Current Awareness

Category: Current Awareness

Meet Your Reference Librarians: Lina Rosenberg Foley Edition

By now, many of you have reached out to our reference librarians by email, phone, chat, our web form, and now, our reference kiosk.

We provide solid research assistance, as well as help with navigating our wide array of electronic resources.

Have you met Lina? If so, you’ll know she is enthusiastic about helping you and supporting your academic success.

She is also our University Archivist, so she loves providing our community with access to the wealth of primary sources and interesting historical ephemera that she carefully curates.

Read on to learn more about this multi-passionate Reference Librarian-slash-University Archivist-slash-all around wonderful person (and alumna)!

Lovely Librarian Lina

Undergrad Major: Environmental Studies (from this fine institution!)

Favorite Book: Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen

Favorite Hobby: Anything outside- camping, hiking, mountain biking

Favorite Database: Artstor, because not only can you find a bunch of things from the Archives and the Wriston Art Galleries, but also art and architecture from around the world. 

Pets: Only the squirrels in my backyard

Best part of being a Reference Librarian: Learning something new because of a question someone’s asked

Anything else: Vote! Register to vote, and get your friends and family to do it too- it’s easy and quick, and your civic duty.

Meet Your Reference Librarians: Andrew McSorley Edition

Considering that you may not have had the opportunity to meet all of our fantastic library faculty and staff during Welcome Week this year, given the need for social distancing, we thought it might be nice for you to get to know the librarians who are here to support you.

Reference librarians, among many other things, help you learn to engage in high-quality research and use our extensive collections in the most advantageous way. We support student scholars! We also support faculty and staff.

First up we have Andrew McSorley, our Reference and Digital Liberal Arts Librarian. Andrew is a published poet and also a published dad! If you’ve worked with him before, you know he is very intelligent, well-rounded, and has the ability to take complex ideas and information and express it all in a clear and concise way. He’s also very, very funny.

Here are a few more fun facts about Andrew, answered in his own words.

Undergrad Major: Creative Writing

Favorite Book: Sometimes it’s Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. Right now, probably either Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino or Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (plays count, right?)

Favorite Hobby: Poetry, Ice Hockey, Magic: The Gathering

Favorite Database: This is such a fun idea, to have a favorite database. They’re all so useful. The one I use the most is probably Credo Reference, but AVON (Academic Video Online) and Oxford English Dictionary are pretty fun. 

Pets: One cat, Nikki.

Best part of being a Reference Librarian: Meeting new students!

Anything else: Stay curious, and never stop learning!

Thanks so much for all you do for Lawrence and our students, Andrew.

Our Reference Librarians can be reached in a variety of ways highlighted here.

National Library Workers Day: A Tribute to Technical Services!

Those of us who work directly with students, staff, and faculty in the library rely every day on the efforts of the people who work in other parts of the library.

Most of you may never see them.

We can do what we do because they do what they do. Now, more than ever, we count on them.

So, a huge thank you to:

Jenni, who orders the library’s books, DVDs, scores, and more;

Trudi, who monitors and maintains all of our journal orders and collections in paper and online;

Kim, who coordinates our government documents;

Susan, who makes sure we can find it all in our catalog;

Jill, who helps all these great people do their jobs as head of Technical Services (and manages acquisitions and special collections);

Craig, who makes it possible to find everything we own and more (and to check it out) by making OneSearch and Alma work.

We could not be providing the services that we are right now if it wasn’t for this fine group of folks.

We see you! We appreciate you! We could not be doing this without you. Thank you!

APOLLO 11 – NASA’s First Moon Landing

Eagle with a branch landing on the moon with the Earth in the background and the words APOLLO 11 on top.
Apollo 11 mission patch
Credits: NASA

By Jill Thomas, Director of Technical Services

On July 16, 1969, a crew of three NASA astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Commander, Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module Pilot, and Michael Collins, Columbia Command Module Pilot, set out to land on the moon. On July 19, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first steps on the lunar surface, spending over 21 hours there before returning to Earth. Their success captivated Americans and the world. The landing completed a ten-year mission to send Americans to the moon.

50 years on, scientific exploration has continued over the intervening decades. Check out the links below which highlight both the Apollo 11 mission and the Apollo Program. Don’t forget to think about sharing your story with NASA!

Online Resources for the Apollo 11 Moon Landing:

Digging Through the Mudd: Keyboards and Finale on the 3rd & 4th Floors!

The library blog is proud to introduce a new post series: “Digging Through The Mudd!” This weekly series will uncover resources and spots in the library that often go unnoticed.

You might have seen those computer cubicles on the left side of the 3rd and 4th floors. They’re perfect for getting in some quiet essay-writing. But did you know that the left-most cubicle on both floors also has a MIDI keyboard?

Digging through the Mudd: Keyboards!
A MIDI keyboard on the 3rd floor of the library, complete with computer and headphones.

The computers are loaded with the keyboard’s primary software, ARIA Player, which you can use to experiment with all sorts of different sounds. Just turn on the keyboard, log in using your LU ID, open ARIA from the desktop, and you’ll be good to go! Make sure to select the keyboard as your controller in the Preferences menu if it doesn’t automatically detect it.

These computers are also equipped with the Finale software. For those who want a silent place to notate their music, look to the 3rd and 4th floor computers.

How to use the Library when it’s Closed

Get ready for the upcoming annual library winter break closure! In addition to visiting with family and friends and relaxing, we know many will be using this time to prepare for winter term. Here are some ways the library can help, even when the building is closed:

  • Streaming media databases: Find documentaries, instructional videos, movies, news clips, operas, theatre performances, and much more from our varied collection of streaming video resources. Our streaming audio resources include a wide variety of music, theatre audio, and more. Many of these resources include permalinks to individual titles and the ability to make clips to use in courses, and most can be accessed off campus with a proxy login.
  • OneSearch and Article databases: Find full text articles by searching in OneSearch and in many of our databases.
  • ArtStor Image Database: Collect images for your courses and projects in ArtStor.
  • Electronic books: Need a book? Access an eBook from our eBook databases- or from our friends at the Appleton Public Library (or your local public library).
  • Course reserve forms: We have PDF forms of our course reserve cards available that you can fill out at home and print out (or save as and print out later). Find an article in one of our databases? Use this form to simply enter some information, and we’ll add your reading and fill out the card.
  • RefWorks citation manager: Don’t have access to a printer? Collect and organize resources in RefWorks that you can easily locate once we’re open again.

We’ll be open again on January 2nd, from 8 am to 4:30 pm, then resuming regular school year hours on January 3rd. We look forward to seeing everyone back on campus and in the library!

New York Times Election Resources

As you may know, the Mudd Library and Warch Campus Center provide a free New York Times subscription to all Lawrence University students, faculty, and staff.

Just sign up on campus at nytimes.com/passes with your Lawrence email address (your account may be accessed off-campus once it’s been created). The subscription provides access to the electronic version from a browser and through NYTimes mobile applications.

Below is a list of features that may be especially helpful for staying informed for the November 6th midterm elections (compiled and annotated by The New York Times staff):

    • The Upshot – News, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Subscribe to the newsletter as well.
    • Elections – News about elections, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
    • The Argument– New York Times Opinion columnists explain an argument from each side of the political spectrum, so you can decide where you stand and how to persuade the opposition. Check out the section and podcast.
    • The Daily podcast – This is how the news should sound. Twenty minutes a day, five days a week. Tune in along with five million monthly unique listeners.
    • Race/Related – A weekly newsletter focused on race, identity and culture.

Prefer a different news resource? The Mudd Library subscribes to a wide variety of newspapers in both paper and electronic formats!

Student Research in the Library: John O’Neill

John O’Neill is a double-degree student from Reno, Nevada. He’s been at Lawrence for five years and will earn his BM in French Horn Performance and his BA in Russian and Government in a just few short weeks!

John is also a much-beloved library student worker, and has been the night supervisor at the Circulation Desk. He definitely knows his way around the Mudd and offers great insight into using the library to your best advantage.

Upon being asked what he would like his fellow students to know about the Mudd Library, he responded,

“Get to know the staff, don’t be afraid to ask questions, and always go upstairs to find your own books because you will come down with an entire stack of useful materials.”

Read on to learn more about John and the fascinating and important research he’s been pursuing in the Mudd!

DSC04921
John O’Neill holds a 2002 issue of Appleton’s local newspaper, The Post Crescent, which he used to research Appleton’s sister city, Kurgan, Russia.

John, what are your plans after graduation?

I am planning to travel to Ukraine for the summer to work with an NGO there that works with under-served regions of the country. After that I will be back in Appleton and hopefully onto Chicago in the fall.

What have you been researching in the Mudd Library?

Over the past two terms I have been working on my senior experience in government. For this project I am profiling the Fox Cities-Kurgan Sister City Relationship. The partnership had an astonishing period of peak activity from the 1990s through 2013, but it has since been dormant. Some of the partnership’s major accomplishments included a 2003 security summit hosted in Appleton with keynote from Mikhail Gorbachev, opening of medical facilities and a domestic violence shelter in Kurgan, obtaining funding for a project to decommission a significant stockpile of chemical weapons in the Kurgan region, and over 100 educational exchanges between universities, high schools, and middle schools in both regions.

What library materials and resources have been the most useful to you in pursuing this research?

For this project I ended up using a wide variety of resources that the library offers students. I took advantage of the main collection, ILL, and electronic databases for most of my background research. Later, I relied on our wonderful reference librarians, who pointed me to contacts at the Appleton Public Library and the Appleton Historical Society. Finally, I learned to be grateful for the VCRs and microform readers that the library makes available to students. Most of my resources were on VHS tapes from the 90s, so having those VCRs on hand was absolutely fantastic.

What are you hoping to learn or gain from this research?

One of my main objectives was to learn how sustainable local organizations are built. This involved finding out how Fox Cities-Kurgan got its start, what program leaders hoped to accomplish, and why it eventually entered a decline. As I progressed in my research I found many other sister cities around the country with similar stories of huge growth followed by a swift decline. This led me to ask just how much these relationships are subject to the broader political climate and what their place is in the global geopolitical environment.

Why do you think this research is important?

For me, The Fox Cities-Kurgan Partnership has been an inspirational example of international partnership that transcends political boundaries. Not only did the program accomplish some enormous objectives that we wouldn’t normally associate with smaller towns like Appleton, but it also forged lasting friendships between the countless exchange participants, volunteers, host families, and students who were involved. By increasing awareness of the program I hope to re-spark the interest in international advocacy that the program was founded around.

How did you become interested in this line of research?

A couple of years ago I found the partnership’s website, which hadn’t been updated since 2013. I later tried to search for Kurgan on the Post Crescent’s website, but due to archiving of the newspaper, my search returned no results. The disappearance of this program from the public eye made me a little sad and I began reaching out to program leaders and participants to find out more.

John, this sounds like really important work. We are so excited to see where you take what you’ve learned and to see the grand adventures that are in store for you! Thank you for sharing.

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A Stone of Hope in the Mudd Gallery

A Stone of Hope, an exhibit which opened in the Mudd Gallery this past Wednesday, explores Black life in the Fox Cities from the 1700s up until the present day. The exhibit, organized by the History Museum at the Castle, has traveled throughout the Fox Cities over the last two years and is making it’s return to the Seeley G. Mudd library.

The exhibit tells a multifaceted story of the lives of Black Fox City residents. Before the 20th century, there was a growing black population many of whom were veterans of the the Civil War, business owners, and community leaders. In fact Lawrence admitted several residents of the Fox Cities as early as 1856.  However with this growth of the Black population and social standing also came a rise in racially motivated harassment, discrimination, and violence. By 1920 most Black residents had left the Fox Cities. This continued throughout the twentieth century as Appleton was an unofficial “sundown town” well into the 1960s.

A Stone of Hope confronts Appleton and Lawrence’s long history of white supremacy, but in doing so also honors the many activists that have worked tirelessly to challenge these structures – in the area and throughout the country. The title of the exhibit is taken from a speech given by Martin Luther King Jr. at UW Fox Valley in 1967 in which he challenges the white community to work towards inclusion saying the Fox Cities could emerge from a “mountain of hate” as a “stone of hope” in the Civil Rights Movement. While King imagined the Fox Cities as a haven from racism there is still no doubt a great deal of work to be done to achieve this. The exhibit ends looking towards the many Fox City residents  who continue to strive towards this goal.

A Stone of Hope

A Stone of Hope, which was made possible in part by the work of the Mudd’s very own Erin Dix and Antoinette Powell, will be on view in the Mudd Gallery until April 20, after which it will be moved to the Conservatory. Be sure to spend some time with this information and impactful exhibit before it closes.

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Prepare for the Solar Eclipse!

ecplise
Simulation of the eclipse view from Appleton in NASA’s interactive web app.

If you’re as excited about the upcoming solar eclipse as we are, you’re probably interested in learning more. We’ve found a few awesome resources that will help you to not just enjoy the eclipse, but understand more about the science that’s making it happen.

NASA has put together an excellent website devoted to the eclipse of 2017 with all kinds of cool stuff. Here are a few of our favorites:

In anticipation of the eclipse, the Appleton Public Library is hosting NASA Ambassador, Bob Schmall, to talk about the significance of this event.

Want even more information? Gale, one of our database vendors, has opened access to three of their science databases from August 1st to September 15th in anticipation of the eclipse. The databases available are, Science In Context, Student Resources In Context, and Research In Context. In addition to these databases, they’ve also assembled some fun experiments, scavenger hunts, and more to help “empower you to participate in this rare event through engaging activities and up-to-date content.”

The eclipse will happen on Monday, August, 21, 2017. Remember- make sure to be safe when viewing the solar eclipse, and never look directly at it without approved eye protection!