Resources

Category: Resources

Zoom Extras for Winter Term from your Seeley G. Mudd Librarians

Your librarians and library staff want to stay connected with you, whether you’re able to come into our spaces or not. To that end, we’re offering multiple opportunities to hang out via Zoom, either to work together academically or to casually chat and see one another.

Please join us at any or all of these weekly events!

Sundays from 4 pm to 8 pm
Virtual Mudd: Open Study Hall

Meet your friends in the Mudd to study, virtually! The motivation you need to get to work and a reference librarian ready to assist. You’ll have the option to break-out into group study spaces, perfect for collaborating with your group or connecting with your friends.

Join our virtual study hall here.

Wednesdays from 7 to 7:30 pm
LU Reads with Spiritual and Religious Life and EDST 270: Why Read Children’s Books?

Brew some tea, grab a blanket, and cozy up to enjoy being read to by some of your favorite folks on campus. We love to read and we’d love to read to you! All ages are welcome. Learn more about the books and readers on the LU Reads guide.

We’ll read to you here.

Fridays at 4 pm
Fiber Arts and Chat

Grab a craft project, an art project, a puzzle, your knitting, or, just come to hang out and chat.

Get crafty and chatty with us here.

We miss having so many of you in our building, and we look forward to seeing you on Zoom! Reach out if you have any questions.

Winter Term Services at the Seeley G. Mudd Library

Happy winter term, everyone!

We are open and providing all of our usual Reference and Circulation Services.

We have safe, clean, and distanced study spaces available throughout the first and second floors anytime our building is open.

Log into your library account to request physical materials. We’re happy to locate and retrieve books and other resources for you to pick-up at the Circulation Desk, or to be sent to your campus SPC.

Check out this awesome guide if you need help accessing our resources from off-campus.

Reference Librarians are available to help you with research assistance and reference instruction. We’re also on hand to offer assistance of any kind!

We’re offering some cool Zoom gatherings this term as well, including weekly read-alouds, virtual study hall, and fiber arts hang-outs. Be on the look-out for announcements about these events through our social media accounts.

Whether through our computer screens, or from six feet away, we’ll see you soon!

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.

Library Help Videos

Need help navigating the library’s resources, but it’s outside of chat help hours? Not sure how to contact a librarian? Prefer to learn about library resources at your own pace through video? Your friends from the Mudd Library have been putting together a variety of videos to help you out! This list will update as more videos are made! (Updated 12/08/20)

Requesting Items through the Library Catalog (for students on campus and in the Appleton area and faculty/staff)

Note: You may also select Lawrence University Library as the pickup location to retrieve your items from the library circulation desk when they’re ready.

Submitting a Digitization Request (to have a chapter or article scanned)

Accessing the Library’s Electronic Resources Off-Campus

Searching & Browsing E-Journals Off-Campus

Remote Reference Options

In addition to creating these awesome videos about library resources, Andrew McSorley, Digital Liberal Arts Librarian, has also been putting together videos about using digital tools on the Mudd Library Digital Liberal Arts tools YouTube Channel.

You can also check out these useful videos made by Craig Thomas, Systems Librarian, about navigating Library OneSearch!

OneSearch Main Search Box

OneSearch Main Menu

OneSearch Brief Results Navigation

OneSearch Refine Results

And, of course, there are plenty of ways to get in touch with your friends from the Mudd to get help with research assistance, interlibrary loan, circulation, off-campus access, or anything else!

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?

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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.

Academic Citation Workshop!

Want to learn answers to important questions like,

  • why do we cite?
  • what’s the difference between MLA and APA?
  • when do I use footnotes?
  • what should be cited (and what shouldn’t be)?

If so, come to the Academic Citation Workshop, co-hosted by your friends from the Mudd Library and the Center for Academic Success. Gretchen Revie, Julie Haurykiewicz, and Nicole Crashell will guide you through the art and science of academic citations.

The workshop will take place on the first floor of the Mudd Library at 4:30 on Tuesday, February 12th. Hope to see you there!

Collaborative Science Fiction Display in the Mudd

This term the Mudd Library has partnered with professors from around campus to create a display celebrating science fiction!

The display is meant to highlight several winter term science fiction courses currently underway.

Chloe Armstrong is teaching Science Fiction and Philosophy, Amy Ongiri is leading a class called Queering Science Fiction Film, and Jason Brozek is heading up a weekend retreat to Bjorklunden to study War and Science Fiction.

Below we’ve shared science fiction recommendations from professors across disciplines. Our library display, located on the first floor, includes many of these recommendations, and more!

Jason Brozek from the Government Department recommends:

Starship Troopers (1997) – This is right up there with Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove as one of the best military satires of all time.

Battlestar Galactica (the rebooted series, 2004-2009) – One of the most powerful TV representations of issues like dehumanization, torture, terrorism, and civil-military relations.

The Forever War by Joe Halderman (1974) – The plot is about humanity traveling light-years to fight an interstellar enemy, but this book is really about how the experience of war fundamentally changes the people who fight it.

Amy Ongiri from Film Studies recommends:

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler

Octavia’s Broodedited by Walidah Imarisha

Peddle Zombies by Elly Blue

Our Reference and Learning Technologies Librarian Angela Vanden Elzen recommends:

Star Trek

Dr. Who

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

Monica Rico from the History Department recommends:

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. It explores the historical and philosophical issues raised by time travel in a sophisticated way, but it’s also a book that, at its heart, is about friendship, compassion, and loyalty.

Martyn Smith from Religious Studies recommends:

Elon Musk, Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tesla, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

Claire Kervin from Environmental Studies recommends:

Maddaddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood

Victoria Kononova from the Russian Department recommends:

The Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky

Chloe Armstrong from the Philosophy Department recommends:

“Imposter Syndrome” by Mari Kurisato, in Love Beyond Body, Space and Time, an Indigenous LGBT Sci-fi Anthology, edited by Hope Nicholson

Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Please come in and visit our display if you are on campus!

We hope you will consider reading or watching some science fiction, and that you live long and prosper, too!

The Mudd is Everything!

The Mudd Library isn’t just a place to study, or to search for and gather materials.

Libraries offer so much more, and the Mudd is no different!

  • Print and Copy Shop

Printing projects and papers and presentations, oh my!

We have everything you need to put the finishing touches on your papers and projects. Make copies, print your paper, or use the scanner. We have a universal phone charging station if you’re running low. We have staplers, tape, paper clips, rulers, and all kinds of other accoutrements to help you polish your assignments and hand them in with pride.

  • Academic Support Station

Do you need another primary or secondary source to support your argument? Looking for an open-source photo to add to your slides or for the proper citation for your paper? The reference librarians are here to help you find what you need and engage in the best and most thorough research possible. We aim to help you feel confident and supported as a student researcher.

  • Information Kiosk

Curious about what’s happening on campus? Looking to find local thrift stores, coffee shops, or parks? Not sure when that concert starts tonight? Stop by, we’ll  help you find out!

  • Social Hot Spot

All of your friends are here! Hang out on the first or second floor to discuss, debate, and collaborate. Chat, vent, laugh, share. Sometimes just sitting next to someone who is working as hard as you are can be the most valuable resource. Snap some pics or make a vid! Then get back to that group project! Pull up a whiteboard and teach each other what you’ve learned. Ask someone out on a study date. The options are endless.

Learning, together.

  • Safe, quiet, peaceful haven

The third and fourth floors are meant for quiet study. They also make a great place to read, reflect, daydream, or nap. Write that paper! No one will barge in just as you get in your groove. Or, if you’ve been in your groove and need a little break, stop down to the first floor to nurture yourself with a cup of tea. Text your mom and then get back at it. The library is for everyone, and everyone is welcome here and treated with respect and dignity!

Getting productive while enjoying the peace and of the fourth floor.

What do you need?

Academic support?

A quiet place to get some work done?

A place to belong?

We’re here for you!