WVU Libraries

Celebrate the freedom to read during Banned Books Week, September 26th through October 3rd. An annual event since 1982, Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Library Association and other professional organizations for authors, journalists, publishers, and booksellers. The celebration is an on-going effort to raise awareness of censorship attempts in the United States.

Each year, groups around the country seek to ban books from library shelves for reasons such as violence, sexuality, and profanity. In the past, classic works of literature like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Grapes of Wrath have been targeted by book banners. In 2008, more than 500 titles were challenged.

Visit the Downtown Campus Library’s Banned Book Week exhibits to learn more about banned books. And read a banned book this week. For suggested titles, visit Challenged or Banned Classics.

To see where book censorship occurred in 2008, visit:
http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/mappingcensorship.

Get a jump on the new semester. Free tutoring, offered by the WVU Academic Resource Centers, begins on August 25th. Tutors will be available in the Reference Department of the Downtown Campus Library from 7 pm until 11 pm each evening, Sunday through Thursday. The tutors can help students with chemistry, physics, biology, math, and statistics. Students should bring their ids, textbooks, and assignments to tutoring sessions.

Additional services for students are coming soon. The Library’s Term Paper Clinic will resume on September 21st. The WVU Writing Center will be joining the tutoring service later in the semester.

Wanted: WVU students who love movies and like online courses

We have the class for you.

Film and Media Literacy (ULIB300 CRN53044) is taught online. The course is an eCampus course and does not meet in a classroom. Students watch films independently in the private viewing rooms in the Media Services Department of the Downtown Campus Library. These rooms have 42” plasma screens and high quality sound systems to deliver an optimal atmosphere for viewing films. Students also have the option to watch films at home if they rent them.

Here are some quotes from students that took the course:

“This was also one of my first web classes and I felt it was better than other web classes I have taken this semester.”

“I really enjoyed this course and would like to take more classes like this.”

“This was my favorite class throughout all of college.”

In this class, you will choose four of eight genres to study. The choices are: Blaxploitation, Slasher, Gangster, Westerns, Dark Comedy, the Films of Quentin Tarantino, Graphic Novel Adaptations, and World Cinema. You will then select two of the fours genres to focus further on and watch five more films that capture the development of those genres. Finally, you will research and choose a film from lists in your selected genres to critique for your final assignment. You will also study media literacy, film criticism and vocabulary, and film databases.

For more information and a complete film list visit the course web page at http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/instruction/film/.

The Downtown Campus and Evansdale Libraries will open at 9 am on Sunday, April 26th, and remain open 24 hours for most of the next two weeks. See Library Hours for details.

Study hard.

Good luck and best wishes from librarians and library staff.

Students can get free help with chemistry, biology, math, physics, and statistics in the Downtown Campus Library Reference Department. Peer tutors from the Academic Resource Centers will be on hand from 7 pm until 11 pm every evening from Sunday through Thursday. You’ll find them in Room 1020 on the first floor.

The service is free and no appointments are necessary.

Tutors from the WVU Writing Center will be joining the schedule soon. Watch for the announcement of their hours.

Stay ahead of the game this semester. Take advantage of this free service.

The Libraries are pleased to announce an upgrade to the MountainLynx Library Catalog coming this spring. Users will find many enhancements and new features that will improve using the catalog of the Libraries’ holdings. Library catalog users can find out what books, journals, newspapers, microforms, and audiovisual materials the WVU Libraries own. MountainLynx contains holdings for all the WVU Libraries including the Downtown Campus, Evansdale, Health Sciences, and Law Libraries, and the West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

The coming redesigned user interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate. Other features to look for include individual record displays that are more readable and distinct. The action buttons (Print, Export, and Add to List) are visually connected to the records they affect. Users can apply one or multiple filters to narrow the results by date, location, medium, or any of the other standard limiting options. With a default link to Google Book Search, users can view results with the enhanced features such as full text, book previews, cover thumbnails, etc. The easy-to-use “My Account” display offers a more complete picture of transactions and account information. It is now supported on the Firefox 2.0 Web browser.

MountainLynx will still be on the same platform and retain all the features of the old system, so experienced users should not have any trouble finding their way around. One change that users may need to take note of is that the choice named “Assisted Search” in the old system will be called “Advanced” in the new one. When the new system comes up, users will be able to try it out or use the old system until after Spring Break (March 16th) when the classic version will be taken down.

Research material for papers and projects is just a few web clicks away whenever you need it. WVU Libraries provide 24/7 access to online resources for WVU students, faculty and staff through our list of Databases.

Resources in the Databases list include a wide variety of types of material and cover every academic discipline. Some of the things you will find are:

collections of peer-reviewed journal articles in JSTOR
news from broadcast, print, and internet sources in Lexis Nexis
early books from Eighteenth Century Collections Online
encyclopedias AccessScience and Grove Art for specialized topics
collections of eBooks in engineering from Knovel
extensive company information from Mergent Online

Browse the Databases list for complete listings and descriptions of the more than 300 online sources available.

If you have questions about which might be useful for your research, you can always Ask a Librarian for recommendations.

Harper’s Weekly, the illustrated newspaper of record for the 19th century, is now available to WVU researchers through HarpWeek, a web site that provides electronic access to Harper’s Weekly for a 56-year period: 1857-1912.

The HarpWeek electronic database makes it possible for you to discover the lively news stories, illustrations, cartoons, editorials, biographies, literature and even advertisements that shaped and reflected public opinion in this era. Using HarpWeek’s powerful features, you can browse through 56 years of Harper’s Weekly page by page, locate specific articles based on search terms or phrases you specify, or use sophisticated indexing and synopsis tools to comb through thousands of Harper’s Weekly articles.

Access HarpWeek through the Library’s website at:
www.libraries.wvu.edu/databases

Open access journals are peer-reviewed journals that provide free, online access to their articles. They do not charge subscription fees to readers or libraries. Instead, they cover their costs through publication fees to authors.

The WVU Libraries have purchased institutional memberships in BioMed Central and Public Library of Science which will reduce the required author publication fees for WVU faculty researchers. For more information visit:
www.libraries.wvu.edu/open-access

WVU Libraries also recently sponsored presentations by two proponents of open online access to scientific and scholarly materials to campus for free public presentations. Members of the WVU community were invited to attend to learn more about this crucial issue. Barbara Epstein, director of the Health Sciences Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, spoke at 11 a.m. Friday, April 25, in the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center auditorium. She lectured on changes in scholarly communication, with an emphasis on open access and a new National Institute of Health mandate. Heather Joseph, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, spoke at 10 a.m. on Thursday, May 1, at the National Research Center for Coal and Energy.

The WVU Libraries present an online exhibit of Vintage Valentines from the West Virginia and Regional History Collection. There are over 40 valentines on display to browse through. You can use our online form to send one to your valentine with a personal message. Valentines include standard cards, postcards, and 3-D cards. Visit the exhibit at http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/exhibits/valentine/.

On Sunday January 27, the WVU Physical Plant will conduct mandatory fire suppression testing at the WVU Primary Data Center from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. The following applications and services will not be available during the test period: Access-A-File, AdvisorTrac, Axium, Birth Score Database, Citrix, CUFS, CyberSports, Endeavor/Voyager, eTD, Fitinfotech, Fix & Release, GroupWise, HSC Alumni Database, IDEAS, Intranet Web Servers, Kronos, Magic, MAP Test, Meeting Room Manager, MIX, Novell Administrative Network, Paciolan, Pyramed, QuickTime, ROADS Test, STAR Production, STAR Test, TicketReturn, TSM, Vista Development, Voice Mail for VOIP, WWW Web Servers, and Wimba. For more information, contact the WVU OIT Helpdesk at OITHelp@mail.wvu.edu or call 293-4444 ext. 1.

The WVU Libraries Web Team is pleased to announce the official launch of their new Libraries web site design on January 14, 2007. The Libraries are holding a contest to promote use of the new site. Two winners of the contest will be presented with an iPod. To participate, go to the WVU Libraries web site at www.libraries.wvu.edu and select “iPod Contest.” Download and fill in the form, then send it as an email attachment to beth.toren@mail.wvu.edu. There are five questions you must use the Libraries web site to answer correctly in order to be entered into the drawing for the prize. All correct responses will be entered into a drawing for the iPods. WVU Libraries employees and student workers are not eligible.

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The Downtown Campus Library and the Evansdale Library will both stay open 24 hours around the clock for Dead Week and Finals Week. These Libraries will be open continuously from 1:00 p.m. Sunday, December 2 until 8:00 p.m. Friday, December 14.

The Libraries are testing a new electronic resource this fall. The Vanderbilt Television Archives – available on a trial basis through December 25th – provides a searchable index of television news broadcasts back to 1968. Researchers can use this resource identify television news programs and segments that document important world events.

Video from CNN is available online through the Archives web site. All other broadcasts (ABC, CBS, etc.) can be borrowed – either in customized compilation of video clips or entire broadcasts. Lending is direct to individuals, who must pay the associated fees for the service.

To use the Vanderbilt Television Archives, visit the Libraries’ database page at: http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/databases/

Faculty and student comments are welcomed. You’ll find the feedback form link on the left of the Databases page.

RefWorks, available from the WVU Libraries web site, will help you format bibliographies, store and organize research, and share references with colleagues or classmates. RefWorks is free to all WVU faculty, students, and staff. Begin by clicking on the RefWorks button at: www.libraries.wvu.edu/.

RefWorks is the leading citation management software on the Internet. It is used by hundreds of thousands of researchers to organize their references and to prepare bibliographies and in-text citations when submitting articles to academic publications. It is accessible – 24/7 – from any computer with Internet access.

When you use RefWorks, you will find preparing the bibliography for the next paper or article you write to be fast and easy. And, if you are collaborating with colleagues at other institutions or with classmates, RefWorks makes it simple to share your references.

Easy-to-follow tutorials and a quick start guide are available on the RefWorks home page. If you need more help, you can always Ask A Librarian— by phone, email, or IM chat.

Beginning Tuesday, September 25, the Evansdale Library will hold a Term Paper Clinic on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 1pm-3pm in Study Room 212. The Term Paper Clinic provides help to undergraduate students at any stage of the research process. At the term paper clinic, students can get help from a librarian and former college writing instructor with any of the following:

–Finding a research topic or a focus that fits their assignments
–Learning how to begin looking for information
–Figuring how best to find the information they need
–Organizing that information into a structured paper
–Explaining documentation and citation formats

Signs will be posted directing students to Study Room 212, which is on the 2nd floor of Evansdale Library. Students can also ask directions at the circulation or reference desk.

If you have any questions about the Term Paper Clinic, or would like a librarian to come to your class to give a 10-minute presentation on the Term Paper Clinic at Evansdale Library, please contact Noel Kopriva, Agriculture, Forestry, & Consumer Sciences Librarian, at 293-4696, ext. 5114, or email her at Noel.Kopriva@mail.wvu.edu.

Do you use images in your teaching? Are you interesting in knowing more about the visual resources provided through the WVU Libraries? Come learn about the libraries’ online image collections, copyright essentials, fair use, and citation styles at this WVU Faculty Development Session.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2007
3:00 – 4:30 p.m.
DOWNTOWN CAMPUS LIBRARY, ROOM 136

WITH SESSION LEADERS:
Beth Royall, Creative Arts Librarian, Evansdale Library
Beth Toren, Web Services Librarian, Downtown Campus Library

To register, contact Wendy Spaw by e-mail.

Getting expert research assistance is easier than ever this summer.  The Libraries are now providing real-time help through instant messaging.  Chat with our reference librarians via AIM, Yahoo! or MSN.  You may contact us using the following screen names:

•  AIM = wvulibraries 
•  Yahoo! =  wvulibraries
•  MSN = wvulibraries@hotmail.com

Summer hours for the service are Monday through Thursday, from 1 PM until 9 PM.   

The new IM service is added to traditional reference and research services, which continue to be available in all campus libraries, and by email and telephone.  Complete information for all types of reference service is available on the Libraries’ Ask a Librarian web site at www.libraries.wvu.edu/ask.

Wanted: WVU students who love movies, like online courses, and are spending part of their summer in Morgantown.

We have the class for you.

There’s a new course called Film and Media Literacy (ULIB493 CRN50964) taught online and in the Downtown Campus Library. The course is an eCampus course and does not meet in a classroom. Students watch films independently in the private viewing rooms in the Media Services Department of the Downtown Campus Library. These rooms have 42” plasma screens and high quality sound systems to deliver an optimal atmosphere for viewing films.

This summer is only the second time the course is being offered. Here are some quotes from students that took the course last fall:

“This was also one of my first web classes and I felt it was better than other web classes I have taken this semester.”

“I really enjoyed this course and would like to take more classes like this.”

“This was my favorite class throughout all of college.”

The entire class will watch one movie from four different genres: Blaxploitation, Slasher, Gangster, and Westerns. Movies include the gangster classic The Godfather Part II (1974) and the grandmother of slasher films, Psycho (1960). You select two of the fours genres to focus on and watch five more films that capture the development of those genres. Finally, you will research and choose a film from lists in your selected genres to critique for your final assignment. You will also study media literacy, film criticism and vocabulary, and film databases.

For more information visit the course web page at http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/instruction/film/.

Have you ever wondered how the Libraries select electronic resources to support research and teaching?  Faculty members are invited to attend an upcoming faculty development session, “New Options in eResources,” to discuss the process used to select, test, and adopt new library resources. 

The session will include a conversation about the important role of faculty in decision-making, examples of incorporating eResources in teaching, and demonstrations of some of the Libraries’ newest eResources.

“New Options in eResources” will be held on Wednesday, April 11, from 3:00-4:30, in Room 136 of the Downtown Campus Library. It is offered as part of the WVU Faculty Development Program. 

To register, please contact Wendy Spaw, Office of the Provost, by fax at 293-7554 or email at wjpsaw@mail.wvu.edu.

If you have questions, please contact one of the session leaders, Linda Blake (linda.blake@mail.wvu.edu), Barbara LaGodna (barbara.lagodna@mail.wvu.edu), or Penny Pugh (penny.pugh@mail.wvu.edu).