New Online Community for Faculty and Students

http://www.xplana.com/
launched mid-August 2010

Have you ever wanted to keep up with someone you met in one of your courses after the class ended? Ever wanted to get together with classmates online to work on a group project, but found it too awkward or difficult to do?

I recently ordered some books from MBSdirect and found a bookmark in one for the Xplana website.  The site is copyrighted by MBS Service Company, Inc.

It took a look at Xplana's introductory pages, read some of their press releases, went to the "Getting Started" guide, and decided to sign up for a free account.  I just wanted to see if it was something that online faculty and students might use to create collaborative learning communities.   It just might be...

Why not set up a free account for yourself and see what you think of it? The online content is indexed. You can share with friends via Twitter, FaceBook, and other social networking sites.  It has its own blog.  I especially liked the InfoGrab section.  Let me know what you think by adding a comment to this post.

OxfordArtOnline Update

Artist: Carlo Crivelli,
"Madona and Child"
in OxfordArtOnline

OxfordArtOnline is the library's "go-to" online resource for your art research projects.  This database provides online access to the well-known Grove Dictionary of Art, a multi-volume print encyclopedia. 

In addition to the Grove Dictionary of Art, the library's subscription includes electronic access to: The Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms.

Oxford University Press is updating this resource in stages.  It has recently updated all of the bibliographies and articles in the Italian Renaissance section.  Check out the OxfordArtOnline home page after you logon from the library's site for more information about featured content and new essay, such as the one on "Science and Contemporary Art."

Search Tips from the Director's Office

Director of Library Services, Brent Short, offers this tip for getting the most out of our library’s subscriptions to Congressional Quarterly (CQ) Press resources once you have logged onto the library's site:

“If you click on the ‘advanced search’ link, the next page shows a link for ‘Search all your CQ Electronic library sites’.  That link will allow you to search all of our CQ resources at once, including CQ Researcher.”

Editors' Picks from CHOICE Reviews Online

Here are some amazing online resources that have been recommended by CHOICE Reviews Online from August through November.  I think you will find them useful and interesting.

·         The World Bank Open Data—This site is an excellent resource for business majors and anyone interested in “economic, social, population, and development data” from the World Bank.  It is an open-data initiative.  You can manipulate World Bank datasets to create your own customized tables.  For more business news and financial information, try Bloomberg’s site.

·         C-SPAN Video Library—Digital copies of more than 160,000 hours of material from 1987 to the present can be accessed free from the site.  The video archive includes links to the Booknotes and Book TV programs.  Subscribe to their blog for additional information.

·         Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web—The Smithsonian Institution Libraries provides this list of online digital exhibits from all types of libraries.  This international guide provides links to more than 5,800 “exhibits sponsored by noncommercial institutions.”

·         Office of Management and Budget—The site, from the Executive Office of the President of the United States, includes information about the current federal budget, along with historical tables, overviews of the US Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and how the current budget will impact individual states.  Sign up for the blog and/or RSS feed for more.

·         The Identity Archives Project (IdAP)—Business majors, entrepreneurs, and web designers will enjoy this site.  Developed by Gabe Ruane, the site relies on content added by other graphic designers.  You can search for logos, find contact information, or upload your own designs.

·         Your Food Environment Atlas—The site is a product of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and “promotes research on food choices and diet quality and provides information on community access to healthy food.”  Consumers and researchers can create customized color-coded maps using more than 90 indicators, and the maps can be exported as Excel spreadsheets.

·         Islamic Heritage Project—Funded by a Saudi prince and produced by Harvard University’s Open Collections Program, the Islamic Heritage Project provides digital access to more than 600 primary-source “Islamic manuscripts, maps, and published texts,” is searchable in English, transliterated English, and Arabic (“via a ‘virtual keyboard’ that allows users to type in Arabic”).

·         20^th Century American Leaders Database—from the Harvard Business School’s Leadership Initiative.  The site provides 1,000 short profiles of “CEOs and founders of U.S.-based companies" that can be accessed via a simple A-Z list or by last name, company, industry, or era.  To access additional data fields, such as religion and military affiliations, just sign a disclaimer and copyright agreement.

·         United States Courts—from the Federal Judiciary.  The site has been updated with new features. There is even a link to the courts’ You Tube channel.  Faculty can create a widget to add to class websites.  “The site is one of the primary sources of information regarding the structure, function, and operations of the federal court system.”

·         Eurostat—a statistical unit of the EU.  Use the First Visit section under the Help tab on the home page for introductory information on how to use the site.  The publications section provides links to full-text statistical publications from Eurostat. 

·         Petrucci Music Library—from the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP). This wiki-based repository of public domain music scores includes some material uploaded by composers “willing to share their music with the world free of charge.” It currently contains “more than 26,000 works…in more than 66,000 scores and parts.” Some performers have added MP3 recordings of selected scores for download. 

·         DART-Europe E-theses Portal—developed by DART-Europe.  This partnership among European research libraries and consortia is designed to as a “single European Portal for the discovery of Electronic Theses and Dissertations” from some 276 universities in 17 nations.  Subjects are provided by contributors, so be prepared to do a little searching, or browse by author, university, collection, country, or year.

How Would You Re-Design the Washington Monument Grounds?

Excerpted from announcement by the Washington Monument (WAMO) and LearningTimes Teams:

The registration deadline for the “National Ideas Competition for the Washington Monument Grounds” has been extended through November 30, 2010. (The deadline for submissions is December 18.) To register and submit an idea, go to the WAMO website.

This competition is open to all ages and backgrounds.  They’re looking for novel and “creative ideas for making the area around the Monument more welcoming, educational, and effectively used by the public.”

You’ll find more information about the history of the Monument and the National Mall, including images of rare maps, documents, and other historical background in the competition section of the site.

Sponsors include LearningTimes, Albert H. Small, George Washington University, the Virginia Society of the American Institute of Architects, Catholic University, American University, the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, the University of Delaware, and the University of Texas, among others.

NewsBank Hot Topics

Hot Topics

Need current events in a hurry? Check out your library subscription to NewsBank, which features monthly
Special Reports and a list of Hot Topics.  You will find these links on the left side of the page when you logon.  The Special Reports assemble links to current and “retrospective” information on the subject in one place, for example this one on mid-term elections.  The Hot Topics list describes topics and provides you with the correct search terms to use to find relevant newspaper articles.

November Topics and Monthly Themes

     U.S. Mid-Term Elections – 2010

     World Health – Haiti Cholera                Outbreak

     World Environment

     World Economics

      Native American Indian Month

Additional featured Reports covering current issues and events

                                
                                                      Natural Disasters

                                                      Conflict and Terrorism

                                                      Education Around the World

                                                      Science and Health in the News

Biography Reference Bank

WilsonWeb Featured Content 

in Biography Reference Bank

Logon to WilsonWeb  and check mark Biography Reference Bank to read biographies, such as these:

•  Veteran’s Day is Nov. 11.  There is a great biography of Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, military writer, historian, and veteran of both World Wars and the Korean War.  He was the chief combat historian for World War II.  Take a look.
•  Or, if movies are more to your liking, why not check out the biography of Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook® founder, and the subject of the current movie The Social Network?                                                                                  
•  And, take a look at November’s Current Biography cover subject Sarah Thomas, the first woman to referee an NCAA football game.                                                  

Digital Vault

Digital Vaults

Pamela Thompson, Library Media Specialist from El Paso, TX, has recommended the Digital Vault site. She says, "Students will hit the gold mine for reports when using [it]...You can enter a search term like World War II, for example, and see various images. Click on the image, decide whether to use it or not, save it to your collection, etc." See what you think about the Digital Vault and post your comments here to share with other students at Saint Leo University.

Humor and Facts in the Stacks for Tuesday Afternoon

from Wall Street Journal online

Marshall Cook's "A Video History of Every Book Ever Written" (Wall Street Journal online, 6.2.2010), is a humorous 6-minute video purporting to cover the history of the book "from the beginning of time"--or, at least, the Gutenburg Bible and the invention of the printing press.  It's something lighten up your Tuesday. 

Afterward, take a look at the "New Books @ Your Library" LibGuide, which organizes the new books and eBooks by subject categories.  You can link to eBooks from the list and read them on your computer.  To read one of the print books from the circulating collection, use the Interlibrary Loan request form to have it shipped to you.  (N.B. We pay to ship books to you; you pay to ship books back to the library.)

Updated Library Tour

Welcome to the Reference Collection at Cannon Memorial Library.

Take our virtual library tour to get an idea of the resources and services available from Cannon Memorial Library.  You will find two links to the tour on the library home page, one in the left-hand frame and the other beneath the picture.  If you have a comment to share, please use the comments feature here.

Wilson Web

Important Message

Click the "Important Message" link above for information about Wilson's new "going mobile" feature. Also, using the Biography Reference Bank alone is the easiest way to find biographies by name or occupation. Check the bottom of the screen for featured biographies, or on results pages, narrow by subject.

SLU Construction

Check out the "SLU Construction Update"" blog to follow the progress on the new School of Business building and other construction projects on campus. You can subscribe to the blog or get RSS feeds.

Gosic

The 21 institutions of the Florida Institute of Oceanography and USF Libraries have created the Gulf Oil Spill Information Center. It Provides links to the information about legal, political, environmental, and health impacts of the disaster, as well as related research.  

Oxford Art Online

The Oxford Art Online database, from the Oxford University Press, includes online access to the classic art reference Grove Dictionary of Art, which we have in our print reference collection. The Oxford Art Online database added the Grove Encyclopedia of American Art to our subscriptions this summer. We also have updated  Italian Renaissance Bibliographies .

Credo Reference

Credo Reference eBooks now has topic pages for select search terms. Topic Pages will appear as the first thing in your results list. These pages include options to link to some of our other online resources, images and videos on the web, results deom the Credo collection, and more. Try this video to learn more about the Topic Pages.

Net Library

Our netLibrary eBook collection now holds some 65,000 titles. We have several new "subject sets" in netLibrary: sports administration (17 titles), engineering (18 titles), social work (20 titles), and science (21 titles), to name a few. Use LeoCat, the online card catalog, to find any of our print and electronic books.

A Community Web of Chemistry at ChemSpider

ChemSpider, the Royal Society of Chemistry's free web-based aggregation of "Structure-based chemistry information," also provides reaction synthesis at the ChemSpider Synthetic Pages beta site.