Odum Library Blog

Put this number in your phone! 229.234.1947

People are raving about our new service that lets you text message your question to Odum. It’s a great way to find the information you need when you aren’t at a computer or you’re in a hurry. Maybe you just want to know if the library is open before you walk over here. In any case, keep the questions coming! Send them to 229.234.1947

Aren’t you curious about what happens when you send us a late night text?  We thought so!

When you text us any time, day or night, your question goes to the Reference Librarians.  We will text you right back during our normal hours.  Even though Reference Librarians live to help our students, we don’t live at the library.  When we open up the Reference Desk in the morning  we get to read and answer all of the text messages you sent us overnight.  On weekdays, that means you might get a return text from a Librarian at 8AM!  We don’t want to wake you up, but we do want to get you the information you need as quickly as we can.  If you don’t plan on being up that early you might want to put your phone on silent.

To find out what hours the Reference Desk is open or to send us a chat, email, or text question, go to http://www.valdosta.edu/library/ask.php

Odum Library is proud to support International Open Access Week, which takes place from October 18th-24th! 

What is Open Access? Here’s a video from SPARC, one of the biggest names in Open Access advocacy:

Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.

Basically, Open Access is a new way of publishing that makes scholarly information available to everyone.  While it isn’t always free to publish this information, the charge isn’t put on the reader, therefore empowering everyone with access to great information.

Here are a few great examples of Open Access in action!

Directory of Open Access Journals : This is a huge database of open-access journals from around the world.  In order to be included, these journals need to be edited or peer-reviewed.

ArXiv : ArXiv is a place to find the newest open-access papers in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics. 

Public Library of Science : Public Library of Science is an open-access publisher of seven peer-reviewed scientific and medical journals.

What do you have to say about Open Access?  Leave us a comment!

This weekend is the beginning of Fall Break, and we know you’ve earned it. Unfortunately, it’s pretty likely that you have a paper or two you need to start working on. Lucky for you, Odum Library is open normal hours this weekend!

Saturday: 9am-9pm
Sunday: 12pm-2am
Monday: 7:45am-2am
Tuesday: 7:45am-2am

The reference desk will be closed on Saturday and Sunday. If you need help with your research, you can always email the reference librarians for help. They get to take the weekend off, too, so you can expect a reply on Monday. You can submit an email question from the Live Chat page: http://www.valdosta.edu/library/ask.php

Have a great break!

The librarians at Odum do a lot of teaching.  You may have come to the library with one of your classes to learn how to find journal articles for a research paper.  We also teach one-on-one at the reference desk when you ask us how to find or use information.

If we left the programming up to you, what would you want us to teach? How to protect your privacy on Facebook? How to create a podcast? How to find books about vampires and zombies in the library’s catalog? Let us know!

South entrance of Odum Library, 10/07/2010

We hope you’re enjoying the beautiful October weather here at VSU.  It can be hard to study outside, though, so why not come study in Odum Library?  We have plenty of seating on the second and third floors surrounding our atrium, where you’ll have nice views of the outdoors.

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!