Resources

Category: Resources

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!

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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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History of the Book Exhibit

Here at The Mudd we love books – we acquire them, we organize them, we help students engage with them everyday – but it’s rare that we get the chance to truly reflect on how books have shaped and been shaped by the course of history. However, we are lucky enough to host an exhibit created entirely by Lawrence students as apart of Prof. Garth Bond’s class “History of the Book”. Under the guidance of Professor Bond and librarian Jill Thomas, several Lawrence student’s engaged critically with selections from our special collection to examine how the role of books have changed throughout time and suggest perhaps how we have changed with them.

Topics range from Catherine Stowe and Harriet Beecher Stowes’ 1869 guide The American Woman’s Home: or Principles of Domestic Science to Artist Books to an analysis of 15th century Christian books. The exhibit, featuring the work of students Sara Armstrong, Allison Brooks-Conrad, Rufino C. Cacho, Anna Cohen, Yarely Covarrubias, and Hanwenheng (Billy) Liu will be up until January 15th. This exhibit is a special opportunity to view some pieces from our special collections in person outside of the Milwaukee Downer room, so be sure to stop by the Mudd before then. For those of you who want to spend some more time with these pieces, selections are digitized in the database Artstor under Selections from Special Collections, Seeley G, Mudd Library. Photographs of the exhibit are available in the History of the Books album.

      These precious books alongside the work of our students provide great insight into the lasting impact books have not only in our own lives but also in the lives of those who lived long before us and surely those who will live long after we’re gone.

Mudd Gallery Exhibit: Future Humour

 

Future Humour runs until November 20.

We love the Mudd Gallery! Having an art gallery in the library is a beautiful partnership, and one that truly embodies the essence of a liberal arts education.

Future Humour features digital photography captured in New York City and Appleton.

Supporting our students is an incredibly significant component of our mission, so it makes sense for us to offer space that allows burgeoning student artists the opportunity to curate, organize, and host their own gallery openings and exhibits.

It’s also a great resource for students working hard in the library, slogging away at their academic work. The gallery allows a meaningful, fulfilling, thought-provoking avenue through which to relax, unwind, and shift or gain perspective.

The Mudd Gallery’s latest exhibit is Future Humor by Yifan Zhang.

The artist shares color photography captured in New York City and in Appleton, creating a vibrant and interesting opportunity to compare and contrast these locations.

Zhang states, “Humour is elegant innuendo. Future Humour represents unforeseen conditions. I will let the images speak for themselves.”

The Mudd Gallery is located on the 3rd floor of the Seeley G. Mudd Library.

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OneSearch Tips & Tools: Add to e-Shelf

Did you know that if you log in to your library account in Library OneSearch, a whole selection of options are made available?! Logging in allows you to see additional materials in the OneSearch and Course Reserves tabs, and do a bunch of cool stuff from your library account. One of these cool things is the e-Shelf feature.

The e-Shelf feature allows you to save items and go back to them later rather than printing screenshots or taking pictures with your phone. It works with items we have in the library like books and videos as well as with articles found in the OneSearch tab.

Unsure of how to add items to your e-Shelf? Here are some photos to help.

Steps 1 & 2: Click the star next to the item you’d like to save. Log in to your account.

Steps 3 & 4: Click on e-Shelf. Click the new folder icon.

Step 5: Name folder

Step 6: Return to basket, click the box next to the item you’d like to move, and drag the item to the new folder.

Items in your e-Shelf folders can be emailed, printed, or sent to your RefWorks account.

Questions? Ask a librarian! We’re happy to help!

Open Access Monographs!

During Open Access Week, we’re highlighting a variety of open access resources. Today is Book Day!

JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org/open/?cid=soc_tw_JSTOR
More than 2,000 Open Access ebooks are now available at no cost to libraries or users. These titles are freely available for anyone in the world to use.

Knowledge Unlatched:  http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/
KU’s vision is “a sustainable market where scholarly books and journals are freely accessible for each and every reader around the world.” There’s a browsable list of books they’ve made available.

MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/open-access
The  MIT Press has been a leader in open access book publishing. They support a variety of open access funding models for select books, including monographs, trade books, and textbooks.

Luminos: https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/
Luminos is University of California Press’ new Open Access publishing program for monographs. With the same high standards for selection, peer review, production and marketing as their traditional publishing program, Luminos is  built as a partnership where costs and benefits are shared.

OAPEN: http://www.oapen.org/home
The OAPEN Library contains many freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences.

As always, if you have questions about these resources, please ask your librarian!

 

 

 

It’s Open Access Week!

Open Access Week, October 23-29, is an “opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of open access issues and express support for free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research.” What’s not to like about that?

The Mudd Library supports open access in a number of ways:

We link to open resources like arXiv.org which offers open access to more than a million e-prints in a variety of scientific fields, SocArXiv.org, the “open archive of the social sciences,” and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  We subscribe to several open access journals like PLoS (Public Library of Science) Medicine and PLoS Biology (search the library catalog for PLOS).  And, of course, we provide open access to a wide variety of scholarly and creative work from Lawrentians through Lux, the repository for “scholarship and creativity at Lawrence.”

If you want to know more about how open access works (and who doesn’t?), watch this Open Access 101 video from SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. And for even more information about open access:

Prepare for the Solar Eclipse!

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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!

Lux Reaches 300,000 Downloads!

People all over the world have accessed honors projects, issues of The Lawrentian, and convocations in the six years since Lux was implemented through the library.

We have now reached 300,000 downloads!

What is this Lux? Lux is the Lawrence University institutional repository, digital home to over 4000 scholarly and creative works of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as select historical documents.

If you are looking for interesting stories from student newspapers or alumni magazines, check Lux! You will find a rich and fascinating history.

Want to peruse recent honors projects? Lux is the place for you.

Interested in reading a Harrison Award paper? Studio Art senior exhibition artwork? Look in Lux. You will find these things and many more.

We hope you enjoy and are enriched by what you find in Lux! Let us know what you think.