Mr. Michael Huebner, a journalist for the Birmingham News, will visit UA on March 31 to present a lecture on “The Himalayas: Tourism, Politics and Cultural Change on Top of the World.” Mr. Huebner’s presentation will focus on Nepal , Sikkim in northeast India, Ladakh in northwest India, and the kingdom of Bhutan. His talk will highlight the dramatic cultural and political transformations in Nepal and Bhutan, since 1996. He will also discuss why Ladakh, despite being part of the volatile Jammu-Kashmir state of northwest India, has remained relatively stable. Mr. Huebner will explain the persistence of ancient cultures and religions in these areas. In addition, he will tell how tourism and mass communication have impacted the social fabric and environment of the world’s most beautiful and pristine region. Mr. Huebner’s lecture is at 7:00 pm on March 31, 2010 in Room 1092 in Shelby Hall on the campus of The University of Alabama. The presentation is open to all UA faculty, students, and staff, as well as the greater Tuscaloosa community. Michael Huebner is a classical music and dance critic and fine arts writer for the Birmingham News. He also writes about world cultures and travel. This program is sponsored by the University Libraries and the Department of Geography. Contact: John Sandy, Rodgers Library for Science and Engineering, 348-2111.
Author: jsandy
UA Libraries Sponsor Book Collecting Contest
Do you love books? Are you a book collector? If so, you are invited to enter the UA Libraries 2010 Book Collecting Contest. Cash prizes will be awarded to contest winners. Deadline for entries is March 31, 2010. For contest rules and an entry form, consult our Web site. Collections of contest winners will be featured in a display in Gorgas Library for six weeks after the contest ends. Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to showcase your collection. The entire UA community will enjoy!
More E-Books on the Way
Publishers are offering more e-books for sale. Rodgers Library has responded by ordering major collections of science and engineering e-books from Springer and Elsevier for 2010. As soon as Springer and Elsevier release the e-books, titles will show up in SpringerLink and ScienceDirect. All new e-books purchased by Rodgers Library are also listed in the UA Libraries online catalog. So access to e-books is easy and direct. Quick links to our e-book publishers are on our Web site. Enjoy!
Discover Oil and Gas Pubs With OnePetro
Beginning in 2010, UA students and faculty have access to OnePetro. This major database with over 80,000 publications covers oil and gas exploration and the oil and gas industry. Classic papers from the API Drilling and Production Practices and Secondary Recovery of Oil in the United States are included. Meeting papers and journal articles from the Society of Petroleum Engineers, more than 50,000 documents, some from as far back as 1927, are included too. The database features search and full-text downloads. OnePetro is an amazing resource for teaching and research.
Social Media Arrive
How we communicate with users is changing. E-mail, once a favorite tool to stay in touch, is losing ground to Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, Twitter, and other social media. Always ready to try newer technologies, Rodgers Library has joined the rush to use social media.
Social media are about sharing and interaction – possibilities abound. Social bookmarking with Delicious improves instruction and research and can enhance professional development. Students in a biology class may choose to bookmark references and share access to common reading lists, for example. For other students, Flickr offers an effective way to share photos depicting research activities with classmates.
During the summer, Rodgers Library introduced its first blog, called R-Lib. With R-Lib, we introduce new and popular resources, as well as changes in services, to faculty and others. Since the blog is “interactive,” faculty are welcome to post and comment on the blog.
By fall, Rodgers Library was ready to roll out Twitter, another popular social media tool. The goal with Twitter is to reach out to undergraduate students. In real-time, “tweets” are posted on the Twitter site for the whole community to see and read. Are seats open this week during late night 24/5 hours? Well, yes, says a new post on the library’s Twitter page.
Social media are easy to access. Students at UA find a link to Rodgers Library’s social media from the library’s homepage. More creative students get the same content using a media feed directed to a personal laptop or smart phone.
Visit Rodgers Library’s general guide.
Springer offers MyCopy Service
Rodgers Library has purchased thousands of e-books from Springer. You can find/search these books on the Springer platform at SpringerLink.com
While using SpringerLink, you can view and download content as you choose. This service is free. The books are paid for. The Springer e-books that we purchased are a part of the University Libraries’ permanent collections. And the e-books are listed in the Libraries’ catalog.
Springer offers another way to capture a hardcopy version of a book, with a service called MyCopy. When viewing a book online in SpringerLink, you can click on a link to “Buy a Print Copy of this Book.” Next add the book to your shopping cart. Should you move forward, you’ll be asked to complete your purchase using a credit card (your personal credit card).
By this action, you will buy a nice paperback copy of the book. Springer will send the book to your business or home address.
New Discovery Interface Launches
The University Libraries lunched a new discovery interface this week. The interface, called DiscoverySearch, is based on a piece of software from AquaBrowser a leading vendor in the library marketplace. DiscoverySearch looks deceptively simple, but it offers a very powerful way to find and access books and other materials listed in the University Libraries’ catalog. The beauty of DiscoverySearch derives from faceted searching. Following a keyword search, often a huge number of items display. With DiscoverySearch, the search results can easily be refined. For example, if a search on engineering mechanics pulls up one-hundred books but you just want electronic books, a click on a facet labelled electronic books changes the results to e-format only. Other facets such as date, topic, series, and author work in much the same way. A word cloud on the left side of the screen helps you locate other related materials that may be of interest. It’s very nice and will improve your productivity. http://ab.lib.ua-net.ua.edu/
Mobile Web Arrives
Did you know that you can access e-journal content licensed by Rodgers Library over the Mobile Web? The iPod Touch (from Apple) is ideal for this purpose. The iPod Touch, using Wi-Fi, easily connects to the Internet. Get productive, go Mobile!
Standards for Technology and Commerce
When standards are needed by engineers, they commonly turn to ASTM (American Society for Testing Materials), ANSI (American National Standards Institute) and ISO (International Standards Organization). Standards from other organizations can be handy as well. Since it’s hard to anticipate what specific standards are needed for a project, the library subcribes to SAI Global’s Standards Infobase. This database provides access to over one million standards issued by organizations from around the world. Standards are essential for commerce and technology. Login to the standards database at: http://bit.ly/fawwi
ASME Conference Proceedings Expanded
ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) publishes the proceedings (full text of papers) from about 30 of its conferences each year. Many volumes are found in the Rodgers Library book stacks, but newer content is online. This summer Rodgers Library subscribed to the ASME Online Archive for conference proceedings back to 2002. To access the proceedings login to the ASME Digital Library at http://www.asmedl.org
Rotunda Dome Scheduled for Paint Job
UA Facilities will be busy adding a new coat of paint to the Rotunda dome in Rodgers Library starting on Monday, August 10, 2009. The project will take about three days to complete. Rodgers Library will be closed to the public while the work is in progress. User can access some library resources from the Rodgers Library Web site during this period.
SMART Board at Rodgers
A new SMART Board, an interactive whiteboard, is ready for use by students and others. Installed in the Nightingale Group Study Room, the SMART Board is great for presentation and has all kinds of flashy features, such as touch screen navigation, intelligent drawing, color pens, and much more. The UF55 projector that’s a part of the system displays images with sharpness and clarity. A very nice set up!
Rodgers Library Publishes Photo Gallery
Photos are a good way to tell a story. Rodgers Library has developed an extra nice photo gallery to acquaint users with services, collections and facilities. Open this link and click on Slideshow to learn about all the library has to offer. Enjoy!
Social Bookmarking a Useful Tool
On the Internet, it’s very easy to find valuable information. And the process of discovery has become even more interesting with the arrival of Web 2.0 networking tools that allow for social bookmarking. Many faculty are engaged in social bookmarking. The possibilities seem endless. Social bookmarking can be used to improve instruction and research, even enhance professional development. Perhaps best of all, content in social bookmarking sites is easy to access. An RSS feed can push new content to your portal. And while on a site, search boxes and tags help find just the information you want to read, view, or listen to. The Rodgers Library Homepage features a handy Widget for social bookmarking. To see how this works, enter in the USER box the keyword RodgersLibrary (as a single word) and observe how finding pages on Rodgers Web site is made easier. If you want to learn more about social bookmarking, read “7 Things You Should Know about Social Bookmarking.” This Educause page explains how it all works.