The Library has added a web page listing our new acquisitions from the previous month. The list includes regular books, children's literature, teaching materials, reference books, bestsellers, and multimedia items. There will be a new list each month at the same location on the website. It's a very nice way to get a sense of what we are buying to support the University's needs.
The new issue of the UMD Library Connection newsletter is out. It includes items on the upcoming Northeast Minnesota Book Awards (NEMBA), the kids from the Children's Place who come in and use the library on Tuesdays, the new statewide 24-hour online reference service AskMN, profiles of three of our student employees, and other interesting news.
The new issue of the UMD Library's Newsletter, the Library Connection, is out. It's out in print and online as well. This issue has items about this semester's Student Video Contest, the transfer of the Media Hub to the library, the call for nominations for next year's Northeast Minnesota Book Awards, an article on the David Berman exhibit and event, and other news.
The library website has an updated section about the various collections in the library. There is a page for each collection, and the majority of these collections can be searched separately from those pages.
The collections you'll find there include:
Archives
Audiobooks
Bestsellers
Books
Center for Economic Development
Children's Literature
DVD/Video
E-Books
Government Documents
Microform
Music Recordings
NRRI
Northeast Minnesota Historical Center
Plays
Ramseyer-Northern Bible Society Museum
Reference Collection
Special Collections
Teaching Materials
Tweed Museum Library
Voyageur Collection
The reference department has set up a "chat widget," which allows anyone to chat with a librarian at the reference desk by going to the "Ask Us" page. This chat doesn't require the user to have any kind of account with any instant messaging service. I think this is pretty nifty.
Additionally, I offer chat service from my office to students and faculty in my subject areas. My IM accounts:
I hope some folks find these services useful.
Here is an Excel file listing all of the books we acquired for Art + Design last year.
We have a nice collection of electronic reference books from Oxford University Press that are kind of hidden away within our databases. Here are some links to some of the reference books on Art subjects:
These are in addition to the extensive Grove Art Online (formerly called the Grove Dictionary of Art, but now expanded to include some Oxford titles).
The Spring issue of The Library Connection, the UMD Library's newsletter, has been sent out in print form and uploaded to the web. Enjoy the news from the library....
We have a new database in the library for art history: Bibliography of the History of Art. This is the standard database for research in art history, covering European and American visual arts from late antiquity to the present. This database indexes and abstracts art-related books, conference proceedings and dissertations, exhibition and dealers' catalogs, and articles from over 4,300 periodicals. This is a major addition to our library resources.
UMD Library Newsletter Fall 2006: The Library Connection: A Newsletter for Friends of the UMD Library.
I want to just mention a little-known service of the library website: the Citation Linker. This allows you to put in a citation to an article, and the system will attempt to link you directly to that article in one of our databases. Take it for a spin...
An FYI for Design faculty and students.
The Journal of Design History is available in the JSTOR database, with coverage for the years 1988 through 1999 (JSTOR specializes in older stuff). Explore JSTOR for other art and design titles as well.
We now have Google Scholar working with our Find-It system, which is very very nice!
Google Scholar is Google's effort to provide access to scholarly resources of the kind needed in college. It's searchable like regular Google, but what it comes up with is (mainly) all scholarly and reliable.
Among the results in Google Scholar are a lot of things that we only have access to through our subscription databases. But in order to get from Google Scholar to the full text of these articles via our databases, you have to set up some settings in Google Scholar to connect it with us. This page explains the steps, but I will repeat them here:
1. Go to http://scholar.google.com/
2. Click on Scholar Preferencesto the right of the search box.
3. In the Library Links field type in UMD.
4. Click on Find Library.
5. Put a check next to the University of Minnesota Duluth.
6. Click on Save Preferences.
Once you have done that, when you search Google Scholar you will often see a Find-It link next to a citation. If the link is in large type, it will lead you directly to the full text of that article in one of our databases. If it's in small type, it will lead you to the other steps you can take for getting the article (e-journal locator, library catalog, ILL form).
The Art Full Text database has added 28 additional titles in full text. They are:
In mid-April we announced an instant-messaging IM service, where you can chat with the librarian who is working at the reference desk during the times that the desk is staffed.
I have decided to offer research help by instant messaging from my office as well. So if you are working on a project in Art of Design that requires some kind of research, or if you want to recommend a book or a database or ask a question that I might know the answer to, you can IM me in my office as long as I'm here.
My IM screennames at work are:
AIM: umdlibraryrory
MSN: umdlibraryrory
YM: umdlibraryrory
GTalk: rlitwin@gmail.com
Pop me a message just to let me know you are reading this.... I don't know if anybody is reading this blog at this point....