Is Big Brother watching? For Banned Books Week we are featuring George Orwell. Both 1984 and Animal Farm have long histories of censorship and challenges. Visit our display and learn about book censorship, Orwell and how issues like the Great Firewall of China and police cameras are seen by some as “Big Brother is watching.”
Monthly Archives: September 2009
E-serials Cleanup Complete!!!
Due to the removal, by publishers, of e-journals that were once available through our online databases, our catalog had accumulated a large number of “orphaned” e-journal records. These titles were previously accessible by way of Ebsco A to Z at the time they were added to our collection, but have since been removed from the A to Z knowledge base primarily due to changes in licensing agreements between publishers and our various vendors.
Until now there had not been an easy way to monitor the removal of titles from Ebsco A to Z, nor to adjust our holdings to accurately reflect the A to Z data as of a given date. Thanks to some Sirsi API magic and a series of SQL queries, we are now able to systematically compare our catalog holdings with the A to Z knowledge base and update our local holdings accordingly. What does this mean to library users? No more dead e-journal records! If a journal record exists in our catalog, then it can be accessed through the Todd Library. If the journal has an “electronic” item associated with it, then it is available in at least one of our full-text resources and can be accessed by clicking the “Search for Full Text using Ebsco A to Z” link in the detailed display for that journal.
This initial cleanup resulted in the removal of some 5000 dead e-journal item records from our catalog.
Banned Books Week
Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read will once again be observed in the Todd Library the last week of September. This annual American Library Association event reminds Americans to not take our freedom to read for granted. Banned Books Week is the only national celebration of the freedom to read. Launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries, more than one thousand books have been challenged since its inception. 2009 marks its 27th anniversary (September 26 through October 3). Dare to visit the Todd Library to check out a banned book!
Advice for New Students
Check out these editorial articles from the New York Times. They are written by instructors who have been teaching in colleges around the United States for many years.
For students who are not new: what piece of advice do you have for new students? Post any thoughts you have in the comments.
September Book Display
September is PAIN AWARENESS MONTH and with that in mind, the Todd Library is featuring some of our books, DVDs and articles to aid in bringing awareness to the fact that pain is a growing national public health crisis. It affects approximately 76.5 million people here in the United States alone. Check out some of our Electronic Sources as well from the comfort of your home.