Library closing at noon on Friday, December 21st

The library will be closing for the break at noon on Friday, December 21st. We will re-open at 8 am on Tuesday, January 2. Have a great break!

Winter break hours

Saturday and Sunday 15th-16th
Closed

***

Monday 17th – Friday 21st
8am – 5pm

***

Closed until January 2

Also, books checked out now are not due back until January 8! CDs and DVDs checked out now will be due December 19. Have a great break!

lolz! "w00t" is the Merriam-Webster Word of the Year

Visitors to the Merriam-Webster website have voted w00t the Word of the Year. (That's w00t with two zeros, mind you.) Merriam-Webster gives the following definition:

w00t (interjection)
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word "yay"

Runners up include facebook (maybe you've heard of it), blamestorm (A meeting held in order to come up with a name of a person to assign guilt to a certain incident), and Pecksniffian (unctuously hypocritical).

via Boing Boing

Library closing at 5 PM due to weather

The library is closing at 5PM today (Monday) due to the weather. The lobby will remain open. The library will either be open or closed with the rest of campus tomorrow. If you are unsure you can call 6225 to see if anyone is here. Stay safe!

Sheldon takes on Wikipedia

The comic strip Sheldon is taking on Wikipedia this week. Links to the first strip in the series. Don't forget to click forward to see more.





The strip above is a great illustration of why you can't rely on Wikipedia as a source for research. Any librarian with access to legitimate research tools like our databases could tell you that Skeletor could defeat Optimus Prime and Darth Vader at the same time with his hands tied behind his back.

Books you check out during finals week will not be due until January 8

Are you going to have some downtime during the break? Need something to occupy yourself in that plane, car, or tv-less guest room? Check out our new popular book collection just around the corner from the circulation desk! Any book you check out during finals week won't be due until you get back next semester! We have everything from non-fiction books to build your mental muscles to page turning light fiction to rot your mind. And best of all it's free! (As long as you bring it back.)

What the library can do for you during finals

Finals time, the most wonderful time of the semester (okay, maybe not) is here. But fret not, the library is here to help you.

• We have access to hundreds of journals through electronic databases. You can look for databases by subject or use a general database like Academic Search Premiere. Don't forget that you can limit your search results to full text articles. In most databases you can do an "Advanced Search" (or similar phrase) and then look for a box to check for "Full Text Only". If you find something that looks good but isn't coming up in full text the first place to look is in the Complete A to Z list of Journal Titles (Under "C" in the list of databases.) That should tell you all of the ways we have access to a particular journal. We might even have a copy right here in the library.
• We have both e-books and regular books. Check the catalog to see if we have what you are looking for. A-HL is downstairs, HM- L is by the restrooms on the main floor, M-Z is upstairs. Books are arranged by subject, so when you find one you like look around in that area for more on the same subject.
• Ask a librarian. That's what we are here for. You can stop by, call x6225 or e-mail Robert or Veronica.
• As always, stop by Cafe Biblio when a staff member is here for free coffee, tea, cider and hot chocolate.
• Our lobby will be open 24 hours a day until finals are over. Meet up with a study group or just escape your crazy roommate.
• Black and white printing is free. (Printer 2130 is down right now so please use printer 2041). Black and white copying is 15 cents a page. Color printing and copying is 25 cents a page. (The color printer is off the network right now, so you must come to the library and access your color files on a specific computer. We recommend emailing the files to yourself.) (Yes, that's a lot of printer problems. The printer gremlins must have waited until finals.)
• Complimentary stress balls at the circulation desk until supplies run out.
• Relax a little with some DVDs, CDs and popular fiction books.

New York Times 100 Most Notable Books of 2007

The New York Times Book Review has released their list of the 100 Most Notable Books of 2007. We even have several, such as Legacy of Ashes and Edith Wharton, right here at Memorial Library! How many of these notable books have you read? (I have read one.)

Thanksgiving Break Hours

Memorial Library will be open during the following hours over Thanksgiving Break:

Tuesday 11/20 Close at 6 PM
Wednesday 11/21 Close at 5 PM
Thursday 11/22 CLOSED
Friday 11/23 CLOSED
Saturday 11/24 CLOSED

Have a safe and fun Thanksgiving!

E-book readers part deux

This isn't the first time that e-book readers have been the Next Big Thing. The Franklin eBookMan was released in 1999 and has been followed by a litany of failures -- the Gemstar REB, the Rocket eBook, the Sony Reader. Amazon entrepreneur Jeff Bezos thinks he has finally hit on a winning formula with the Kindle. (Of course, he also thought society as we know it was going to be upended by the Segway.)

The Kindle is a paperback sized, shaped, and weighted electronic device that uses eInk to simulate the look of a printed page. Like many new electronic devices it is "always on" and receiving and exchanging information. The Kindle uses the same technology as cell phones, and thus can be connected to the Internet without having to be at a WiFi hotspot. You can purchase eBooks from Amazon, access Google and message other users. Of course, you can already do that with a computer... or a cell phone... or a Game Boy. In fact, the Kindle sounds an awful lot like a Personal Data Assistant, another already failed concept, attached at the hip to Amazon.com. There are two main reasons you would turn to a book instead of an Internet resource:

1. You are learning about something complex and involved that requires that lots of information be conveyed over an extended period involving studious contemplation.

2. You want to lose yourself in a narrative (the so-called reading trance) and turn off the conscious parts of your mind for a while. For instance, before you go to bed.

Neither of these ends is served by buddy-lists, click-through links, offers of the day, low battery warnings and all of the other "features" of the Kindle that one turns to a book to get away from.

The Web has already been done better elsewhere, texts have already been done better elsewhere, portable multipurpose machines have already been done better elsewhere. What need does an always connected eBook reader fill that isn't already met better somewhere else?
Is this really the book of the future?

via iLibrarian

What it is like to be a student today (In case you didn't know already)

Michael Wesch from Kansas State has posted a video that describes what life is like for students today. Wesch claims that you have 26.5 hours of things to do each day. Does this video describe you?

Wesch has previously released the popular videos The Machine is Us/ing Us and The Information R/evolution.

Deep Web resources

Did you know that Google indexes only a small percentage of the Web? Here's some good links for getting to information that Google can't find:

http://aip.completeplanet.com/ : A search engine for finding specialty search engines
http://www.goshme.com : A Deep Web "assistant:
http://www.pipl.com/ : Search hundreds of databases at once for information on people
http://www.blinkx.com/ : Search across the web for videos in one spot

Health and Career Fair

Come check out the health and career fair from 1 PM to 4 PM today in the library. Companies and resources from around the state are at your fingertips!

Daylight Saving Time ends

Daylight Saving Time ends on Sunday, November 4. (At 2:00 AM should you be up at that time.) Your clocks should "fall back" so that, for instance, 6 AM becomes 5 AM. That means an extra hour of sleep! Time changes are also a good time to check the batteries in your smoke alarms.

Happy Halloween!

Don't forget that Memorial Library is open until midnight for your last minute scary book and movie needs. Also stop by for a treat as long as supplies last. Have a safe and happy Halloween!

How to get back into reading

Gather No Dust has a good article with tips for getting back into reading, like "start small", "it doesn't matter what you read", and "don't read before going to bed." One of the best pieces of advice was glossed over - if you like a movie or tv show look for the book. From Sense and Sensibility to Star Wars there are a lot of franchises that have book counterparts. The book Bad Twin is even a real book from inside the fictional Lost setting. The best point the article makes is don't be afraid to stop reading a particular book. Especially library books, which cost you nothing. These aren't brussel sprouts-- it is not good for you to suffer through a book you don't like reading! What tips do you have for getting back into reading?

Happy Homecoming!

The library staff would like to welcome all of the returning Builders who are visiting us this weekend. There are more activities planned than we can cram into this annoucement, so check out the Homecoming Schedule. The library will also be listing Homecoming activities on the video screen behind the circulation desk. While you are here, why not check out the library? We are in the process of renovation, so please excuse the mess around our new restrooms and roof. Alumni are welcome to check out books (including our new popular fiction books) as well as access the Internet. We can also fax, copy, and scan for a small fee. Finally, please come see the display of books by faculty and alumni at the front of the library. Have a great Homecoming Weekend!

Bring your own cup prize day

Today is another prize for bringing your own cup day at the library. This month you can get a spooktacular sticky brain for using your own cup to get a tasty beverage at the library. Just show us your cup at the circulation desk.

Want to put a display in the library?

Memorial Library has two glass display cases in need of displays. Displays should be related to the College in some way. Students, staff, faculty, teams, clubs, groups etc. are all welcome to inquire. You would be responsible for putting the display up and taking it down again. If interested please contact robert.perret@sckans.edu.

Discover the .edu underground

Lifehacker has an interesting article about the .edu underground. That is, the world of college and university websites that often get ignored by major search engine algorithms. Colleges and universities are in the business of scholarship, and a lot of this scholarship tends to languish in the nooks and crannies of the information universe. Some scholarship ends up in obscure journals. Some gets presented at a conference, or prepared for a dissertation but never published. (This is known as grey literature, and can be an excellent source of fresh information.) Now, somewhere in between is the .edu underground. The department web pages, individual databases and other miscellanea that is readily available but hard to discover. Lifehacker suggests using the Google search string site:.edu "insert subject here". Even if you aren't looking for some esoteric data for your research it can be fascinating to see what others have dedicated their scholastic careers to. You just might be inspired to create some underground resources of your own!

Berkeley offers Full-Course lectures free on YouTube

The University of California at Berkeley has started offering videos of full lectures for free on YouTube. The lectures are a sampling across a wide array of disciplines. You can even subscribe to get new lectures when they are released. What a great way to expand your horizons. (And get a sneak peek at what classes at another school are like!)

via Mashable

Fall Break Hours

Memorial Library will be closed on Saturday, October 6 and Sunday, October 7 for Fall Break. We will be open 8 AM - 5 PM on Monday October 8. The 24 hour lobby will also be closed from 6 PM on Friday, October 5 to 8 AM on Monday October 8. Normal library hours and lobby hours will resume at 8AM on Tuesday, October 9. Have a fun and safe break!

Kansas Book Festival

The Kansas Book Festival is being held at Wichita State University this Friday, October 5, and Saturday, October 6. Kansas authors will be speaking, there will be a Book Fair, and there will be a number of concerts. There will also be a Gala on Friday night, should you have some spare Benjamins burning a hole in your pocket. This is a great opportunity to support book culture and Kansas authors!

Old-fashioned hyphens are on the way out

Reuters is reporting that the new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary has dropped the hyphens from over 16,000 words. The AskOxford Ask the Experts website even goes so far as to say that hyphen usage "doesn't really matter." Oxford reviewed over 2 billion words published after 2000 before making their decision. They noted a lack of use in journalism and online (formerly on-line). Casual writers expressed a lack of confidence in knowing when to use a hyphen, while professional writers and publishers avoid using hyphens because they are now considered ugly and old fashioned (formerly old-fashioned). Will you miss the hyphen? Check out some of the examples provided by Reuters:

Formerly hyphenated words split in two:
fig leaf
hobby horse
ice cream
pin money
pot belly
test tube
water bed
Formerly hyphenated words unified in one:
bumblebee
chickpea
crybaby
leapfrog
logjam
lowlife
pigeonhole
touchline
waterborne



via LISNews

Beyond Wikipedia

The blog scholastici.us has posted 20 information resources besides Wikipedia that you can't live without. They have some great suggestions like ePodunk for city information, Scholarpedia for peer reviewed articles and Religion Online for religious primary texts. Some sites that weren't listed:

Internet Movie Database for all of your Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon needs.
THOMAS for free information on Federal legislation.
PubMed for published medical articles.
LifeHacker for daily productivity tips.

What are some of your favorite information sites?

via LISNews

Bring your own cup, help save the planet

The first 24 people who bring their own cup to Cafe Biblio today, (Friday, September 14) will win a nifty prize! Just stop by the circulation desk to claim it!

An e-book tries some DVD like special features

Book publisher Harper Collins is releasing an e-book, Lady Amelia's Secret Lover by Victoria Alexander, that features author video commentary that pops up while you read. Is this interesting or annoying? I know that novelty of behind-the-scences features on DVD's has worn off for most people. Will e-books fare any better? Do you want the author popping up as you read to give her interpretation? Didn't she have her chance when she wrote the book in the first place? Or is this interesting and exciting? I suppose it depends on the author and what she has to say.

This reminds me of the hypertext novels at the turn of the millenium. (See The Unknown for example.) Only back then the authors seemed to be trying to do something more with the electronic book format. Hypertext novels allowed the reader to click on key words that interested them to find out more about that subject. In some ways it was like a hybrid of Wikipedia and Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Traditional books have long included maps, diagrams, figures and illustrations. Wouldn't it be cool to read Lord of the Rings and be able to reference a map that "updates" with the locations of characters depending on what page you access the map from? Maybe you could launch any song that is mentioned in the text just by clicking on it. There is a whole world of cool things you can do with electronic books, by far the least of which is author commentary. Let's hope that Lady Amelia's Secret Lover is a baby step in the right direction.

via Travelin' Librarian

The mindset of incoming freshman

Every year Beloit College issues a mindset list to help professors relate to incoming freshman. Here are some of the highlights:

1. What Berlin wall?

Once Germany was divided into East Germany and West Germany and the city of Berlin was divided by a literal wall. The infamous wall was one of the last and best-known symbols of the Cold War. The ideology that divided Germany crumbled as the Cold War played out and finally on November 9, 1989 East Germany announced that it would stop enforcing the boundary at the Berlin Wall. The German people on both side of the divide showed up in droves to tear down the wall by hand. Pieces of the Berlin wall ended up in places like museums and history departments, but perhaps the most interesting place to see pieces of the Berlin wall is in the men's restroom at the Main Street Station Casino in Las Vegas, where you can demonstrate your feelings about repressive communist regimes by urinating on a piece of history.

4. They never “rolled down” a car window.

This item has been subjected to much criticism on the Web already. First, this is an arbitrary and bizarre distinction to draw. Secondly, there are still cars manufactured with hand cranks for the windows. If you, like many students, didn't hop into a fresh-off-the-lot new car the second you got your driver's license, you probably have some experience with cars from past decades as well.

19. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.

Ay carumba! Unless you are a fictional cartoon character it is very unlikely you could have been classmates with "the" Bart Simpson. Even if you ignore the not so fine line between fiction and reality Bart's birthday is April 1, 1981.

32. They grew up in Wayne’s World.

Shyeah, right. If you are 18 this is probably news to you. Wayne's World was a popular Saturday Night Live sketch in the late eighties and early nineties about two metalheads who hosted a community access television show. With any luck you are only vaguely familiar with the phrases like "schwing," "blow chunks," and "...and monkeys might fly out of my butt." Should you wish to see what you were spared, Memorial Library has both Wayne's World movies on DVD. Party on!

44. Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.

Some might argue that Twitter is the preferred method for real time autobiography, but I digress. Is there such a thing as Too Much Information anymore?

58. They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.

The ever present debate over form vs. content. Is infotainment information or entertainment? Does adding comedy to news make it more digestible or simply trivialize serious matters? Don't forget that you can go beyond the sound byte by reading the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Wichita Eagle, Arkansas City Traveler, and Winfield Daily Courier at the library. (Not to mention all of our great databases.)

66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

E-mails, MySpace, Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, Wikipedia, Blackboard... you probably spend half of your day using technology that would have seemed like science fiction to your parents when they were 18.

Do any of the items on this ring a bell. Dead on? Totally off? The Beloit Mindset List is a fascinating insight into what people of your professors' generation think of people of your generation.

Library closed Labor Day weekend

Memorial Library will be closed on Saturday 9/1 and Sunday 9/2 due to Labor Day. The library will re-open at 3 PM on Monday 9/3. Have a safe and fun weekend!

Are books obsolete?

A recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll reveals that 25% of Americans did not read a book last year. More women than men read a book last year. The Bible was read by two-thirds of people while only one in five admitted to reading a romance novel. Less than five percent read poetry. Did you read a book on your own last year? Was it a novel or non-fiction? More and more people watch TV and movies instead, but a lot of movies and shows are based on books. Does the format matter? Is getting the gist of the story from the movie the same as reading the book? At Memorial library you can compare and contrast the books and movies with stories like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings both in print and on DVD. Not to mention our wide selection of Shakespeare movies and movies based on classics. (Jane Austen may or may not recognize Bride and Predjudice.) You might be surprised what movies are based on books. Keep your eyes open during the credits. If you like the movie you might love the book!





www.LISNews.org

College students miss the smell

When college students use an e-book what do they miss most about physical books? According to a Zogby survey the thing college students miss the most is the smell! One e-book publisher is even going so far as to send out scratch-and-sniff musty book stickers that students can put on their laptops. Luckily for you at Memorial Library you don't have to choose. We've got high tech e-books and good old fashioned ones as well. (Of course, our books don't smell, they simply have the heady fragrance of accumulated knowledge.)

via Wired

All we are saying is give Credo Reference a chance

Southwestern College has signed up for a one month trial of Credo Reference. Check it out and let us know what you think.

Credo Reference is a digital reference library that places a world of factual information at your fingertips. Containing a selection from 240 high-quality reference books from the world's leading publishers, Credo Reference is the ideal place to start any research. Your institution chooses this selection and can swap in new titles from Credo Reference as they become available.
Offering access to over 1.7 million individual entries, Credo Reference contains all the types of reference books that you'd want to see in any quality library: dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, and books of quotations, not to mention a host of subject-specific titles covering everything from the arts to accountancy and law to literature. And because all our books are provided by the best reference publishers, you know you can believe what you read.
But Credo Reference is one digital service that really uses the internet to add another dimension to our books and deliver you more. Not only does our powerful search look through books in seconds, but our unique network of related entries, connect relevant information across the whole library.
Whatever you need to find - facts, words, concepts, people, places or sayings - you'll find it in Credo Reference. All cross-referenced, all reliable and all in one place.

http://www.credoreference.com/

Welcome back! Regular library hours resume on August 22

We hope you had a great summer and we're glad to see you returning or joining us at Southwestern College. Our regular hours (see below) resume on August 22, the first day of classes. We will begin keeping the lobby open 24 hours a day during the school year and the Biblio Cafe will be returning as well! Finally, we've got plenty of books, CD's and DVD's just waiting to be checked out. Of course, we are always happy to help you with any reference or research questions you have as well. Have a great school year!

Regular Term Library Hours:

Monday- Thursday 7:45 AM - MIDNIGHT

Friday 7:45 AM - 6 PM

Saturday NOON - 4 PM

Sunday 3 PM - MIDNIGHT

A daily dose of literature

A nifty website called DailyLit sends bite sized chunks of literature right to your e-mail or RSS reader. This seems like it might work for some things better than others. It might be nice to read one or two poems a day but it would probably to hard to follow War and Peace one or two pages at a time.

How to fight information overload

With a new school year comes new demands for your time and attention. Web Worker Daily posted 21 tips for fighting information overload. Some are as simple as taking a break from your computer while others are a lot harder to imagine. Could you really restrict yourself to reading just five e-mails a day?!?

via LISNews

Say hola to the bibliomule

The BBC recently published an interesting story about a totally unique kind of library. The collection travels between villages in Venezuela on the backs of mules! Some areas even get to access the Internet with laptops. This is a fascinating mix of old and new technologies. There is a saying that necessity is the mother of invention and it is exciting to see what people can invent.

via Boing Boing

How to read e-books on your iPod

USA Today has an article on turning your iPod into an e-book reader. Every few years someone comes up with an e-book reader that doesn't catch on with the public. Even Microsoft couldn't make e-book devices popular. Now it turns out you may already be carrying an e-book reader at this very moment. What a great way to take some great books with you everywhere you go. Memorial Library has access to hundreds of e-books for you to choose from!

A habit you don't need to kick

British publisher Tank Books is publishing classic novels in cigarette boxes. The stories include "The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka, and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Lewis Stevenson, along with many others. The books are designed to be sold from cigarette vending machines in pubs and other public places. Not only are these books cool, but so is the novel use of existing technology. This is just proof that there are more cool ideas waiting to be discovered.

via Boing Boing

Popular Fiction has moved

Our popular fiction books have moved from next to the DVD's to the righthand side of the Reference Room. We have also shifted the reference collection a little bit to make room for even more new books. Soon Moundbuilders will have access to hundreds more new popular books, both fiction and non-fiction. We are excited about our growing collection and we think you'll be too!

Please welcome our new librarians

Ms. Veronica McAsey holds both a Master of Library Science and a Master of Arts in English from Emporia State University. Prior to coming to SC, Veronica served as the Reference/Electronic Services Librarian at Briar Cliff University. She is active in a number of professional societies and has presented papers at the Kansas Library Association.

Mr. Robert Perret is joining us from the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center Archives. Robert holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from the University of Colorado and a Master’s of Library Science from the University of Denver.