Library News, Events, and Blogs

On October 30 USM co-hosted the New England Regional Sloan-C Conference.  The gathering brought together educators concerned with the quality of online education.  The attention to quality particularly struck me (Maureen Perry) in two of the presentations.

The first presentation described a learning module approach to course design.  Instead of having a confusing array of Blackboard buttons (Assignments, Course Documents, etc.) the instructor has the content organized into self-contained modules.  Students can spend more time engaging with the material and less time searching for it.

In the other session David Lavoie, an instructional designer,  and Andrew Rosman, an accounting professor, described their partnership at the University of Connecticut.    By paying close attention to course objectives at the start they made sure that the chosen technologies and activities best met the desired goals.  Thus the technology doesn’t drive the course: it serves the course.

Let us continue to share our ideas.  Let us continue to put the learning in online learning.

Free and Open to the Public

2:00pm
Saturday November 7th
7th floor of the Glickman Family Library
Portland Campus
Kate Cheney Chappell ‘83 Center for Book Arts at USM will present a lecture
“Artists’ Books: When the Goblet Becomes the Wine” presented by Bill and
Vicky Stewart of Vamp and Tramp Booksellers, Birmingham, Alabama. The
lecture takes place at 2:00, on Saturday November 7th, on the 7th floor of
the Glickman Family Library, Portland Campus. The lecture will include 8
large tables of artists’ books from Europe, Canada, and America.

For more information contact Rebecca Goodale at 228-8014 or
goodale@maine.edu

Time magazine online has their list of the 50 best Web sites of 2009 – how many are YOU familiar with?  Granted, not many of them are scholarly resources, but you probably use – or could be using – a good number of them on a regular basis!

Now, if you are looking for the best free REFERENCE sites, here is a reminder to check out the ALA RUSA annual lists, including the newly published 2009 list.

Want to explore the treasures of Iraq’s long cultural history? Luckily, there is the Virtual Museum of Iraq for just that. Funded by the Italian government the museum allows visitors to explore eight galleries highlighting Iraq’s past from prehistoric to the Islamic period. Each object in the collection has a description and animated video to explain the object and its significance. Along with the selected objects each gallery also contain information and maps about each period. So if you are interested in exploring some of the history from the Fertile Crescent then explore this site.

URL: http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/prehome.htm

American Periodicals Series Online™ (APS Online) includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Titles range from Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine and America’s first scientific journal, Medical Repository; popular magazines such as Vanity Fair and Ladies’ Home Journal; regional and niche publications; and groundbreaking journals like The Dial, Puck, and McClure’s

Coverage: 1741-1940
Total Sources Covered: 1000+

Access is available until November 30, 2009

We Welcome your Feedback

The USM Libraries are pleased to announce the significant acquisition of JSTOR Arts and Science Collection I, II and VII.  These JSTOR collections provide access to USM faculty and students to complete electronic back files of 426 journals in 21 disciplines.  These collections join two smaller, previously acquired JSTOR collections:  Mathematical and Statistics Collection and Music Collection.  Access to USM JSTOR holdings are from the USM Libraries website under “Quicklinks- JSTOR”:  http://libraries.maine.edu/auth/auth.asp?db=JSTOR

JSTOR is the trusted digital archive for scholarship, and has been the most requested acquisition by USM faculty over the past several years.  JSTOR’s mission is to digitize the complete backfiles of high quality, interdisciplinary journals, as well as to create an archive of scholarship.  Journals in JSTOR are digital backfiles and have a rolling embargo of two to five years which is the time lag between the most current issue and the content available in JSTOR.  In many cases the library also has access to the most current issues.

The Libraries were able to add JSTOR this fiscal year thanks to President Botman’s dedication to investing in library collections and through the use of gift funds.  Over time, the goal is to not only acquire all of the other JSTOR collections, but to also transition nearly all current journal subscriptions to electronic format.  This is one cornerstone of our commitment to student success, as the Libraries move from print journals to electronic journals, giving students and faculty increased access from home, work, and on campus.

As another example of this commitment, the Libraries will add in January, online access to over 1,200 Wiley/Blackwell journals, increasing USM’s Wiley/Blackwell titles by 1,000 at only a marginal cost.  This is made possible through library consortium participation and publisher’s offering of new journal packages.   As the largest publisher on behalf of scholarly and professional societies, these Wiley/Blackwell titles will include current issues and back files to 1997 in the social sciences, humanities, sciences, medicine, and technology.

David Nutty

University Librarian

If you or your students need ideas for a research project or creative work, inspiration may be closer than you realize.  USM has special collections of rare primary source materials in a variety of formats: photgraphs, texts, recordings, ephemera, etc.

At the Glickman Library (Portland Campus) you’ll find a General Rare Books & Manuscripts Collection, the University Archives, and the Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine.  The Sampson Center collects materials on Maine’s African American, Jewish, and Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender communities.

At the Lewiston-Auburn College you’ll find the Franco-American Collection.  The Collection also has material on Lewiston’s history and a few items on the College’s history.

These collections not only preserve culture, but also  serve as resources for the creation of new culture.  Please consider including them in your courses.  Why ignore possible inspiration when it is nearby?

A string quartet consists of two violins, viola, and violoncello and is considered to be one of the most widely-cultivated instrumental ensemble of Classical period chamber music. The Classical String Quartet, 1770-1840 is a collection from the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University which is exhibiting about 40 works for the string quartet. These works, or in some cases parts of works that survived, represent composers whose works are now rarely found in modern anthologies collections. Works from composers such as Emanuel Aloys Förster (1748-1823), Peter Hänsel (1770-1831), and many others. Be sure to also explore the USM Libraries Music Score collection for other great quartet works.

URL:http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/quartets/

Friday, October 23, 2009
2-3pm Informal talk with Jean Valentine
4-5:30pm Lecture, Reading & Reception
7th Floor Events Room
Glickman Family Library

These events are free and open to the public.

Jean Valentine is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently Little Boat (Wesleyan University Press, 2007). Her work has been recognized in the past with grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockerfeller Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. In a press release, Academy chancellor and poet Gerald Stern describes Valentine’s work as Sometimes existing “in a dream-world, with all the immediacy, the panic, the odd journey that dreams give. But add to that a great moral vision, infinite skill, and beauty.” (Poets & Writer’s Magazine http://www.pw.org)

The Academy of American Poets awarded Jean Valentine the Wallace Stevens Award, one of the organization’s top honors, September 2009.

You may use bookmarks to keep favorite websites close at hand, but you can only access these bookmarks on a particular computer.  Delicious allows you to organize and access bookmarks from any computer.

If your students need to find and share websites in a course, you can create an account for that course.  Dordt College’s library uses a Delicious account to share bookmarks.  Arkansas Technical University’s Ozark Campus Library also uses Delicious tags.

The best idea is to try Delicious for yourself.  Then you can see if it would meet some of your needs.