As you trot off to the beach....(farm, city, apartment, dorm----fill in the blank!)

I am wistful seeing you all float away to lives empty of tests, papers, finals, and studying for a week. We will be here catching up on projects that we often can't do when you are here needing help. I am working on a project in the Archive, trying to finish some tutorials, and work on my ERC procedures manual. I never run out of things to do. Go, have fun, and be safe! We want you back soon!

Hot off the Presses?

Just read a book that made you want to tell everyone about? Know of a book that you think we should have that was recommended in a reading for class? Hear an author being inteviewed on the radio? Whatever the reason, there is a way to make yourself heard. There is a link to a form you can fill out online. It is on the library home page at http://pierce.eou.edu at this location. The link is "Suggest Title for Purchase." We would like to know what you think!

Try a three-dimensional life!

I'm with Paul Rowan, Director of Information Technology, in his letter to the editor of The Voice. I have noticed a significant increase in students using university bandwidth to check on their virtual relationships in Face Place or My Space. I wonder what would happen if they spent that time actually cultivating their real three-dimensional lives? That might leave more bandwidth to spend for those of us who are actually working productively. It is annoying to have to wait even one nanosecond longer to access databases so that Harry can see Sally's last Saturday night's escapades or to hear Joe's latest rap pick. Give it a rest....go visit your friends in real time and space.

Research 'R Us!

The heat is on! Fingers are flyin', tempers are flaring, and a whole forest has been consumed in paper this week. I have noticed that several times (more than five) this week, students are writing papers on the research computers in the ERC.

Repeat after me:

ERC=Research
Computer Lab=Writing

Students tie up the ERC machines for too long writing papers. Thanks for being respecful to your fellow students by writing upstairs.

I'm Baaaaack!

Wow! It is great to be back! Students look really busy getting projects finished up. The Quiet Zone has been packed almost all day! Best wishes for a good week of studying. Again, it is wonderful to be back amongst all the fun!

From a distance-Bette and Me

I know...you hate the song as much as I do but it alludes to my situation for another week. Struggling to even type the sentence I formed in my narcotic-filled brain, I am longing for normalcy. I had BIG surgery last week (see photo except my surgeon was a female!) and have another week to get myself together before getting back to work. I miss you guys but am hardly good company as things stand! My husband watched me take one-half hour to unpeel a flap on a caramel wrapper. The next half hour, I got the next flap undone. Yes! I did get to eat the caramel as a reward. I even tried to knit. Holy Cow! I couldn't remember from one stitch to the next where I was. I tried to go it alone without the pain meds but Wow! Slammed -- as with a ball peen hammer, freight train, Mack truck…you get the picture.

My point is that in the last half-hour before the next pain med and the first half-hour before it kicks in, I have a lucid hour to do homework for my reference class. This week's focus is on ready reference sources. I long to answer my questions in the Reading Room, running from First Facts to The Statistical Handbook of the U.S. but having to work "at a distance" I have to confine myself to online resources. I found two cool ones in our list of databases: Brittanica Online and World Almanac. They have a database search box like the other databases and you can choose the focus of the search to just World Almanac but also Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia. Once again, Pierce's ERC resources save my bacon! Bye! Pain meds R making me Zzzzzzz.

Who's your Daddy?

Busy morning! There was more searchers than neurologists looking for Britney Spears' brain! This got me to trying a few search engines and coming up with such differing results. Sally, the Boolean logic queen, has skills to tame the most unruly search engine but still gets frustrated. Ken and I had a discussion about which search engine to use and we decided that if you rely on one search engine to do your business-think again! Like Google Scholar, for instance. How do you know what resources they are pulling from? How do you know how comprehensive it is? How can you be sure that any search engine is not serving up yesterday's lunch or just corporate sites that have paid to be there? How can you trust anything you read on the internet? This left me with the thought...who's your daddy? You are! You decide what to trust by teaching yourself to look for trustworthy sites of integrity. Here's a site to start with that: Evaluating Internet Sources

Bring your own popcorn!

Lisa just hooked movie tutorials to some of our database titles in our list of databases on the library webpage. I don't know about you, but some of the databases have many elements to choose and it is bewildering to me. I have listened to the tutorials and they are illuminating. Here's what one (Academic Search Premier) looks like in the listing of the databases:

Academic Search Premier Large database of scholarly and popular journals covering variety of academic subjects; includes full-text journals back to 1985, abstracts back to 1984, peer-reviewed articles and some newspapers. Click here for a tutorial

Try it! Just click on the link and learn all about it!! Pass the popcorn!

My secret wish for cellphones in the library!

Leaping Literature!

We have a new database! It is called Literature Resource Center and is found in our database list at http://pierce.eou.edu You can search by using the author's name, by type of author (nationality, ethnicity, genre, theme, and literary movement. You can search by document type and title of a work. This is one-stop shopping for information on literature and 120,00 authors! It has timelines so that you can place an author into historical perspective, bibliographies of the author's works and about the author, reviews of their work.....it has it all! Oh, except the paper you have to write. We'll leave that to you!

Let's Be Civilized-Turn the Dang Thing to Silent!

We know you are addicted to communication devices. How do we know? The dang things go off here every day. To get into the library, patrons pass at least one sign that states library policy-"Silence your cellphone." I don't remember there being a line on the sign that says "This policy applies to everyone but you."

Let's try harder to not disturb our fellow learners! Turn them to silent when you enter. Besides, that little buzz in your pocket is pleasant!

Keep ya' posted!

EBSCO (one of our database vendors) is offering us a cool new feature! You can have the tables of contents of journals delivered to you via email. Say you are following a topic in a journal that you want to keep on top of and don't wnat to remember to look in that journal every single month or issue date. This service just lets you know,based on your keywords, that an article has been published that you need to see.

Here's how you do it:
Creating a Table of Content Alert from Ebscohost

1. Open an EBSCO Host database from the Pierce Library page. Use the first one "Academic Search Premier."
2. Click on “Sign into my EBSCOhost” link (top left.)
3. Click on “I’m a new user” link or login if you have a login already.
4. Fill out the form and submit the info.
5. Click on the “Publications” link.
6. Select the journal you would like to receive alerts of TOC in your email
7. Click on the “Journal Alert” on the right side of the screen
8. Fill out the form (Run alert time, email address, and subject) and then click
save (if you would like to setup for multiple emails then put a semicolon between each address)
9. Repeat #5-8 for each title you would like to add.

How much fun is that?

Whatta ya call that web page again?

Ever try to cite a webpage in a bibliography but have no clue what the title is? It happens a lot because web pages follow no standard protocol. Check this out...Even cats have websites http://www.mycathatesyou.com

The title is the text within the title tag when you select View/Page Source from the menu bar. That would make the title of this page as follows:

title="My Cat Hates You"

You will see this text displayed at the very top left corner of the window above the menu bar. There's more than one way to skin a...ooops! Sorry, Fluffy!

Industrious ILL!

We can't pay these people enough in my book! As a distance student, I am surviving by the graces of the ILL staff here at Pierce and at the Buley Library at my grad school, Southern Connecticut State University. I am writing a paper on Sarah Byrd Askew, an early library pioneer during the New Deal (she is fascinating!) and her writings are hard to secure and so are the reference books with biographical information. On several occasions, they have found just the article I needed!

However, sometimes I create more work for them than necessary because I cannot see the table of contents to guarantee if Sarah Askew is listed. The entire reference book comes in (some of them are huge!) for no reason. I check the table of contents and if she is not there....back to its home it goes creating a lot of work for the ILL folks for my five minutes of scanning.

Enter a solution! Google Books! Go to http://books.google.com and type in the title of the book you want to use. Try "Book Lust" as a demo if you can't think of anything. As soon as the cover of the book appears, the Table of Contents is on the top left in the navigation page. Cool? Yes. No more asking for a book through ILL without knowing if it will really help me!

Free word processor...no, really!

So, you are sitting at a computer that does not have Word installed. Bummer. You really want to start that paper but don't want to have to type it over or have some funky filter in Word interpret "It was a dark and stormy night" into "Is &t8s98y 9 808yu098u%$%$%$%$%" Or, imagine this! You have a document on your flash drive and just want to put some final touches on it and print it out. No Word--sunk deeper than whale poop.

Try Zoho Writer found at: http://www.zohowriter.com/Home.do It writes like Word, saves like Word, it's free. What's not to love????

Messka, Mooska. . .

Mouseketeer! We have new mice on the Macs in the ERC! Now, you can right-click and be able to run the contextual menus with the big dogs!

Two times last week, students lost files using the ERC computers. They worked so hard on assignments and left them on our hard drives, expecting to retrieve and print them out on Monday. Every evening, our computers dump all documents so the files were gone. Even using a data recovery program was not successful. Heartbreak reigned. I would recommend using your iPod as a hard drive or a flash/thumb/gizmo USB drive to backup your data. It will be the best $40 or so you ever spent! They sell them at the bookstore on-campus. A the very least, email a copy of your files to yourself.

The university provides storage space for your files at http://www2.eou.edu/myfiles/
Follow the directions on that page to pull-down the server you are interested in: staff/faculty or student and then enter your account name. The account name is the part before the @ symbol in your EOU email address. Example: This " jdewey@eou.edu" email account would yield "jdewey" as the account name. This service does not extend to off-campus work but will serve as a keen place to backup your files as you move around the buildings and labs here at EOU.

Forewarned is forewarmed. It will save on Kleenex, too!

Let's Get One Thing Straight!

Yeah...the Vendacoder card! It needs to be on an even plane to work properly in the machines. This Vendacoder is old and cranky. The company who makes it is out of business so we are babying it to make it last as long as possible. When you pull out your card, look at it BEFORE you booger up the machine! If it is creased, has a split in it, looks like it may have survived the Korean Conflict, we will replace it for you! Do not insert it into our curmudgeonly machine to jam the sucker up until staff (me) returns for the next work day.

Last term, a student got his card stuck in the copy machine and instead of asking for help, convinced his buddy that it would be a great idea to stick HIS card in as well. Everyone knows that two stuck cards are better than one, right? Luckily, I was here with my handy toolkit.

So, go easy and get it straight!

Speaking of Lost!

Two wallets were lost in the library this past week-both returned to grateful owners. They were turned in by honest folks. Aren't we lucky to have such a community here at EOU? Unfortunately, it is not ALWAYS like that. I got my wallet stolen in Portland at the Portland State university hotel by going from my booth in the restaurant to the buffet table 10 feet away to get orange juice. I did not notice the wallet missing until I started to pay the bill. Backtracking across the parking lot to the car, retracing my steps to the hotel room, and then back to the restaurant (we always think it is our action that has misplaced an item) yielded no wallet. Circling back from the parking lot I spied my wallet behind a trashcan by the restaurant entrance. The cash was gone but all the credit cards were intact. People say I was lucky. It is sort of sad to consider yourself "lucky" to just have the cash stolen. The police dutifully wrote up the report. I am sure in Portland the range of crimes and their severity puts my issue pretty low on the roster of "things to follow up on." I kicked myself all the way back to La Grande. I mean, I am a person who locks the doors when I am in the house. I lived in Cincinnati for 17 years and learned a lot about being "city smart." Here at Pierce, we do all we can to assure your safety but do not use me as an example. Be aware that you are not in your living room. Our Lost and Found items are at the Circulation Desk and valuables we secure elsewhere. Ask me for those in the ERC.

Lost in Space (in my head!)

I started back to school yesterday-carrying nine graduate hours. Giddy with possibilities for projects, I could hardly sleep. I must get things mapped out and get super-organized. Lisa says it is the key to survival. Working on a proposal for cataloguing the archives that would require a mentor. Ken?

I feel much empathy for our students who are working and balancing school and some even have families. YOU are awesome!