Campus closed due to inclement weather

The campus is closed today, Thurday, January 31st due to the weather. Please check your e-mail or the sckans.edu homepage for more information. The library lobby will remain open but circulation will be closed.

Rummage through the government attic

governmentattic.org has recently posted an interesting series of FCC complaint logs with complaints about shows like the Simpsons, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and Sex and the City. It can be interesting and sometimes surprising to see what people filed a formal complaint about. You can also see some logs for the Peace Corp, the Secret Service, and NASA, among others. All of this information was obtained via a Freedom of Information Request. The Freedom of Information Act allows U.S. citizens to request any non-published information from any federal agency. As long as it is not classified or otherwise protected (see the link above) and you are willing to pay "reasonable processing fees" you have the right to access any information the government has! This is a great tool for original research in a wide variety of fields.

If your tastes run a little more lurid you can also check out the always interesting but sometimes frightening display of original documents at The Smoking Gun.

Free online courses from prestigious universities

The Online Education Database has posted a list of 200 classes you can take for free online. Everything from Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics at Yale to Introduction to Psychology at MIT. This is a great way to try a class you have always wanted to take.

The Library of Congress needs your help

The Library of Congress has launched a Flickr account to crowdsource the tagging of digital images in their collection. You can tag and comment on their images just like you can on any other Flickr account. If you want to stay a little closer to home you can do the same on SC's own fledgling Flickr page.

via Boing Boing

Library closed Saturday and Sunday

In observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day the library will be closed on Saturday, January 19 and Sunday, January 20th. The library will be open from 8 AM to midnight on Monday, January 21st.

Some Google tricks

Lifehacker has posted a list of ten tricks in Google. Did you know you can get the local time anywhere, track a specific flight and limit image searches to faces only right from the search box? Well, you can. Some of the other "tricks" are a little less impressive. The article claims using the phrase "better than" in a search is a trick. For instance, if you are looking for a book that is similar to but better than Harry Potter search for "better than Harry Potter." Unlike most of the other tricks, this isn't an actual command, just an arbitrary suggestion. There is one good command, the tilda ("~") mentioned. Tildas are used in equations to indicate approximation, and they are used the same way in Google. For instance, a search for "~college" returned results including college, colleges, NCAA, and graduate school highlighted.

Welcome back!

We are glad to see you and we hope you are looking forward to a great Spring semester. Normal library hours resume on January 8. It's never too early to start researching your papers... or to start watching some DVDs. Just let us know what we can do to help!

Library closing at 5 PM today

The circulation desk will close at 5 PM today. (Monday) The lobby will remain open. Regular circulation desk hours will resume tomorrow with the beginning of classes. (Tuesday)

Library Hours for the rest of break

The library will be open Wednesday January 2 through Friday January 4 from 8 AM - 5 PM. The library will be closed the weekend of January 5-6 and will resume regular hours on January 7. Welcome back!