Odum Library Blog

On Veterans Day we recognize veterans and all of those who have offered military service.

(Photo courtesy of the U.S Department of Veterans Affairs.)

Help the younger generation appreciate our veterans with this Teacher Resource Guide from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Veterans Day National  Committee.

As a Federal Depository Library, Odum Library’s Government Documents collection includes many publications about veterans, including these hearings:

• Access to U.S. Department of Veterans Healthcare: How Easy Is It for Veterans?, available in print, microfiche, and online PDF formats.
• Women, Rural, and Special Needs Veterans, available in print and microfiche

Veterans’ history and needs extend beyond Veterans Day, of course. The Library of Congress invites public participation in the Veterans History Project. Veteran Brian McGough describes ways to help veterans after Veterans Day.

The Department of Veterans Affairs provides an online database to search for the burial locations of veterans, including National and other military cemeteries and private cemeteries in which veterans’ graves are marked.

View more documents about veterans at the Government Documents display, located in the Odum Library 2nd floor Reference area.

GALILEO needs your help, and they’re giving away an iPad to one lucky helper! Take the annual GALILEO survey to tell GALILEO what you like, what you don’t like, and what you would like in the future. The lucky iPad winner will be drawn randomly from the completed surveys.

To get there, either go right to the survey at http://galileo2012.questionpro.com, or go to the GALILEO homepage and click on the page’s survey link: http://www.galileo.usg.edu

The survey is open from November 12-18, 2012.

Thanks, and good luck!
Odum Reference

As Election Day 2012 draws near, be sure to check out election and voting resources from the U.S. and State of Georgia governments.

Find election information for any state through the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. The Commission’s Voter’s Guide to Federal Elections is available in English and ten other languages, including Cherokee, Vietnamese, Navajo, and Yupik.

From the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, view Georgia’s MVP page for one-stop shopping for Georgia voting information: registration status, sample ballots, and voting precincts, for example.

Georgia’s voter identification requirements explain what kind of photo ID you should provide when you vote.

You can view 2012 election results for Georgia, as well as archived information from previous years, at the Secretary of State’s Election Results site.

Tell Us What You Discovered Using the New Discover GALILEO Search Tool For a Chance to Win

To celebrate the launch of Discover GALILEO, the “What I Discovered Today” contest will last throughout October with both daily and weekly prizes awarded to GALILEO users just for sharing their search experiences. Discover GALILEO brings a new user experience enhanced by meaningful results and lots of tools to manage research, such as a personal folder and facets for drilling down to the most useful articles. Entries may include exciting articles or other content that really satisfies the search, fun facts or new knowledge, useful tools featured in Discover GALILEO, or other discoveries, large or small. Prizes are provided by EBSCO.

Daily prizes of $25 gift cards will be awarded to the submission randomly drawn from each day’s entries. A weekly prize of an iPod Shuffle will be awarded to the name drawn from all entries submitted during the week.

For rules and the entry form, go to http://about.galileo.usg.edu/discover_contest

Next Thursday, October 11th, 2012 at 7 PM , Odum Library and the Honor’s college will be presenting the faculty student colloquium “A Guide to Collecting, Authenticating and Exhibiting Antique Printed Artifacts” in the University Center Theater. The event will be hosted by Deborah Davis and Andrew Tatler-Burgess and will discuss items featured in the Tatler-Burgess Collection that is currently on display in Odum Library.
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GALILEO is changing how GALILEO Scholar works! Please check out the following demo, as GALILEO has just confirmed that the rollout date for the changes is October 1, 2012 – next Monday. Please note that the new Search will include many databases, but not all of them yet – by March or April, GALILEO will work with each individual school to include our locally purchased resources, and the content in our catalogs.

Preview Discover GALILEO

Here’s the official message from GALILEO:

Dear GALILEO Users,
Good afternoon — we are delighted to announce that Discover GALILEO will become the production GALILEO search service for all sites on Monday, October 1, 2012. Sites will begin to update to the new service on Sunday, September 30th, and all sites should be updated by the start of the work day Monday.

If you’ve been in the library recently, you’ve almost certainly seen one (or two or five) of our new digital signs. So far we’ve been using them just to share information about the library with you, our wonderful users. But now we’re opening them up for use by the entire VSU community!

You’ll find a form at http://www.valdosta.edu/library/services/digitalsignagerequestform.shtml to use for submitting your sign requests. Policies for the signs, along with formatting requirements, can be found at http://www.valdosta.edu/library/services/digitalsignageinfo.shtml

We look forward to seeing your recital fliers and announcements about upcoming events for your student organizations! See the policy for more information, but in essence we welcome signs from VSU students, faculty, and staff that’s related to an official VSU  event, service or academic activity.

Odum Library marks the 225th anniversary of the signing of the 1787 U.S. Constitution  with an online exhibit of resources about the U.S. Constitution.

For instance, you can interact with the U.S. Constitution, courtesy of the National Constitution Center.

Both the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) offer Constitution Day resources especially for teachers, as does the U.S. Department of Education.  NARA even provides instructions for a game to help teach students about the Constitution.

Be sure to visit the Government Documents display for Constitution Day 2012, located in the Odum Library 2nd floor Reference area, to see copies of the Constitution, Congressional hearings, and other documents related to the U.S. Constitution and citizens’ constitutional rights.

Opening page of the U.S. Constitution, Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections Division

Are you tired of fumbling with pencils and paper when you need to write down a call number? Is your handwriting so bad that you can’t even read it?

Don’t bother scribbling your call numbers down any more! When you find a book in the catalog that you want to check out, send yourself a text message with all the information you’ll need.

Let’s say you found this book in the catalog: http://gilfind.valdosta.edu/vufind/Record/412390 Sure, you could write down the title, the call number, and the location of the book. But you could also use the “text this” button to send all of that information straight to your mobile phone!

This is where you'll find the magical "text this" button in the catalog.

We use this feature all the time and hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we do!

It seems that in all the commotion surrounding the first days of Fall Semester, a thief has made off with one of the paintings from the new art displays in the library. Investigators think that the thief has hidden the painting somewhere in the library for safe keeping until they can come back to claim their prize.

Come help us search the library for clues and use your deductive skills to help find the painting before the thief comes back and it slips through our hands for good.

Join in the mystery. It’s happening this Friday, August 17th, at 4pm. Meet in room 1604 on the first floor of the library if you think you could help us out.

If you finish the mystery you’ll get free pizza and drinks! There will also be prizes, including a drawing for an 16GB iPod Nano courtesy of the VSU Tech Shop! Bring your friends for an afternoon of fun in the library.

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to moholt@valdosta.edu. If you have any more questions about the mystery, don’t hesitate to contact the Reference Desk at the Library for answers!