Milligan Library Life

by the staff of P.H. Welshimer Memorial Library & Seminary Library

NEW local alumni borrowing privileges

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Milligan Library is now providing extended library borrowing privileges to local alumni. Alumni may now borrow media—DVDs, videos, and CDs—in addition to books. These privileges extend beyond those of community patrons, who may check out books only.

Local alumni may check out DVDs, videos, and CDs for a period of three days, with one renewal per item. Both alumni and community borrowers may check out up to 20 items at one time.

In order to encourage the prompt return of items for Milligan students, faculty, and staff, we have also begun charging daily fines for overdue items on both community and alumni accounts–$0.25 per day per item, with a $5.00 maximum fine per item. The Library Handbook has been edited to reflect these changes.

We hope to see you soon!

Photos from the Phoenix Release Party!

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Photos from the Phoenix release party have been posted to Milligan Library’s brand new Flickr photostream! Take a look and leave some comments!

The party was a blast–more than 35 students, faculty, and staff showed up to hear their fellow Milliganites read original works, to eat tasty food, and to get a copy of this year’s literary and arts journal.

If you missed the party and would like to get a copy of the Phoenix, the Library has several dozen copies in the coffee room near the front entrance. Hope to see you soon!

Phoenix Release Party!

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Join us @ the Library Monday, April 28th at 6:00 pm for the Phoenix release party!  Come get a free copy of this year’s literary and art journal, featuring contributions from your fellow Milliganites.  Be sure to stick around to hear the original artists read selections of their work.  Light refreshments will be served.  And don’t worry, you’ll be done in time to catch the Milligan Jazz Ensemble Concert in Seeger at 7:30!  Hope to see you there!

New Look to JSTOR

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JSTOR has unveiled a sleek new look on April 7, 2008! Most veteran JSTOR users will find that the basic and advance search screens retain many of the old features, while adding a few new twists.

Highlights of the new features:

  • In Advanced Searching, searchers can now specify that search terms be within a certain proximity to each other (within 5, 10, or 25 words). Using this feature can greatly improve full-text search results.
  • Save citations within JSTOR and access them again at future sessions. To use the feature, create a MyJSTOR account from the tab at the top of the screen.
  • All searches from a session are retained and can be reviewed.
  • Simplified printing and viewing of articles in PDF format.

To learn more, watch several short tutorials on the new features at:

http://0-www.jstor.org.library.acaweb.org/action/showBasicSearch

In future posts, I will discuss ways to improve JSTOR searches. But if you have any questions or would like any assistance on JSTOR or any other database, please contact me at mjackson at milligan.edu

I didn’t know we had THAT in the Milligan Library…

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As Milligan’s resident reference librarian, I am aware of some really great resources. Some of these are located physically in the library, some are available online through a subscription, and some are free out on the Internet. I hope to have occasional posts highlighting interesting resources that are often overlooked by students and faculty.

Gale Virtual Reference Library

What is it? As its name implies, it is an online reference library. Over 60+ multivolume reference books on social sciences, popular culture, religion, history, medicine and more. The complete text of every volume can be searched at one time, over 86,000 documents.

When would the Gale Virtual Reference Library (GVRL) be helpful in a research project? The GVRL is a great place to start almost any research project. Many of the articles give excellent overviews, show how a topic may be relevant in many different fields of study, and give keywords, concepts, and references for further study. The GVRL way also be helpful later in a research project to fill in gaps left by other resources. Most instructors won’t accept Wikipedia articles in a bibliography, but instructors like to see GVRL articles.

What kind of topics might be covered in the GVRL? Just a few examples: Bob Dylan (32 articles), Lord of the Rings (21), PATRIOT Act (50), and tobacco (265).

Accessing and using the Gale Virtual Reference Library
Milligan Library Homepage → Electronic Reference → Gale Virtual Reference Library

Type one or more search terms in the Basic Search box. Helpful tip–Return to the basic search screen EVERY TIME to revise a search or begin a new search.

Need help with Gale Virtual Reference Library or any other research question, contact me, Mary Jackson, mjackson at milligan.edu.