CSU Libraries will be Closed on July 4th

CSU Libraries will be closed on Monday, July 4th in observation of Independence Day.

The Libraries will reopen during their usual times on July 5th.

For more information, please Ask a Librarian or call: 706-562-1494.

Happy 4th of July!

Explore the Georgia State Fair in Macon: 1886-1960

Want to learn more about Georgia's history? Check out the Georgia State Fair, Macon, 1886-1960 digital collection!

A part of the Digital Library of Georgia, the Georgia State Fair, Macon, 1886-1960 online collection consists of 151 black-and-white photographs, and four advertising fliers, from the Georgia State Fair records held by the Middle Georgia Archives at the Macon-Bibb County Public Libraries. These photographs document the evolution of the state fair in Macon from 1886 until 1960.

A group portrait of the executive committee of the Georgia State Agricultural Society is the earliest piece in the collection. The majority of the photographs depict county agricultural exhibits whose function was to promote a variety of farm produce and homemade items. These displays include cotton, seeds, vegetables, preserved food, clothes, quilts, furniture, and more.

Exhibits from the early 1940s are of interest due to the appearance of slogans supporting the World War II home front effort. One notable picture during this era shows a demonstration of a community canning project.

Displays for agricultural associations and state government agencies, such as the Highway Department and the Fish and Game Commission, can also be seen in this collection. Other photographs capture fair culture beyond the exhibitions: 4-H clubs, farm machinery, livestock judging, amusement rides, the midway, side shows, food booths, and parades.

Macon mayor B. F. Merritt appears in several photographs along with other notable Macon citizens. Former Georgia governor Marvin Griffin is also pictured.

For more information about this unique collection, please see the GALILEO database handout.

Explore Georgia's history today!

Charles Darwin's Library is Now Online

Have you ever wondered about what kinds of books Charles Darwin read that helped him to develop the theory of evolution? You are in luck! Now you can peruse Darwin's library online!

Through a joint agreement between the University of Cambridge, the Darwin Manuscripts Project at the American Museum of Natural History, the Natural History Museum in the UK and the Biodiversity Heritage Library, 330 of Darwin's books have been digitized and are fully indexed online. All of the digitized books contain notes written by Darwin so that you can see first hand how Darwin researched.

To virtually browse Darwin's library, please go to: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/collection/darwinlibrary.

Writing Boot Camp at the Library: June 23rd and 24th

Ready to get your writing and research into shape?

Need a little external motivation?

The Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, together with the Math and Science Learning Center, will be conducting a Faculty Writing Boot Camp on June 23 and June 24 in the Schwob Library.

Minimum sign-up is for 3 hours, but you’re encouraged to stay for the whole day.

Thursday and Friday June 23 and 24 8:30 AM-3:30 PM

The Writing Boot Camp:

• Enables faculty and administrators to devote as many as two full days exclusively to writing.
• Boot Camp is a great way to launch your research and/or creative projects.
• It is NOT a writing workshop.
• You must commit to a particular project and describe it in a paragraph in order to reserve a spot.
  

The Faculty Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning will provide:

• the environment and structure necessary to get you going and keep you going.
• a quiet space far from the madding crowd
• light snacks and drinks
• as much “tough love” as you need
• writing “coaches”
• grants office assistance
• CSU librarians to help with research and reference questions
  

Please contact Janet Jamieson at 706-507-8464 or jamieson_janet@columbusstate.edu to make a reservation and indicate areas of interest.

ARTstor Introduces New Video Tutorials!

Looking for a summer full of art and culture? CSU Libraries can help!

The ARTstor Digital Library provides more than one million images with tools for teaching and research. Its collections comprise contributions from outstanding museums, photographers, libraries, scholars, photo archives, and artists and artists' estates from all over the world (read the full list here: http://www.artstor.org/collections). The collections encompass a wide variety of subject areas, including art, architecture, music, religion, anthropology, literature, world history, American Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, and more.

Breaking News!

ARTstor just announced its summer series of instructional videos that explores newly released features and also reviews older topics.

Videos that are currently available include"Export to PowerPoint," "Folders and image groups," and "How to unlock a password protected folder."

Future videos to look forward to are: "Faceted Search" and step-by-step PDF guides.

You can find these new videos on YouTube and on ARTstor's Help Wiki.

Happy searching!

Database of the Month: America's Newspapers

Have you ever found the perfect citation to a newspaper article, but had problems finding it in the library?


Do you ever want to browse through newspapers, such as the New York Times, but do not have a subscription to them?

CSU Libraries can help with its access to America's Newspapers!

America's Newspapers by Newsbank is a database of local (Columbus Ledger-Enquirer), state (including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution), and national newspapers (including the New York Times) of the U.S. Each indexed newspaper includes local and regional news, politics, sports, industries, cultural activities, and community information. Paid ads are excluded.

America’s Newspapers provides CSU students and faculty with authoritative, staff-written coverage of local and national topics, along with specific articles, obituaries, statistics, quotations, facts, analysis and much more. Several features of this unique database are:

• Contains daily updates of comprehensive news coverage at the local, state, regional and national levels
• Offers 24/7 online access to tens of millions of fully searchable current and archived articles
• Includes the complete electronic editions of more than 1,500 full-text newspapers nationwide—over 75% not available in any other library database
• Features an intuitive, map-based interface and powerful, user-friendly search options
• Enables users to search a single newspaper, a select group of titles or the entire collection
  

For more information, please Ask a Librarian or call CSU Libraries at: 706-562-1492.

Happy Searching!

SciFinder Mobile

Are you busy juggling several priorities at once? Do you need to do chemical research anytime from anywhere?

SciFinder Mobile is an easy-to-use, on-the-go solution for research!

Please visit scifinder.cas.org/mobile using the web browser on your smartphone to seamlessly access an intuitive, mobile-friendly version of SciFinder.

From anywhere, you can use SciFinder Mobile to:

• Explore by Research Topic
• Explore by Substance Identifier
• Explore by Author Name
• Explore by Company Name
• Review Keep Me Posted Alerts
• Review Saved Answers
  

SciFinder Mobile now supports the Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system!

Now you can access SciFinder Mobile on smartphones with any of the following mobile platforms/operating systems:

• Apple iOS
• Google Android OS
• Nokia Maemo and Symbian OS
• RIM BlackBerry OS
• Windows Phone 7 OS
  

For more information, please see the list of SciFinder Mobile Supported Platforms.

Happy searching on the go!

June 4th ProQuest Infrastructure Maintenance Schedule

ProQuest will be performing infrastructure maintenance on June 4, 2011.

A twelve (12) hour maintenance window will be required for this maintenance. The window will take place from Saturday, June 4, 2011 at 10:00 PM to Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 10:00 AM.

During this time, all ProQuest databases databases will be unavailable. These include:

• Criminal Justice Periodical Index
  
• ProQuest Newspapers
• ProQuest Nursing and Allied Health
  
• ProQuest Research Library

If you have any questions or need more information, please Ask a Librarian or call CSU Libraries at: 706-562-1492.

GALILEO announcements and status updates are available at: http://status.galileo.usg.edu

June 4th Gale Infrastructure Maintenance Schedule

Gale will be performing infrastructure maintenance on Saturday, June 4, 2011. A twelve (12) hour period will be required for this maintenance.

The window will take place from Saturday at 12:00 AM to 12:00 PM.

During this time, all Gale products and services will be unavailable. These include:

• Biography in Context
• GREENR
  
• Literature Criticism Online
• Poetry for Students
  
• Something about the Author Online
  

If you have any questions or need more information, please Ask a Librarian or call CSU Libraries at: 706-562-1492.

GALILEO announcements and status updates are available at: http://status.galileo.usg.edu

Check Out the Newberry Digital Exhibitions

The Newberry Digital Exhibitions, an online resource built with the open-source platform Omeka, catalogs digital images of objects that have been featured in Newberry exhibitions. It also recreates these exhibitions in digital form, so the information lives on even though the exhibitions have left the library's galleries. The project will continue to grow as the Newberry digitizes current and past exhibitions.

Exhibitions already available include:

• Illuminated Manuscripts and Printed Books: French Renaissance Gems of the Newberry
• French Canadians in the Midwest
• Revolutionary France and Haiti, 1787-1804
• Approaching the Mexican Revolution: Books, Maps, Documents
• "Everywhere West": Daily Life Along the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad
  

The Newberry Library is an independent research library concentrating in the humanities with an active educational and cultural presence in Chicago. Free and open to the public, it houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, maps, music, manuscripts, and other printed material. The Newberry Library offers exhibits based on its outstanding collections, musical and theatrical performances, lectures and discussions with today's leading humanists, seminars, and teacher programs (Quoted directly from: http://www.newberry.org/general/generalinfo.html).

Notable Government Documents of 2011

The annual list of Notable Government Documents was released this week. The list is a selection from nominated publications on the state, federal and international level. None from Georgia made the list this year, but the selections on the federal and international lists show diverse themes of climate change, human rights, natural disasters and health. US federal document highlights include:

• Climate Change Indicators in the United States / U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling; Report to the President / National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling
• Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Role in the Secondary Mortgage Market /Congressional Budget Office
• The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report: Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States / rev. ed. by Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
• A Field Guide for the Identification of Invasive Plants in Southern Forests / James H. Miller & others. U.S. Forest Svc., Southern Research Station

Many items from the list this year, along with a wealth of other government resources can be found at CSU libraries by searching GIL or by visiting the New Gov Docs page for monthly updates.

Happy Searching!