Odum Library Blog

All floors of the library will be open 24 hours a day for Finals Week beginning Sunday Dec, 7 at 12 P.M. and ending Thursday night, December 11 at 2 A.M.

Advice from your librarians:

• DON’T LEAVE YOUR STUFF UNATTENDED. Not a laptop, a textbook, or a purse. Not even a phone charger. This holds true all year long, but right now you’re so distracted that you forget to keep an eye on your things. It doesn’t matter if you’re just going to the bathroom or if you’re going next door to grab a Philly cheesesteak from Nathan’s. If you leave your things behind, they might not be there when you get back!
• You can alleviate this problem just by studying with a buddy. Then you can look out for each other! We have lots of study rooms available on the first and third floor. They’re first come, first served, so don’t bother trying to reserve one. Get together and finish up your group projects, proofread each other’s papers, or help each other study for your finals!
• Backup your documents! You spend a lot of time working on papers. Don’t let it go to waste just because you lost your flash drive!  Save your documents in a couple of different places. Your VSU Office 365 email account includes 1TB OneDrive for cloud storage where you can safely stash your papers in several Web apps for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.
• If you need quiet to write, try the 3rd floor computer lab (the “quiet lab”) by the south staircase. It’s a designated quiet zone!
• Finally, remember that we’re all a little stressed out right now, so be nice to one another. 

Odum Library is pleased to announce that BioOne.1 has been added to the library’s online holdings and is available on the Odum Library Biology Research Guide and in GALILEO.  BioOne.1 includes 108 high-impact biological, ecological and environmental sciences journals from more than 82 scholarly publishers.  All of the BioOne.1 full text articles and journals, some dating back to 1998, with the majority covered from 2000, are now included or covered in a Discovery search

BioOne.1  is an online aggregation of primary research in the fields of organismal biology, ecology, zoology, and environmental science.  A  valuable resource for students, faculty, and researchers, featuring timely content on a wide-array of today’s most pressing topics, including global warming, stem cell research, and ecology and biodiversity conservation.  BioOne Mobile means all of this content is available from your iPhone, Android, Blackberry or tablet device.

BioOne is a nonprofit publisher established in 1999 by five founding organizations:  the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), The University of Kansas, the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA), and Allen Press, Inc.  Valdosta State University is delighted to now be added to a community of 4,000 accessing institutions, over 140 society and institutional publishers,  and millions of researchers worldwide that are currently already served by BioOne.

BioOne Journal List

Now that our 3D printing service is in full swing here at the library, we wanted to make a couple of tweaks to our policies to ensure that more of the VSU community could use them.

Instead of requiring an in-person course, we have shifted all our 3D printer training to an online course in BlazeView. You can now view the training presentation when it’s convenient for you, take a quiz, and then be authorized to use the printers in the media center.

We have made one other change as we have learned what the costs of maintenance and materials are. Printing now costs $2.00 per hour of print time plus $.10 a gram of print weight.

To register for the BlazeView 3D printing training course or if you have any questions about our 3D printers, please email Michael Holt. (moholt@valdosta.edu)

It’s time to head back to classes which means it’s also time for the annual library mystery! This years mystery focuses on all the internet rumors of ghosts on VSU’s campus. Come help us get to the bottom of this mystery and learn about the library’s resources in the process! All the info you need to attend is in the flyer below. If you have any questions, let us know!

The Odum Library is proud to present another wonderful Art in Odum event on Monday, March 31. We will be opening two galleries and welcoming a guest speaker, Amalia Amaki. The event is open to the public and all are welcome to attend. Refreshments will be provided.

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Valdosta State University will join the Valdosta Tree Commission to host the annual Arbor Day Observance and Proclamation Friday, Feb. 21, at 10 a.m. in the Pinetum at Odum Library.

There will be multiple recognitions made during the ceremony by the Georgia Forestry Commission and the Valdosta City Tree Commission annual tree planting and preservation awards. VSU will receive its second designation as Tree Campus USA, one of nine Georgia universities to have this designation. Dr. Bradley Bergstrom, professor of biology at VSU, will speak about the university’s Pinetum and opportunities to use the area as a learning hub. Hulyn Smith, instrumental in the formation of the community partnership to restore the campus Camellia trail and a Valdosta Camellia Society member, will be recognized posthumously. A tree will be planted at the event as well.

While the Arbor Day ceremony is outside the library at 10 am on Friday, Feb. 21, do remember that there is ample material within the library to learn more about Arbor Day, pines or trees.

Due to potentially hazardous weather conditions, the library was closed at 8:00 pm, Tuesday, January 28.  Wednesday, January 29 and Thursday, January 30, the library will be open from 12:00 noon to 6:00 pm with reduced services.  The library will reopen at 8:00 am for normal operating hours Friday, January 31.

Please continue to monitor campus announcements and updates at: http://www.valdosta.edu/

Makerbot 3D Printer

Starting in Spring Semester 2013, Odum Library is proud to announce the availability of 3D printing services for students, staff, faculty, and the VSU community. The services will be provided by a Makerbot Replicator with a Dual Extrusion printing head that will be located in Media Services.

Because 3D printing is a technology that requires some basic background knowledge to operate successfully, we will be offering one-hour workshops on the basics of 3D printer operation. Attendance at one of these workshops is mandatory before an individual can use the 3D printer. These sessions will cover basic use and operation of the machine, tips for successful printing, and policies governing the use of the printer. There will be four workshops offered in Spring Semester 2013 with plans to offer more in subsequent semesters. The dates, times, and locations for this semester’s workshops are:

January 21, 2014 – 5:00PM-6:00 PM  Odum Library 3270

February 18, 2014 – 5:00PM-6:00 PM  Odum Library 3270

March 25, 2014 – 5:00PM-6:00 PM  Odum Library 3270

April 22, 2014 – 5:00PM-6:00 PM  Odum Library 3270

If you wish to attend one of these sessions, please RSVP by email to Michael Holt no later than 2 days before the workshop you wish to attend. There is an attendance limit of 40 for each session, so please reserve your seat early if you wish to use the printer this semester.

If you have any further questions about using the 3D printer in Odum Library, please visit the Media Center’s page for 3D printing services, where you’ll find a complete list of polices.

Recently, Odum Library has decided to offer a novel way to deliver free books in the area around the free book shelf on the second floor of the building, near the reference desk. This distribution system is called a LibraryBox, which  is a wireless network used to provide free eBooks and other content to the public. There is no login required and it is completely free. It utilizes open source code from NYU professor David Darts and Jason Griffey at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with modifications made by the Lake Forest Library (Lake Forest, IL) and  Odum Library.

Currently, the main use of the LibraryBox is to provide quality public domain and creative commons licensed materials to the public. We also plan to expand this to be a place for you to share your art, writing, and music.

The LibraryBox is easy to use! Just use your mobile phone, laptop, eReader and connect to the “LibraryBox – Free Content” wireless network (just like connecting to your wireless internet at home). Once you connect, use any web browser to go to any page, it will automatically redirect you. Then, simply browse the ebook collection and click a title to download the book.

We are always on the lookout for great new public domain or Creative Commons titles to add to our LibraryBox. If you have any suggestions, please contact us (our contact information is here under the Get Involved section) and let us know what you’d like to see on the LibraryBox. We would also love to host any writings, music, or other digital materials created by the VSU community as well, so contact us with those requests as well.

We hope you enjoy the content we’ve provided you in the LibraryBox and a free bookshelf that’s never truly empty!

For more details on the LibraryBox and how to use it, please see our LibraryBox User Guide.

The Library will have some special hours in the upcoming weeks because of the Thanksgiving holidays and Finals Week.

Odum Library will close for the Thanksgiving holiday on Tuesday, November 26 at 5 P.M. and will re-open on Saturday, November 30 at 9 A.M.

The main library will be open 24 hours a day for Finals Week beginning Sunday Dec, 1 at 12 P.M. and ending on Thursday December 5 at 2 A.M.

If you have any questions about library hours, including the hours departments like Media Services and Archives are open, our Hours of Operations page has the information you need and it’s constantly updated to reflect special hours:

http://www.valdosta.edu/academics/library/general/about/hours-of-operation.php