Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

Full Access to The Chronicle of Higher Education

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Chronicle of Higher Education

It’s a new year and with is comes all of the promises we make to ourselves. I’ll go to the gym at least 3 times a week. I’ll stop eating potato chips. I’ll be a more informed citizen/student/professor!

We might not be able to help you shed those pesky pounds of “holiday weight,” but we can help you stay better informed about news, events, and issues in higher education. The Library maintains a College-wide subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education. To access all articles, opinion pieces, and writing about academia you could ever want, just visit The Chronicle online and sign up for a free account using your St. Mary’s email address.

Now you can cross at least one thing off of your New Year’s resolution list.

Crafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist

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mathematical bead braceletsCrafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist is a new book from CRC Press featuring the stunning bead jewelry designs of St. Mary’s mathematics professor Dr. Susan Goldstine.

Drawing from her love of math, crochet, jewelry-making and puzzles, Dr. Goldstine and co-author Dr. Ellie Baker have put together a book designed for crafters, puzzle lovers, and pattern designers.

You can find Crafting Conundrums in the stacks on the 2nd floor of the Library.

MathSciNet

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soap bubbles

Photo by John Britt on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Published by the American Mathematical Society, MathSciNet is a searchable electronic database that contains reviews, abstracts and bibliographic information for literature in mathematics. It contains over 3 million items and is pretty much THE disciplinary research tool (along with ArXiv) in mathematics. It’s now celebrating its 75th year of publication. Needless to say, that’s a lot of math over the years.

Involve: a Journal of Mathematics

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math drawing on chalkboard

Triangle by Clemens Koppensteiner on Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The mathematical journal Involve features research that, at a minimum, contains one-third student authorship. It’s aim is to “showcase and encourage high-quality mathematical research involving students from all academic levels.” Published by Mathematical Sciences Publishers, Involve is an Open Access journal, which means all articles are available to read and download for free on the journal website.

 

Welcome Back!

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Welcome to the start of another amazing academic year at St. Mary’s. You may not realize it, but by this time the librarians and library staff have had enough of the quiet summer days and are so very excited to see you again! If you’re a student, come by the library to say hello in between classes, and while you’re here you can:

  • Check out a laptop if your computer is on the fritz during the first week of classes.
  • See what your professor has placed on Course Reserve for the semester.
  • Print out your syllabi for the semester.
  • Start digging in to your SMP lit review (if you’re at that point)!

For faculty, don’t forget that the library

  • Has an all-campus subscription to both The Chronicle of Higher Education AND The New York Times. For full access to content, you just need to register with your St. Mary’s email address.
  • Is still taking requests for Course Reserves. You can find the online forms for Course Reserves requests on the Portal under the Faculty Tab.
  • Has librarians who can teach research workshops for you this semester. Just ask us.

See you soon.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Discovery Tools

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If you are a reader of The Chronicle of Higher Education, you may have seen last week’s article about library discovery tools. Marc Parry’s article, As Researchers Turn to Google, Libraries Navigate the Messy World of Discovery Tools, sheds light on some of the complications and questions caused by discovery tools and their ability to make library resources more discoverable. Parry opens with this description of discovery tools:

“Instead of bewildering users with a bevy of specialized databases—books here, articles there—many libraries are bulldozing their digital silos. They now offer one-stop search boxes that comb entire collections, Google style.”

As much as we’d like to promise seamless access to our entire collection through a single search box, the discovery tools on the market are from perfect. The items retrieved in a search and their page ranking are not always determined purely by their relevancy or recency, but instead by algorithms and licensing agreements between publishers, database vendors and the companies creating discovery tools. Parry’s article questions the possibility of bias in discovery tools, which would cause results from one vendor or content provider to be ranked higher than another. (Vendors will not explain the algorithms used to rank results for fear of sharing proprietary information).  The article also points to the possibility of the unfortunate pairing of an imperfect ranking system and high number of results so the “best” sources are lost in the mix.  What happens if we’re using discovery tools as a primary access point for research, but we don’t exactly know how the tool sorts and ranks results? Is it that unlike searching Google, but not knowing how Google’s algorithms work?

[Read more…]

A reminder of our (no) fines policy

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Hello from the front desk!  Despite the snow days, the semester is now in full swing and the books, DVD’s, Kindles, extension cords, laptop chargers, and more are quickly moving back and forth across the front desk – from us to you and back again.  So I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone of our fine policy.

Our fine policy is simple: with a few exceptions, there are no overdue fines.  And these aren’t wide-ranging exceptions that basically include everything – nothing like “no fines except on days that end in ‘y'”.  When we say “no fines”, we mean it!

Having said that, the exceptions are as follows:

  • items from the media center: if it comes from the third floor of the library where Ken, Linda, Raven, and Andy work, it’s subject to overdue fines.
  • course reserves: if it’s on course reserve at the front desk (three hour, overnight, or three day loan) – it’s subject to overdue fines.  This doesn’t apply to e-reserves, only to physical items you check out at the front desk.
  • recalled items: it doesn’t happen too often, but every once in a while you’ll get a “recall notice” email.  That’s letting you know that someone else wants to use the item.  Read that email closely because it gives you a new due date.  If you turn it in late, you’ll get fined.
  • USMAI/ILLiad items: if you borrow something from another library, either through USMAI or ILLiad, you’ll get fined if it’s late.  The amount varies depending on the library that owns the item.

So if none of the above applies, then you won’t be fined for returning it late.  Now, if you NEVER return it, you will eventually get billed for it.  But if it’s a day or a week late – nothing.

The reason for this policy is simple.  We want you to borrow all the items you need, for research, fun, etc., without worrying about anything except whether you want or need it.  And not to sound “braggy” but we’ve got a lot of stuff!  Almost 200,000 books, mostly academic but many popular titles as well, (and several thousand more ebooks), nearly 3,000 DVD’s, six Kindles pre-loaded with about 40 bestsellers, scores of equipment such as Mac chargers, extension cords, headphones, flash drives, etc.  So if it’ll make your life easier, or better, go for it!  We’re open until 1:00 AM Sunday – Wednesday, midnight on Thursday, and 9:00 PM on Friday and Saturday, so there’s plenty of opportunity for you to stop by.

Happy librarying!

New Database Trial

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Are you in search of information about Latin America?  The Caribbean?  Looking for scholarly articles, or simply statistics?  What about primary sources?  News sources?  Well, look no further!  The Library is hosting a free trial of Gale World Scholar:  Latin America and the Caribbean.  This database contains both historical and contemporary content from a variety of sources and document types, including:

  • Historical monographs, manuscripts and newspapers
  • Peer-reviewed journals
  • Audio, video and other multimedia
  • International news sources
  • Reference sources
  • Reliable statistics

You can access this trial through the month of November from on-campus at this URL. 

What do you think of this database?  Let us know!  By sharing your thoughts and feedback on this anonymous form, you’ll help us decide if we should continue providing access to this product or not, when our trial comes to an end.  Thanks!

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New Database Trial!

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Welcome back from Fall reading days!

We have another database on trial.  ProQuest Newsstand is a newspaper database of international, national and regional titles, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Guardian, El Norte, Jerusalem Post, and South China Morning Post.  We encourage you to give this database a try and let us know if it’s worth a subscription!  We have one month of free access, through November 14th, available on this trials page.  And while you’re there, take a look at ProQuest Central!  To share your feedback, use this anonymous online form.   We appreciate your thoughts and opinions, and use that feedback to make a more informed decision at the end of the trial.  Thanks in advance!

eBooks!

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The SMCM Library is entering the wonderful world of ebooks, and using data to get there.  The Library is participating in a pilot project, along with other USMAI campus libraries, to begin adding ebooks to the library collection.  For this pilot, however, we’re following your lead and only purchasing titles which you would like to read and borrow.  During the pilot, the Library has access to 8500 ebooks.  Those titles which are borrowed six or more times will be permanently adding to the collection.  The USMAI campus libraries have access to the same pool of 8500 ebooks, and those titles which are purchased will be accessible to all of USMAI.  A book will not belong to a single library, and can be read and borrowed by multiple users at the same time.

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To use library jargon, this process is called demand driven acquisitions.  Our library users create a demand by borrowing a title, and we let that demand dictate which books we purchase or acquire.  Traditionally, the librarians make acquisition decisions, based on a variety of information and recommendations.  For this pilot, we’re standing back and letting you select the titles.

Contact Us:

(240) 895-4264

ask@smcm.libanswers.com
47645 College Drive
St. Mary's City, MD, 20686-3001

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