The University of Scranton’s Weinberg Memorial Library is accepting book donations for its annual book sale slated for Saturday, April 30 and Sunday, May 1. A special preview sale will be held on Friday, April 29 for current (2021-2022) Friend’s members and Schemel Forum members.
The Weinberg Memorial Library will be accepting paperback and hardcover books in good condition, such as children’s books, young adult books, cookbooks, fiction, and non-fiction books. Appointments to donate books are needed. The Library is also seeking volunteers to help work the book sale. Volunteer shifts are flexible.
To schedule an appointment to donate books, obtain clarification on accepted books, or to volunteer, please reach out to Melisa Gallo at melisa.gallo@scranton.edu or (570) 941-6195. All current University of Scranton health and safety protocols must be followed for volunteers and visitors.
CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. John Norcross of Clarks Summit who won these fabulous prizes in our January Leaves of Class XXIII Raffle drawing: Kalahari Resorts & Conventions (four all-day Waterpark admission tickets); Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar ($25 gift certificate); Café Rinaldi ($25 gift certificate – courtesy of George & Lindsay Aulisio): The New Café ($50 gift card – courtesy of Joseph Cimini); Stirna’s Restaurant ($25 gift certificate); Wegmans ($100 gift card – courtesy of Sid Prejean); Actor’s Circle (two flex tickets); Dietrich Theater (movie gift bag); Everhart Museum (family membership); NEPA Philharmonic (two tickets to the 4/8/22 PNC Pops Jerry Herman Concert); The President’s Daughter by Bill Clinton & James Patterson (courtesy of Charles Kratz & William Varady); LiztechNecklace and Pin (courtesy of Charles Kratz & William Varady); Wonderstone Gallery ($25 gift card – courtesy of Peter V. & Narda Tafuri); Crunch Fitness (one 3-month membership with 2 personal training sessions & t-shirt); Amazon (two $25 gift cards – courtesy of Sondra Myers); American Candle (sugar cookie scented candle); $250 Cash (courtesy of Charles Kratz & William Varady); Hand-knit Shawl (courtesy of Bonnie Strohl); Hand-made Fleece Throw (courtesy of Annette Kalwaytis); Library Express (composition book gift bag); Mastercard ($50 gift card – courtesy of Letha Reinheimer); One Point (office supply basket); and Target ($50 gift card – courtesy of Marian Farrell.)
This year’s raffle features more than $7,000 in prizes! Tickets are $25 and earn each participant 4 chances to win seasonal prize drawings.
The next drawing date is March 1, 2022.
To be eligible for the drawings, purchase an entry form online or request to have brochures mailed to you.
The Friends of the Weinberg Memorial Library at The University of Scranton are pleased to announce the 23rd Annual Ann Moskovitz Leaves of Class XXIII Raffle to help support the Friends of the Library Endowment Fund.
This year’s raffle features more than $7,000 in prizes! Tickets are $25 and earn each participant 4 chances to win seasonal prize drawings. The 2022 drawing dates are: January 3, March 1, June 1, and September 1, 2022.
Be the lucky winner of these or many more fabulous prizes, including Waterpark admission tickets to Kalahari Resorts & Conventions, an iPad, a one night stay at The Settlers Inn, an annual couple’s membership to the Schemel Forum, cash prizes up to $250, services for personal care, gift baskets, gym memberships, gift certificates to various area restaurants, and much more!
To be eligible for the drawings, purchase an entry form online or request to have brochures mailed to you. Gift envelopes are available for anyone who would like to give a raffle ticket as a gift. They make great stocking stuffers!
The Library invites University of Scranton Faculty to join us during Open Access Week on Wednesday, October 27th, at 11:00 am on Zoom to discuss implementing Open Educational Resources (OER) and affordable learning materials in the classroom.
Discussion will include an introduction to OER, how to locate OER and other open materials within the Library’s collection and online, and suggestions for how you can replace costly textbooks and other resources with OER and/or appropriately licensed library resources. We will also discuss a new trial database, CloudSource OA, and workshop with attendees to utilize this resource that curates and aggregates open access publications and open educational resources from leading academic publishers and universities.
Librarians will also answer questions about OER and the Affordable Learning Implementation Grants (formerly the Open Educational Resources Grants), available to full-time Faculty and accepting applications until November 19th.
The Weinberg Memorial Library is pleased to welcome the Class of 2025 to The University of Scranton!
Sign up for the Heritage Hunt, the interactive introduction to the library and its resources for first-year students!
You can consult a University of Scranton Librarian during our service hours by calling 570-941-4000 or by using the Ask a Librarian chat box. Assistance is available 24/7 through the chat box, which is covered by librarians not affiliated with the University of Scranton outside service hours.
Research consultations can be scheduled by using the Ask a Librarian chat box or by contacting your library liaison directly by email.
To find resources, such as books, periodicals, and media, search our catalog from the Library’s home page. The Library’s large collection of e-books, e-journals, and streaming media are available 24/7. To access the Library’s online content, you must first authenticate through my.scranton.edu.
The InterLibrary Loan (ILL) service is available for requesting articles not currently accessible at our library. For ILL questions/concerns, please email interlibrary-loan@scranton.edu.
The Weinberg Memorial Library has five floors and offers a variety of spaces to support your study and research needs including computer workstations, individual study space, group study rooms, quiet study areas, and the Heritage Room.
The library’s Pro Deo room, Reilly Learning Commons, 2nd floor, and 3rd floor remain accessible to students 24 hours a day when campus is open and include printing stations, group study rooms, and lab computers.
Circulation Services, located on the first floor, can help you check out and return print materials, laptops, and iPads. You can also pick up items on reserve, books placed on hold, and InterLibrary loan materials.
The Reilly Learning Commons (RLC), located on the first floor, is a collaborative space with access to high-powered computers, video and audio recording rooms, 3D Printing, and reservable group study rooms equipped with white boards and monitors.
The Library’s Research & Scholarly Services department, located on the second floor, can assist you with research, such as finding, evaluating, and citing information.
The Media Resources Collection (MRC), located on the third floor, provides media materials for instructional support and student learning. The EdLab collection, found within the Media Resources Collection, consists of children’s literature and K-12 textbooks.
Sophia N. Visaggio is the winner of the 2021 Bonnie W. Oldham Library Research Prize in the Undergraduate Upper-level category, which is awarded to the winning project completed in a 200- to 400-level course.
Sophia N. Visaggio, Bonnie W. Oldham Library Research Prize Winner in the Undergraduate Upper-level Category
Sophia is a sophomore Occupational Therapy major with a minor in Psychology from Wantagh, New York, who submitted the project “Interventions for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” completed in the course OT 250: Scientific Writing and Information Literacy, taught by Dr. Julie Nastasi. Sophia began her research process after information literacy instruction to her class by a librarian, through which she learned techniques for searching within the EBSCO database CINAHL with Full Text, including how to adjust search criteria to meet her research and topical needs. She maintained an electronic file with a chart in which she logged her progress so she could recreate her searches later in the research process, and as an aid in her organization and analysis of sources. She also notes how her increased understanding of her topic will help her in different parts of her life, both professional and personal.
But perhaps most important in Sophia’s work on this project was the change in her disposition toward research; as she shares in her description of research:
“When researching my topic of interventions for ADHD, I felt accomplished when I found an article that was perfect for my paper. I was surprised how a task I once feared now brought me a sense of enjoyment from successfully scouring the database and finding exactly what I needed. … Now being able to retrospectively look back on this once terrifying task, I am proud of my growth in both accessing the library’s databases as well as my analysis and writing skills. What began as a task I dreaded and could not wait to be done with became a journey of researching and writing that I found enjoyable so much so that I did not mind the amount of work I put into perfecting my paper.”
Sponsoring faculty Dr. Julie Nastasi comments on the quality of Sophia’s work and shares, “Sophia conducted a literature review and synthesized the types of interventions used in occupational therapy practice for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Her research is extremely impressive because she has not had clinical practice courses at this point in the curriculum. She identified appropriate interventions and was able to report the findings in literature to use in clinical practice.”
Currently celebrating its 10th year, the Weinberg Memorial Library inaugurated the prize in 2011 to recognize excellence in research projects that show evidence of significant knowledge of the methods of research and the information gathering process, and use of library resources, tools, and services. In 2017, the prize was named for Professor Emerita Bonnie W. Oldham, who founded the prize at the University in 2011. The Bonnie W. Oldham Library Research Prize was fully endowed in 2019 and consists of a prize of $500 awarded to winning projects in each of the three categories: Undergraduate Foundational (100-level projects), Undergraduate Upper-level (200- to 400-level projects), and Graduate.
Honorable Mention awards in the Undergraduate Upper-level category were presented to Sydney L. Gero, a sophomore Criminal Justice major and Counseling and Human Services minor, for the project, “An Empirical Study on Cybercrime and COVID-19,” completed in CJ 386H: Cybercrime and COVID-19 for Dr. Sinchul Back; and to Jessica Goldschlager, a junior with majors in Neuroscience and Hispanic Studies, for the project, “El trauma histórico y la comunidad latinx,” completed in SPAN 335: Service and the Hispanic Community for Dr. Roxana Curiel.
Amanda Trumpore, Elizabeth DiGiovine, Kayla Brown, and Emily Harvan are the winners of the 2021 Bonnie W. Oldham Library Research Prize in the Graduate category.
Top Row: Amanda Trumpore, Elizabeth DiGiovine; Bottom Row: Kayla Brown, Emily Harvan; Bonnie W. Oldham Library Research Prize Winners in the Graduate Category
Amanda, Elizabeth, Kayla, and Emily are students in the Doctor of Physical Therapy program, who are from Warren, New Jersey, Shavertown, Pennsylvania, Stockholm, New Jersey, and Cranford, New Jersey, respectively. Together they submitted to the competition the group project “Effects of Music on HR and BP on Patients in the ICU: A Meta-Analysis,” completed in the course sequence PT 771/772/773: Scientific Inquiry in Physical Therapy, taught by Dr. Renée Hakim. This project was a systematic review conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) format. Group members relied on expert instruction by a librarian in search, e.g., how to use MeSH terms in PubMed, and bibliographic management, e.g., collaborative citation organization and analysis using Zotero. They also used the Library’s efficient Interlibrary Loan (ILL) services to successfully conduct their review of 182 studies which were culled down to 18 from which they extracted data “to determine the impact of music on the vital signs of patients in the ICU.”
The group comments on the iterative and collaborative nature of the research process in their description of research when they share:
“Our group learned many lessons throughout this project with the help of both the library and our department faculty. Although we anticipated that the process of conducting a systematic review would be straightforward, we discovered that implementing the procedure involves considerable trial and error and team cooperation. We had to change our search terms many times to obtain an appropriate search yield …”
Sponsoring faculty Dr. Renée Hakim commended this project for being accepted for presentation at a national scientific meeting (American Physical Therapy Association’s Combined Sections Meeting, February 2021), and notes that “At the start of the project, the students knew very little about the design methodology and library resources. By the end of the project, they completed a quality study which is considered the highest level of evidence (OCEBM [Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine]),” and that “This application of information literacy will be applied by these students as life-long learners to maintain best practice as future health care professionals.”
Jonathan R. Wells is the winner of the 2021 Bonnie W. Oldham Library Research Prize in the Undergraduate Foundational category, which is awarded to the winning project completed in a 100-level course.
Jonathan R. Wells, Bonnie W. Oldham Library Research Prize Winner in the Undergraduate Foundational Category
Jonathan is a first-year Biology major from Long Valley, New Jersey, who submitted to the competition the project “The Surprising Reality of Middle Eastern Tourism,” completed in Prof. Charles Kratz’s WRTG 107: Composition course. He investigated his topic in both the Library’s resources, primarily in the EBSCOhost database Academic Search Elite and the ProQuest Central database, and in credible web sources such as the Jordan Investment Commission (jic.gov.jo). He also developed the structure of his paper in response to the information he found in the databases about his topic, shaping his subsequent searches based on the new things he learned about his topic along the way.
In his description of research, Jonathan offers a metaphor for the research process that illustrates his developed understanding of research when he shares:
“Through an evolving research process, I developed a greater understanding of the process of gathering information. An analogy I like to use is that research is synonymous to mining. You have a target ore that you would like to find; however, in the process of trying to find that ore, you will come across other valuable types of rocks. My research process relates to this idea, because when I was researching my topic, I started out with target ideas, and ended up with other valuable information that helped me create a strong informative essay. This allowed me to understand the importance of starting with broad searches, and narrowing down on more specific subtopics.”
Sponsoring faculty Prof. Charles Kratz comments on Jonathan’s project and shares, “Jonathan did excellent work in defining a clear research process using Weinberg Library resources. The strength of his work came in how he revised his research process along the way. His topic and the information gathering process became very important to him. He especially enjoyed the new sense of discovery the research process provided him.”
An Honorable Mention award in the Undergraduate Foundational category was presented to Charles C. Sylvester, a first-year Environmental Science major with a minor in Classical Languages, for the project “The Age of the Electric Vehicle has Come,” completed in WRTG 107: Composition for Prof. Dawn D’Aries Zera.
Due to the impact of COVID-19 on campus operations, in lieu of an in-person awards reception prize winners received their awards in May.
