UoR Open Sound 2010: Votes Are In!

The UoR Open Sound 2010 poll has closed. See below for results.

A big “thank you” to all those who participated! We will now burn the selections made onto CDs that we will be distributing during Open Access Week, starting Monday, October 18th. Look for them at Armacost Library’s circulation desk, the Fletcher Jones Foundation Computer Center main lab, the Campus Diversity and Inclusion main offices, and the information tables Armacost Library will have around Hunsaker Plaza during Open Access Week. CDs will be available only while supplies last, of course.

And...on Monday, October 18th, 7-9 p.m. at the Casa Loma Room, CDI, Armacost Library and ITS will be hosting a talk by Kevin Driscoll. Kevin is a board member of Students For Free Culture. He will speak about Open Access, Free Culture and why these issues matter to us all, especially undergrads. We hope to see you there!

So…where did they go?

Maybe you noticed. Or maybe you didn’t. The tracks provided to us by UoR student band Overeasy were withdrawn last week. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons.

1) Creative Commons, Free Culture and Open Access are newer concepts of understanding ownership and authorship, so can be difficult to grasp.
2) Free Culture and Open Access is all about creators having control over their creations. Not someone else.

Armacost Library realizes and honors both of these points.

And chief among the rights artists and creators should retain, we believe, is the right to decide what they want to happen with their work. Overeasy made the brave and honorable decision to take the time necessary to understand Creative Commons copyright before committing them to Open Access.

California Library Snapshot Day 2010

This week the library will be participating in a state-wide event, the California Library Snapshot Day. Academic, public, and special libraries all over California will be collecting photos and feedback from their patrons to capture life at the library.

Please come in to Armacost Library anytime this week to let us know what the library means to you, and we will welcome your digital photographs expressing the same. Click!

New University website includes library tweaks

The University of Redlands unveiled a new website this morning. While the library URL is unchanged (http://www.redlands.edu/library), the library website does benefit from a new visual style. You can now navigate through the site using the left hand navigation bar and "breadcrumb" trail at the top of each page. Tables and text are more readable, and pages have been resized to fit modern monitors.



One difference involves the home page links to the library catalog and electronic journals. These links have moved to the right side of the page, and are joined by the links to Course and Subject Guides and the login page to our new ILLIAD interlibrary loan system.

While the structure of library's web pages has not changed, this is a good opportunity to look over the site and make sure you know how to get to the resources you use regularly. If you have questions about the design, ideas for improvements, or just want to find out how to do something, contact our reference desk at (909) 748-8878 or reference@redlands.edu and one of our reference librarians will gladly work with you.

What is that thing anyway?

We hope you’ve seen the following image around.



It’s a QR Code. QR stands for “Quick Response” and the image is, really, a two-dimensional bar code. You might have seen these already in other contexts, such as postage you’ve received or sent from the Post Office or products you’ve purchased from stores.

Some mobile phones have QR readers that decipher the embedded information. To download a free QR reader to your phone, go to http://reader.kaywa.com/.

Scan the image above using your mobile phone and you’ll be taken to the UoR Open Sound 2010 poll on Armacost Library’s blog. Snap, click, vote!

Snap, Click, Vote!

Vote in UoR Open Sound 2010!

To mark International Open Access Week 2010, Armacost Library is holding a poll to select which freely available music tracks will be included in the first ever UoR Open Sound 2010 compilation CD.

The entire university community is encouraged to participate! UoR students, faculty, staff, alumni, family and friends are welcome. Vote as many times as you want, for as many tracks as you want. Music tracks that receive at least 50 votes will be included in the compilation CD. We'll also include some bonus tracks from the artists whose music tracks make the 50-vote cut.

UoR Open Sound 2010 CDs will be distributed at various locations during Open Access Week, starting Monday, October 18th till Sunday, October 24th. Look for them at Armacost Library’s circulation desk, the Fletcher Jones Foundation Computer Center main lab, the Campus Diversity and Inclusion main offices, and the information tables Armacost Library will have around Hunsaker Plaza during Open Access Week.

Voting will close on Sunday, October 10th at 11:59 p.m. Cast your vote below.

Sample each music track by clicking on the big orange Play button that each track has. If you like what you hear or think a track should be part of UoR Open Sound 2010, click on the little box at the left of the track title to select it. Select as many as you deem worthy. One vote can have many selections. When you are finished making your selections, click the Vote! button at the bottom of the poll. Doing this will submit your vote to us.

We want to know what you think. Post a comment to this blog post. Post a comment using Polldaddy, our poll site. Email or call us. Come visit us at Armacost Library. Leave a post on our Facebook wall. We want to hear from you!

To E-Book or Not E-Book?

Considering whether or not to buy a e-book reader? The Wall Street Journal has a great article weighing the pros and cons. Their main points are spelled out below.

1. Casual readers probably shouldn't bother.
2. The books aren't as cheap as they should be.
3. Savvy readers read the classics anyway.
4. Be aware of the potential costs of buying a Kindle.
5. Be aware of the costs of the rivals.
6. And if you're thinking of buying a book reader–wait!

Read the full article "Are E-Books Worth the Money?" by Brett Arends.

Tutorials: PsycINFO changes

For those of you already familiar with PsycINFO, you might be surprised to see how different it looks. That's because we've changed from the FirstSearch platform to ProQuest's CSA platform.

What used to look like something like this:


Now looks like this: (advanced search)


To familiarize yourself with a few of the enhancements, check out these PsycINFO video tutorials.

Free Textbooks

The Open Culture blog posts a growing list of freely available textbooks on the web. If it has the textbook you need, great! If it doesn't, browse the list for titles that could help support your learning in other classes. Need to brush up your algebra skills? Want help understanding the main points of international finance? Topics covered include mathematics, business and management, physics, history, computer science, and biology.

You may also want to check out the blog's listing of free online courses, free language lessons, and more.

Mobile Apps

Here's a list of mobile apps and websites you may be interested in.

• MedlinePlus--downloads an app
• PubMed--mobile web
  
• U.S. Gov't mobile apps & websites--18 mobile tools to help you with travel, the environment, government information, and more.
  
• Library of Congress tour--app for the iPhone
• Museum of Modern Art in NY for the iPhone for the iPhone
• The Man Booker Prize for Fiction for the iPhone
  

Interruption in Service: EconLit, Alternative Press Index, ATLA Religion Databases

Some may have noticed the interruption in service to Alternative Press Index, ATLA Religion, and EconLit databases. The extended interruption in service is due to a change in database vendors. Formerly hosted by OCLC, these three databases will soon be hosted by EBSCO. We greatly appreciate your patience as we work out licensing and set up access.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience.

Questions can be directed to Sanjeet Mann, Electronic Resources Librarian and our other librarians.

Library catalog and circulation system downtime on Monday, August 9

We have one last upgrade/outage to announce. The library catalog will be unavailable for up to two hours starting at approximately 5:30 PM on the evening of Monday, August 9, 2010 as our library systems receive an upgrade. During this time we will also be unable to check out books or interact with patron records. As soon as the upgrade is complete, you should be able to search the catalog and view your record as usual.

New LexisNexis interface debuts tomorrow!

In addition to the new Wiley Online Library reported earlier, we can also announce that Lexis-Nexis is completing their migration to a new interface this weekend. Lexis-Nexis will be unavailable for up to three hours, beginning Saturday, August 7 at 9 AM PST, as part of the migration.

The new LexisNexis interface makes it easier to pick particular sources and search for data on businesses, individuals, legal cases, and much more. Try the new interface out by visiting http://0-www.lexisnexis.com.library.uor.edu/hottopics/lnacademic!

New Wiley Online Library debuts this weekend

Wiley Interscience, home to over 1,000 of Armacost Library's electronic journals, will be unavailable this weekend between 1 AM on Saturday, August 7 and 9 AM on Sunday, August 8. The downtime will allow Wiley to implement their new e-journal platform, the Wiley Online Library.

On Saturday, you will be unable to access Wiley journals from the "Wiley Interscience" links on our lists of databases by title and subject, the Index List of Full Text Journals, Citation Finder, or Article Linker. Once the upgrade is completed Sunday morning, you should have normal access to all Wiley journals.

For more information about the upgrade, visit http://info.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/view/0/index.html.

World Bank data now freely available

For several years, Armacost Library has held a subscription to the World Bank's Global Development Finance and World Development Indicators databases. We are pleased to announce that the World Bank has now added these two datasets to their growing library of data freely available to the public!

Visit http://data.worldbank.org/ to view the wealth of World Bank-gathered statistics for countries around the world. Topics covered include agriculture, debt service, public- and private-sector economic data, scientific and technological capacity, health and education indicators, energy and environmental impact, and much more.

Data can be downloaded in Excel or CSV format and visualized through "Change Indicator" maps. World Bank statistics are a valuable resource for anyone researching economic or social issues of international scope, or simply curious to find hard data to better understand the international news we read in newspapers or online everyday. Check them out!

Why The Next Big Pop-Culture Wave After Cupcakes Might Be Libraries

The cultural rise of the geek, in this story from NPR's Monkey See blogger Linda Holmes.

Government Statistics

Find your way around government statistics with this pathfinder created by the Government Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association.

Google Scholar: Make it work better for you

Set your preferences to better connect with Armacost Library resources, search more efficiently, stay current, and follow the research trail with Google Scholar.

University of California v. Nature Publishing Group

The University of California system has said "enough" to the Nature Publishing Group, one of the leading commercial scientific publishers, over a big proposed jump in the cost of the group's journals. Read more in the Chronicle of Higher Education.