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 will close at 5:30 pm on Tuesday, November 25th, for the Thanksgiving break. The Library will reopen at 9:00 am, Saturday, November 29th.

The history of Thanksgiving as a celebration dates back to before the familiar Pilgrims’ observance in 1621. Remember that November is also Native American Heritage Month. You can also read more about the history of Thanksgiving as a tradition and as a national holiday in the United States.

Before you prepare a Thanksgiving dinner, it’s a good idea to review these Seven Tips for a Safe Thanksgiving Dinner from the Georgia Department of Community Health. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides these alternate routes for cooking a turkey.

Finally, if your plans include travel this holiday, be sure to consult these sources for travel information:

• Traffic and Road Closures from the Federal Highway Administration
• Air Travel Tips from the Transportation Security Administration
• Flight Delay Information from the Federal Aviation Administration

Whatever your holiday plans, we hope you’ll consider coming to Odum Library for your holiday reading and government information needs, and be sure to come back once the library opens!

Election Day is Tuesday, November 4th, for important mid-term elections for office and, in Georgia, three constitutional amendments.

You don’t have to wait until November 4th to vote, though! In Lowndes County, advanced voting is available at the Board of Elections office at 2808 N. Oak Street, Valdosta, Georgia, on the following dates and times: 

10/13/2014 – 10/24/2014    8:00 AM – 5:00 PM, Days: M,Tu,W,Th,F

10/25/2014 – 10/25/2014    9:00 AM – 4:00 PM, Days: Sa

10/26/2014 – 10/26/2014   12:00 PM – 5:00 PM, Days: Su

10/27/2014 – 10/31/2014    7:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Days: M,Tu,W,Th,F

A number of resources about disease outbreaks and control are available from federal government resources:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) list recent outbreaks, including diseases and food-borne illnesses.
• Find out how the CDC is responding to the recent West Africa Ebola outbreak and learn more about the risk of exposure, symptoms, and prevention.
• The Enterovirus D68, a respiratory virus, has infected 678 people in 46 states since mid-August.
• Summaries of data about reported healthcare-associated cases of Hepatitis B and C are also available from the CDC.
• The most common infectious disease in the United States is seasonal influenza. You can see the most recent weekly number of positive influenza reports, mortality rates, and an overview of influenza surveillance, also provided by the CDC. Remember that the best way to avoid the flu is through an influenza vaccination.

Be sure to take a look at government reports, hearings, and handbooks on infectious diseases, superbugs, and global health, available at the Government Documents exhibit near library’s Reference Desk. For further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact the reference librarian on duty or the government information librarian at ecrogers@valdosta.edu or 229.245.3748.

Stay informed and stay well!

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

Due to a server upgrade as scheduled between 8:30 to 10:00 am on Sunday, September 28^th,  the GIL Express borrowing service from other University System of Georgia libraries will be unavailable.  While the Library’s GIL-Find@VSU catalog will be accessible, item status will not display during the upgrade time.   The various Classic GIL@VSU Odum Catalog interfaces will also be unavailable.

Odum Library’s staff appreciates your understanding and patience during this necessary library system maintenance and upgrade!

Fifty years ago this fall, the Warren Commission issued its report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. To commemorate this event, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has made the complete report and 26 volumes of congressional hearings available online on GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys). GPO and the Boston Public Library worked together to digitize the volumes of hearings after digitizing the Warren Commission Report last year.

• View the complete Warren Commission Report and Congressional Hearings here.
• Odum Library has the print version of the original Warren Commission report available in its Government Documents collection.

GPO produced the original Warren Commission Report and 26 volumes of hearings in print in 1964 and distributed copies through the Federal Depository Library Program and by purchase from GPO bookstores.

Audio tape recordings of the post-President Kennedy assassination conversations between various individuals in Washington, DC, and Air Force One pilots and officials are also available on FDsys.

• Hear the post-assassination audio tape recordings here.

For more information on these and other government information materials, feel free to contact the Government Documents librarian at 229-245-3748. Remember that all types of questions are always welcome; just contact Odum Library’s reference librarians by dropping by the second floor reference desk, by calling 229-333-7149, or by using our Live Chat service. 

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)

Constitution Day occurs on Wednesday, September 17th, this year. In honor of this event, Odum Library will be handing out free candy and pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution all day at all three service desks, the Reference Desk, Main Circulation, and 1st Floor Circulation.

If you can’t make it to the library that day, be sure to view this online Constitution available from the National Archives. You can also view the library’s display of books and other materials about constitutional interpretation in the first floor display cases on the north side of the library; it remains on view until October 1st.

Georgia had four delegates to the Constitutional Convention, but only two actually signed the Constitution. Who were they?

Find out more about the Constitution and its signing on September 17th, 1787, with these fun facts about the Constitution and Constitutional Convention.

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!