Odum Library Blog

Tomorrow is the first day of Banned Books Week, celebrating your right to read what you want to read.

The American Library Association lists the top 10 most challenged* books each year since 2001.

You can check out many of these controversial books from Odum Library, including Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War.

*“A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A banning is the removal of those materials. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others.”–“About Banned and Challenged Books,” ALA Web site.

For your information and entertainment, we would like to share this short video about Odum Library’s services.  We created it to use when your class visits the library for a lesson on accessing our materials.

Let us know what you think! You can also create your own videos at www.xtranormal.com

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, businesses in the Southeast expect to hire 8.3% more graduates from the 2011 than they hired from the 2010 class.  For more information, see their press release here.

Until then, let the library help you stay on track for graduation.  Ask us how to find peer-reviewed journal articles for your capstone paper.  If you can’t make it by the reference desk or chat with us before 10PM (we know how you love to pull all-nighters), you can email the Reference Librarians for help any time of day, or night!

You hear it from your professors, and you hear it from your librarians. We keep asking you to find “scholarly” articles using the library’s databases, but you’d rather just use Google. Am I right?

There is a reason that we keep steering you toward Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, SocINDEX, and ERIC. These databases help you find reliable information written by experts in their fields. What will Google find? Lots of information: some that’s realiable and some that, well, isn’t.

Most of the websites you’ll find using Google are not scholarly, peer-reviewed resources.  If your assignment requires them, you will want to search one of the library’s databases instead.  If you need help determining if a resource is peer-reviewed or not, just ask!  We are happy to help you.

Did you know that in our online catalog, as well as many of our databases, you can start with a simple, Google-like search and refine your results?  We think if you give them a try, you will find that the databases and the catalog are not as difficult to use as you might think.

The semester is well under way by now, and that means it’s time to start writing your papers.  If you need help figuring out how to format citations in any of these formats, stop by the reference desk for help.  We have copies of current style manuals behind the reference desk and will help you find just the format you need.  We’re also happy to help you by chat, so don’t forget to try out our Live Chat page!

Thousands of video programs at Films on Demand can now be accessed through GALILEO.

You can search for films or browse by subject area— Humanities and Social Sciences, Business and Economics, Science and Mathematics, Health and Medicine, or Archival Films and Newsreels.

A few sample titles:

Dyslexia, an Unwrapped Gift

Aquatic Environments: Riparian Areas, Lakes, and Marshes

[Warren] Buffet and [Bill] Gates Go Back to School

Poetry and Its Relevance: an Experiment

Adult Entertainment: a Psychosocial Study of an American Obsession

Reborn: New Orleans Schools

“The answer to almost any question is available within seconds . . . it’s up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. ”

In his article “Crap Detection 101,” author Howard Rheingold will help you figure out how to verify information you find online. It’s easy to Google what you need, but is what you find accurate? Is it true? We’ll ask you to do this all the time– evaluate your online sources!

Click here for Odum Library’s recommended resources for evaluating Websites & search engines.

If you need help, please ask a librarian. You can also text us now!

Did you know Blaze loves to hang out at Odum Library?  Here’s photographic evidence: Blaze posing for a photo with Jeff and Ginger, two of our Reference Librarians.  Seeing is believing!