Talking in the Library

What's the theme?

Another week and another Twitter theme. Did you figure out last week’s theme? Here are some reminder tweets:

• Serve, set, attack! If you're a bit rusty on volleyball fundamentals, here's a book that might help: http://owl.li/7jqfj 
• In honor of our Cross Country team, a book on the science (and occasional mysticism) of the runner http://ow.ly/i/kiNv
• We can all be K-State athletes with the right photo cutout. http://owl.li/749Em

 If you guessed sports, you are correct. Here’s a hint of this week’s theme. 

Do I need a library card?

All K-State students, faculty, and staff automatically have a library card that you can use in any library at K-State--your K-State ID!

Yes, the same handy bit of plastic that will let you pay for a coffee in the Union, launder your clothes in the residence halls, define your lats at the Rec, print in the computer labs, and a few dozen other handy tasks, is your ticket to borrowing materials from the over 2 million items in the K-State Libraries collections.

With your K-State ID in hand, you can check out materials your instructor placed on Reserve for your class. You can check out films like When the Levees Broke, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina. And don't forget the other 2 million items in our collection. Whether for classes, research, or fun, we're guaranteed to have something that will interest you!

After you've checked out something at least once from a help desk in any of our libraries, you can use the self-checkout machines in Hale Library. There are two located on 2nd floor, one by the entrance/exit gates and one by Library Help. Both make cool "Bing!" noises like Bejewelled. And I'll be honest, I use the self-checkout machines for the noises. With your K-State ID and the self-checkout machines, you don't have to wait in line and you can checkout materials at 3:00 a.m., when all the library staff is tucked away, asleep in our beds.

Reunited and it feels so good

Folks, I have a story to share with you. One that stars a student who decided to ask at the Help Desk if we'd seen her flash drive. She felt kind of silly because she was sure that flash drive, and her final, were lost forever. Well, let the violins soar and pull out your tissues, because this story has a happy ending. Unbeknownst to our star was another star, an anonymous student or staff person who found the flash drive and turned it in to the Help Desk. When our bereft student asked if we'd seen her flash drive, we were able to report with much happiness that we had. I won't say there were tears but, yes, there was joy.

During this time of The Great Study you, too, can bring much joy into your life and others. If you find a flash drive or cell phone or iPod (or umbrella, hat, t-shirt, text book....) take a minute and drop it off at the Help Desk. If you've lost yours, stop by the Help Desk and ask.

Don't make it easy for them

This is one post I wish I didn't have to write. I hate this post. I haven't even finished writing it and I hate it. But it's a post I have to write.

DON'T LEAVE YOUR STUFF UNATTENDED.

Why? Because jerks will take your stuff. We call them "opportunists," but really, they're jerks.This isn't a new phenomenon, it happens every semester. I hate it because you are just trying study. Sometimes you have to use the bathroom. Or print. And opportunists take advantage of that. So, please, be aware that there are jerks and watch your stuff. Studying with buddies is also a good way to make sure someone you trust is keeping an eye on your stuff.

As for you opportunists?  Take the opportunity to be a decent person. If you see someone has stepped away from their stuff, keep on walking. If you find an abandoned cell phone or iPod or calculator, turn it in to the Help Desk. Report thefts. Sleep better at night.

Oh, and on a cheerier note: Happy last day of classes!

Write Or Die: It will save your life!

I have a semester project due Wednesday. After months of hunting down and reading various books, texts, and journal articles, I find myself at my least favorite part of writing a paper: writing the paper. Somehow, all of those words and ideas become logs, and there are so many logs, so jumbled together, that they just bang around inside my head instead of flowing smoothly from brain, to keyboard, to text. 

Lacking a good lumberjack to clear the jam, I head to Write Or Die. With Write or Die, I set a timer (or word goal) and start typing, without worrying about coherence or cohesion. If I stop typing, Write or Die starts "nudging" me, first with a hot pink screen, but it worsens to blaring bad music and even (in Kamikaze mode) deleting the words I typed. When my goal is reached, I copy and paste the words to a document. Then I start worrying about making sense. It's far easier to edit garbage than to edit nothing at all.

Good luck!

Image source: Log jam Canoe Pass Bridge http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_rees/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Shortcuts: Where's the librarian?

Picture it (swirly lines...swirly lines)-you're at home working on a a paper. Your prof told you that you HAD to have two peer reviewed articles, but you don't know how to find them. Then you remember you can Ask a Librarian online. Yes!

Ok, so you go to Ask a Librarian and type in your question. Then you wait..and wait forever (or 20 seconds, which is like forever). Where's the librarian? There are a few reasons there may be a wait from the librarian. It could be super busy! IM is a popular service and it may take us a while to respond. 2) We could be having technical difficulties. Every once in a while there's a hiccup in the interwebs and our response to you doesn't come through.

What should you do if this happens?  I'd wait a few seconds, then type again. If that doesn't work, you can close the chat window and open it again. If for some reason IM is not working for you, email or call us! We'll do our best to respond as quickly as possible.

Good luck researching!

~T. Coleman

You are a t.v. detective, investigating a crime

Some days I have ideas. Some days my ideas are absolute genius.

Here's my latest one: in a few weeks, all of the Public Speaking classes are coming to Hale Library for Library Days. We explore basic research concepts like moving from a topic ("Word of mouth marketing is like the flu") to keywords that can be searched in a database--and how to discover new keywords when the first ones you try don't work. I have a great snowball fight analogy that I'll share if you ask me.We also play with some of the relevant databases (Credo, CQ Researcher, ProQuest Research Library, maybe LexisNexis) and demonstrate the awesomeness that is the Get It button and the Cite This link available for many articles in many of our databases.

OK, here's the genius idea: you need to approach a research topic like you are a detective on a t.v. show (I've never seen a detective work in real life, so won't presume to say this is how they work.) That is, you are solving one case, but you will be interviewing a lot of different people to learn as much information as you can because the prosecutor and/or judge won't just take your word on it...you need evidence. If you have ever caught an episode of Law & Order, or The Closer, or The Wire, or Veronica Mars,  or ...you get the point... then you know that t.v. detectives never ask everyone the same question, because everyone they talk to has a different perspective or relationship to the crime/victim/suspect.

Your case is something like, "Why having a GTA with an accent can benefit your education." (That's right, let's take that age-old gripe about teachers with accents and turn it on its head.) You'll definitely want information about the benefits of diversity or multiculturalism in the new world economy. So you're going to search in databases like ProQuest Research Library or Diversity Database Suite for information about (diversity or multiculturalism) AND higher education AND learning. You'll also want information about why people don't like having teachers they can't understand, so you might do searches in the same databases, or some of our education databases about international AND graduate teaching assistants.

As you read through the articles, you're going to find new terms to search (we call this "mining an article") you are also going to find new perspectives: perhaps a research study that you wanted to read more about, or a program at another university that sounds intriguing. This is just like on Law & Order when Detectives Green* and Lupo interview one witness and that witness says, "I saw the back of the guy's head before he pocketed the radishes, but my buddy Chwen saw him look at the bananas first." And then the Detectives go talk to Chwen and ask him about the radishes and the bananas.

You're not going to ask all of your sources (databases) the same question because they may all have different perspectives on case, and as you learn more information, you're going to have different ways to ask the question. This can be really fun (honestly, I do it for a living, it is fun!) But it can also be confusing as you find yourself looking up from an article about the grade school system in Saudi Arabia, wondering how you got there. My solution is to write down my primary question and have it in front of me the entire time. While I may refocus it a bit, or decide to attack it from another angle, looking at it periodically reminds me of my purpose.

Now, here's where I ask for your help. What I would love to do is have a montage of detectives interviewing people about the same case. Not long, 3 minutes maybe? Just enough to get the idea about reformulating questions, building on previous interviews and so forth. I've done a few preliminary searches in YouTube, but haven't hit gold. Anybody out there have and idea of where I can search or already know of the perfect montage?

*Yes, I know Detective Green isn't on Law & Order any more, but he's still my favorite.

Chart wars: Don't mess with graphic designers

Alex Lundry illuminates the power of charts. He says everything better than I could, so I'll just sit back and let you watch.

May I suggest the Statistical Abstract of the United States?

Hello to everyone who is searching for historical numbers about the United States, like, say, women in the workforce.  I think you will be delighted with this annual publication, Statistical Abstract of the United States.  We have access to editions going back to volume 1, 1878.  Clicking on the Get It button from the link above will let you link out to the 2009 edition.  Click on Earlier Editions to access, yes, earlier editions!

This should qualify as a "library resource" as it is a book that has been scanned as a pdf and posted online by the publisher (in this case, the U.S. Census Bureau).

Copyright Quickie: Showing Films in the Classroom

All hail the American Library Association!  The good folks at ALA have published a lovely explanation, with the help a few copyright experts, answering copyright concerns teachers have when they show films in classrooms. 

This is especially cool in light of a few new databases K-State Libraries offers: American History in Video, Theatre in Video, and Dance in Video.  These three databases offer streaming video of shows from the History Channel,  theatre performances (like Langston Hughe's Street Scenes), and dance performances by individuals or troupes, such as the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre.  If you create a user account (which anyone at K-State can do), you can then create playlists or clip a pertinent scene. Then, when you are teaching a class, you can show the film or clip. 

If you are teaching an online class or want students to watch the film on their own time, you can link to the film (or your clips, or your playlist) and the students can follow that to watch the video from the database.  For example, I think people might enjoy this performance of Henry V.  I simply clicked on the little icon for a permanent URL from the Henry V page.  Then, to be sure my K-State peeps could watch it, even if they are off-campus, I swung over to Link It.  There I pasted the URL for Henry V, and Link It added some extra information to the link that will just ask off-campus users to enter their eID and password to access the database.  Then, you can share the URL, or link to it from K-State Online, with K-Staters.  Here's a brief video where I show you how to do all of that.

Students--you can do the same thing for presentations!

We also have a lot of films on VHS and DVD in our collection that can be checked out and watched.  Just search in our catalog and use the Quick Limit option (lower left side of the search screen) to limit your search to Video Recordings.