Internet Search Challenge

This week's Featured Online Resource is the Internet Search Challenge, from the 21st Century Information Fluency Project.   In blog format, this feature doles out challenges on Internet searching meant to help one practice not just finding, but also evaluating information. The blog also posts various tips and developments with search engines as they arise.

E-books Now Available!

Frostburg State University students, faculty and staff now have access to a collection of 7,500 e-books - and growing!

The Library's current e-book collection is hosted on the eBooks on EBSCOhost database available in Research Port.  Many of these titles are also available by searching catalogUSMAI.  Simply click on the Find It button to access titles listed with a location of "E-books."  Off-campus users are required to sign-in using the barcode number located on the front of their FSU ID card and last name.

E-books may be viewed directly on the eBooks on EBSCOhost database or downloaded to a supported e-book reader.  Students, faculty and staff who wish to download an e-book must first download Adobe Digital Editions and create a Personal EBSCOhost Account. Checkout periods for downloaded e-books range from 2 hours to 7 days.

Links to brief EBSCOhost tutorials explaining how to use the eBooks on EBSCOhost database - as well as other resources - are available on the Ort Library website.

If you have any questions regarding e-books (or any other Library service for that matter!), please feel free to email or chat with a librarian, call us at 301-687-4424 or see us in person by stopping by the Ort Library Reference Desk.

Featured Online Resource, Weebly

This week’s Featured Online Resource is Weebly.  This free tool allows you to create a website that can include multimedia items like a blog, video, audio, and many others.  Are you are looking for a place to create portfolio of your work that you have created while at FSU so you can show it off during job interviews or for graduate school applications? Weebly allows you to quickly and easily create a website to present your best academic work.

Weebly is completely web-based so you do not need to install any software.  You can drag and drop in pictures, audio, and text.  Your website is updated in real-time, so any changes you make will automatically be applied and live for others to see.

Every week, the Ort Library brings you a new and outstanding resource from the Web or from one of the library's databases. To get an archive of all FOR entries, click here. Also, you can suggest a website that provides well-organized access to useful info.

Massive Management Manifestoes

Here are a lot of exciting new titles in Management/Business Admin.

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries--Peter Sims. Free Press. 2011. A book on creativity, exploring "using negativity to positive effect"

Engaged Leadership: Building a Culture To Overcome Employee Disengagement--Clint Swindall. John Wiley. 2011. Explores facets of employee engagement such as the economic downturn and social media.

Cultural Competence For Public Managers: Managing Diversity in Today's World--Espiridion Albert Borrego. 2012. Cultural competence for public managers, execs, and employees; the global economy

Who's In the Room?: How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them. Bob Frisch. 2012. Informed by interviews with MasterCard, Ticketmaster and The Red Cross

Corporate Political Strategies of Private Chinese Firms. Hao Ma, Shu Lin, & Neng Liang.

2012. Includes case studies

Organizational Misbehaviour In the Workplace: Narratives of Dignity and Resistance. Jan Karlsson. 2012. "analyses stories about people's resistance in working life that make us reflect upon how employees are treated at work and consequences thereof."

What Matters Now: How To Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation. Gary Hamel. Jossey-Bass 2012. Offers "fundamentally new thinking about values, competition, leadership, organization talent." Fortune has called Hamel "the world's leading expert on business strategy."

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth at the World's Greatest Companies. Jim Stengel. Crown Business. 2011. Shows "how the fifty top-performing businesses in a range of fields have succeeded through superior customer engagement and outlines an action framework..."

Go Mobile: Location-based Marketing Apps, Mobile Optimized Ad Campaign, 2D Codes and Other Mobile Strategies to Grow Your Business. Jeanne Hopkins, Jamie Turner. Wiley. 2012.

The basics of mobile media campaigns.

April is Mathematics Awareness Month

April is the month for those that love mathematics as it is designated Mathematics Awareness Month. Mathematics Awareness month is sponsored by: The American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

This year’s theme is Mathematics, Statistics, and the Data Deluge.

Massive amounts of data are collected every day, often from services we use regularly, but never think about. Scientific data comes in massive amounts from sensor networks, astronomical instruments, biometric devices, etc., and needs to be sorted out and understood. Personal data from our Google searches, our Facebook or Twitter activities, our credit card purchases, our travel habits, and so on, are being mined to provide information and insight. These data sets provide great opportunities, and pose dangers as well (retrieved from MAM Website).

Want more information about Mathematics Awareness Month, go to: http://www.mathaware.org/index.html

New Titles in Visual Arts

Feast your eyes on several new books on photography, painting, drawing, graffit, and graphic design:

Graphic Design: Now In Production Andrew Blauvelt & Ellen Lupton. Walker Art Center. 2011.

In conjunction with an exhibition at Walker Art Center and other institutions, Oct. 22, 2011, and Jan. 2014

Graphic Design: A New History Stephen Eskilson. Yale U. Press. 2012.

Covers Bauhaus, American modern, Postmodernism and more

Graffiti and Street Art Anna Waclawek. Thames & Hudson. 2011.

Graffiti's genealogy; urban visual culture; tags, throwies

Extra/ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art Maria Elena Buszek, ed. 2011.

Explores craftivist history; queer theory; letterpress printing

The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art In a Global Context Grant H. Kester Duke U. Press. 2011.

Explores the work of artists and groups such as Superflux, Francis Alys, Santiago Sierra; looks at the parallels of the work of these artists with that of NGOs, urban planners, activists.

Keith Edmier and Farrah Fawcett: Recasting Pygmalion: a Collaborative Art Project Essay by Lynn Zelevansky. Rizzoli. 2002. From an exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2002.

Featured Online Resource, Diigo

This week’s Featured Online Resource is Diigo. Diigo allows you to bookmark web pages, similar to Delicious but it has the added feature that you can highlight important passages of the web page. You can also place sticky notes on the web page to notate certain parts as well. The great feature about Diigo is that when you return to the web page, your highlighting and sticky notes will still be there.

You can also share you bookmarks that you have made with others or post your new bookmarks to Twitter, a blog, or Facebook. Diigo also allows offers the option to create groups. The group can then build a knowledge base of bookmarks on a particular topic. This is a great feature for a group working on a project.

Every week, the Ort Library brings you a new and outstanding resource from the Web or from one of the library's databases. To get an archive of all FOR entries, click here. Also, you can suggest a website that provides well-organized access to useful info.

RESOLVED---Problems accessing Research Port

The issues with Research Port have been resolved.

Thank you for your patience during this time.
===============================================================

The Ort Library is aware of an issue with accessing databases through Research Port from off-campus. Some students have logged into Research Port and received the error message that "no databases are available". We are aware of the issue and it is currently being worked on.

We have created a work around for students to access the databases from off-campus. A library guide has been created with a list of the databases. This list has direct links to the databases - you will still be prompted to enter your barcode and last name - then you be able to access the database.

The link for the LibGuide is http://libguides.frostburg.edu/databaselist

Another option is to come to campus to work. Database access is working correctly on campus.

The Ort Library thanks you for your patience during this issue. If you need additional assistance, please contact the Reference Desk at 301-687-4424 or libref@frostburg.edu

National Library Week 2012

April 8 through April 14, 2012 is National Library Week. The theme this year is: You belong @ the library! We have several displays throughout the Library that you might be interested in seeing. Our Dr. Seuss display, celebrating Theodor Seuss Geisel's birth, re-introduces some of his famous characters and includes a few surprises. Of course, we could not resist including a display on the Library, highlighting some of the many services we offer. To recognize April as National Stress Awareness Month and Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we have exhibits on the third and fifth floors. The National Stress Awareness Month display, located at the entrance of the Library, has hand-outs to help you figure out ways to de-stress. There is also a poster board next to the display where you can share your favorite stress reducing activities with the rest of us. Polar Explorer, a sculpture by Columbia- born sculptor natson, continues to stand at the entrance of the Library, greeting out visitors as they enter. The Political Posters and Display Exhibit throughout the fourth and fifth floors reveals distinctive items from our extensive George A. Meyers Collection.

The Library has much going on throughout the year and you are a part of it. You belong @ the library!

- Virginia Williams

New Titles in Mass Comm.

Here's a look at several new books on mass communication and mass media.

Transforming McLuhan: Cultural, Critical, and Postmodern Perspectives. Paul Grosswiler, ed. Peter Lang. 2010. An anthology of new essays updating our understanding of McLuhan's work

Messages, Meaning, and Symbols. Charles T. Meadow. Scarecrow. 2006. Outlines the history of communication, going into the future, and delves into both communication and information theory

Discourse Theory and Critical Media Politics. Lincoln Dahlberg and Sean Phelan, eds. Palgrave Macmillan. 2011. Essays on Marxist Theory, New Media, Laclau's Political Theory and more

Twilight Of The Social: Resurgent Publics In the Age of Disposability. Henry A. Giroux. Paradigm. 2012. Advocates the need for social spaces in which people can agitate for social change

Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction To Its Own Past Simon Reynolds. Faber and Faber. 2011. Contains chapters on record collection, youtube, sampling, hauntology, and mash-ups, among other topics

On Media Memory: Collective Memory In a New Media Age Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers, Eyal Zandberg, eds. Palgrave Macmillan. 2011. Discusses journalistic practices and politics through the lens of a society's formation of a collective memory

Women On Screen: Feminism and Femininity In Visual Culture Melanie Waters. Palgrave Macmillan. 2011. With essays on James Bond films, the show "The Sopranos" and many others.

Idolized: Music, Media, and Identity In American Idol Katherine Meizel. Indiana University Press. 2011. Analyzes success and failure and global politics

Coming soon: SpongeBob SquarePants and Philosophy and The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires.

1940 Census Released

The embargo has been lifted, and for the first time, the 1940 census is not only available, but available online. The files accessible via Census.gov can be downloaded in a zip file of the whole thing or in individual PDF's. It is nicely broken down into the Census of Housing, Census of Agriculture, etc.

Here's the transcript of a pretty good NPR story (from "All Things Considered"), which you can listen to if you choose.

And here's a clip from last night's CBS nightly news.

MD Government Documents Digital Collection

This week's Featured Online Resource is the State Publications Depository and Distribution Program's new digital collection. This is a collection of full-text documents, usually downloadable in PDF form, published by "Maryland State Agencies, Executive Commissions, Task Forces, and Interstate Agencies and covers subjects of interest to consumers and researchers alike."

Pictured, left, is the 2010 Data Book from the Maryland Higher Education, a 58-page PDF filled with numbers such as student enrollment, retention rates, etc. for colleges and universities in the state.

It serves as one example of government-created information available. A user will also find grant reports, reports on various bodies of water and other ecosystems, proposed regulations, etc.

The depository is searchable and browsable, with links to sub-depositories.

The Ort Library Tweets!

The Ort Library is now on Twitter! Come follow @LibFSU