Category: Resources & Technology

Technology On Your Own Terms–Fall 2015

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November 2, 2015

12:00 pm

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TOYOT_logo4a-smallOn behalf of the Weinberg Memorial Library and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, we invite University of Scranton faculty and staff to the Fall 2015 Technology On Your Own Terms (TOYOT) workshops.

Music Streaming: Tuesday, November 17, 12pm-1pm in Weinberg Memorial Library 305. Presenter, Sam Davis, Library Systems Specialist.

Do any Google search for ‘music streaming’ or ‘online radio’, and you’re presented with a myriad of options for listening to music. When it comes to listening to music online, how do you know which one to pick? If it worth the possible subscription?  Much like Goldilocks looking for the perfect bed, it’s difficult to find the best one in a sea of options. In this session, we’re going to discuss popular streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, examine some offbeat choices such as Amazon Music or Google Play, plus examine the results of the music streaming survey.

Fill out a brief survey on your music streaming preferences in preparation for the session here.

New Travel Websites and Transportation Apps: Tuesday, December 1, 12pm-1pm in Weinberg Memorial Library 305. Presenters John Culkin, Senior Systems Administer and Sheli McHugh, Cataloging & Metadata Librarian and Learning Commons Coordinator.

There are a slew of new websites and apps that are transforming the way we travel, both locally and beyond. We will explore several companies that are part of the sharing economy, including Air BnB, Uber, and Lyft. We will look at the features of using each app, the types of services included, and explore security concerns.

A light lunch will be provided. Both sessions are open to all University faculty and staff, but seats are limited, so please let us know if you plan to attend. You can register at www.scranton.edu/ctleregistration under Technology on Your Own Terms.

World Series Resources at the Weinberg Memorial Library

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October 30, 2015

2:08 pm

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As a librarian and sports fan, I decided to research the history of the World Series, given that the World Series starts this week, with the first game of the Series being played between the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets on October 27, 2015.  I have shared below what I have found on the World Series using some of the resources that are available to faculty, students, and staff here at the University of Scranton.

The World Series can be defined as an…

“Annual series of championship baseball games between the pennant winners of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL), played after the end of the regular season in October. The first team to win four games becomes the U.S. champion. The 1919 series is the most notorious because after the heavily favored Chicago White Sox were upset by the Cincinnati Reds, it was proven that members of the White Sox team had conspired with gamblers to throw the series. In what became known as the Black Sox Scandal, eight players were eventually acquitted but banned from baseball for life by the game’s first commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Played every year since 1903 (except 1904 and 1994), the World Series is a major sporting event.”

Taken from the University of Scranton – Weinberg Memorial Library Credo Reference Database

World Series. (2004). In P. Cornelison & T. Yanak, The great American history fact-finder. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved from Credo Reference.

Upon further research, I found that The University of Scranton’s Weinberg Memorial Library has 6 books in our circulating collection that deal with the World Series. Here are some book recommendations: Autumn glory : baseball’s first World Series / By: Louis P. Masur (Call # GV878.4 .M37 2003), Eight men out : the Black Sox and the 1919 World Series / By: Eliot Asinof (Call #  GV875.C6 A8 1987), Saying it’s so; a cultural history of the Black Sox Scandal (Call # GV875.C58 N38 2003), The World Series : a history of baseball’s fall classic / By: Ron Firmrite (Call #  GV878.4 .F55 1993), The Story of the World Series / By: Fred Lieb (Call #  GV863 .L53 1965), and World Series Classics / By: Dan Gutman (Call # GV878.4 .G89 1994).

For some more general research on the topic of baseball, I searched within the library’s catalog and came up with some great books from the Reference Collection.  For a nice overview of baseball through the decades from its early history though the end of the 1990s, check out The chronicle of baseball : a century of major league action / By: John Mehno (Call # Reference GV863.A1 M4 2000) or for a nice comprehensive look at everything you could ever want to know about baseball from its early beginnings up to 1992, check out The Baseball encyclopedia : the complete and definitive record of major league baseball /By:  Maxwell Macmillan International Publishing Company (Call # Reference GV877 .B27 1993).

Feel free to read up on baseball’s fall classic and learn more about the history of the game by using some of the resources that were mentioned in this library blog.

first ws the ws

New Magazine Display on the 2nd Floor

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August 25, 2015

2:38 pm

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In addition to the library 2nd floor being open 24 hours a day, we have added a magazine display rack. This new display is located near the end of the periodicals stacks. It holds the most recent issues of 20 popular periodical titles, among them: Rolling Stone, the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, and Sports Illustrated. If you are looking for one of these magazines, look in the new display rack instead of the plastic periodical box.

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Like all periodicals, these magazines are for library use only and cannot be checked out. Here is a listing of the twenty titles featured on the magazine display:

Atlantic                                                                         Nation

America                                                                        National Geographic

Bloomberg Businessweek                                         New Yorker

Consumer Reports                                                     Popular Science

Discover                                                                       Prevention

Ebony                                                                           Psychology Today

Essence                                                                        Rolling Stone

Fortune                                                                        Science

Harper’s                                                                       Sports Illustrated

Health                                                                           Time

(A periodical is any publication that comes on a regular interval such as daily, weekly, monthly, annually.  A magazine is not scholarly, not peer reviewed.  It is intended for reading enjoyment.  A journal is scholarly and may be peer reviewed.)

Bike Scranton at the Weinberg Memorial Library

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June 10, 2015

11:54 am

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As of today the Library has 3 bicycles available for borrowing. The program is called Bike Scranton, which is a cooperative program between the University of Scranton Office of Sustainability, and the Lackawanna Valley Heritage Authority. All University of Scranton students, faculty, and staff as well as Lackawanna County Library System card holders will be permitted to check out a bicycle as long as they are at least 18 years of age. Each bicycle comes with a lock and an adjustable helmet upon checkout. The borrowing period for each bicycle is unlimited, but all bicycles must be returned before the library closes. Soon there will be 3 more bikes available, for a total of 6.

Other participating locations in the bike Scranton program are the office of the Lackawanna Valley Heritage Association (http://www.lhva.org/), the Hilton Scranton hotel, and Cedar Bike Shop (http://www.cedarbikeandpaddle.com/). Bikes checked out from the Weinberg Memorial Library must be returned here, and we will not accept returns from any of the other Bike Scranton locations.

The Lackawanna Valley Heritage Authority owns all of the bicycles. Bike Scranton will be seasonal, and the transportation and storage of the bicycles will be the responsibility of our University Facilities staff.  The bikes will be routinely maintained via Cedar Bike, and the University Office of Sustainability is in the process of developing bike routes throughout the city.

Please ask at the Circulation Desk if you have any questions.

SpringerLink Ebook Collections

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April 27, 2015

2:49 pm

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Springer has been in the publishing business since the early 1840’s and has been an industry leader in innovative publishing methods. The Weinberg Memorial Library provides access to the Springer Complete ebook collections from 2005 through 2014. We have also just added the Springer 2015 ebook collection into which new titles will be added throughout the entirety of 2015. Springer is actually home to the world’s largest Scientific, Technical and Medical ebook collection currently published. The library has access to over 42,000 ebooks via Springer. The titles included in the 2015 ebook collection will be gradually implemented throughout the year until eventually all 6,750 new titles within the collection are available.

There are no limits on page downloads or printing, so it is possible to download every page of all 42,000 plus titles if that is what you need. Also, SpringerLink is now available in the form of a mobile app, for both Android and IOS, allowing a University of Scranton student to utilize the Springer ebook collection for research from virtually anywhere.

It is a simple process to access the ebook collection from the library’s home page (http://www.scranton.edu/academics/wml/index.shtml).  Choose the articles and databases tab, click the link to the databases page. From there, choose the letter S and click on SpringerLink (http://link.springer.com/).  SpringerLink allows the user to browse by discipline, see book or articles that were recently accessed by other users within the University of Scranton, or use a keyword searching function for your research subject area or specific topic. You can refine by content type (book, article, chapter etc.), discipline, subdiscipline, primary language.   You can also further refine searches by date of publication and relevance (whether the keyword is in the title, subject or in the fulltext make the results a better match).

Although best known for sciences, medical research, and also computer science and mathematics there is a wealth of information in all disciplines including philosophy, theology and psychology. Any member of the University community studying these fields in any capacity should utilize Springer as a truly invaluable research tool.

Times-Tribune and Citizens’ Voice now available online

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March 25, 2015

10:29 am

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The Weinberg Memorial Library provides electronic access to the Times-Tribune (Scranton) and to the Citizens’ Voice (Wilkes-Barre) via the ProQuest Central and ProQuest Newsstand databases. The Times-Tribune is available from August 7th of 2005 to the present. Coverage for the Citizens’ Voice is from January 23, 2006 to the present. Articles are text only (no images), since access is currently only in HTML format.

To view the Times-Tribune or Citizens’ Voice articles electronically, either enter the title in the catalog search, the periodical search, or select ProQuest Central or ProQuest Newspapers from the A-Z list of databases (http://www.scranton.edu/academics/wml/databases.shtml). These links can be found either on the library tab of my.scranton or accessed from the Library’s home page http://www.scranton.edu/library. Searching the library catalog for the Times-Tribune gives two results, one labeled “Times Tribune-Blogs ” and the other labeled “Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa. 2005). “Times-Tribune Scranton, Pa 2005” is the article content with links listed to both ProQuest Central and ProQuest Newsstand. Clicking on either of these links provides the same level of access to the Times- Tribune content.

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On the ProQuest page, there is a link to “view current issue” for articles published in the current issue of the newspaper. “Search within this publication” provides keyword searching in all of the electronically available issues of the Times-Tribune (Aug. 7, 2005-present). Search results can be sorted by relevance (the search term is in the title or in the subject descriptors) or by the date of publication, from oldest to newest or newest to oldest. Another search option is “browse specific issues,” click on the year and then month of  the issue. The month expands to a list of specific dates of the issues published that month. Clicking on a specific date, results in a listing of all of the available articles from that issue, sortable by page number order. These search strategies work in the same way for the Citizens’ Voice.
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Select ProQuest from the A-Z list of databases to browse the entire list of newspapers in:
(http://www.scranton.edu/academics/wml/databases.shtml)
Select the letter “P,” scroll down, and select ProQuest Newspapers. Click on the “publications” heading listed at the top of the page for an alphabetical listing of 1,107 newspapers sortable by language, publisher, or publication subject. ProQuest Newsstand provides access to everything from the Washington Post to Estonian Business News, including our own Scranton Times-Tribune. It is a welcome alternative to sifting through reels and reels of microfilm.

Technology on Your Own Terms — Net Neutrality, the Basics

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March 13, 2015

11:07 am

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Events, News, Resources & Technology

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TOYOT_logo4a-smallOn behalf of the Weinberg Memorial Library and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, we invite University of Scranton faculty and staff to the second of our Spring 2015 Technology On Your Own Terms (TOYOT) workshops.

Net Neutrality: The Basics

Monday, April 20, 2015, 12pm-1pm in Weinberg Memorial Library room 305. Presenter: George Aulisio, Public Services Librarian

Net Neutrality is a vital principle that affects all internet users, but it has often gone overlooked by everyone except the most passionate advocates and special interests. This session will discuss the basics of Net Neutrality, why it’s important, what the sides are, and what the recent FCC ruling means for the future of the internet.

A light lunch will be provided. This session is open to all University faculty and staff, but seats are limited, so please let us know you are coming. You can register at www.scranton.edu/ctleregistration – under Technology on Your Own Terms.

NEW Library A-Z List of Databases

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February 12, 2015

10:06 am

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There are recent changes in how the Library presents and manages our A-Z list of Databases.

Utilizing the relatively recently adopted and implemented Electronic Resource Management (ERM) component of our integrated library system, we can now dynamically update in real time the list of databases to which we provide access. This allows our A-Z list of databases to be the most up to date list of electronic resources that we provide to you.

In the past the A-Z list required a much more involved and labor intensive process in order to update content and manage what the list actually looked like to the user. This new system requires a very simple alteration within the records found in our library system and monitored by the library technical services staff. These changes immediately take effect, altering what is displayed on the Library’s list of A-Z databases within seconds.

This new dynamic A-Z list of Databases presents a more modern but also more easily navigable interface for the researcher. It is uncluttered and extremely simple to use.

As a researcher, you can click on a letter listed alphabetically at the top of the page and immediately be linked to a list of all of the databases that we subscribe to whose name begins with that letter.

Directly underneath that feature there is a drop down menu labeled “Database Subject.” By selecting a subject, you see a list of all of the databases we subscribe to that provide content related to that subject matter.

The next feature of the A-Z list is labeled “Search for Databases.” Here you can use the drop down menu to choose “Database Name”, which allows you to type in the specific name of the database you are looking for or you can choose “Database Subject” which allows you to type in a subject you are researching and then be provided with a listing of databases that provide content related to that subject.

The Final feature of the new A-Z list is an area labeled “Trial Databases”. This is the section where there will be a listing of any databases for which the Library has trial access as a way to examine whether or not the resource will be added to the collection.

Access to the A-Z list of databases is available via the Library’s homepage by clicking on the “Databases” link under the Articles & Database tab or by clicking on the “Databases” link under “Library Resources” in the My.Scranton portal under the Library tab. The URL for the A-Z  list page is :

http://www.scranton.edu/academics/wml/databases.shtml

The dynamic A-Z list of Databases provides a more elegant solution to the question of providing our library users with a more intuitive and functional research interface.

Making, Modeling, and Materializing: 3D Printing in Teaching and Research

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November 17, 2014

10:56 am

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3Dprinting

UofS librarians Sheli McHugh and Kristen Yarmey are hosting an Office of Research and Sponsored Programs research seminar on 3D printing, featuring lightning talks by faculty members Dr. Ben Bishop (Computing Sciences), Dr. Alan Brumagim (Marketing and Management/Entrepreneurship), Dr. Tim Cannon (Psychology/Neuroscience), and Prof. Nick Truncale. Come join us this Friday, November 21 at 3:15pm in Brennan 509!

 

 

Drone Days of Summer: Flying High at the Library with Access Aerial

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September 8, 2014

1:06 pm

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One of our goals here at the Weinberg Memorial Library is to encourage thoughtful exploration of new technologies – we see experimentation as an important part of thinking and learning. Also, sometimes we just like to play with cool new toys. For both reasons, we were delighted to receive a visit earlier this summer from local drone photography team Access Aerial, who gave us the Library’s very first drone flyover along with a demonstration of their equipment.

We’ll confess – we had an in! Access Aerial’s two pilots, Lee DeAngelis and John Culkin, are also staff members in the University of Scranton’s Information Resources division. In their day jobs as Senior Systems Administrators, Lee and John help us keep the Library’s infrastructure running smoothly. Off hours, though, they’re out flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over community events, giving us a new perspective on our local landscape. Back in June, Lee used his drone to capture aerial footage of the Scranton Cooperage fire, demonstrating the potential value of drones in local journalism (and even getting a mention in Fortune). In July, Access Aerial photographed the construction of the brand new library at nearby Marywood University (we’ll admit that a tiny bit of librarian jealousy may have prompted us to set up our own appointment).

At the end of August, Lee and John brought over one of their Phantom drones for a demonstration at the Library. Their Information Resources coworker Ray Frey, also a UAV enthusiast, brought his own homemade drone along for the fun.

The PhantomDrone Flyover with Access AerialIMG_4291RayFlying down the Commons IMG_4282

The results were phenomenal: a beautiful video of our Library and campus and gorgeous drone’s-eye-view photographs.

Monroe Ave side   Commons sideCampusDCIM100MEDIA

As an added bonus, Lee and John came back to see us a few days later to do a “fly through” promotional video for our new Reilly Learning Commons!

We may have cheated a *tiny* bit. Shhh!

Reilly Learning Commons fly-in    Reilly Learning Commons fly-in

Overall, the experience has left us feeling quite majestic. From all of us here at the Weinberg Memorial Library, huge thanks to Access Aerial! We can’t wait to see what you’ll photograph next.

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P.S. Feel like you missed out on the fun? Lee and John will be bringing a drone back to the Library on November 13, 2014 at 12pm for “Everything You Wanted To Know About Drones, But Were Afraid to Ask!” They’ll be giving a presentation and demonstration (weather permitting) as part of the Library’s Technology On Your Own Terms workshop series. Faculty and staff can sign up at www.scranton.edu/ctleregistration.