Text UofSLibrary!

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March 17, 2010

3:48 pm

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News, Systems

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Photo courtesy of isla_yelo under a Creative Commons license

Starting today, you can now send text messages to the UofS Library Reference Desk at:

570-687-8787

Send us your library-related questions via text message, and we’ll text you back an answer shortly, if you send the text during normal library hours.

If you text us when we’re closed, we’ll receive your text when we open up the next day, and text you back as soon as we get the question.

Please remember that your cell phone carrier may charge you for each text message sent and received. The library is not responsible for these charges.

More to come on this, but in the meantime, tell your friends! Happy texting!

2010 Spring Break Hours

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March 10, 2010

10:58 am

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Hours

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Almost spring in Scranton – looking west along the Lackawanna Railroad towards the Radisson Lackawanna Station.  Photo courtesy of our Twitter friend (and UofS alumnus) Frank Dutton.

The snow is starting to melt, the grass is starting to grow, downtown pedestrians are shedding their heavy coats… everywhere you look, the city of Scranton is getting ready for spring.  And on campus, students and faculty are getting ready for spring break!

Here at the Weinberg, the Library faculty and staff, not unlike our students, are looking forward to taking a spring rest.  We’ll be working reduced hours during break, starting this Friday.   Here’s when you’ll find us open:

Friday, March 12:  8:00am – 4:30pm

Saturday, March 13: CLOSED

Sunday, March 14: CLOSED

Monday, March 15: 8:00am – 10:00pm

Tuesday, March 16: 8:00am – 10:00pm

Wednesday, March 17: 8:00am – 10:00pm

Thursday, March 18: 8:00am – 10:00pm

Friday, March 19: 8:00am – 4:30pm

Saturday, March 20: CLOSED

Sunday, March 21: 12pm – 11:30pm

Also, this year, we’ll be closing down the Pro Deo room (which is normally open to students 24/7) on Friday, March 12 at 8:00pm.  The Pro Deo room will be CLOSED all day on Parade Day (Saturday, March 13) but will reopen on Sunday, March 14 at 8:00am.

Free Rice

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March 9, 2010

7:42 pm

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Resources & Technology

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What’s more fun than playing a game?

Free Rice

Playing a game that matters…

http://www.freerice.com/ is a multiple choice website which quizzes your general knowledge.

People spend hours wasting their time on games similar to this one, but the difference here is…

When you answer correctly on FreeRice.com a Sponsor pays for a donation of Rice to the UN World Food Programme.

The more you play, the more you get correct, the more rice gets donated.

According to FreeRice’s FAQ section, FreeRice has:

Fed 27,000 Myanmar refugees in Bangladesh.
Provided take-home rations of four kilograms of rice for two months to 13,500 pregnant and nursing women in Cambodia.
Fed 66,000 school children in Uganda for a week.
Fed over 108,000 Bhutanese refugees for three days in Nepal.
Fed 41,000 children for 8 days in Bhutan.
Fed 750,000 cyclone affected people for 3 days in Myanmar.

The website defaults to English Vocabulary words, but you can click on Subjects at the top of the page to change it to something more to your liking, such as: Famous Paintings, Chemistry, Geography, Mathematics, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.

If you are going to burn time on the internet doing something similar, why not do it here? I guarantee if you spend an hour at this website you’ll feel a lot better than you would if you spent an hour at another website.

www.freerice.com

CNN’s Jill Dougherty Speaks at Schemel Forum

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March 5, 2010

3:42 pm

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Friends, News, Schemel Forum

Sondra Myers, director of the University of Scranton’s Schemel Forum, with CNN foreign affairs correspondent Jill Dougherty

CNN foreign affairs correspondent (and Dunmore native!) Jill Dougherty came to campus today to speak to University and local community members on the topic “Who Runs Russia? Deciphering Moscow’s Centers of Power.”

Formerly CNN’s Moscow bureau chief, Dougherty described her experiences as a journalist in Russia, providing character sketches of former President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin, former President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and current President Dmitry Medvedev.  She also discussed the evolving nature of Russian democracy and provided insight on demographic changes, Russia’s relationship to China, the reliance on an oil and gas economy, and the importance of civic society.

Dougherty’s talk was the second of this Spring’s Schemel Forum Insights Luncheons, a series focused on discussions of world affairs.  Next in the series will be Alex Thier of the United States Institute of Peace, who will present on “Enigma and Dilemma: Our Fraught Relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan” on March 19th at 12pm in the Weinberg Memorial Library’s Heritage Room.

Jill Dougherty speaks in Brennan Hall

Indie Magazines for Everyone

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March 2, 2010

8:54 pm

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Resources & Technology

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Issuu

One of my favorite websites to kill some time on is Issuu.

Issuu is a website which allows you to “Publish yourself.”

I think it’s pretty cool that you can publish your own work on this website, but that is not the reason why I enjoy it so much.

Issuu has a large collection of magazines which are all free for you to peruse. The only difference is that these magazines are not the ones that you usually see at the grocery store.

Because Issuu is free to publish on, a lot of magazines which are not mass-produced and are uber-popular in America use it to increase their readership.

The magazines are mostly Independent, Student run, or from outside the U.S.A. The content of these magazines ranges from Poetry, Photography, Art, Graphic Design, Film Reviews, Popular Culture, just about everything…

Issuu is a great way to get your daily dose of culture and to read something a little different for a change.

Check it out at http://issuu.com.

Oscar-Scranton-Schemel Connection: Jay Parini’s The Last Station

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March 1, 2010

3:13 pm

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Events, Friends, News, Schemel Forum

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTh-vQho7UU]

Now that the Olympics are over, it’s time to start preparing for the next big event – the Academy Awards are this Sunday!  And this year, there’s a Scranton connection.

West Scranton native Jay Parini is the author of The Last Station, a novel about the last year of Tolstoy’s life – and the film adaptation of the novel has received two Oscar nominations.  Helen Mirren (who plays Sofya Tolstoy) and Christopher Plummer (Leo Tolstoy) are up for Best Supporting Actor and Best Actress, respectively.   The Last Station was also nominated for five awards (including Best Feature) at Friday’s Film Independent Spirit Awards.  For more details about the film and Parini’s work, see this article from the February 5 Scranton Times-Tribune.

This Spring, Mr. Parini will be making a special appearance on campus to discuss his book and the film at one of our Schemel Forum “Insights” luncheons.  The luncheon will be held Friday, April 9 from 12pm-1:30pm in Room 509 Brennan Hall.   Registration fees are $20 per person or $30 per couple for the luncheon – and Schemel Forum members get in free. To register, please contact Kym Fetsko at fetskok2 (at) scranton (dot) edu.

Olympic Gold

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February 25, 2010

3:29 pm

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Image from the winter2010olympics.net/

The United States is still leading the medal count in the 2010 Winter Olympics.

View the vancouver2010.com medals’ table.

In Men’s Ice Hockey, Canada knocked out the Russian Federation yesterday and will be playing Slovakia in the Semi-Final Round tomorrow. The undefeated United States team also plays tomorrow against Finland.  I’m looking for a rematch of the United States and Canada in the Men’s Ice Hockey Gold Medal game, which is scheduled for 3:15 EST on Sunday, February 28. NBC will be broadcasting the game live.  The US beat Canada in the Preliminary Round so if they meet again, it’ll definitely be an exciting game!

In Women’s Ice Hockey, the United States faces off against Canada tonight at 6:30 EST. The game will be broadcast live on MSNBC. Canada has the home team advantage, but the US team is coached by Mark Johnson who played on the 1980 Miracle on Ice team. If you like ice hockey, you won’t want to miss this game.

Compare and Contrast

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February 22, 2010

10:43 pm

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Resources & Technology

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About.com vs. Wikipedia

About.com is a free information resource tool which shares a few similarities to it’s widely popular colleague, Wikipedia.

Some of the similarities are that they are both free resources and they’re extremely easy to use… Another one is that they don’t look great when citing them in a research paper.

Wikipedia is undoubtedly the more popular resource and almost certainly has more articles in its collection.

However, the biggest difference between the two is the way articles are written.

As most everyone knows, Wikipedia uses “group intelligence” to compile what many consider to be highly accurate and extremely accessible information; whereas others consider it to be riddled with erroneous information, typos, and consider it poorly written.

About.com has each article written by a single author. The authors of the articles are known as About.com Guides. These Guides are hired by About.com solely to be their resident expert in a given field. At first glance About.com sounds like it has an advantage over Wikipedia in so much as it could provide more reliable information. However, not all of the About.com Guides live up to the standards that are required in Academe. Most guides are not scholars, they do not have a Ph.D., and haven’t dedicated their lives to their given field.

Many guides on the other hand are very well informed and highly trained, so another similarity between About.com and Wikipedia is that they are mixed bags. You could be getting high quality information from both, but by the next paragraph you can be reading something that simply isn’t true.

The fact is that you are going to get information from website such as About.com and Wikipedia (I do it too), but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from websites like these, depending on the accuracy of information that you need, it’s OK to read these articles.

The important thing is that you cross reference the information provided with a more reliable source (i.e. encyclopedia, handbook, reference manual, etc.).

Please know that I am not saying its OK to cite Wikipedia and About.com in your homework assignments (I am 100% against that), what I am saying is that it’s OK to check information resources like these, but you should always check more than one resource to make sure the information is accurate. Lastly, make sure those additional resources are highly reliable — those are the resources you can cite!

Curling

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February 21, 2010

4:09 pm

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Copied under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Curlingrock.jpg Author: Earl Andrew

The sport of curling dates back to 16th century Scotland. The object of this game is to slide a round stone over a stretch of ice toward a target circle. Players often use a “curl” (hence the sport’s name) to alter the stone’s trajectory. Teammates use a broom to sweep the ice ahead of the oncoming stone in order to facilitate a longer slide or to adjust the arc of the curl. Blocking and knocking out an opponent’s stones are important strategies of the sport.

Curling was added to the Winter Olympics in 1998. Currently leading the standings, Canada’s women’s team appears headed to the medal round after winning all five of the preliminary games played to date.

Take this quiz to find out how much do you know about curling.

2010 Winter Olympics

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February 18, 2010

4:08 pm

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Olympic rings

(This image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)

Even if you’re not a sports fan, you probably have seen some of the 2010 Winter Olympics being held in Canada, specifically Vancouver, British Columbia. The United States is currently leading the medal race with 14, followed by Germany with 10, and France with 7. Last night I watched Shaun White win the Gold Medal in the Snowboard Men’s Halfpipe. WOW! His first run earned him 46.8 points (out of a possible 50).  No need to make a second run, but he did. Why? For some people, it’s not just about winning. Listen to what Shaun said after the run.

I’ll be posting about other events as the games continue.

Let me know which event is your favorite: [polldaddy poll=2721283]