It’s National Library Card Sign-Up Month. Stop by the circulation desk at the SMCM Library from September 10-23 to sign up for a St. Mary’s County Public Library card.
Get access to:
Popular books, ebooks & audiobooks
New releases on DVD & Blu-ray
Mango Languages Online
Online Test Prep for GRE, MCAT, LSAT
When was the Point News not the Point News?
For most of the 1940s and ’50s the St. Mary’s student newspaper was called “The Signal News.”
Tom Barrett plans orientation
It first became “The Point News” in 1959.
A recurring theme
Then for most of the 1970s and into the ’80s it was “The Empath.”
Another recurring theme
Uncharted territory
Not to be confused with the mac lab
Much to the dismay of some 1970s and early ’80s alumni, the name “The Point News” returned in 1985.
Witnesses to history
First report on the storied Riot of ’98
Going green in 2000
Whatever the name, St. Mary’s student newspapers from 1952 through 2002 have been digitized and are now available online, fully word-searchable, via the Archives web site!
And because we take our duty to preserve our historical record seriously, physical copies of all these papers (as well as those from the 1940s and from 2002 to date) are safely tucked away in the College Archives. Hard copies of issues from 2002 to date are also available in the Library.
Happy reading!
If you’ve been to the library’s website recently, you may (or may not) have noticed a smallish box off to the left-hand side of the screen with the words “Ask Us.” It’s a small but commanding phrase, and here at the library, it’s one we take seriously. Librarians and library staff love questions and you need answers, so we’ve added yet another way for you to ask and us to answer:
Online Chat!
That’s right, librarians are online and available to help you. At the moment, our chat hours are a bit inconsistent, but eventually we’ll work out a regular routine. This is a new service for us and we’re still working out the kinks and playing around with the features. So, when you click on the “Ask Us” button you’ll end up with one of two screens:
If you’re really lucky, you’ll see this:
Chat Success!!!
which means a librarian is online and available to help you.
If you’re a little less lucky, but still amazingly lucky in the grand scheme of library help options, you’ll see this:
Ask Us is our new FAQ system
Which is an entryway into our new LibAnswers system. It’s a Frequently-Asked-Questions system/knowledgebase and an email-a-librarian system all rolled into one. It’s a way to help yourself or get the help you need. Just type in a question to search for an answer.
So again, when we ask you to Ask Us, we mean it. We really, really do.
Photo from Flickr user Matt McGee
Welcome everyone to the 2012-2013 academic year at SMCM! In the library we were hard at work all summer so that now, you can work smarter! Below is a brief rundown of just a few of the new toys and services we’re offering in the SMCM Library. If anyone has any questions, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
New photocopier: We have a brand new photocopier! It does full color and has an automatic feeder for those long documents. Prices are 10 cents per black & white copy, 25 cents per color copy. Please note that the photocopier on the 2nd floor (in the periodicals) is no longer there – there is only the first floor photocopier, which is in the same location.
New scanner: Returning students, staff, and faculty may remember the touchscreen-operated scanner that we had on a trial basis toward the end of the Spring 2012 semester. It is now a permanent addition to the SMCM Library. It scans in color or black & white and your scanned images can be printed (print in black & white only), saved to a thumb drive, or emailed immediately to you as a PDF, JPG, PNG, or RTF (MS Word) file. It also has a leading edge – this makes it very easy to photocopy books & journals without pressing down on the item to get that hard-to-read text in the center!
Kindles: We now circulate Kindles! We have three Kindle Fires, two Kindle Touches, and a Kindle Keyboard that can be checked out for two weeks (one renewal allowed). They come preloaded with several e-books for your reading pleasure, including the Hunger Games trilogy, Prisoner of Heaven, and more! We are actively soliciting requests for new titles for our Kindles, so let us know if you have a request.
Overdue fines: The rumors are true: the SMCM Library has eliminated almost all of our daily overdue fines. Daily overdue fines remain in effect for:
Nothing else, I repeat: nothing else is subject to daily overdue fines, i.e. books, DVD’s, VHS, CD’s, laptops (yes, laptops!), headphones, extension cords, ethernet cords, thumb drives, Kindles, etc etc). The complete new SMCM Library fine policy is available on our website here (or, from the Library home page, click on “about the library” then “policies”).
Group Study Room Booking: Now, you can reserve one of our group study rooms for up to three hours per day. Use this link (or, from the Library home page, click on “library services” then “group study rooms”). In addition, Group Study Room 221 has been outfitted with a 55” HDTV with a DVD player. Group Study Rooms 215, 216, & 221 are available for booking. Group Study Rooms 206 & 217 are open and available on a first-come, first-served basis.
Happy Librarying!!!!!
Did you read the Catching Fire, The Help or Front Burner? These are just a few of the titles that were reviewed on the Library Summer Reading Blog this summer. As editor of the blog I read them all. The books reviewed covered everything from young adult (YA) dystopias to Al Qaeda’s Attack on the USS Cole. There were also memoirs, literary fiction and plays. The reviewers were a mix of SMCM students, staff and alumni.
I am a big fan of book statistics so here are some stats from the 2012 blog;
55 reviews were posted
41 were fiction reviews
14 non-fiction reviews
5 reviewers submitted more than 6 reviews
3 reviewers submitted only 1 review
1 reviewer submitted 10 reviews
YA series were by far the most popular titles reviewed this summer. Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games led the way with six reviews, but other series such as Scott Westerfeld’s steampunk series Leviathan, Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments and Cinda Williams Chima’s Seven Realms all made a good showing with at least two books reviewed from each set. The non-fiction reviews were dominated by memoirs including Tina Fey’s Bossypants. And, well, I’m not sure what to call Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Both our reviewers agree that despite the vampires, it “reads like a history lesson,“ but not on whether you should read it or not.
Mandy Reinig was our top reviewer and wins the bag of library swag.
Pamela
Last Wednesday I saved a file on my computer – an incomplete draft of a document to post on our library blog. I just took a quick look at it this afternoon since my PDA (remember those) showed that today I was supposed to submit an item. I had written about information literacy, my thoughts on its role in the four basic liberal arts skills in first-year seminars (I’m going to be teaching a section of FYS this fall) and how much more is involved with information literacy (and its integral companion skill, critical thinking) than the academic research aspects of locating and evaluating information. On re-reading, I liked one sentence: “In fact, most of the information we encounter or seek out may only indirectly find its way into our academic writing, or more likely, not enter into the academic realm at all.”
I just took a look at my recent web browser history (which includes Google searches.) Items include: This is Hardcore Fest, August 9, 10, 11, 12 2012; H20 (American Band) Wikipedia; Whiners of Average Intelligence (from the Chronicle of Higher Education); Services for Faculty (SMCM Library); ProQuest Migration Platform Center; USA Basketball: 2012 U.S. Olympic Women’s Basketball Team Roster; Home – LibGuides at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Just did a search for a friend on Philadelphia Arts Alliance to get to “Shiny Monsters.”
I can connect the dots. I can explain why each of these sites was of interest, and why they each contributed to the ongoing creation of me – the “who I am” in terms of what I “know” or think about. I can tell you why I trust the information I found. I don’t expect anything that I found will be cited by me in any type of academic paper.
We are celebrating the birthday of our new web site!! It came from humble, but delicious beginnings:
Our first meeting to discuss what we wanted in our new web site was accompanied by doughnuts and lots of slips of paper. All seven of the librarians contributed DNA, and Veronica Arellano Douglas was the midwife through what seems like the longest labor and delivery in history. We prioritized, we compromised, we moved post-it notes around, and we agreed that we were ready for a big change.
So we’re ready to hear what you have to say. Don’t be shy. You don’t have to tell us we have a beautiful baby if you find things that don’t work, or don’t work the way you expected them to. As hard as we try to think like our users (that’s you), it’s hard for us to turn our librarian brains off.
Send us feedback! Send congratulations to Veronica! No pacifiers or baby blankets. We could use more doughnuts, though.
Life just got a little easier for students searching for psychological tests and measures. The library now has a subscription to the American Psychological Association’s PsycTESTS online database.
What PsycTESTS does NOT contain: Every psychological test, measure, scale, survey instrument or assessment tool ever written. Sorry, folks.
What PsycTESTS DOES contain:
Not bad, huh?
Yes, many of the tests are relevant to psychological research, but there are measures that cover quite a few different subject areas, including education, sociology and health. If you’re working on your SMP or just a research paper and need a test, measure or assessment tool, try searching PsycTESTS.
But don’t forget! If you can’t find what you need in PsycTESTS, we have plenty of excellent print resources for locating tests and measures. Take a look at the Psychology Research Guide for a quick refresher.
You now have enhanced access to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The domain smcm.edu has been added to the CHE authentication database so that anyone with a college email address can create a free account and access the CHE from anywhere, anytime, without using Research Port!
Ways to access the Chronicle online:
You don’t want this kitten to know more about higher education than you do. Trust me.
The Library at St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s Summer Reading Program will begin on June 4 and end on August 17, 2012.
The Summer Reading program is open to all members of the SMCM Library community including students, staff, faculty, alumni and residents of the Tri-County area (St. Mary’s, Calvert and Charles counties.) Any book is eligible as long as a copy is available in the SMCM library catalog, the Cosmos catalog, or the USMAI catalog. To get points, you must post a review on the blog.
New this year, Cosmos, the online catalog for the Southern Maryland public libraries has been added to the list of eligible library catalogs. That means more popular fiction, mysteries, sci-fi and fantasy novels will be eligible for points.
For more information, visit the Summer Reading Program Blog.
