Ort Library Goes Mobile!

You now can take the library with you wherever you go! The FSU Ort Library offers a new mobile website providing access to a core set of basic library services optimized for smartphones and other mobile devices. Features include the ability to search the library catalog, find library hours and important contact information, access subject research guides, and much more. You can even send your reference questions to us via Ask A Librarian from the mobile site.

The link to the new mobile website is http://libguides.frostburg.edu/mobile/1040 (the site only appears correctly if accessed from a mobile device). If you navigate the Web from your mobile device, you will be automatically redirected to the mobile site. You can also access the mobile site by using your smartphone to scan the QR code above.

Featured Online Resource, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

This week’s Featured Online Resource is the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The DOAJ states on its website that its aim is to “increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals thereby promoting their increased usage and impact.” The journals included in the DOAJ must be peer-reviewed or have some other quality control. It also includes journals that report results of research and covers all subject areas. The DOAJ contains 7540 journals from 117 different countries around the world for a total of over 764,000 articles.

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.

Celebrate Dr. Seuss!

The Ort Library would like everyone to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday on March 2 with our new display, Dr. Seuss: Children’s Books, Political Cartoons, and Advertising. The display showcases some of his most famous works as a children’s author. It also highlights Dr. Seuss’ work as a political cartoonist for PM newspaper from 1941 – 1943 and his work as a commercial artist for companies such as Ford, Macy’s, GE, and NBC.

The display is on the main floor of the library (3^rd floor) and will run through the end of March.

Image retrieved from: http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/ob/seuss/cat-hat-book.jpg on March 6, 2012

Make Your Friends Into Action Figures!

This week's Featured Online Resource is Shape Me Miniatures from a company called Shapeways.

First, about the company and its services. They provide 3D printing--say you'd like a small sailboat for a knicknack. About three inches long, four or five ounces. You'd like to design your own. Use CAD or some sort of design software, send them the design, and via 3D printing they fabricate the boat or whichever item you choose and ship it to you. Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that in the future all objects we own, we'll make ourselves by this method, and we're now beginning to see the technology in play.

As for the Shape Me Miniatures, they are little dolls (though busts are also available) in the image of your mother, grandmother, friends, etc. You send in a photo from the front and one in profile, pay your fee, and get back a little doll.

Please excuse the way in which this post sounds like a commercial. I'm not interested in generating business for this company, but providing information. The fact that 3D printing is now afoot and seemingly relatively accessible , is to me, an epochal happening in the world of information. It is another way in which the line between creator and consumer is blurred.

So, while we usually include websites that provide free information, this one's an exception, and I think just looking at the website is enlightening and inspiring.

Featured Online Resource, African American History Month website from Library of Congress and National Archives

This week’s Featured Online Resource is the website http://www.africanamericanhistorymonth.gov/index.html, a joint website from the Library of Congress, National Archives, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, and other agencies. The site contains links to online exhibits and collections available from these different government agencies. It also contains an online exhibit “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty” which looks at the lives of six of the slave families living at Monticello around the time of his drafting the Declaration of Independence.

The site also contains links to the Veterans History Project, “African Americans at War: Fighting Two Battles” and photos from the Harlem Renaissance.

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.

FOR: Sonja Haynes Stone Center Guide to the Web

This week's FOR (Featured Online Resource) is the Sonja Haynes Stone Center Library for Black Culture and History Guide to the Web. From the University of North Carolina, this annotated guide indexes web sites on many topics relevant to African-American issues, with subcategories such as Harlem Renaissance, Engineering, Physics, and Mathematics, Labor and others.

More than 600 websites, in all, are indexed. See you next week!

Ort Library joins Maryland AskUsNow!

The Lewis J. Ort Library is thrilled to announce that we have joined with Maryland AskUsNow! to offer students, faculty and staff a 24/7 chat reference service. This chat service allows the library to offer access to reference help whenever and wherever you may need it.

If you are working on a paper late into the night and you need some extra assistance finding information, you can now use Maryland AskUsNow! to chat with a librarian for that help. Librarians from the Ort Library chat only during certain hours, so you may be helped by a non-FSU librarian. Even though you may be chatting with someone from outside FSU, they still have access to information about the library and can help you use the library catalog or the library databases. Providing a valid e-mail address will also allow a librarian from the Ort Library to follow up on your question.

Try the service out by clicking on the Maryland AskUsNow! link on the library’s home page or by clicking on the icon above.