) Union Catalog Project

• A growing catalog of full-text electronic dissertations from a variety of participating institutions, including MIT, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, OhioLINK, and numerous European institutions.

PubMed

• The freely accessible interface to the MEDLINE bibliographic database.  Many citations connect to full-text.

Governor proclaims Information Literacy Month in Ohio!

October has been designated Information Literacy Month in Ohio by Governor John Kasich (here is the full proclamation).  The proclamation “seeks to remind all citizens of the importance of the role of all libraries and librarians—academic, public, school, and special—in teaching information literacy, which fosters educational opportunities, economic prosperity, social cohesion, democracy, and quality of life.”

The Gardner-Harvey Library provides educational resources to assist in building your information literacy.  Check out our tutorials and research guides, or talk to an information literacy expert on your library staff!

Here is a quick list of information literacy skills and how you can use some of our resources to build them up.

New materials added in July, August, and September

The July through September new materials list is now available. We added 98 books, DVDs, and other items during the first quarter of the fiscal year, thanks to your selections and suggestions.  The list is sorted by call number, with items grouped roughly by subject area.

This tag will show you all of the prior lists of new materials.

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 at any time.

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

Wireless Printing

It is possible to print from your laptop to the Pay4Print (uPrint) machines using the Miami wireless network by following these IT Services Instructions, for PC and Mac users.  Print jobs will be stored for 2 hours.

NBC Learn: Video clips for all subjects

We've just added a new resource:  NBC Learn.  NBC Learn contains more than 12,000 stories from the NBC News archives—one of the largest news archives in the world, dating back to the 1920s. In addition, collections are updated with current events every day, Monday through Friday, with stories from such celebrated programs as NBC Nightly News, the TODAY show, Meet the Press, Dateline NBC, as well as the networks of MSNBC, CNBC, and Telemundo.

You can find information on many topics, link videos in Niihka for students to review, or share part of a video in a class presentation.

It only works on campus for the moment, but we will update this shortly.  Enjoy!

New 2012 Elections Guide

Feeling a bit confused about the upcoming elections?  So much information, so many viewpoints...

Take a few minutes to explore this new online interactive guide: 2012 Elections  created by Miami Librarian J. Presnell.  Yes, your vote counts!

Find your Butler County, OH Board of Elections voting location here!

Faculty: need to place items on reserve?

The Library is pleased to help instructors give their students access to class reading or viewing materials. We can keep books or DVDs at the InfoDesk in the Library for students to check out and use, we can encode library-owned DVDs and videos to stream online through our Video on Demand (VOD) service, or we can help you get a link to an article or e-book to place in your Niihka course site.  More explanation of these options is available on our Reserves page.

Three key points to remember:

(1) Sufficient lead time is extremely helpful to us in ensuring that items are added in a timely fashion. A minimum of two business days is needed for physical reserves, and, particularly at this point in the semester, three days for VODs.

(2) Faculty need to fill out a reserve request form to ensure that the reserve is processed correctly. The form is available online.

(3) Regarding placing course textbooks on reserve, if you have a spare copy of a textbook for one or more of your courses, we would be happy to add it to our list of textbooks on reserve.  We can also purchase copies of textbooks for courses using library funds that are budgeted to your department or academic area.  More information on that program is available here.

Please contact Chris Mull, our Circulation and Reserves Supervisor, at mullcr@muohio.edu or 513-727-3291 if you have any questions.

Embedded Librarians @ Miami Middletown

Dear Miami University Middletown Faculty:

Why should you have an LMS embedded librarian in your Niihka courses next semester?  Would your students really benefit?

Collaborating faculty have this to say:

“They (students) did appreciate having the resources laid out for them in an organized manner.  You did a lot of the ‘leg work’ for them!”

“…but the students who reached out were met with a quick response, direct answers and a supportive ‘go team’ tone.  invaluable!!”

“The embedded librarian offered many needed skills that the students did not avail themselves of.  I will rework my assignments to encourage them to use the resources available next semester.”

Students interacting with a LMS embedded librarian in Niihka said:

“I would love to see this service in a lot more other classes than what there is! I really found this service very useful!”

“I found the link in our class page helpful, especially the APA guides and databases of nursing journals.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to access this terrific resource.”

Embedded librarianship is a Gardner-Harvey Library service that has been offered 7 semesters, connecting us with 176 course sections and over 3900 students!  In Spring 2012 three librarians, collaborated with 19 instructors and embedded in 33 courses, reaching about 850 students.  Library resources, services, and information literacy instruction are customized to specific course research assignments and made readily available to students in the LMS. 

When the instructor and subject expert collaborates with an information specialist, good things happen for students in terms of online, scholarly research.  When a professor directs students to contact their named embedded librarian, already familiar with the course research assignment, rather than direct them to visit the library, it makes a world of difference.

Embedded librarians can teach your students to:

·         Search research databases

·         Format bibliographies and in-text citations

·         Conduct literature reviews and create annotated bibliographies

·         Use the online catalog and the new discovery layer

·         Evaluate online sources

·         Distinguish scholarly journals from popular periodicals

·         Find custom library content relevant to their research assignments

·         Use brainstorming charts, presentation software, project calculators, RSS alerts, etc.

If you would like to join the LMS Embedded Librarian program in Summer or Fall 2012, please provide the information below and an embedded librarian will contact you this summer.  The program is flexible enough to provide research support in ways that align with your learning outcomes.

Name:

Email:

Phone:

Courses:

Please provide a copy of the research assignments.

Emphasize information literacy instruction in these areas (see list above):

I wish my students’ research skills were stronger in these areas:

I would like the services of an embedded librarian for (Mark one.)

Beginning of the semester          A research period            Entire semester

Reply by August 15, 2012 to
John Burke burkejj@muohio.edu
Jessie Long longjh@muohio.edu
Beth Tumbleson tumbleb@muohio.edu

OneSearch: a new way to discover information.

This fall brings the launch of a new service for Miami University Libraries:  OneSearch.  OneSearch comes from the same people that bring us Academic Search Complete and a host of other databases.  It provides a single search box to find Miami-owned books, DVDs, and e-books along with articles, books, and digital media located in many other databases (e.g., Academic Search Complete, Web of Science, and JSTOR).  

If you are looking for an overview of resources on a given topic, OneSearch is the place to start.  The service also provides several ways to focus your search for better results and, we hope, improve your library research experience.  Just click on the OneSearch tab on the library website to give it a try.  If you have questions, please contact us at the InfoDesk (call 513-727-3222, text us at 513-393-9141, IM us at askghl on many different providers, or email us at midref@lib.muohio.edu).

This Week's PAWS Highlight is McFly

McFly is a big sweet cuddlebug. He is very laid back and doesn't ask for much, just someone to love him! You can find out more about McFly and other PAWS cats on their website.

Also, Don't miss out on your chance to sign up for PAWS’ GOLF OUTING!

Here’s a great opportunity to help PAWS and have a great time doing it! PAWS annual Golf Outing will take place Monday, Aug. 20 at Wildwood Golf Club, 601 Aberdeen Dr., Middletown, Ohio.

This 18-hole, shotgun, scramble event will include box lunches, a buffet dinner at the golf course, beer and beverages all day and a kennel full of prizes.  We are seeking 72 golfers as well as tee and hole sponsors. Cost to play is $125 per player. Sign up as a team or individual to play.  Tee Sponsorship is $100 and Hole Sponsorship is $50.

The PAWS Golf Committee is also seeking prizes and volunteers, so if you are interested in playing or can help in some other way, please email Ginger Shawver at director@pawsadoptioncenter.org.