Category Archives: Reference & Research

What we did on your summer vacation, Part 1

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“So, what do you, like, DO at the library all summer?” is one the most frequent questions students and faculty ask library staff as one school year ends and another begins.  I mean, it’s only reasonable to expect that library staff  play Scrabulous and Minesweeper in an empty library all summer while kindergartener-sized tumbleweeds roll past the periodicals racks.

Well, it may surprise you to learn that we do quite a bit!  Though we still have plenty of summer students, faculty and staff, and camp kids to keep us company, we still find time both to carry out our normal duties and to work on bigger projects and initiatives.  Here’s a taste of what we’ve done between graduation and today…

  • Our biggest news first…we completed our library staff by hiring two new library staff members:  Jack Weinbender, our new Library Assistant whose first day with us was June 17, and Meredith Sommers, our new Information Resources Librarian/College Archivist, who will begin  July 13.  We’ll post profiles of both of them soon on this blog so you can get to know them better!
  • Mary Jackson tagged dozens of new web resources for the library’s del.icio.us page
  • Ordered, cataloged, processed, and shelved hundreds of new books, DVDs, and CDs
  • Gary Daught, Mary Jackson, and Jeff Harbin attended BCLA Shared Catalog Committee meetings at Maryville College at the end of May
  • Jeff cleaned up and shifted photography lending shelves
  • Jeff shifted S-Z section of lending books
  • Gary presented on the peer review process to two Scholarly Communication classes in Milligan’s M.Ed. program
  • Jeff refreshed new book display with over 150 new books, not one of them published before 2008
  • Jeff attended two online Interlibrary Loan tutorials and exponentially expanded pool of potential DVD and CD lenders
  • Gary attended a webinar on WorldCat Local, and implemented Milligan’s “quick start” WorldCat Local environment
  • Readied reserve shelves for next year, removing many outdated items and adding course-relevant materials, and moved out empty shelving unit to create more space in reserves area
  • Gary closed out the fiscal year, reconstructed acquisitions fund code hierarchies, and reallocated funds in the library management system
  • Gary initiated a review of current periodical/journal subscriptions with faculty
  • Added extra shelving unit to provide more room for growing DVD collection, shifted current items and moved furniture to create more space in DVD room
  • Jeff cleaned up and organized both the circulation desk and the Interlibrary Loans area
  • Gary and Jeff wrote a grant proposal for the library’s “Librarians Bearing Gifts” faculty outreach project
  • Worked with faculty to improve our lending collection of music books
  • Gary and Jack organized receipt of and binding requests for M.Ed. theses
  • Gary and Jack eliminated backlog of periodical check-ins
  • Obtained ten additional circulating student-use laptops, bringing our total to twenty.

Whew!  And though the days of summer are quickly sifting through our fingers like so many grains of Myrtle Beach sand, the library staff has much more to accomplish in the 5 1/2 weeks (!) before the fall semester begins.  Be sure to check out Part 2 of this update as the new school year draws closer.

What I didn’t learn in library school

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There are lots of things I didn’t learn in library school, but as we approach the end of another school year, I’d like to focus on one.

But first I need to give some history.  When I decided to go to library school, it was not because I had great librarian role models.  I had the same school librarian (this was pre-media specialist days) for 1st through 8th grade.  My friends and I always disliked library class because we were forced to learn things we thought were dumb.  I liked learning library related things like the Dewey Decimal system, but it seemed we covered lots of other topics that I didn’t enjoy.  I realize now that many of these topics were things the librarian probably didn’t want to teach either, but it was her job.  My mom volunteered in the school library and they became very good friends.  This added another layer of strange to the relationship.

The most negative librarian experience I had was with my high school librarians.  In my sophomore year, my high school library reopened after a complete renovation.  It was a lovely facility.  But I only went a handful of times because the RULES were more important than the people.  The most onerous rule was a ban on talking at any time.  If you merely whispered to your neighbor, you had a warning and the next offense, you were out.  It was such an unpleasant place that I abandoned it completely and used the very fine Phoenix Public Library System.  My mom taught me how to use the Reader’s Guide and other library resources.   While I loved my public library system, I didn’t have a relationship with any of the staff.

I spent a lot of time in my college library.  It was also a lovely facility and in contrast to my high school, a much more welcoming environment.  I knew many of the library staff.  Someone was always posted by the door as we entered and exited, clicking a counter, checking to see if we had found what we needed.  One librarian in particular always exchanged a few words with us, including the same Bible jokes that we had heard from previous encounters.  But I never considered the librarians friends or mentors.  Now I can conjure up fuzzy images, but I can’t remember names like I can of the professors I loved.

So I was surprised in my first job as a librarian to find out that I quickly began to recognize the library regulars (or as I like to call them the library groupies).  First we made eye contact. Later we would exchange greetings.  After a while many would start stopping by to chat on their way to and from studying.  Often I found the best part of my day was talking with the regulars and often our conversations would lead to ways that I could help them with their academic questions, but also a wide variety of other issues.

So it is May again, I’m finishing up my second year as the Reference and Instruction Librarian at Milligan College.  A job that I love.  This year there is a long list of library groupies and some great student workers, who will be graduating.  I’ve very excited for them.  I think they are well prepared to face the challenges of this life, but I will miss them.  My daily interactions with them are just one of the reasons that it is a joy to come to work.  They have made me think. They have made me laugh. Fortunately, many groupies will be back next semester and a new batch of potential groupies will come in August.

In library school they did not teach me that I would have life changing relationships with my patrons, but it is the reason that I will continue to be a librarian and love it.

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.

Website Tweak Simplifies Search for Library Journal Holdings

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The Library collection includes not only books, and non-print media (CDs, DVDs, etc.) but also journals and magazines. Journals and magazines are an important medium of written communication.

  • Popular magazines inform or entertain general audiences on a wide variety of topics and interests (e.g., current news, computers, or cats).
  • Professional journals and magazines report on news and current practices within specialized professions (e.g., teaching and education, or nursing and healthcare).
  • Academic (or peer-reviewed) journals report on the results of research from various disciplines of scholarly study (e.g., Medieval history, physics, or Old Testament biblical studies).

The Library subscribes to many different journals and magazines of these various types, in both print and electronic formats. Until recently, if you wanted to find out what journals and magazines the Library held, you had to first browse a listing of print titles and then search for available titles in electronic full-text format. We are pleased to announce that you can now search for all the library’s journal and magazine holdings, in either print or electronic format, from a single location.

From the homepage of the Library website, click on the Electronic & Print Periodicals link. The link takes you to a journal search and browse service called Serials Solutions.

If, for example, you wanted to find Library holdings for the magazine Smithsonian, simply type the title in the “Find” box and click the “Search” button. The results indicate that we have holdings of Smithsonian in print and electronically in two online databases.

Smithsonian

Although we observe that most users prefer to access journal articles electronically, don’t forget that print can still be very useful. Notice that our print holdings of Smithsonian stretch back to 1971, while our holdings in electronic format only go back to 1983. If your research required you to secure an article in an issue from 1979, you would not be able to get it in electronic format. But it is available in print! (Back issues of all our print periodicals can be found in the compact shelving in the basement level of the Library.)

We hope this one-stop interface will help to simplify your search for journals and magazines held by the Library. Remember that articles from journals or magazines not held by the Library in either print or electronic format can be requested from interlibrary loan by filling out the webform here.