Posted by Ginny Moreland at 3:39 PM | Permalink

U.S. CENSUS WORKSHOP

The fall closing of the Charlotte office providing assistance in the use of U.S. Census data is one of the many, though not the most tragic, victims of our current economy and governmental belt tightening. At the very time that software changes are making accessing large census data sets on the web more difficult, the valued assistance of this office will no longer be available.

Ramsey Library has arranged for a trainer from Charlotte Regional Census Bureau to offer a workshop in Ramsey Library on Monday, August 15. This workshop will cover some important details about 2010 reports and the new search interface for American Fact Finder2. This is a great chance to get hands on training on how to locate data on the census site.

The workshop is 2 pm - 4:30 pm in Ramsey Library, Kimmel Room, 119.

To sign up or ask questions, please contact Anita White-Carter, Research Coordinator, UNC Asheville - Ramsey Library, 251-6434, whitecar@unca.edu.

VARIETE!

Virtual And Real Integrative Educational Technology for Everyone! The Center for Teaching & Learning and Teaching & Learning with Technology Resources recently announced VARIETE, a program introducing innovative ways in which UNC Asheville faculty use technology to facilitate student excitement and learning. Sessions will address instructional technology novices and pros. Participants will also have a chance to interact with colleagues interested in exploring enhanced uses of instructional technology or blended/hybrid learning opportunities.

VARIETE will take place on Wednesday, August 17th, in the Ramsey Library Whitman Room, from 12:30-4:30 p.m. Lunch provided! Reserve a spot by emailing Melissa Himelein (himelein@unca.edu); let her know whether you prefer a vegetarian or non-vegetarian lunch.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE FROM TLTR

• Humanities Scholars Discuss Their 'Shared Mental Map' for a New Age of Digital Communication, By Jennifer Howard. A select group gathered to talk about the skills and energy needed in an "era of remaking and rebuilding scholarly communication."
• New Digital-Humanities Grants for Small Projects at Colleges The National Endowment for the Humanities is backing 32 projects, such as a digital field journal for archaeologists.
• 'Big Tent Digital Humanities,' a View From the Edge, Part 1, By William Pannapacker New technologies, alliances, and career paths redefine the future of higher education in the humanities, but not everywhere.
• Technology Is Changing What We Do Social media has altered teaching, research, and other aspects of global higher education--and created new problems, says Nigel Thrift.
• Innovations: A Skeptic of Online Learning Weighs Its Pros Frank Donoghue analyzes some strengths of a virtual education, including its flexibility and accessibility to students in any location.
• College Students Lead in Internet Use and Tech Gadgets, Study Finds Speedy Internet connections were more common among students, but nonstudents were more likely to use social networks like Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center.

OTHER RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

• NCAA Student-Athlete Experiences Data Archive ~ The Inter-university Consortium for Political & Social Research recently announced that the NCAA Student-Athlete Experiences Data Archive has updated its data on Division I Academic Progress Rates. The dataset, NCAA Division I Academic Progress Rate, 2011, now includes the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 seasons. The data contains team level academic performances available by division, by conference, and by school.
• Amazon Announces Digital-Textbook Rentals Just in time for fall, a new option has emerged on the e-book front: Students can now rent textbooks for Amazon's Kindle.
• Boston College Digitizes Yeats's Unpublished First Play Now scholars and admirers of the Irish poet and playwright have digital access to his unpublished first play.
• Rogue Downloader's Arrest Could Mark Crossroads for Open-Access Movement, By David Glenn To charge, or not to charge: That is the question Aaron Swartz, accused of abusing MIT's computer network, has brought to the forefront of debate in scholarly publishing.

AND, JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT!!

Immortal Quotations About Higher Education

Posted by Brandy at 2:51 PM | Permalink

OUR BEAUTIFUL CAMPUS

NOTES wants to take just a moment to share some views of our beautiful campus from these early summer days and from the cooler days of last fall. NOTES also hopes that you will join in thanking and congratulating MELISSA ACKER and her hard-working grounds crew for what they've done over many years to make UNC Asheville into a beautiful physical environment.

FEATURED RESOURCE

One of Ramsey Library's new, digital resources that is fully accessible 24/7 is Political Science Complete (PSC). PSC provides the full texts of articles in more than 530 journals (e.g., Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Science Quarterly, Peace & Change, Human Rights Review, Environmental Politics, Background Notes on Countries of the World, Political Risk Yearbook, and African Studies Quarterly) as well as indexing and abstracts for over 2,900. Searchers will find a world-wide focus, "reflecting the globalization of contemporary political discourse." PSC also offers over 340 full-text reference books and monographs, and over 38,000 full-text conference papers, including those of the International Political Science Association. Be sure to check it out!

Political Science Complete

TLTR: RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

CLICKERS ~ Using or interested in using Classroom Response Systems (or "clickers" to the "rest of us") in your classroom? Teaching & Learning With Technology Resources is collaborating with Melissa Himelein and the Center for Teaching in Learning in sponsoring a Google Groups-based campus discussion forum, cleverly enough named "Clickers," on just that technology. Instructors, technology staff, and others with an interest can use the forum to connect with others with similar interests, share ideas and debate pedagogy, or simply eavesdrop (NOTES' personal favorite). All you have to do to join is follow this link and follow the directions: https://groups.google.com/a/unca.edu/group/clickers/topics. (Let the guy behind the curtain know if you have any trouble. )

There's still time to get in on the ground floor of two interesting discussions. One explores student reaction to buying their own clicker and whether they think it worth the investment (both the model of the department providing the clickers and the one in which students purchase their own exist on campus). The other discussion has introduced current news reports on suits by students claiming that the use of clickers disadvantages students with visual and other challenges.

For further info:
Join "Clickers" at: https://groups.google.com/a/unca.edu/group/clickers/topics
"Blind Florida State U. Students Sue Over E-Learning Systems"
"Classroom Response Systems, an Accessibility Viewpoint" (Michigan State University)

OTHER RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

Darwin Library, Now Online, Reveals Mind of 19th-Century Naturalist
The portion of Charles Darwin's library on the Web even includes handwritten notes he scribbled in the margins of his books.
My Battle With E-Pirates, By Clement Vincent
A scholar claims victory in his first salvo against an illegal download of his book. But was engagement a mistake?
Hot Type: Publishers Say They Are Not the Enemy in University Copyright Disputes, By Jennifer Howard, Whatever happens in a court battle over fair use, it has made the divisions between librarians and publishers more evident than ever.
Wanted: Your Ideas on How to Build a Digital Public Library of America

Posted by Brandy at 4:58 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE

This issue's featured resource is the first iteration of a major revision to Ramsey Library's main web page. After discussing student comments and the library's 2009-2011 assessment results, Ramsey librarians concluded that feedback indicating concerns about sufficient information resources might have more to do with sorting through library search results than with any objective insufficiency in available content. You'll recall that on last spring's library web site you landed on a home page that then required that you navigate either to conduct a search for books, etc. in the "catalog" or to select specific journal databases to locate individual articles. In both cases, increasingly and due to the disparate sizes of Ramsey Library and the libraries at Western Carolina and Appalachian State (the combined holdings of which comprise the online catalog), UNC Asheville searchers were finding more and more electronic books or journal articles not available to our campus. Inevitably, this resulted in frustration AND the perception that Ramsey Library did not offer sufficient resources. In some cases, for example e-books devoted to computer software, the searcher had to navigate several screens of titles available at ASU but not UNC Asheville before finding anything.

Brandy Bourne, ace Web Services Librarian, has redesigned the the library's main page so that:
You're ready to search on the first page.
The default is for individual articles with a quick search box similar to a Google search (note that the Quick Search covers only a limited number of the most popular databases) with results limited to articles available at UNC Asheville.
Tabs for searching journal titles, videos, course reserves, and books.
Note that searching under "Books & more" in the quick search box produces results which are fully accessible to folks at UNC Asheville.
So, what if you don't find what you need or for whatever reason you want your search to cover the holdings of all three libraries, or you want to use the Aquabrowser feature. All you have to do is click on t he "Books & more tab" on the left above the "Quick Search" box, and then click on "WNCLN." That'll take you back to the original search screen.

We plan to conduct focus groups with students this fall to see if these changes are an improvement. If we can figure out how to do it without being to intrusive, we'll also ask for user reactions via a voluntary online survey. In the meantime, if you have any comments or suggestions, please send them along to Brandy Bourne.

TLTR: RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

In the Public Domain

This is the first entry in a recurring if irregular series designed to help the campus community locate copyright-free materials for use in the classroom, on websites, or for basically anything you want. Suggestions here will come largely form NOTES FROM RAMSEY's reading of Stephan Fishman's The Public Domain: How to Find & Use Copyright-Free Writings, Music, Art & More (5th ed., Nolo Press, 2010)(available from Amazon and other book sources). Today, we'll share Fishman's definition (more than likely the last quote): ". . . the words 'public domain' mean creative works that for one reason or another are not protected by copyright law and are ordinarily free for all use." (p. 4)

Other TLTR News

Check out Teaching & Learning with Technology Resources' (TLTR) web page "In-House Productions." Here you'll find a listing of local campus programs representing the fine work of Kent Thompson, many of your students, and the campus community. One of the newer features with a link to the actual program is "Multimedia Arts & Sciences Annual Juried Student Exhibition." This is great stuff!!

Creating a Meaningful College Experience in an Era of Streamlining, By William G. Tierney
With class sizes in the hundreds of students, distance learning can begin in the fifth row. (NOTES finds this an interesting perspective!)

OTHER NEWS OF NOTE

Digging Into Data in the Humanities, Day 1
Digital humanists have converged on the headquarters of the National Endowment for the Humanities to talk about cutting-edge work with big data in history, linguistics, literature, and other fields.

Digging Into Data, Day 2: Making Tools and Using Them
Projects explored at the meeting included a database in which scholars can mine a year's worth of spoken English, and another with digitized records of 200,000 trials at London's Old Bailey.

National Academies Press Puts All 4,000 Books Online at No Charge
Recent cost-cutting measures have allowed the leading publisher of scholarly books to offer its catalog gratis, as PDF downloads.

Publishers Grapple With Thorny Issues of Protecting Property and Going Digital, By Jennifer Howard
Value copyright laws, attendees at the Association of American University Presses' annual meeting were advised.

SUMMER READS

Geeks at the Beach: 10 Summer Reads About Technology and Your Life
Recent books (and a video) highlight how tech is turning culture and parts of higher education upside down.

Novel Academic Novels, By Ms. Mentor
Ms. Mentor offers her annual summer reading list for faculty members. (With a respectful nod to our friend and colleague, Professor Merritt Mosley)

Posted by Brandy at 3:44 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE
Well, it had to happen and if you haven't anticipated it, you should have! It's NOTES' first, real COPYRIGHT issue! It's a shame NOTES couldn't get itself together for World Intellectual Property Day (April 26), but sometimes the world just doesn't cooperate. Anyway, though not strictly the library's, today's featured resource in the university's new intellectual property web site just published on the new campus website located under the Office of the University General Council in the Administration section. Check out convenient links to UNC Asheville policies and forms on the main Intellectual Property/Copyright page. Then check out links to information about U.S. copyright law, tutorials and guides, digital media, free or low cost permissions, and useful sites on the Intellectual Property Information page. And last but certainly not least, NOTES hopes that many of you will take the opportunity to link to the Copyright Information for Students page which presents those connections likely to be of most interest to our students (including dire warnings and a summary of civil and criminal penalties for violation of copyright laws).

RECENT COPYRIGHT NEWS OF NOTE

What You Don't Know About Copyright but Should, By Jennifer Howard
In a maze of rights confusion, Nancy Sims, copyright-program librarian at the University of Minnesota, guides colleges to safety
A Professor Takes His Rights Fight to the Supreme Court, By Marc Parry
Lawrence Golan, music teacher and conductor, has a case whose outcome could affect access to many books and films, as well as to some composers' scores.
2 Universities Under the Legal Gun (includes update on Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al. (Georgia State University) that will like have seminal impact on the copying of and electronic access to copyrighted materials in the classroom and library).
What's at Stake in the Georgia State Copyright Case
Experts in scholarly communications comment on what the case may mean for the use of reproduced copyrighted material in the classroom.
Out of Fear, Institutions Lock Millions of Books and Images Away from Scholars, By Marc Parry
Confronted with the murky copyright status of many works, academic archives are playing it safe and limiting online access to scholars.
Pushing Back Against Legal Threats by Putting Fair Use Forward, By Jeffrey R. Young
Two professors at American University fight against "copywrongs" with common-sense guides to the law.
QuickWire: Parties in Google Books Settlement Get More Time

OTHER RECENT NEWS OF NOTE
Students Say Tablets Will Transform College, Though Most Don't Own Tablets
Nearly half said they expected the devices to replace textbooks within the next five years.
Textbooks Go the iTunes Route, but Buying by Chapters May Not Save Students Money, By Ben Wieder
Publishers are now giving students the option to buy e-textbooks by the chapter. Will it do for academic publishing what iTunes did for the music industry?
Academics, in New Move, Begin to Work With Wikipedia
The Association for Psychological Science uses its prestige-and some new software-to motivate scholars to help fix inaccuracies in the everyone-can-edit encyclopedia.
U. of Chicago Students Hope to Revolutionize Course Packs
Two students are developing a cheaper, online alternative to printed course materials that they want to bring to campuses nationwide
When You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover, By Ann Kirschner
E-readers have changed the packaging picture.
Leading Economics Journals Drop 'Double Blind' Peer Review

Posted by Brandy at 8:50 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE

This issue's featured resource is easy access to help. NOTES FROM RAMSEY is proud of the many electronic and paper texts we offer as well as images and videos in many formats to aid learning and research. But the greatest and most powerful of all our resources are the Ramsey folks who are here and eager to help you and your students. One fun and easy way to access that help is through the library's Ask a Librarian service. In the far left column of the library's home page (green section) you'll find the "Ask a Librarian!" link. The next screen shows frequently asked questions ~ a click will take you to the answer. At the top of the screen beneath "LibraryAnswers - Ask us" you'll find a box in which you can enter a question. And, if you don't want to try either way, you can always email us libref@unca.edu. Posting a question through "Ask a Librarian!" or emailing libref@unca.edu are dependable ways to receive quick, written help often with useful hotlinks embedded.

TLTR: RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

ICPSR

• ICPSR recently announced the first-place winners of the 2011 ICPSR Research Paper Competitions. This is a prestigious, national competition for undergraduates and students at the masters level focusing on the use of quantitative data. As ICPSR noted, it's not too early to start researching for the 2012 competitions!


• On June 6, 2011, ICPSR will welcome four outstanding undergraduate interns who will experience ICPSR and its Summer Program for 10 weeks and complete a research project. See details on the ICPSR internship. This could be a rich opportunity for the right UNC Asheville student scholars.


• ICPSR's Online Learning Center is pleased to announce the release of eight new Data-Driven Learning Guides (DDLGs). DDLGs were designed by teaching faculty and geared toward building data literacy in undergraduate classrooms.

Other TLTR News

• Make Wikipedia More Useful to Students
  If students need to find good sources related to a Wikipedia article, a new Web service may be of help.


• Info Tech on Campuses
  Students' views about how technology is applied on campus are mixed.


• Understanding the New Culture of Learning, By Goldie Blumenstyk
  Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown espouse a shift from the traditional lecture to "experiencing, playing, and occasionally failing."


• A Tool for Writing-Intensive Courses
  Keeping track of discussions about a work in progress is now a lot easier with a new feature in Google Documents.


• 5 Tools for Building a Next-Generation 'Hybrid' Course Web Site
  A guest author, Nicholas Martin, describes a suite of open-source and commercial tools he used to design a Website for a hybrid class that would promote engagement more than a traditional LMS.


• Better Googling
  The most widely used search engine on the Internet features some powerful--if sometimes little-known--features.


• Social Web Sites Are Popular Sources for Student Plagiarists

Posted by Brandy at 11:36 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE

Here's a nifty (NOTES' colloquialisms may need a bit of updating?) one you and your students may have missed. SimplyMap is a web-based mapping database for developing thematic maps -- and reports -- using thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables. Covers census block-groups, census tracts, zip codes, cities, counties, states, and the entire United States. Includes Mediamark Research (MRI) data, covering usage and consumption for thousands of products, including actual brand data, details of frequency of usage, and more. Data and maps can be exported. Requires user to create an account.

Check it out at http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/scripts/redirect.pl?db=www.nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?rsrc=247

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION ONLINE

As I hope most of you know already, Ramsey Library subscribes to the Chronicle of Higher Education online. As a result of this site license, each of you has electronic access to the contents of the Chronicle and can choose to receive a variety of newsletters. In a recent development, once you've logged into the Chronicle web site, you can stay logged in for a full year. Just check the "keep me logged in" box. You don't have to log in to read premium content so long as you're using a computer on campus. You have IP access to all of Chronicle.com. But you do need to be logged in to take advantage of other Chronicle services such as e-mailing an article, posting a comment, subscribing to any free e-newsletter, creating a job alert, and more.

Check it out at http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/scripts/redirect.pl?db=chronicle.com/section/Home/5.

UNC ASHEVILLE YEARBOOKS ONLINE

In its last issue, NOTES announced the availability of UNC Asheville yearbooks online as part of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center. NOTES is very pleased to announce that all 39 years of The Summit (1939-1985 with gaps) are now up and available.

Be sure to take the tour, accessible from UNC Asheville's page in the Digital NC Library.

TLTR: RECENT NEWS OF NOTE (from a variety of perspectives!)

New Technologies to Get Your Students Engaged, By Ryan Cordell
Online tools can help with teaching while allowing student to engage with one another and with larger academic communities.
College 2.0: Across More Classes, Videos Make the Grade, By Jeffrey R. Young
Some traditional courses are beginning to accept multimedia projects in lieu of final papers.
In Learning, the Lasting Value of Place,By Joseph E. Aoun
Online education will be part of the future, but on-site instruction brings benefits beyond the obvious.
The Humanities, Done Digitally, By Kathleen Fitzpatrick
What is digital humanities? Or more important, what are they? (Is there an English major in the house? There's that troublesome correct grammar that just refuses to sound right!)

OTHER RECENT NEWS OF NOTE
The Library of Congress Adds a Jukebox
The new National Jukebox makes more than 10,000 early-20th-century recordings available for free streaming online.
What They're Reading on College Campuses

Posted by Brandy at 1:26 PM | Permalink

END OF SEMESTER LIBRARY HOURS

Please note and share with your students that Ramsey Library began end-of-the-semester extended hours on April 20. On this schedule the library opens at 8AM and closes at 2AM, Monday through Thursday, opens at 8 AM and closes at 9 PM on Friday, opens at 10 AM and closes at 9 PM on Saturday, and opens at 1 PM and closes at 2 AM on Sunday. For the day-by-day schedule please see the library's web hours info at
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/cal/index.html.

FALL RESEARCH TOOLS SYMPOSIA

Ramsey Librarians are planning a series of research tools symposia for fall 2011. These will focus on some new and at least one more familiar tool and how they can be used to enhance undergraduate research. These will likely include two brand new statistics resources, Statistical Datasets ~ Basic and Statistical Insight, our new membership in ICPSR, and enhanced use of the Web of Knowledge (recall that we recently restored the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index components). Watch for notices over the summer and at the beginning of the fall semester.

HELEN WYKLE TO RECEIVE SONDLEY AWARD

NOTES FROM RAMSEY has just learned that that on 11 May Helen Wykle, Curator of Special Collections in Ramsey Library, will receive the Sondley Award, " . . . given by the Historic Resources Commission of Asheville and Buncombe County to an individual or individuals in the community who by word or deed has kindled among the citizenry of Asheville and Buncombe County an appreciation for the history or historic resources of the area."

Please join NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY in congratulating Helen on this distinction and the recognition of her contributions to the community and in support of UNC Asheville's mission of outreach to the community.

UNC ASHEVILLE YEARBOOKS AVAILABLE ONLINE

Take a look and take pride in our University's illustrious heritage as the first 19 University of North Carolina Asheville yearbooks are now available online. Digital access is brought to you, and the world, via Ramsey Library's collaboration with the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, ". . . a statewide digitization and digital publishing program housed in the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (and working ) with cultural heritage institutions across North Carolina to digitize and publish historic materials online." The Center operates in conjunction with the State Library of North Carolina's NC ECHO (North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) project. It is supported by the State Library of North Carolina with funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act.The project's site notes that "Student yearbooks provide a window into college life in North Carolina from the 1890s to the present. From sports teams to sororities, fashions to hairstyles, these volumes document the changing attitudes and culture of college students year by year."
UNC Asheville's Institutional Page
http://digitalnc.org/institutions/university-north-carolina-asheville

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

Brainstorm: Educating Students About Their Data Trails
The merits and pitfalls of digital surveillance can be discussed at length. Meanwhile, though, just make sure undergrads know about it, Mark Bauerlein advises.
5 Myths About the 'Information Age' , By Robert Darnton
New technology is reinforcing old modes of communication more than it is undermining them.
Colleges Aren't Meeting Demand for Programs That Blend Online and Classroom Learning, Survey Suggests
With Google Settlement in Limbo, Universities Forge Ahead With Research on Digitized Books
Indiana University and the University of Illinois plan to establish a center for computational research on millions of digitized texts, many of them scanned by Google.

Posted by Brandy at 9:44 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE

Ramsey Library is pleased to announce the availability of a new online package, the Oxford Digital Reference Shelf. This new package includes Oxford University Press standard reference sources in history and culture (e.g., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Greece & Rome, Black Women in America, The Oxford Companion to the Book), literature and language (e.g., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children's Literature), the arts (e.g., The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre & Performance) , science (e.g., Encyclopedia of Global Change), the social sciences (e.g., Encyclopedia of Human Rights) , and law (e.g., The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Legal History). All individual titles are linked from their respective record in the online catalog.

UPCOMING CELEBRATION

NOTES FROM RAMSEY wants to send a special thanks to Professor Bruce Larson for bringing to our attention that April 26 is WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DAY!! Be sure to mark your calendar and watch NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY for more exciting news! (Actually, Bruce just forwarded a note in good faith. It was NOTES that spotted the celebratory date.)

TLTR: RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

iPads for College Classrooms? Not So Fast, Some Professors Say., By Ben Wieder
iPads are all the rage, but researchers who look into the teaching value of tablet PC's say those older devices may be better.
English Professor Uses High-Tech Tools to Make Case for Importance of Reading
Innovations: Invigorating the Classroom
Ernst Benjamin of the American Association of University Professors says the group's recent report is not an effort to politicize the classroom but to improve student learning.
Early Finding of Cal State U. E-Textbook Study: Terms Matter
The university has found that whether or not students liked their digital textbooks depended on what rules publishers set on how they could be used.
'New York Times' Paywall Will Add Costs to Some College Offerings
Campuses that participate in the college-readership program will have to pay for access to the paper's site but will receive a discounted rate.

OTHER RECENT NEWS OF NOTE
Judge Rejects Settlement in Google Books Case, Saying It Goes Too Far By Jennifer Howard
The judge urged the parties to consider revising the settlement, however, and suggested an approach that would ease his major concerns about copyright.
Google Decision Spurs Research Libraries to Rethink the Path to Digital Access, By Jennifer Howard
The libraries reiterated their commitment to making as much material as possible available digitally and hoped to find a solution to a vexing copyright issue.
A Copyright Expert Who Spoke Up for Academic Authors Offers Insights on the Ruling
Libraries, Publishing, and a Plea for Shotgun Weddings , By Bryn Geffert
Libraries and university presses are both ailing and desperate. Their union could be their salvation.

Posted by Brandy at 2:16 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE

Statesman's Yearbook Online ~ Next to the Statistical Abstract of the United States this may be the title nearest and dearest to an old librarian's heart. "Regularly updated to reflect recent world events, the much-acclaimed The Statesman's Yearbook Online includes reliable information on every country in the world, covering key historical events, population, city profiles, social statistics, climate, recent elections, current leaders, defense, international relations, economy, energy and natural resources, industry, international trade, religion, culture, and diplomatic representatives, as well as fact sheets and much more. Find out more about The Statesman's Yearbook." Online version available to UNC Asheville students, faculty, and staff, only.

INTER-UNIVERSITY CONSORTIUM FOR POLITICAL & SOCIAL RESEARCH

From ICPSR's DataBytes newsletter, Winter 2011
The Integrated Fertility Survey Series (IFSS) project at ICPSR is pleased to announce the release of its second harmonized dataset, which updates the first release and adds variables related to union history, cohabitation and husband/partner sociodemographics. The dataset combines information from 10 surveys and over 71,000 respondents spanning 1955 to 2002 into harmonized variables for easy analysis.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families, Office of Planning Research & Evaluation Funds is accepting applications to provide funding for a Research Center to Support Secondary Analyses of Head Start Impact Study Data to answer questions related to the characteristics of effective Head Start centers, classrooms, and teachers. For more information about this funding opportunity, including the award amount and due dates, please visit the Research Connections Web site.

The library's online catalog now contains bibliographic records for all the ICPSR databases. There are more than 7,265 records; 55 new for this year. So, if you're looking for that old reliable General Social Survey, just search it in the library online catalog to get direct access to the ICPSR data file online. Check it our at General Social Survey!

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE
Setting Students' Minds on Fire
Learning should be more than active. And it can be, as some professors and students are discovering in a particularly compelling classroom competition.
College 2.0: Actually Going to Class? How 20th-Century. , By Jeffrey R. Young
New learning technologies prompt a rethinking of traditional course structure.
Collaboration Seeks to Provide Easier Access to E-Books
The Internet Archive and Open Library are working with 150 public and academic libraries to offer their patrons a larger catalog of digital books.
Rereading the University Classics, Part 5
A series on classic texts about higher education continues with Thorstein Veblen's "The Higher Learning in America."

Posted by Brandy at 1:47 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE

In this issue, NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY invites your attention to a collection of the most valuable resources available through the Ramsey Library web site ~ LibGuides. From the library's home page, click on the "Research & Collection Guides" link located just below the divide in the white, mid section of the page. This will transport you to the remarkably useful "Welcome to LibGuides." A quick tour of the page reveals information about featured resources (currently ICPSR), a way to sign up for email alerts to new guides, featured new books, and, most importantly, links to more than 40 guides to subjects (e.g., African American Studies, Art, Economics, Gender & Sexuality, Statistics, and Women's Studies) as well as useful tutorials (e.g., Zotero, Writing in the Disciplines, Library 101, and Career and Job Search). Check it out!!

NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY congratulates Brandy Bourne, Web Services Librarian, and all the librarians who put so much time and effort into making the LibGuides such a valuable resource!

CHANGES TO LIBRARY WEB SITE

Hopefully, you've already seen them, but NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY is very pleased to congratulate Brandy Bourne, Web Services Librarian, for the recent housekeeping improvements on the library's primary pages. We've added a link and widget to our new service, LibAnswers, added a daily library hours box, and changed our header and colors to more closely align with the University colors. Email library@unca.edu to let us know what you think!.

ONLINE EXHIBITS

Check out Ramsey Library Special Collections Online Exhibits Asheville's Black History and Faces of Asheville's Black History.

ICPSR MERITORIOUS SERVICE AWARD

As part of its mission to support the social sciences, ICPSR presents biennial awards to individuals who have distinguished themselves in their service to the social science community and is now seeking nominations for these two awards. The Warren E. Miller Award for Meritorious Service to the Social Sciences was initiated in 1993 to recognize individuals who have had a profound impact on social science research and infrastructure. Warren E. Miller, a founder of ICPSR and its first Executive Director, demonstrated throughout his career exemplary service to the social science community and a talent for building institutions that have survived beyond his direct involvement and continue to prosper. ICPSR requests nominations be sent to mf-awards@icpsr.umich.edu and include a brief summary of the individual's qualifications and explanation of why the nominee is a worthy recipient. The Prizes committee will consider the nominations, make a final determination of the award winners, and inform ICPSR Council of their decision. The awards will be given during the ICPSR Biennial Meeting of Official Representatives held October 5-7, 2011 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Nominations are due no later than March 25.

Posted by Brandy at 3:36 PM | Permalink

GRAPHIC NOVEL CONTEST

Recently, Cynthia Canejo announced that Gareth Hinds, Graphic Novel artist/writer,will be giving a lecture in the Humanities Lecture Hall on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 7:00 PM. In addition to directly supporting Mr. Hinds visit, Ramsey Library is pleased to collaborate with the Departments of Art, Language & Literature, and Multimedia Arts & Sciences in offering a Graphic Novel Contest for UNC Asheville students. Please encourage interested students to enter. The grand prize winner will choose a $250 gift card to True Blue Art Supply, Malaprop's Bookstore, or Asheville Bookworks.

More information, contest rules, and application forms can be found at GRAPHIC NOVEL CONTEST.
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NEW FEATURE: NOTES FROM TLTR
A new, irregular feature of this irregular (on many levels!) publication will feature Ideas, observations, tips, and gleanings from published sources shared by the talented folks in Teaching & Learning with Technology Resources. John Myers, Leigh Svenson, Kent Thompson, Chris Asbill, Greg Dillingham, Clliff Hedrick, and Tim Buckner comprise the team which brings instructional technology support in the classroom (with the able support of ITS User Services), Lipinsky and Humanities Lecture Halls, TV and video production, and distance learning services via the Internet. Today's offering comes from a recent issue of EDUCAUSE Review which caught the attention of NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY.
>"Case Study: Murder, Madness, and Mayhem"

In the spring of 2008, Professor Jon Beasley-Murray launched his students at the University of British Columbia on a project to improve the inadequate and shallow coverage of Latin American literary studies by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AWikiProject_Murder_Madness_and_Mayhem). Working in groups, some students were assigned to topics that did not yet have articles while others were tasked with improving existing articles. The grading scheme was explicitly tied to the criteria and external peer-review processes used by Wikipedia to assign "good article" and "featured article" status.18 Students were pushed to develop both traditional and new media literacy skills. The result was scholarly yet engaging public resources that have been read by hundreds of thousands of information-seekers. It is also worth noting that no license, usage, or subscription fees have to be paid to Wikipedia for the provision of this incredible learning environment."

"Never Mind the Edupunks; or, The Great Web 2.0 Swindle"© 2010 Brian Lamb and Jim Groom.
The text of this article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 45, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 50-58
RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY has taken particular note of a significant publishing announcement. What note, NOTES isn't quite sure of yet. However, we're pretty sure we've set a new world's record for the occurrence of the words "note" or "notes" within one inch of an email!!

o Nota Bene: Idol Pursuits, By Nina C. Ayoub
In the first university-press book on "American Idol," an ethnomusicologist looks at the TV show's cultural influence.

Less stimulating, perhaps, but noteworthy!

* Obama's Plans for Advanced Ed Tech Center
An Education Department official talks about a new National Center for Advanced Research and Information in Digital Technologies that will finance research on teaching and learning.
* 6 Top Tech Trends on the Horizon for Higher Education
Among the ones to watch are game-based learning, electronic books, and learning analytics, according to a new report.
* Wikipedia's Editing Process Is Still a Mystery to Students
Students remain unaware of the site's history and discussion pages.

Posted by Brandy at 3:44 PM | Permalink

RAMSEY LIBRARY JOINS ICPSR

Ever mindful of our role in facilitating undergraduate and faculty research, Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce its membership, on behalf of the University community, in the Inter-University Consortium for Political & Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. Many faculty will be intimately familiar with this international consortium of about 700 academic institutions and research organizations which has since 1962 provided leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for the social science research community. ICPSR's preeminent data archive offers more than 500,000 files of research in the social sciences including 16 collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields. Note that ICPSR does not provide publications, reports, or ready-made statistics. What ICPSR does supply are the numeric raw data used to create publications, reports, and figures.

All UNC Asheville staff, students, and faculty have access to the extensive ICPSR data holdings via any campus computer. Access is direct and quick by accessing the ICPSR Web site at www.icpsr.umich.edu. First-time users will be asked to create an ICPSR MyData account; thereafter, you will need your email address and password to download data. Content downloaded from this world's largest collection of digital social science data can be used for secondary research, instructional activities, and to write articles, papers, theses, etc.

The library has just acquired access so this is a bit new for us. NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY will be sharing more information as its assimilated, but wanted to let everyone know of its current and future availability as soon as we could. More later. In the meantime, please check out the more detailed information available at:

Political Science (PDF 328K)
Social Sciences (PDF 180K)
Sociology (PDF 328K)
Instruction and Learning (PDF 811K)
Specialty archives (PDF 333K)
Resource Center for Minority Data (PDF 340K)

2011 ICPSR SUMMER PROGRAM IN QUANTITATIVE METHODS

ICPSR recently announced the 2011 Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research. The main component of the ICPSR Summer Program is held on the campus of the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. Lectures and workshops on a wide variety of topics in research design, quantitative reasoning, statistical methods, and data processing are presented in two four‑week sessions. The first session runs from June 20, 2011 until July 15, 2011. The second session runs from July 18, 2011 until August 12, 2011. The contents of the two sessions are largely independent of each other, although some second‑session workshops do assume that participants are familiar with material from first‑session courses.

The 2011 ICPSR Summer Program will also offer a number of three‑ to five‑day workshops on both statistical and substantive topics throughout the summer. Most of these shorter workshops take place in Ann Arbor, but there are several that will be held in other locations: Amherst, MA; Bloomington, IN; Chapel Hill, NC; and (for the first time) Berkeley, CA.

The application form, registration instructions, fee structure, and further information about the ICPSR Summer Program are all available on the ICPSR web site: http://icpsr.umich.edu/sumprog/.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

On the general theme of "rules (?)", here's some news you may have missed:

E-Books' Varied Formats Make Citations a Mess for Scholars, By Tushar Rae
E-book readers use different page-numbering systems, forcing academics to find other ways to provide the citations that are crucial to scholarship. But, Anita White-Carter let NOTES know that Amazon plans "real" page numbers in Kindle books sometime in the coming months!

A Digital Library Guru Discusses New Rules on Sharing Scientific Data
Sayeed Choudhury predicts that the step by the National Science Foundation will lead to broader participation in science activities.

A Classic 'Nontextbook' on Writing, By James M. Lang
A third edition of "Writing With Style" proves once again why the book has been so popular.

The Poetry Foundation has just released a "Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry." It can be found online at:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/downloads/FairUsePoetryBooklet_singlepg_2.pdf

Posted by Brandy at 5:25 PM | Permalink

FEATURED RESOURCE

Many accomplished information seekers have long known the breadth and depth of information available through the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). For decades, though, the difficulty of navigating that complex, even arcane information world proved at best daunting. In the mid-1990s, GPO launched GPO Access as the first step in expanding its mission to provide electronic access to Federal Government information (ever wonder how many hours per year a particular type of aircraft engine is run in U.S.?). GPO has now begun to roll-out its second generation system known as F-Dsys (and, yes, NOTES does know what it stands for ~ Federal Digital System) with completion scheduled for mid-2011. Here are some key enhancements:

• Easily search across multiple publications or collections of Government publications from a single search box.


• Perform an advanced search against robust metadata about each publication from a single advanced search page.


• Construct complex search queries using advanced Boolean and field operators.


• Refine and narrow searches by applying filters, sorting search results, and searching within search results.


• Retrieve individual Government documents and publications in seconds directly from each search result.


• View more information about a publication and access multiple file formats from a "More Information" Web page that is available from each search result.


• Access metadata or information about Government publications in standard formats such as MODS and PREMIS.


• Download content and metadata packaged together as a single ZIP file.


• Browse for a specific Government publications and browse within the publication using its table of contents.


• Utilize enhanced help options including context specific field level help and a searchable online help system

To learn more about F-Dsys visit http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/search/home.action.

BROWN BAG BOOK TALKS

Well, if you weren't in Special Collections, 12:30 to 1:30 on last Tuesday, you missed it!! Yep, you missed Ramsey Library's first Brown Bag Book Talk of the spring semester and the chance to hear Dan Pierce wax poetic on "The Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay, and Big Bill France." Not only did you miss Dan's (of History Channel fame!) presentation, but you'll never know if white lightning was really served.

It's not too late, however, for the second talk of the semester. Please join us and encourage your students to participate in Laura Hope-Gill's poetry reading and slide show "The Soul Tree: Poems and Photographs of the Southern Appalachians," Ramsey Library Whitman Room, 12:30 - 1:30, Tuesday, February 8.

Visit the full schedule at http://toto.lib.unca.edu/programs/brownbag.htm

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE
As Wikipedia Turns 10, It Focuses on Ways to Improve Student Learning
The popular open encyclopedia moves to create a repository of teaching materials.
Looking for a Companion? Philosophy Publishers Can Help
Carlin Romano wandered around the exhibits at last week's APA Eastern, and found new companions at every turn.
Hip-Hop and Copyright Law in the Classroom
A professor's documentary film examines the legal implications of hip-hop artists' use of samples of previously recorded music.
The Chronicle of Higher Education's Selected New Books on Higher Education
Rereading the University Classics, Part 4
By Kai Hammermeister, A series on classic texts about higher education continues with Upton Sinclair's "The Goose-Step."

Posted by Brandy at 4:32 PM | Permalink

NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY hopes that everyone enjoyed a safe and joyful holiday season and that your semester is off to a great start. NOTES also wants to thank the library staff who overcame the weather to make the library as available as possible over the past week. And, all the Ramsey Library folks are grateful to the Grounds and Facilities personnel who made the campus as safe as possible and who kept our buildings warm and the water flowing. To all of you and to those "critical personnel" we may not even know of, many, many thanks!!

BOOKS & LIBRARY CONTENT PURCHASES CONTINUE FOR NOW

While the latest budget news seems less than encouraging, we are still able to purchase books and other library materials to support students and faculty. Faculty who know of materials that they need please get that information to your librarian bibliographer and we will do everything we can to acquire the material before the budget doors close any tighter. Please contact or send your requests to your departmental bibliographer whose listed at:
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/libdir/bibliographers.html.

LYNDA.COM

If you haven't tried it, do give LYNDA.COM a whirl. This online training library containing over 3,000 video tutorials on all types of software, and provides comprehensive training in office software, audio, video, photography, graphic design, web and interactive design, business, and development from expert instructors. We've been very pleased with the response to this investment and recently added several concurrent users to our license.

GRADUATE SCHOOL ENTRANCE EXAM PREP

As the semester begins many students turn their attention to thoughts of graduation and graduate school. NOTES FROM RAMSEY encourages students to take advantage of the expertise offered by the Career Center and the wisdom of their faculty. In addition, we offer access to interactive practice tests and tutorials for academic and licensing tests including the GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, and the Praxis. These materials can be accessed via the Ramsey Library web site by clicking Research Databases, then clicking Title List. Navigate to the L listing on the alphabetical title index and select Learning Express Library. Once on the Learning Express web site, click the College Students link under the heading "Learning Centers" on the left side of the page. From there click the Graduate School Entrance Exam Preparation link. A second list will appear. Select an exam preparation module. Click the Login to Add link to the right of the selection. You will be asked to create a unique user name and password for accessing scores and keeping track of progress. PLEASE MAKE NOTE OF THE USER NAME AND PASSWORD YOU SELECTED. Ramsey Library has no access to this information.

(Many thanks to Anita White-Carter for these directions!!)

Posted by Brandy at 5:18 PM | Permalink

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS HONORED

On December 8th Special Collections was awarded the Western North Carolina Historical Association (WNCHA) trophy for Outstanding Achievement. The award, given annually since 1954 recognizes individuals, organizations, museums, and societies for contributions to the historical record of western North Carolina for outstanding work in documenting and providing scholarly contributions to the public record, to publications about the area, for services to history, and for providing unique research materials.

NOTES FROM RAMSEY congratulates Helen Wykle, Curator of Special Collections, Sallie Klipp, Special Collections Assistant, and the legions of student workers, interns, and volunteers who have contributed so much to Special Collections, Ramsey Library, and our community over the years with particular nodes to those able to attend the award event: student, Melissa Hutcheson, intern, Susan Jones, volunteers, Toey Fortenbery, Tim Hawkins, Bob Cunningham, and Sharon Fahrer, were able to attend the ceremony. In addition to those in attendance recognition should be given to key outstanding volunteers, particularly Margaret Mitchell for her work on the E.M Ball Photograph Collection, Brian Stanley for web site design, and Sharon Fahrer of History@Hand who continues to be one of our strongest supporters and gatherers of collections and materials.

Group Study Rooms Upgraded!!

Recently, Ramsey Library was pleased to let students know that in response to student requests and mindful of an increasing need for "smart" group study space, the library has equipped five of its group study rooms with 36" plasma monitors to be used with laptop computers. Students may bring their own laptops or check one out from the library. In the 2009-2010 school year, students checked out keys to group study rooms 4,212 times. We hope this new addition will make them even more useful to students as they collaborate on papers and projects.

Ramsey Library wants to express its gratitude to the lab/smart classroom team of ITS' User Services. Many thanks to Mark Nielson, Alex Mitchell, and John Furst for their supportive collaboration and their quick, professional work in getting these screens up and running.

Recent News of Note

Professors Publish Guide to Copyright Issues of Multimedia Projects
Students often create classroom projects that blend in clips from YouTube videos or hit songs, and many want to post their work online for a wider audience. But does that violate copyright law?

Southern Cal to Open Lab on Future of Digital Media
The Annenberg Innovation Lab will focus on social networking, journalism on digital devices, and other emerging areas.

Posted by Brandy at 2:41 PM | Permalink

Extended Hours

As noted in an earlier issue, was pleased to extend its regular evening hours until 1 AM, Sunday thru Thursday. As the end of the semester and finals approach the library will be offering even later hours beginning Wednesday, December 1. The end-of-semester schedule is as follows:

Wednesday, 12/1 8 AM - 2 AM
Thursday, 12/2 8 AM - 2 AM
Friday, 12/3 8 AM - 9 PM
Saturday, 12/4 10 AM - 9 PM
Sunday, 12/5 1 PM - 2 AM
Monday, 12/6 8 AM - 2 AM
Tuesday, 12/7 8 AM - 2 AM
Wednesday, 12/8 8 AM - 2 AM
Thursday, 12/9 8 AM - 2 AM
Friday, 12/10 8 AM - 9 PM
Saturday, 12/11 10AM - 9 PM
Sunday, 12/12 1 PM - 2 AM
Monday, 12/13 8 AM - 2 AM
Tuesday, 12/14 8 AM -9 PM
Wednesday, 12/15 8 AM - 6 PM

For current hours information please see http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/cal/index.html.

Featured Resource

Environment Complete™ offers deep coverage in applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, renewable energy sources, natural resources, marine & freshwater science, geography, pollution & waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more. It contains more than 2,265,500 records from more than 2,100 domestic and international titles going back to 1888 (including over 1,250 active core titles). The database contains full text for more than 820 journals, including many of the most used journals in the discipline, such as Environment (back to 1975), Ecologist, Conservation Biology, etc. Additionally, Environment Complete provides full text for more than 220 monographs, such as Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (3 volumes), Advances in Water Treatment & Environmental Management, etc.

Check it out online at http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/search?vid=1&hid=107&sid=d473a943-bfb2-4641-bcf2-01758a2760b2%40sessionmgr115 or via the spotlight box on the lower right of the library's main page.

Recent News of Note

Textbooks & Reading

The End of the Textbook as We Know It
Here's the new plan: Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them.

Brainstorm: Pride and Proofreading
Jane Austen's newly released digital manuscripts show how extensive her revisions were and that she wrote in a radically experimental style, says Laurie Fendrich.

New at iTunes U: Free E-Books
Oxford, Rice, and the Open University have added digital books to the lectures and other materials available on the educational-content platform.

Selected New Books on Higher Education

Rereading the University Classics, Part 3
By Kai Hammermeister, A new series on classic texts about higher education continues with John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University."

What They're Reading on College Campuses
And, yes, Mark, Stieg Larsson's still there!!

Posted by Brandy at 2:49 PM | Permalink

FILMS ON DEMAND

This issue's featured resource is FILMS ON DEMAND. Ramsey Library is very pleased to invite you to take full advantage of this online, streamed access to thousands of academic films and film clips in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Business & Economics, Science and Mathematics, and Health and Medicine. Films Media Group is the leading source of high-quality video and multimedia for academic, vocational and life-skills content through its four brands: Films for the Humanities and Sciences, Cambridge Educational, Meridian Education, and Shopware. Our licensing allows viewing by individuals, streaming into classrooms, and bookmarking by instructors. It can also be streamed for student use through your MOODLE course structure (see John Myers for details).

This is an exciting new product which takes full advantage of emerging instructional technologies. We hope you and your students enjoy it!

LIBRARY ADDS GRAND NEW PAINTING

On your next visit to Ramsey Library be sure to check out our new painting in the wall of the University Writing Center. Donate by UNC Asheville parent Robert Lock, "Wild Acres" was produced by the studio of Asa Cassidy and Joseph Ness as a real estate speculation painting for Thomas Dixon, Jr., a native North Carolinian and author of multiple romanticized Ku Klux Klan novels. Dixon bought "Wild Acres" to be the home of the Mount Mitchell Association of Arts and Sciences, an "intellectual colony" he founded for writers and artists.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

A Modern Scholar's Ailments: Link Rot and Footnote Flight
A plague of dead links to Web-based resources threatens academe.

ProfHacker: Improve your use of Google Books with Mirlyn and Hathi Trust
Having trouble finding specific public-domain texts in Google Books?

NC LIVE Has Added 25 Videos to the PBS Streaming Video Collection.

Posted by Brandy at 2:56 PM | Permalink

***************************************************
NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY; 2010-5

7 October 2010
***************************************************

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

Ramsey Library Hours Extended

In response to student requests and long-running assessment, and enabled by an increase in this year's E&T fees, Ramsey Library is pleased to announce that beginning Tuesday, October 12 the library will remain open until 1 AM, Sunday through Thursday. This will be will be the library's regular schedule and represents an additional hour on those days. We will continue to extend hours to 2 AM for the period preceding final exams.

Effective 10/12/10, the library's weekly schedule will be:

Monday - Thursday, 8 AM to 1 AM
Friday, 8 AM to 6 PM
Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM
Sunday, 1 PM to 1 AM

For detailed hours info, please check http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/cal/index.html.


Coffee & Hot Chocolate Now Available in the Library

In response to requests of student focus groups last summer, Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the installation of a coffee/hot chocolate machine in the library. This makes at least a limited selection of hot beverages available during those late evening and weekend hours when Café Ramsey is closed. The machine is located on the main floor in the area of stairwell to the right of the Information & Technology Desk. Initial reports are that the coffee's pretty good!! We hope you enjoy it and that you'll help us keep the library neat and well-maintained. We hope to have a juice and water machine in the near future.

Featured Resource

Ramsey Library is pleased to welcome back a great electronic resource that had somehow escaped from our corral. For a number of years, the library provided access to EconLit on a "per search" basis. Recently, that means of access was disabled and that escaped our attention. Now we have a full subscription to EconLit, the American Economic Association's electronic bibliography indexing more than thirty years of economics literature from around the world. Compiled and abstracted in an easily searchable format, EconLit is a comprehensive index of journal articles, books, book reviews, collective volume articles, working papers and dissertations. The direct link (from on campus only) is http://0-web.ebscohost.com.wncln.wncln.org/ehost/search?vid=1&hid=113&sid=4303ca4a-5e21-4a0a-8f87-9ea66913cf42%40sessionmgr114. It can be accessed remotely by going through the library's web site and selecting EconLit from among our collection of electronic resources at http://libguides.unca.edu/content.php?pid=81370. You can find a downloadable desktop link at http://www.aeaweb.org/econlit/icon.php.


More on Free & Discounted Software

With apologies to any and all I may have confused, it turns out the link to the site with information about the free and discounted software that I distributed earlier was to a site not ready for publication. And, it went away. It will eventually return on the new ITS web site, but till then I've created a Google site with the same info and the link to Microsoft for their discounted software. Please note that you have to go to that site, pay the discounted price, and download the software to your computer. It's NOT available in the library like the free packages. The Google site for software info is https://sites.google.com/a/unca.edu/jim_kuhlman/software.

Posted by Brandy at 3:29 PM | Permalink

***************************************************
NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY; 2010-4

21 September 2010
***************************************************

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

Featured Resource

Lynda.com is one of Ramsey Library's most exciting new resources. This online training library contains more than 3,000 video tutorials on all types of software (e.g., Word, Excel, Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, Dreamweaver, After Effects, etc.) providing comprehensive training in office software, audio, video, photography, graphic design, web and interactive design, business, and development from expert instructors. The library subscription allows for as many as 5 concurrent users. Let us know if you used any of the tutorials, how you like them, and, especially, if you have had difficulty accessing them due to all the concurrent use slots being in use.

Lynda.com (NOTE: If you're trying from off campus, you'll need to access Lynda.com via the library's web site and logging into the proxy server.)

Recent News of Note

· E-Readers Advance in Academe: a Chronicle Survey

Nearly 40 percent of Chronicle Review readers own the devices, and a large majority are very satisfied.

· Wired Campus: Should Colleges Do More to Teach Students About Plagiarism?

When caught turning in papers with passages lifted straight from Wikipedia, some students say they didn't realize that was against the rules.

· Rereading the University Classics

By Kai Hammermeister , A new series on classic texts about higher education begins with José Ortega y Gasset's "Mission of the University."

· What They're Reading on College Campuses

It's time we all catch up with the writings of Stieg Larsson!!!

Posted by Brandy at 5:04 PM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

NEW LIBRARY RESOURCES

With an improved library materials acquisitions budget last year, the library was able to restore subscriptions to some titles that had been canceled during the more stringent times and purchase totally new materials. For the last several years the campus community has consistently emphasized a preference for electronic, full-text resources with their increased searchability, ease of capture, and 24/7 access. Please check out the library's descriptions of and links to new databases at http://libguides.unca.edu/content.php?pid=80898&sid=814238.

The new or expanded "standards" include:

ABI/Inform Complete

The Asheville Citizen-Times

Encyclopedia Britannica Online

MyiLibrary Audio Books

MyiLibrary eBooks

Sage Journals Online

Socindex with full text

Web of Science.

Brand new offerings include:

Art Full Text

Mary Ann Liebert Publishers Full Text Journals

ATLA Religion Database

NC Live Business Portal

Cambridge Collections Online

NC Live Jobs Portal

Cambridge Histories Online

Oxford Art Online

Cinema Image Gallery

Oxford Handbooks Online

Credo Reference

Political Science Complete

Environment Complete

PowerSpeak Languages

Films on Demand

World Bank e-Library

LGBT Life with Full Text

Literature Resource Center.

Future issues of NOTES FROM RAMSEY will highlight some of the more interesting and useful titles. We very much hope that these offerings will enhance the research and learning experiences of you and your students.

RECENT ITEMS OF INTEREST FROM THE CHRONICLE YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

· Wired Campus: 21st-Century Research Collections--Mostly Digital, Ever Larger
A new report looks at the shape library materials will take and the prospects for the survival of the print book.

· Wired Campus: Blind Students Get Free Access to Cambridge U. Press Books
Digital technology will allow visually impaired students to read the press's entire backlist of titles, thanks to a new partnership with a California-based nonprofit group

· Wired Campus: Archive Makes Over a Million Digital Books Available for Those Who Can't Use Print
The Internet Archive has more than doubled the number of volumes in a format accessible to blind people and others.

· Wired Campus: A New Digital Repository for Sociology Instructors
The American Sociological Association hopes that its members will build a large library of syllabi and other teaching tools.

· Hot Type: From the Bodleian's Remarkable Collections, a Publishing Business Grows
By Jennifer Howard
The program at Oxford's library actually looks more like traditional university-based publishing than like the digitally driven models taking shape elsewhere.

Posted by Brandy at 2:18 PM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

RAMSEY LIBRARY EXTENDS HOURS FOR END OF SEMESTER

Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce that we are again extending hours to help our students at the end of the semester. Please share this with students:

Sunday, April 25 1pm - 2am
Monday, April 26 8am - 2am
Tuesday, April 27 8am - 2am
Wednesday, April 28 8am - 2am
Thursday, April 29 8am - 2am
Friday, April 30 8am - 9pm
Saturday, May 1 10am - 9pm
Sunday, May 2 noon - 1am
Monday, May 3 8am - 1am
Tuesday, May 4 8am - 1am
Wednesday, May 5 8am - 1am
Thursday, May 6 8am - 1am
Friday, May 7 8am - 6pm
Saturday, May 8 CLOSED
Sunday, May 9 CLOSED

Posted by Brandy at 2:17 PM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."
~ Heinrich Heine

Library Adds Electronic Products

As indicated in the previous two issues, this year's materials acquisition budget has allowed the library to restore book purchases to the healthier level of a couple of years ago, to consider restoring some subscriptions we had canceled, and to contemplate new and highly desirable products. Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the following electronic resources:

· ABI/Inform Complete ~ "Featuring over 4,975 journals, ABI/INFORM Complete™ is the most comprehensive business database on the market today. The combination of products forms a business database package that offers more than 3,840 full-text titles covering business and economic conditions, corporate strategies, management techniques, as well as competitive and product information. Its international coverage gives researchers a complete picture of companies and business trends around the world. ABI/INFORM Complete is used at major business schools including Harvard, Michigan, Wharton, Northwestern, and Chicago."

· America History & Life with Full Text, Historical Abstracts with Full Text ~ American History & Life and Historical Abstracts have long been the standard indexes to the journal literature of American history and non-U.S. history respectively. Ramsey Library has maintained subscriptions to these relatively expensive indexes for some time. We are very pleased to announce the addition of full text articles.

"America: History and Life™ with Full Text is the definitive database of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to present, this database is without question the most important bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history. America: History and Life with Full Text also provides full-text coverage of nearly 200 journals and over 90 books. The database also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages."

"Historical Abstracts™ with Full Text is an exceptional resource that covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and much more. Historical Abstracts™ with Full Text is essential for libraries supporting upper-division and graduate research. This authoritative database provides selective indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955. In addition, this database provides access to the full text of more than 300 journals and over 130 books. History and social science researchers have used Historical Abstracts to discover significant and groundbreaking work for more than 50 years. No other history research tool matches its scholarly standards or comprehensive coverage.

· Art Full Text ~ Ramsey Library has long offered an electronic version of Art Abstracts which providing citations and abstracts but lacked full text articles. This upgrade This offers full text plus abstracts and indexing of an international array of some 500 peer-selected publications with full text access to some 200 with expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism.

· Cambridge Companions Online ~ Cambridge Companions are lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. All are collections of specially commissioned essays, shaped and introduced to appeal to student readers. Together the chapters add up to a systematic critical account of, for example Plato, Luther, Jane Austen, Tom Stoppard or Stravinsky, the French Novel or Jewish American Literature, and each title is supported by reference features such as a chronology and guide to further reading. Addressing topics and figures as diverse as Gothic Fiction and Arabic Philosophy, WB Yeats and Martin Luther, the online collection contains over 3,000 downloadable essays, taken from 322 Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics (195 volumes) and Philosophy, Religion and Culture (127 volumes). 2 new Companions have been added as part of the September 2009 update.

· Cambridge Histories Online ~ The Cambridge Histories have become an established and essential component of the academic research library, and now, for the first time, over 250 of these well-known, used and trusted volumes are available online, adding immense value to the texts and enhancing any aspect of historical research. 3 new volumes have been added to Cambridge Histories Online as of May 2009, bringing the total number of volumes included in the collection to 258.

· CREDO Reference ~ "Credo Reference is a . . . general reference solution for learners and librarians. Its full-text, aggregated content covers every major subject from the world's best publishers of reference (materials)." Includes more than 3,270,127 entries from 473 titles and 66 publishers.

· Encyclopedia Britannica ~ Restoring an old favorite that we had to let go due to the budget.

· JSTOR A&S VIII ~ This addition to our essential store of scholarly periodicals includes ". . . include a minimum of one hundred forty (140) titles when it is completed at the end of 2011. This collection extends JSTOR's coverage in disciplines across the social sciences and humanities, with new and expanded focus on art & art history, classical studies, philosophy, language & literature, and music."

· Literature Resource Center ~ Literature criticism, biographies, work and topic overviews, reviews, and full text of many literary works--all searchable at the same time and returned in lists organized according to the type of research needs they serve. According to our friends at the publisher ~ "Literature Resource Center is the world's most current, comprehensive and reliable online literature database. Uniquely relevant to today's curriculum, the resource's rich critical, biographical and contextual materials support interdisciplinary approaches, information literacy, and the development of critical thinking skills. Researchers will find the information they need on authors and their works, from all time periods and from around the world."

· LYNDA ~ Online training library containing over 3,000 video tutorials on all types of software. Provides comprehensive training in office software, audio, video, photography, graphic design, web and interactive design, business, and development from expert instructors.

· Oxford Scholarship Online ~ A large and rapidly expanding cross-searchable library which offers quick and easy access to the full text of 3,036 Oxford books in Economics, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Literature, Classics, History, Law, Business, Psychology, and Music with new and recently-published books are added each year.

· SAGE Premier ~ Electronic access to approximately 514 peer-reviewed SAGE journals comprising over 230,000 articles with access to the backfile of each journal, dating back to 1999. SAGE publishes journals across 40 disciplines in the business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine fields with 47% of content in the package is ranked in the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports®. Provides SAGE Journal Email Alerts for tables of contents notifications, announcements, and keyword, author, and citation alerts. This electronic journal package represents one of the largest collections in the social sciences and now includes an extensive STM list. All SAGE journal content is peer-reviewed.

Keep an eye out for announcements on the following online products:

· American Chemical Society Publications

· Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

· Political Science Complete

· SocIndex with Full Text

A LOSS FOR UNC ASHEVILLE & RAMSEY LIBRARY

January 15 was Bryan Sinclair's last day at UNC Asheville and as a valuable part of the Ramsey Library team. Bryan joined the library faculty in 1997 as the User Instruction Librarian, served as the Web & Electronic Resources Librarian, and for the last several years ably filled the role of Associate University Librarian for Public Services. During his tenure and across his several positions, Bryan made significant contributions to the University, especially in helping to integrate the use of library and information resources into the enhancement of undergraduate research. He will be sorely missed.

NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY wishes smooth seas and following winds in the big city of Atlanta as he brings his talents, professionalism, and commitment to the role of Associate University Librarian for Public Services at Georgia State University Library. The old guy behind the curtain misses him, too.

Posted by Luke at 5:30 PM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

NEW ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

As indicated in the previous issue, this year’s materials acquisition budget has allowed the library to restore book purchases to the healthier level of a couple of years ago, to consider restoring some subscriptions we had canceled, and to contemplate new and highly desirable products. Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the following electronic resources:

· Art Index Full Text ~ Ramsey Library has long offered an electronic version of Art Abstracts which providing citations and abstracts but lacked full text articles. This upgrade This offers full text plus abstracts and indexing of an international array of some 500 peer-selected publications with full text access to some 200 with expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism.

· Cambridge Companions Online (SOON TO BE AVAILABLE) ~ Cambridge Companions are lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. All are collections of specially commissioned essays, shaped and introduced to appeal to student readers. Together the chapters add up to a systematic critical account of, for example Plato, Luther, Jane Austen, Tom Stoppard or Stravinsky, the French Novel or Jewish American Literature, and each title is supported by reference features such as a chronology and guide to further reading. Addressing topics and figures as diverse as Gothic Fiction and Arabic Philosophy, WB Yeats and Martin Luther, the online collection contains over 3,000 downloadable essays, taken from 322 Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics (195 volumes) and Philosophy, Religion and Culture (127 volumes). 2 new Companions have been added as part of the September 2009 update.

· Cambridge Histories Online (SOON TO BE AVAILABLE) ~ The Cambridge Histories have become an established and essential component of the academic research library, and now, for the first time, over 250 of these well-known, used and trusted volumes are available online, adding immense value to the texts and enhancing any aspect of historical research. 3 new volumes have been added to Cambridge Histories Online as of May 2009, bringing the total number of volumes included in the collection to 258.

· Oxford Scholarship Online (SOON TO BE AVAILABLE) ~ A large and rapidly expanding cross-searchable library which offers quick and easy access to the full text of 3,036 Oxford books in Economics, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Literature, Classics, History, Law, Business, Psychology, and Music with new and recently-published books are added each year.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

· Open Access to Research Is Inevitable
"I now believe that having public access to most scholarly communications is inevitable," said David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. "Faculty are coming to understand, finally, that this has to happen if they're going to have the most scholarly opportunities to get things done."

· Course-Pack Company Loses Copyright Lawsuit
“A business in Ann Arbor, Mich., failed in its attempt to get around a legal precedent that guides the procedures for copying course packs.”

Posted by Brandy at 11:04 AM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."
~ Heinrich Heine

Good News and a BIG Thank You!

Like the rest of the campus community, Ramsey Library faculty and staff have been holding their collective breaths as we hoped for the best possible budget outcomes and prepared as best we could for the worst. Given the complexities of differing renewal dates for periodicals and electronic resources, the library had to cancel some materials beginning last spring. And, like many areas of the University, the library has suffered significant personnel loses.

So far, our community is very fortunate and we are all greatly appreciative for the relatively low reduction in UNC Asheville’s recurring state funding. Chancellor Ponder, our Board of Trustees, and others have succeeded admirably in advocating the value of UNC Asheville’s mission while demonstrating both our efficiencies and our persisting lack of resources.

But in addition, I want to take advantage of this “bully pulpit” to personally and on behalf of the community to send a special thank you to Chancellor Ponder and all the members of the Chancellor’s Senior Staff. Recognizing the fundamental importance of books, journals, electronic databases, videos, and other library materials to the learning and research processes we so value, they worked diligently to provide a materials acquisition budget which is stronger than circumstances would lead to expect. And while we will continue careful stewardship of our funds by examining existing expenditures and seeking better ways to meet community needs, librarians have already begun the process of seeing what databases and products can and should be restored (e.g., an improved “Research Central is on the way) and will be working with faculty and students on those decisions. More later . . . .

Again, many thanks!

Jim Kuhlman

University Librarian

New Online Resource for Philosophers

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently announced a new online resource for philosophers “Billed as ‘a comprehensive directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers. . . .” Check it out at:

Archive Watch: Taking It Philosophically

PhilPapers

What They’re Reading on College Campuses

If you haven’t seen it lately, you might want to check out the Chronicle of Higher Education’s best seller list, “What They’re Reading on College Campuses.” Top of the list this month and last? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Now who said great literature was dead???

“What They’re Reading on College Campuses”

Recent News of Note

Copyright-Law Curricula Face Each Other in a Duel

Chemistry Journals Go Digital-Only

University Presses Can Hang Together to Make E-Books, or All Hang Separately
Wired Campus: 5 Major Research Universities Endorse Open-Access Journals

And NOTES FROM RAMSEY’S personal favorite:

If You Dance With No Pants, a Well-Defined Body (of Slang) Helps

Posted by Brandy at 4:39 PM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

NEW BOOKS!!!

Even though this year’s budget picture isn’t perfectly clear as yet, Ramsey Library is certainly more optimistic about the financial forecast and we’re back buying books at a moderate pace. Faculty should continue to request materials for the library collection through your library liaison.

Not only do we have new books to share, we are trying an enhanced display for the new books to spark interest. Many thanks to Barbara Svenson, Noel Jones, Anita White-Carter, and Brandy Bourne for making this happen. We are leaving the dust jackets on the new books until they’re transferred to the stacks and devoting two of the shelves in the display cases to take advantage of all the nice art work. We’re also trying the elimination of the pop reading shelves (those titles have been moved to the stacks and are in the catalog) to allow space and to emphasize that all books are popular. (Is NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY exposing its bias here? Hope so!)

Please visit the new new book display. In the meantime check it out at https://sites.google.com/a/unca.edu/new-book-display/.

INSTRUCTION RESOURCES FOR INFORMATION INTENSIVES

Like many areas on campus and as NOTES FROM RAMSEY mentioned earlier, the library enters the new academic year with fewer staff. We have been particularly affected by the loss of the professional librarian position previously devoted to coordinating and supplying a great deal of the library’s user education. While everyone is trying to do as much as possible to fill the gap, many instructors will inevitably find that we’re unable to help at the time requested. Please be patient as we all attempt to cope as well as we can.

NOTES FROM RAMSEY does want to invite instructors’ attention to digitally available resources that can help them in presenting information resources to their students (actually better than a librarian coming to your class because the students pay much more attention to their “real” teacher) and to help their students directly. On the “InfoLit” page on the library’s web site you can find learning modules on research basics, finding articles, finding and evaluating web resources, suggested sample assignments, and resources for LANG 120 and LSIC 379 instructors.

Check it out at http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/infolit/Default.htm.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

· Research on Teaching Reading Shows What?

· Pricey Cost per Page Hurts Humanities and Social-Science Journals

· Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars
“Geoffrey Nunberg gets lost in the metadata of digital books.”

· New Editing Process Seeks to Improve Wikipedia's Accuracy

Posted by Brandy at 11:29 AM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

REMODELING TO ENCOURAGE PERIODICAL USE

For those of you who could get away, welcome back to campus! For the many who pushed on through the summer, NOTES FROM RAMSEY hopes you did have some good time away and that the fall semester is off to a great start for you. Many of you may have missed this announcement in an earlier NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY, so like the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION in dealing with its summer vacation, NOTES wants to share our new periodicals layout with you one more time.

Under the expert eye of Noel Jones, one of Ramsey Library’s able circulation supervisors, keen minds and strong backs recently completed a no cost rearrangement in the current periodicals area of the main floor to encourage the reading of current magazines and journals. The project consolidated shelving of the majority of paper periodicals, grouped by subject according to their Library of Congress classification, into an area nearer the windows of the periodicals area in order to create more space for group work and comfortable seating. In addition, the library pulled some of the more popular titles from the single subject grouping and added new titles selected as a result of a student, staff, and faculty survey to create an easily accessible range of popular magazines suitable for browsing. Older titles included in this new grouping include:

American Craft

Ebony

Ecologist

Economist

Harper’s

Mother Jones

Ms.

Newsweek (NOTES FROM RAMSEY hates the new format!)

NYT Book Review

Rolling Stone

Scientific American

Time

U.S. News

Women’s Health

New titles added in response to survey requests include (note: less popular titles in the survey were canceled to allow for the change):

The Believer

Bitch

Bust

Dwell

Make

Men’s Health

Mental Floss

Paste

ReadyMade

Shambala Sun

Spin

Vanity Fair

Veg News

Week

See photos at: https://sites.google.com/a/unca.edu/ramsey-library-pop-periodicals/ and be sure to stop by for a visit!!

RESEARCH CENTRAL CANCELED

"Research Central" was the name for a commercial product embedded on the library's web main page which allowed you to put in a search term or phrase and retrieve results from the catalog (books, primarily) and the library's electronic databases (largely citations to articles and full text) all in one search. This is a feature known as "federated searching" for all you library groupies out there. Library staff had worked with this product for about a year while making it available to you in "Beta." While we felt there were still functional problems we also recognized that some faculty and more students found this an easy and productive way to search. Unfortunately, it also cost us $6,500 a year. In light of the anticipated limitations of this year's budget and the somewhat less than dependable performance, the library recently canceled the product so that we can spend the $6,500 on books and electronic information content that we would otherwise not be able to provide. When the library's budget begins to recover (and it will!) we'll return to our search for an affordable and functional federated search engine.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

* Google Hopes Readers Can Download, Share, and Use Books
"The company announced . . . that it will work with Creative Commons to let authors decide how their works can be used and cited."

*A Laboratory of Collaborative Learning

"How can we put the library back at the center of undergraduate education where it belongs?"

AND FOR THE ANNUAL BACK TO SCHOOL REALITY CHECK

* Beyond the Experience of Today's College Freshman: Johnny Carson and the KGB
blockquote>"As professors dust off their lecture notes in preparation for the new academic year, they might want to vet their cultural references with the folks at Beloit College."

Posted by Brandy at 10:16 AM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."
~ Heinrich Heine


REMODELING TO ENCOURAGE PERIODICAL USE

Under the expert eye of Noel Jones, one of Ramsey Library’s able circulation supervisors, keen minds and strong backs recently completed a no cost rearrangement in the current periodicals area of the main floor to encourage the reading of current magazines and journals. The project consolidated shelving of the majority of paper periodicals, grouped by subject according to their Library of Congress classification, into an area nearer the windows of the periodicals area in order to create more space for group work and comfortable seating. In addition, the library pulled some of the more popular titles from the single subject grouping and added new titles selected as a result of a student, staff, and faculty survey to create an easily accessible range of popular magazines suitable for browsing. Older titles included in this new grouping include:

American Craft
Ebony
Ecologist
Economist
Harper’s
Mother Jones
Ms.
Newsweek (NOTES FROM RAMSEY hates the new format!)
NYT Book Review
Rolling Stone
Scientific American
Time
U.S. News
Women’s Health

New titles added in response to survey requests include (note: less popular titles in the survey were canceled to allow for the change):

The Believer
Bitch
Bust
Dwell
Make
Men’s Health
Mental Floss
Paste
ReadyMade
Shambala Sun
Spin
Vanity Fair
Veg News
Week

Posted by Brandy at 10:33 AM | Permalink

Library Book Orders for Fall Classes

Like the rest of campus and the UNC system, Ramsey Library is awaiting budget news on pins and needles. However and in spite of uncertainty, we know that fall classes inevitably loom. The library is now accepting from faculty book and media requests to support fall classes or research projects. We will go ahead and order these materials as soon as possible in order to have them in time for classes. Please limit requests to essential materials in support of this fall’s work until we know more about next year’s budget. Check the library’s web site for your department’s bibliographer.

Ramsey Library Subject Bibliographers

http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/libdir/bibliographers.html

Recent News of Note You May Have Missed

· United Nations Opens World Digital Library

· How a Student-Friendly Kindle Could Change the Textbook Market

The expected introduction of Amazon's wide-format Kindle could revolutionize the delivery of textbooks, or the new product could get as lukewarm a reception as previous e-book readers.

· Physicist Set to Unveil 'WolframAlpha' Web Site, a New Kind of Research Helper

Notes From Ramsey thinks this is one amazing product. Check it out at http://www.wolframalpha.com/

· Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past

Lest Notes from UNCA ITS’ buddy Google takes this the wrong way, please note this isn’t our headline!! “Google Book Search promised to bring the world's archives to our computers. Instead, too often, we're getting the digitally mutilated remains, writes Ronald G. Musto.”

· 10 University-Press Directors Back Free Access to Scholarly Articles

Posted by Brandy at 1:25 PM | Permalink

ABC Express & Interlibrary Loan

Several folks have asked about the less than clear reference in the last NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY to being able to continue ABC Express and Interlibrary Loan (ILL), at least for now. Please excuse the ambiguity.

The concern applies only to the remainder of this fiscal year. The money that supports the Western North Carolina Library Network (WNCLN) and, thus, ABC Express is handled by Financial Affairs at ASU. So far, their interpretation of the state’s spending ban is that we can continue to put gas in the ABC Express truck. As long as we can do that, ABC Express will continue to run. If the state or ASU determines that we can’t put gas in the truck, we stop. The same’s true for ILL. We can continue to mail materials under NC guidelines. If those change and paying for mailing is prohibited, we’ll have to stop. On the ILL side of things, another complicating factor is that we may be borrowing materials from libraries in states where mailing is no longer allowed.

Ramsey Library will not willingly let ABC Express or ILL go, nor would I expect that from our campus. State regulations are another matter.

Posted by Brandy at 5:37 PM | Permalink

LIBRARY CANCELLATIONS

Like all campus units, Ramsey Library began this year with a significant cut to its operating budget and the attendant reduction in the information resources we could buy. The first law of library economics is that the cost of books, journals, and electronic subscriptions rise every year. In aggregate, this increase has averaged about 8% a year over several decades depending on many factors including the strength of the dollar. Journals, continuations, and electronic products tend to increase more rapidly and regularly averaging about 10%. Book prices increase at a much lower rate closer to the increase in the Consumer Price Index. Inevitably, a library’s tendency is to pay the increasing prices of the serials and continuations devoting whatever is left to the more discretionary book requests or perhaps new serial titles. It’s not difficult to envision what happens when the overall library materials budget fails to grow, much less the potentially dire consequences of materials budget reductions. Maintaining current serial subscriptions reduces funds available for books. And since the most costly serials, both paper and electronic, tend to be in the natural sciences there is a disproportionate effect on those disciplines that rely more heavily on books, particularly the humanities.

Given this year’s budget reduction, Ramsey Library sought to maintain as much of our book buying capability as possible. Late in the fall library bibliographers consulted with some faculty and made difficult decisions to cancel lesser used serials in both paper and electronic formats that were judged to have least impact on teaching and research. Obvious targets were subscriptions to the paper versions of journals where we already subscribed to an electronic version in a stable format. In such cases we lost no content while eliminating the cost for the paper subscription as well as an associated expenses for binding, staff processing, and library space. The canceled electronic products were judged to have high cost relative to benefit or that they duplicated information available in a less costly or free resource. For example, we canceled INFOTRAC ($5,115), a basic full-text periodical database we’ve long maintained, because we also receive Academic Search Premier, a very similar product, at no cost through NC LIVE. Please note also that one advantage of electronic products as compared with more traditional library serials subscriptions is that we can restart them when budgets permit and demand requires. You can find a listing of cancellations at http://facstaff.unca.edu/kuhlman/Ramsey_Library_Cancellations.pdf. Savings totaled just over $64,000.

Like the rest of campus and most of higher education, Ramsey Library anticipates at least as much financial difficulty over the next few years as we’ve already experienced. Accordingly, library bibliographers are working on initial prioritization of potential cancellations of additional electronic products, continuations, and journals, and will be working with available faculty and the Library, Information Resources & Technology Committee (LIRTC) over the summer and into the fall in order to exercise the greatest possible stewardship with the resources we have. This will require creativity and flexibility from us all. We appreciate your help and patience.

LIBRARY STAFFING

As you plan for the fall, please keep in mind that the library will be operating with fewer staff as will many areas on campus. You already know that Classroom Instruction & Technology Support (CITS) will not be able to fill Rudy Moorrees’ position and that we anticipate losing it permanently. In addition, we lost our User Instruction & Reference Librarian at the end of the fall semester and have not been able to fill that position. I anticipate that it will also be lost permanently. With the loss of two professional positions everyone in Ramsey Library and CITS is intensifying their efforts to continue to provide the very best information services possible, but there will be some diminishment. This will be particularly true when it comes to our ability to support information literacy efforts next fall since we have lost the primary professional position devoted to that effort.

REDUCED BOOK PURCHASES

As indicated above, fixed or reduced library materials budgets tend to reduce book purchases as a first casualty. This affected Ramsey Library purchasing from the beginning of the year and motivated the serials cancellations indicated above. Unfortunately, book ordering was halted with a bit more than $70,000 in book funds unencumbered more than eliminating book purchases we had planned to make with the $64,000 savings from serials cancellations noted above. The combined effect of the initial reduction and the early stoppage is represented in the following table:

Academic Year-----------------Book Volumes Added

2006-2007------------------------------7,079

2007-2008------------------------------6,258

2008-2009------------------------------3,269

We face great unknowns, but at this point Ramsey Library estimates that without cancelling additional electronic products and assuming a materials budget at least equaling this year’s expenditures (optimistic, perhaps) we may only be able to purchase 1,000 to 1,500 new books next year.

IMPACT

NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY reports these figures so that instructors realize that students are already encountering diminished resources in terms of books and a few electronic resources. Please anticipate greater impact as you plan for next year. While we are fortunate in being able to tap the collections at ASU and WCU through ABC Express (note: we’re not sure how long that service will be allowed), they anticipate significant cuts in funds as well. The library at ASU has begun a serials cancellation project of far greater scope than we anticipate. Many thanks in advance for your help and understanding.

Posted by Susan at 3:09 PM | Permalink

NEW LEADERSHIP IN CITS

As most of you know, Ramsey Library, Classroom & Instructional Technology Support (CITS), and the entire UNC Asheville community has lost the long serving and loved Rudy Moorrees to the temptations of retirement and Hawaii. In addition to losing Rudy’s notable experience, expertise, and commitment to UNC Asheville and like many areas on campus, we have lost Rudy’s position apparently indefinitely. The silver lining in that very black cloud is the also talented and committed John Myers, our Moodle and course support expert, has agreed to assume Rudy’s management duties on an interim basis in addition to his own important work with Moodle much to my delight.

In spite of John’s commitment, expertise, and devotion to UNC Asheville, he will not be able to devote the time and energy to both Moodle and CITS leadership as had two experienced and consummately talented professionals have in the past. His teammates in CITS, as well as all the folks in Ramsey Library and ITS, will do all they can to help, and we’re looking for ways to increase support. Everyone on campus can help by being sure to direct questions and requests to the folks best equipped to respond. These include:

Leigh Svenson (Auditoriums (Lipinsky, HLH)), lsvenson@unca.edu, 251-6630

Greg Dillingham (Distance Learning Services), gregd@unca.edu, 251-6333

Emily Ellis (Distance Learning Services), eellis@unca.edu, 251-6333

Chris Asbill (Equipment setup & circulation, duplication), casbill@unca.edu, 251-6996

John Myers (Moodle, course improvement), jmyers@unca.edu, 250-3885

Kent Thompson (Television production), thompson@unca.edu, 251-6425

Many thanks for all your help, patience, and understanding.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

A Digital Window on the Medieval World

“Thousands of medieval manuscripts have been digitized by libraries around the world. The trick has been finding them. Matthew Fisher, an assistant professor of English at the University of California at Los Angeles, thought up a solution: the Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts, a centralized online archive of holdings around the world.”

MIT's Management School Shares Teaching Materials Online

“Though some business schools charge for the “case studies” they develop as teaching aids, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that it is making a set of teaching materials available free online.”

U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology

“To help get colleges thinking about how they might adapt their teaching styles to the new ways students absorb and process information, Mr. Siemens and Peter Tittenberger, director of the center, have created a Web-based guide, called the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning.”

MIT Professors Approve Campuswide Policy to Publish Their Scholarly Articles Free Online

“Last week MIT’s professors voted unanimously to adopt a policy stating that all faculty members will deposit their scholarly research papers in a free, online university repository (in addition to sending them to scholarly journals), in an effort to expand access to the university’s scholarship.”

Posted by Susan at 2:54 PM | Permalink

“SHAW-SHOEMAKER” NOW AVAILABLE AT RAMSEY LIBRARY

Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the availability of the microfiche collection Early American Imprints, Series II: Shaw-Shoemaker, 1801-1819. The “Shaw-Shoemaker” collection is based on the classic American Bibliography, 1801-1819 compiled by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker and presents more than four million pages from more than 36,000 sources. This is considered one of the definitive resources for researching late 17th and early 18th century America.

We are very grateful to our generous and thoughtful colleagues at Appalachian State’s Belk Library for remembering us when they were able to upgrade to an online version of this collection which we, unfortunately, cannot afford. At least this valuable collection is now readily available for use in Asheville.

RECENT NOTES FROM THE PUBLISHING WORLD YOU MAY HAVE MISSED

University Press, With Amazon, Revives Out-of-Print Books
The University of Minnesota Press is announcing a new program to make almost every book it has ever published available on demand.

Book Drop: University Presses Report Fall in Sales
Net sales for books published by university presses fell more than 9 percent in the last half of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007, a survey found.

Physicists Set Plan in Motion to Change Publishing System
One signature at a time, national research agencies and university libraries have pledged to support a new system of publishing in high-energy physics that would replace expensive subscriptions to journals with membership in a nonprofit group.

The Undead Soul of Today's College Best-Seller List
“College students’ reading habits ain’t what they used to be, laments Ron Charles, a senior editor at The Washington Post’s Book World.”

Posted by Susan at 3:12 PM | Permalink

A Blessed and Happy New Year from all your friends and colleagues in Ramsey Library!

“OLD” ONLINE CATALOG UNAVAILABLE THRUSDAY, 1/8

Ramsey Library’s old and familiar online catalog will be unavailable most of the day Thursday, 1/8 in order to install a new catalog server at Appalachian State. You can, however, still search the library’s catalog by taking advantage of the Beta version of our new and much improved interface, AquaBrowser. You can access AquaBrowser from a link on the library’s home page or more directly by going to http://aquabrowser.wncln.org. Take it for a spin. We think you’ll be impressed. PLEASE NOTE: While the main server’s being replaced AquaBrowser will work but will not show call numbers.

A NEW GUIDE TO THE BEWILDERING QUESTION OF “FAIR USE”

In a mid-November release, the Chronicle of Higher Education announced that a new guide by American University’s Center for Social Media offers free legal advice to clarify the fair use provisions of copyright law “. . . —and its authors say that the "fair use" provisions of copyright law are more permissive than many professors may think.” The “Code of Best Practice in Fair Use for Media-Literacy Education” was created over 10 meetings involving more than 150 educators before being reviewed by a panel of lawyers “who are experts in fair use.” Be sure to check it out as well as other guides to the use and ownership of intellectual property at UNC Asheville’s intellectual property web site.

“Panel Issues Guide to Using Copyrighted Material in the Classroom”
Chronicle of Higher Education
11 November 2008

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education
American University Center for Social Media
UNC Asheville Intellectual Property/Copyright

UNC Asheville Intellectual Property/Copyright ~ Copyright Information

IS THE REIGN OF GREAT BOOKS OVER? AGAIN??

If you missed this in the Chronicle due to end-of-semester crunch, you may want to give a look to The Chronicle Review’s December 19, 2008 essay, “What Ails Literary Studies; Reading’s Next Chapter; Great Books and the Consensus Canon Breathe Their Last.” The essay also asks “What will take their place?” Well, whatever it is, NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY hopes we already have it! See where you stand on the argument!

“What Ails Literary Studies”
The Chronicle Review
December 19, 2008

Posted by Susan at 5:54 PM | Permalink

ELECTION DATA ANALYSIS

NOTES FROM RAMSEY is pleased to thank its newest reporter, Merianne Epstein, for sharing most timely information about a new web resource. The University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab recently announced a collaboration with Google as part of a project to share historical data for U.S. presidential elections. The data comes from a standard source, VOTING AMERICA: UNITED STATES POLITICS, 1840-2008. “Google will make digital maps of presidential elections from 1980 to 2004 available in Google Earth. These maps detail how people voted in every county in the United States, providing far more detail and information than what is currently available in Electoral College maps. The voting returns are also paired with population data—including information on race, age, gender and income levels—in every county, allowing people to examine the factors that affected voting in any given election.” “Anyone can access the Google Earth layer by going to Google's 2008 Election site, Google 2008 U.S. Election.”

In a complementary discussion, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “The Wired Campus” alluded to the University of Richmond/Google project before asking “As more scholars try similar map-based data projects, should they use Google as a platform?” You can join that discussion at:

Is Google Earth Becoming a Platform for Academic Scholarship?

WIKIPEDIA REVISITED

This is a bit dated but NOTES FROM RAMSEY loves anything to do with WIKIPEDIA. Back on April 10, the Chronicle’s “The Wired Campus” reported that the venerable Oxford University Press’ publisher, Niko Pfund (glad this is in writing!), “. . . paid Wikipedia the ultimate compliment: He compared it to the Oxford English Dictionary.” Pfund went on to note that “After all, the Oxford English Dictionary, arguably the greatest reference work in the English language…found its origins in a wiki model, whereby scholars put out the word to English speakers far and wide that they would welcome hard evidence of the earliest appearances of English words.”

And the best part is that you can find links both to the OED and Wikipedia via the library’s tried and true web site. Check it out at:

Ramsey Library
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/

Publisher Compares Wikipedia to Oxford English Dictionary

Posted by Brandy at 2:33 PM | Permalink

LIBRARY IMPROVEMENTS

Recent NOTES FROM RAMSEY have shared information on formative plans to create more user-friendly library space and provide for a “Collaborative Learning Commons” (see http://facstaff.unca.edu/sinclair/spaceplan/). Most recently we invited you to see the more open current periodicals area which is one step along the path of converting that space to the “Collaborative Learning Commons.” Last week we took a next step by moving current newspapers from current periodicals to what I think of as the far, left-hand corner of the library’s main floor. This was done to afford our newspaper readers with a quieter, less-trafficked environment in what will be the eventual new home for all current periodicals, probably by next summer. In the meantime, check out the new newspaper reading area which will soon include a new package of popular magazines. From the old newspaper reading area, check out the two, new plasma screen work areas for students. Each will allow students to project work from a laptop or fixed station computer or to view instructional web sites.

NEW INFORMATION LITERACY/OUTREACH LIBRARIAN

NOTES FROM RAMSEY is delighted to announce the library’s newest colleague, Heather Stewart Harvey, who has accepted the position of Information Literacy & Outreach Librarian who started 4 August. Heather comes to us from AB Tech where she has been working as a Reference and Instructional Librarian. Before that, she had a wide array of experiences working as a public librarian, a paralegal, a translator in Madrid, and a teacher in Barranquilla, Colombia, to name just a few. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from University of California, Davis, and earned her M.L.I.S. degree from San Jose State University. Please join us in welcoming Heather to our community.

Heather Stewart Harvey
Ramsey Library 128
e: hharvey@unca.edu
v: 251.6632

Posted by Site Administrator at 2:17 PM | Permalink

LIBRARY IMPROVEMENTS
You’ll recall from the previous NOTES FROM RAMSEY our plans to improve the appearance of the current periodicals area while beginning the evolution of that area into a Collaborative Learning Commons. We very much appreciate your patience with any disruption or inconvenience the work may have caused you, but are very pleased to invite you by the library to see the results. With a tremendous amount of hard work and creativity, Bryan Sinclair, Laurie Edwards, Sammy Hughes, Noel Jones, and Jason Reed planned the project and put a lot of physical effort into moving periodicals and even ranges of shelving. NOTES FROM RAMSEY congratulates and thanks them for a job very well done!

When you get a chance, be sure to stop by and see what you think. For more on future planning, check out Bryan Sinclair’s “space planning project” page at http://facstaff.unca.edu/sinclair/spaceplan/.

NEW ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCE
Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the availability of a new electronic data base. GreenFILE offers well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more. The database provides indexing and abstracts for more than 384,000 records, as well as Open Access full text for more than 4,700 records. From the library home page, you can find GreenFILE under the “sciences” listing of electronic resources.

GreenFile

“MY READING HISTORY”
In collaboration with our WNCLN partners (the libraries at ASU & WCU) we have enabled a new function on the online catalog, 'My Reading History'. If you choose to use this feature, after you enable your Reading History, the system will start collecting a list of items you check out from the library from the that time. Items currently checked out at the time of opting in will not be added to your reading history. Please note that Reading History is set so that you must log into your library account and enable Reading History by clicking the Opt In link. You may then opt out at any time by choosing that option. The system will not let you opt out until you have deleted your entire reading history list. You may also delete selected circulation history entries at any time by checking the entry in the *mark* column and clicking the "Delete Marked" link or delete all circulation history entries by clicking this "Delete all" link.

PLEASE NOTE: Deliberately, the library currently does not retain a record of materials you’ve checked out beyond the record when you were the last person to check an item out. The next time it circulates, your information is permanently separated from the item record. We do this to ensure the greatest feasible privacy for our patrons. While all circulation data is confidential, it is always subject to disclosure in response to legally executed search warrants or subpoenas, and, in some cases, requests for information under the Patriot Act. If you do choose to take advantage of the “My Reading History” feature, its contents will be subject to the same legal requests for records.

See “my account” in the right block on the catalog search screen.

GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS REPORT
For those of you who have been waiting, the 2007 / 2008 edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report has finally arrived and is available in Reference under the call number REF/HF114.G559.

Posted by Brandy at 10:11 AM | Permalink

LIBRARY IMPROVEMENTS

During the week of June 23 we expect to begin a project to improve the appearance of the current periodicals area while beginning the evolution of that area into a Collaborative Learning Commons. A construction company will be assisting in lowering the current periodical shelving to create a more open feeling in the area while providing a sight line to plasma screens for use by students working collaboratively with laptops. We apologize in advance for the associated noise and inconvenience while this work proceeds in this area and in the bound periodicals area while the company helps us to reinforce damaged shelving. For current thinking on library space planning, check out Bryan Sinclair’s “space planning project” page at http://facstaff.unca.edu/sinclair/spaceplan/.

READER RATINGS

The WNCLN libraries recently agreed to implement the "Patron Ratings" feature has been turned on in the online catalog. The rating will appear in both the Browse screen display and in the full bibliographic record resulting from searches. In the latter it appears under the "Additional Info" option. To input your rating, clicking on the word "Rating" will take you to http://wncln.wncln.org/screens/ratings.html which provides the options. The Rating option is just that -- the ability to pick one of the options available. It does not include any option for inputting comments, etc.

When you click on the stars, you will be prompted to login. You can rate the material by clicking one of the five indicators to rate it on a scale of one to five, with one being the lowest and five being the highest rating. If you not logged in to My Millennium cannot change the rating of the material. However, once logged in, you can delete or change their own rating.

I’m on my way right now to provide my highly impartial rating to The Pencil : A History of Design and Circumstance by Henry Petroski. Check it out and then have fun!!

Posted by Site Administrator at 3:32 PM | Permalink

GREENWOOD DIGITAL COLLECTION

Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the availability of the Greenwood Digital Collection provided under the auspices and funding of NC LIVE. This is a collection of complete e-books all searchable by keyword, subject, author, title, or any Boolean search method. It includes the series Daily Life Through History, Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Authors, Historic Events of the 20th Century, Literature in Context, as well as American Slavery: A Composite Autobiography. This is brand new. I haven’t even found out how many titles are available and have barely played with it, but give it a try at:
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/scripts/redirect.pl?db=www.nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?rsrc=229.
At present, ACCESS IS LIMITED TO ON-CAMPUS, ONLY.

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MORE ON ELECTRONIC BOOKS

In most recent issue of its “practitioner’s journal,” EQ: Educause Quarterly, the preeminent association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology addresses the evolution of electronic books in relation to higher education. In a brief essay, Charles Edward Smith, a computer administrator, argues in favor to Google’s library scanning project in spite of the associated complexities including copyright and indexing. He concludes that “. . . the successful transfer of knowledge is the task that lies before us,” and that “Any effort that responsibly furthers the task benefits all of us.”

Smith, Edward Charles. “A Few Thought on the Google Books Library Project.” EQ, 31:1 (2008), 10-11.

On another and intriguing front, an Associate Professor of Information Technology Leadership explores “E-Texts in the Classroom.” You may not realize it, but several UNC Asheville faculty are using electronic texts as their textbook already giving their students the opportunity to “rent” these e-texts for the semester at very competitive rates. Opportunities are likely only to improve as does the technology. Check out EQ’s take and information about the new Kindle reader at:

Hannon, Charles. “E-Texts in the Classroom.” EQ, 31:1 (2008), 12-13.

AMAZON.COM ~ The Kindle

Levy, Steven. “The Future of Reading.” Newsweek, November 26, 2007, pp. 58-64.

Posted by Brandy at 2:49 PM | Permalink

My Antonia: The Story in Sign
The Friends of Ramsey Library and Ramsey Library are very pleased to announce our support of a very special event which is free and open to the public. Acclaimed actress and American Sign Language practitioner Barbara Bates Smith will perform passages of My Antonia in sign and spoken word with Marilyn Edwards, Telecommunications Specialist, Asheville office, N.C. Division of Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. This program is a component of the region’s celebration of the National Endowment of the Arts THE BIG READ, which is featuring Willa Cather’s My Antonia under the auspices of Western North Carolina’s Together We Read.

My Antonia: the Story in Sign (poster)
Sunday, March 16
2:30 PM
Reuter Center
UNCA Campus

AUDUBON’S BIRDS ONLINE
In its 4 March issue, the Chronicle’s “The Wired Campus” reported that Pitt’s Digital Research Library “. . . used a high-resolution scanner to create the digital set (of Audubon’s 435 birds) for the Web, along with reprints from Audubon’s Ornithological Biography, his five-volume text describing each of the birds.” “The naturalist John James Audubon attempted, in the 19th century, to paint every species of North American bird. He got through 435 of them before running out of time and money.” Only 120 sets of the large, hand-colored works are known to exist. To view the plates and text directly, go to the University of Pittsburgh’s beautiful Audubon’s Birds of America.

Audubon's 435 Birds Mounted Online at Pitt

AND FROM THE SHADIER SIDE OF ACADEME
The Chronicle’s “Today’s News” of 6 March reported that a researcher at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has been suspended for fabricating data which “. . . appear in two papers about ways to manipulate human cells that were published in highly influential journals. The articles by the scientist, Tae Kook Kim, appeared in 2005 and 2006 in Science and Nature Chemical Biology, and had both already been cited several times by authors of other articles, an indication of their importance.”

Biology Papers in Prominent Journals May Be Frauds

Posted by Brandy at 5:39 PM | Permalink

Negro Baseball League: Sounds and Voices of an Era

Tuesday, March 11, 2008, 12:30-1:30
Lipinsky Hall 018 (UNC Asheville Music Department)

Ramsey Library takes great pleasure in inviting you to "Negro Baseball League: Sounds and Voices of an Era," a celebration of the athletes who broke baseball's color barrier and the contributions of African Americans to sports, the arts, and culture. This event will feature music, poetry, spoken word, and history of the Negro Baseball League set to jazz accompaniment. Featured performers will include the UNC Asheville Big Band, directed by Dr. David Wilken, and the spoken word talents of UNC Asheville students, faculty, and staff. Lunchtime refreshments will be served. Contact event coordinators Anita White-Carter (whitecar@unca.edu; 251-6436) and Bryan Sinclair (sinclair@unca.edu; 251-6636) for more information.

This event is part of a week-long series of community events, "Spring Training: Baseball in Black and White," March 11-15, 2008, celebrating the Negro Baseball League and involving the Asheville Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Guild, UNC Asheville, Asheville High School, Asheville Middle School, Asheville Tourists, Lake Eden Arts Festival, Reid Center, YMI, Stephens-Lee Alumni Association, North Carolina Center for Creative Retirement, Center for Diversity Education, and a broad cross section of our Asheville community. The culminating event will feature a performance of “Pastime,” a new composition by Richard Danielpour based on a poem by Michael S. Harper, as part of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra’s program on Saturday, March 15th. Both the poem and music honor the Negro League and three of its biggest stars: Josh Gibson, Jackie Robinson, and Henry Aaron.

OPEN ACCESS

A recent item in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s News Blog noted that “Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (has) adopted a policy . . . that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online.” In a news release following the vote, “Stuart M. Shieber, a professor of computer science at Harvard who proposed the new policy, said . . . that the decision ‘should be a very powerful message to the academic community that we want and should have more control over how our work is used and disseminated.’” Check out the article and comments at “Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement.”

In other news from the world of “open access,” on February 15 the Chronicle reported that “The American Anthropological Association's journals will be disseminated through a for-profit publisher for at least the next five years, but scholars are still debating the merits of open access.” See “Some Anthropologists Continue the Slow Push Toward Open Access.”

And finally, in a landmark announcement, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently announced that “Columbia University Press has radically restructured its high-profile experiment with history monographs (and that) . . . Its books are being made available in two online forms, one of them open access.” See “Landmark Digital History Monograph Project Goes Open Access.”

Did you notice my theme?? J

Posted by Brandy at 3:50 PM | Permalink

From all in Ramsey Library we hope that you and yours enjoyed a safe and wonderful holiday season, and we wish you the very best of new years!!

STREAMING VIDEO ACCESS TO PBS PROGRAMS

As we begin an exciting new semester, Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the availability of some of the best and most popular PBS educational and documentary programming from accessible via the Internet. Provided by NC LIVE -- North Carolina’s virtual library cooperative -- students, faculty, and staff can view these programs via computer on campus, in classrooms, from home, or wherever you have access to the Internet (off campus users please note that a high speed internet connection and Flash Media Player 9.0 or higher are required to use this resource) . The collection offers nearly 250 PBS programs including the Emmy award winning series “American Experience” and “Frontline,” as well as groundbreaking programs such as Ken Burns’ “The Civil War, “ “Baseball,” and “Jazz.” We anticipate that a second group of videos will be available later in January 2008 that will include children’s programming from the highly acclaimed “Cyberchase” and “Liberty Kids” series.

The NC Live PBS Video Collection is accessible via the Ramsey Library web site. Choose Research Databases and find the NC Live PBS Collection listed under General Indexes, Audio/Video Resources or the title list.

Check them out at:

NC LIVE Media Collection
http://0-media.nclive.org.wncln.wncln.org/

RAMSEY OFFERS RSS FEEDS

Hard at work toward the end of the fall semester, Ramsey Library and the WNCLN network now offer RSS (really simple syndication?) feeds. Check it out at http://wncln.wncln.org/screens/feeds_example.html or go to any WebPac search screen and click on 'Our RSS feeds' in the right-hand (crème colored) box. If you have any suggestions for additional feeds, please contact Janet Ferguson (jferguso@unca.edu) or Brandy Bourne (bbourne@unca.edu) in Ramsey Library.

SCIENCE & JSTOR

Good news! Our friends at JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org/) have just announced that the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and JSTOR reached an agreement at the end of 2007 under which Science will continue its participation in JSTOR (read online availability via Ramsey Library). Science will be available with a 5-year moving wall. In addition, JSTOR officials expect to introduce more opportunities within the JSTOR site for users to link directly to Science's website from Science legacy content (backfiles) located in JSTOR.

Posted by Brandy at 11:19 AM | Permalink

THANKSGIVING HOURS ~ RAMSEY LIBRARY

Tuesday, November 20 8 a.m. – 9 p.m.

Wednesday, November 21 8 a.m. -- 6 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 22 -- Saturday, Nov. 24 CLOSED

Sunday, Nov. 25 1p.m. – midnight

NEW DISTANCE LEARNING TECHNOLOGY

Greg Dillingham reports that UNCA’s Distance Learning Services has been selected as one of nine NCREN locations (out of 24) to receive new Polycom High Definition (HD) video conferencing systems this fall. Greg will deploy the units in our RBH 136 teleconference room and the camera and microphones associated with this unit will actually be controlled from within the room via remote control. Look for this, soon.

A BIT MORE DEPRESSING NEWS

Today’s eChronicle notes that a report scheduled for release today by the National Endowment for the Arts finds that “Americans aren't just reading fewer books, but are reading less and less of everything, in any medium.” Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, writes in the report’s preface, that "Most alarming . . . both reading ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates." Read all about it, if you can, at:

Americans Are Closing the Book on Reading, Study Finds
http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/11/742n.htm

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NC COPY OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS
This is “Bill of Rights Week” at UNCA featuring the exhibit of North Carolina’s copy. Be sure to check out history, resources and campus events at http://www.unca.edu/bill-of-rights/. Lindsay Hearn and many on campus have put in a lot of work and arranged stimulating programming for the campus and the Asheville community. Be sure to join in and encourage your students to take advantage of this unique local opportunity.

UNCA ON THE RIGHT TRACK
An article in yesterday’s eChronicle reports that this year’s National Survey on Student Engagement shows that “Special experiences like study abroad and undergraduate research make a real difference . . . .” Check it out. Many thanks to Bruce Larson for spotting this!!

“Helicopter Parents Help Students, Survey Finds: Study abroad, research, and big projects are said to improve learning”
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i11/11a00104.htm

ON THE GLOOMIER SIDE
Say it ain’t so ~ especially about UNCA students, but a recent note in the Chronicle’s “Wired Campus” reports that “Michael L. Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, has posted another YouTube video about how students learn. This latest one was produced with 200 of his students and is more provocative than his first video, uploaded to YouTube eight months ago, since it seems to indicate that higher education—-or perhaps just Kansas State University—-is failing to engage students.”

Kansas State U. Students Read Half of Class Material
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2462/kansas-state-u-students-read-half-of-class-material?at

Posted by Brandy at 9:18 AM | Permalink

IMPROVED ELECTRONIC RESOURCE

The library is very pleased to announce the availability of a new version of Infotrac, long one of our most useful and popular sources for journal articles in all disciplines. The new version, Academic OneFile, has nearly twice the content, indexing Over 8,000 academic journals, the majority in full-text, available in HTML and PDF formats. Covered subject areas include the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, and literature. Other features: Persistent urls so you can add an article link to an email or web page (TIP: use the "bookmark" link to do this), Email & RSS search alerts and Direct links to JSTOR & Web of Science content. Read more about it at:

Ramsey Library News
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/mt/2007/09/new_eresource_infotrac_onefile.html

OneFile Web Site
http://gale.cengage.com/pdf/facts/AcademicOneFile.pdf

NEW BOOK ABOUT ASHEVILLE

Helen Wykle, Curator of Special Collections, is very pleased to announce an exciting program!!

EVENT: Nan K. Chase, author Reads from her new book "Asheville: A History"
WHERE: D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections
WHEN: October 22, 2007
TIME: 6:00 p.m.

RECEPTION AND BOOK-SIGNING TO FOLLOW

Nan Chase’s exciting new book published by McFarland & Co., a North Carolina publishing company, uses a substantial number of images from the UNCA Special collections and is one of the first well-researched books to look at Asheville's urban development with a fresh and critical eye. See http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3176-2 and also the recent note regarding her reading at Malaprops, Saturday Oct. 6th. http://www.malaprops.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=storeevents&eventId=358219

For more information, visit the Special Collections web site at:
http://toto.lib.unca.edu/WNC_women/chase_nan_k.htm

NOT THAT ANYONE THOUGHT COMPUTERS MADE THINGS EASIER, BUT . . .

From the 17 August Chronicle of Higher Education ~ “Shakespeare didn't have a word processor, but almost all writers today do. Scholars must play a major role in deciding how to preserve and study the various electronic versions of literary works, writes Matthew Kirschenbaum, an associate professor of English at the University of Maryland at College Park.”

“Hamlet.doc? Literature in a Digital Age”
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i50/50b00801.htm

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GOOGLE – READ ALL ABOUT IT!!
Want to know more about GOOGLE than you can find out by “Googling?” Check out Ramsey Library’s blog and Brandy Bourne’s posting “NEW READINGS on Google.” You’ll find everything from The Google Story and Google Hacks to the more sociological The Search: How Google ant Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Changed our Culture!

NEW READINGS on Google
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/mt/2007/09/google.html

IMPORTANT NEW SOURCE FOR SPORTS & HEALTH
Ramsey Library recently added the electronic resource SPORTDiscus, “the world's leading database in sport, health, fitness and sports medicine … providing access to fulltext and bibliographic references in such areas as sport medicine, physical education, coaching and training, arts and history, corporate wellness, engineering and health and safety.” This electronic and remotely accessible database “has over 700,000 qualified references from thousands of international periodicals, books, e-journals, conference proceedings, theses, dissertations, and websites as well as has direct links to fulltext articles.”

SPORTDiscus
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/scripts/redirect.pl?db=0-search.epnet.com.wncln.wncln.org/login.aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=ehost&defaultdb=s3h

NEW WEB RESOURCES
In separate articles, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently announced the advent of two new web resources that are of significant interest to higher education:

* On August 27 the Chronicle reported that “NASA’s storehouse of historic photographs, film, and video will be digitized and made available free on the Internet with the assistance of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, according to a written statement released Thursday by the two organizations.” See more at:

http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/scripts/redirect.pl?db=chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2335?=atwc.

* A bit earlier, on August 6, the Chronicle announced the debut of the online “Open Library” ~ “. . . a vast digital card catalog, (where) Web surfers will be able to edit entries, much like in Wikipedia . . . (and which) will also collect books in the public domain, a mission that will bring the library into competition with Google’s much-publicized book-scanning service.” Read more at: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2235?=atwc.

Posted by Brandy at 10:03 AM | Permalink

FRIDAY HUMOR

A treat for the end of your week ~ this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the editors of Motto magazine have come up with a list of “the 10 best college mottos” while casting critical aspersions towards the selection of Stanford’s “The wind of freedom blows” for being somewhat vulnerable to mockery. Following in the tradition of light night talk shows, the Chronicle then speculates on those that might not have “made the cut?” My personal favorites:

"Catering to 'C' students since 1987"
"Where the ill informed become somewhat-less-doltish"
"Now with fewer books!"

Check it out at:

“Dept. of Bad Ideas”
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i03/03a00701.htm

“The Top Ten College Mottos”
http://www.whatsyourmotto.com/Blogs/2007/08/08/college_mottos/

RESEARCH ON UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH

If you haven’t seen it, you’ll want to check out “What Good Is Undergraduate Research, Anyway” in the 17 August Chronicle of Higher Education. Author Lila Guterman notes that “In the past few years, a small cadre of social scientists have, with grants from some of the largest supporters of undergraduate science research, begun systematically studying the effects on students. Three large studies verified some widely held notions about undergraduate research but challenged other assumptions.”

What Good Is Undergraduate Research, Anyway?
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i50/50a01201.htm

Research on Undergraduate Research
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i50/50a01401.htm

AROUND THE STATE

The 7 September Chronicle reports that a “major biotechnology center in a downtrodden North Carolina mill town (Kannapolis) will test supporters' beliefs about economic renewal. Read all about it at:

Building a New Economy With Biotechnology
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i02/02a00101.htm?=attw

Posted by Brandy at 12:44 PM | Permalink

All the folks in Ramsey Library extend a warm welcome to all the new members of our community, welcome back those who were away over the summer, and congratulate all who stayed around for all their hard work. We wish you all the most fulfilling and joyful year.

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CITS

You’ll recall that late last spring Distance Learning Services (Greg Dillingham & Emily Ellis) as well as John Myers (Instructional Technology Consultant) moved organizationally though not physically to become part of the Library’s Media Services under the able leadership of Rudy Moorrees. Recognizing the broadening of mission and following an agonizing search for just the right name, we’re pleased to announce that this new grouping of old friends and reliable professionals is now known as CLASSROOM & INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT (CITS). Be sure to visit their web site.

http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/about/cits.html

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DISTANCE LEARNING CHAMPIONS

As one of the smaller campuses served by NCREN, the North Carolina academic internet system, you wouldn’t necessarily expect us to be among the leaders in the number of total video hours. Nevertheless, Greg Dillingham reports that UNCA’s Distance Learning Services was among the top two institutions for fiscal 2007 with 1,774 hours second only to UNC Wilmington’s 1,798. And we’ve been among the top two nine years running! Many thanks and congratulations to Greg, Emily Ellis, and their student workers. Check out the numbers:

Total Video Hours by Site FY 2007
http://facstaff.unca.edu/kuhlman/2007_site_hours_%20by_month.XLS

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NEW READINGS ON ACADEMIA

The previous issue of NOTES FROM RAMSEY proudly announced the library’s new blog and news section featured in the lower left corner of the library main page < http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/>. As we begin the new year, you’ll want to check out the recent listing of new readings on academia. Who knows? We may find just the thing to make us even better?

New Readings of Academia
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/mt/2007/08/new_readings_on_academia.html

Posted by Brandy at 11:20 AM | Permalink

LIBRARY BLOG & NEWS

If you haven’t already seen it, you’ve GOT to take a look at the library’s new blog and news section featured in the lower left corner of the library main page < http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/>. Brandy Bourne, the library’s Web Services Librarian, has worked hard in perfecting this significant addition to the library page and her library colleagues are endeavoring to populate the service with new, useful, and interesting information. When you click on “NEWS” you’ll find yourself in the most recent issue of NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY and access to an archive preserving all of my mistakes (see especially my having left the sport out of Leigh Svenson’s recent BRONZE MEDAL at the NATIONAL SENIOR GAMES – badminton for those of you who may not know Leigh well). You’ll also find more exciting content such as listings of NEW READINGS posted by Brandy and complete with book jackets and hot links to the catalog record. Brandy’s recent suggestions have included New Readings on American History, American Life, Immigration, and Men & Fatherhood. You’ll also find links to other features such as UNCA student Sasha Hussey’s animated film featured on UNC-TV’s North Carolina Visions and “Bluets & Wilma Dykeman” in Special Collections.

Many thanks to Brandy for all her work and congratulations on a job very well done. We’re very proud of her achievement.

Posted by Brandy at 11:17 AM | Permalink

RAMSEY’S LEIGH SVENSON CONQUERS AGAIN
Continuing his celebrated career, Ramsey Library’s own LEIGH SVENSON and his partner recently claimed the BRONZE MEDAL for their age group at the NATIONAL SENIOR GAMES in Louisville, KY. Congratulations Leigh!!

ARTSTOR EXPANDS ACCESS TO IMAGES
Looking to spruce up your manuscripts?) ARTstor and The Metropolitan Museum of Art began a new collaboration, Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) that allows scholars at ARTstor participating institutions (including UNCA) to download and use, free of charge, high-resolution digital images for academic publications. Initially, nearly 1,700 images representative of the renowned Metropolitan Museum's encyclopedic collection became available through the ARTstor interface to users at all ARTstor participating institutions. For more information and to register see:
http://www.artstor.org/info/tools/tools_iap.jsp

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE
Students of the life sciences will want to check out the remarkably ambitious ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE, an amazingly ambitious web venture that the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION has described as planning to catalog over the next 10 years all 1.8 million species of plants and animals known to reside on earth. Better start reading early or you’ll never catch up!!
An Awfully Ambitious Encyclopedia
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2055

Posted by Brandy at 4:28 PM | Permalink

PROPOSED WITHDRAWAL OF BOUND JOURNALS

You’ll recall a mid-April email (http://facstaff.unca.edu/kuhlman/Bound_Journals.pdf) describing emerging and evolving plans for Ramsey Library and, most immediately, the library’s recommendation that we withdraw bound journals to make space for future development. You’ll also recall that these bound copies of paper journals and microforms duplicate “. . . holdings that we currently and will continue to subscribe to in a stable electronic format (JSTOR) and for which there is a duplicate and readily available hard-copy at either ASU or WCU (in some instances, both).”

Many thanks for your thoughtful responses. As a result, the library will retain the bound, paper copies of the following titles:

Art Journal

Bound: v. 32, 1972/73 - v. 64, 2005

Classical Journal
Bound: v. 52, 1956/57Bound: v. 55, 1959/60 - v. 71, 1975/76

Once again, many thanks for your help.

Related Links:
Proposed Withdrawal of Bound Journal (email of 4/17/07)
http://facstaff.unca.edu/kuhlman/Bound_Journals.pdf

Proposed Journal Backfile Withdrawals (Microform and Bound)
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/collections/journal_withdraw07.html

Library Space Planning Project
http://facstaff.unca.edu/sinclair/spaceplan/

Collaborative Learning Commons Proposal
http://facstaff.unca.edu/sinclair/spaceplan/clc.html

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Posted by Site Administrator at 4:52 PM | Permalink

EXTENDED LIBRARY HOURS

Based on student interest and library night supervisor Jon Wheeler's willingness, Ramsey Library extended evening hours to 1 A.M. beginning Sunday, April 29. Updated library hours for the end of semester are as follows:

Sunday, April 29
1 pm - 1 am
Monday, April 30 - Thursday, May 3
8 am - 1 am
Friday, May 4
8 am - 9 pm (Final exams begin)
Saturday, May 5
10 am - 9 pm
Sunday, May 6
11 am - 1 am
Monday, May 7 - Wednesday, May 9
8 am - 1 am
Thursday, May 10
8 am - Midnight (Last day of final exams)
Friday, May 11
8 am - 6 pm

Many thanks to Jon and the Public Services staff serving our students in this way.

Continue reading "NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY; 2007-9" »

Posted by Brandy at 11:40 AM | Permalink

DON'T MISS THIS EXHIBIT

It's worth a special trip. The next time you're near Ramsey Library stop by opposite the circulation desk and spend some time with Biology's Professor Micael Stuart exquisite wood carvings. He's only been carving for four years, but you'll be amazed by his artistic representations fo wildlife carved in local woods. And, don't miss his sense of humor, either!!

Continue reading "Notes from Ramsey Library; 2007-8" »

Posted by Brandy at 3:30 PM | Permalink

WOMEN’S HISTORY RESOURCES

Well, I’ve managed to miss Women’s History Month (March), but better late than never, I hope. You and your students will want to visit new slide show on Ramsey Library’s “Women's History Resources in D. Hiden Ramsey Library's Special Collections” page. Many thanks to Brandy Bourne, Web Services Librarian, Helen Wykle, Curator of Special Collections, and Jamie Patterson, Special Collections Assistant, for another job very well done in sharing the collections’ contents with us!

Women's History Resources in D. Hiden Ramsey Library's Special Collections

See also:

The National Women's History Project (NWHP)

Continue reading "NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY; 2007-7" »

Posted by Brandy at 5:42 PM | Permalink

RENOVATION UNDERWAY!

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS CLOSED MARCH 26-30

Ramsey Library Special Collections is transitioning to new shelving which will better accommodate our archival boxes and will expand and refine our available space to better accommodate the new collections we have received over the last half-decade. Unfortunately, for what is a large project we were unable to schedule our vendor during spring break or after classes. We very much regret any inconvenience you or your students may experience and will make every effort to accommodate students and faculty seeking reference assistance. We expect to have our collections back on the new shelves by March 30, but will still have limited time to serve walk-in patrons. It is expected that we will be in full operation by the week of April 9. For an appointment or further information, please call 251-6645.

Please note and remind your students that well over three-quarters of our finding aides are available online at http://toto.lib.unca.edu and http://www.wncheritage.org. Many of the online collections contain full-text and images and access may be satisfied by the electronic surrogate.

Thank you for your patience with this process during a busy semester. We invite all to come see us when the move is completed and re-familiarize yourself with the depth of primary source material that is available for research by students, faculty, and the general public.

Continue reading "NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY; 2007-6" »

Posted by Brandy at 5:51 PM | Permalink

TEXTBOOKS IN THE UNC SYSTEM

In an article titled “Who Controls Textbook Choices?” in the March 16 edition of INSIDE HIGHER ED (http://insidehighered.com/) reports that the “U. of North Carolina may adopt system wide rules limiting faculty options (with respect to textbooks)...” and that it “...is considering adopting a plan that would require all its campuses to create a guaranteed rental or buyback program for large, lower-division courses.” Read more at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/16/unc.

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INFORMATION LITERACY

An article in the 9 March CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION describes the academe’s growing emphasis on the importance of information literacy and reflects much of UNCA’s current philosophy and practice. You will find an important discussion of current developments in assessing to what extent institutions successfully equip their students for a life of continuing and independent discovery enabled by information literacy – a topic UNCA will need to confront.

“Information Navigation 101”

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i27/27a03801.htm

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OUR CHANGING INFORMATION ENVIRONMENT

Two essays in THE CHRONICLE REVIEW of 9 March grapple with issues of our current information age. In “The Intellectual in the Infosphere,” Peter J. M. Nicholson. president and chief executive officer of the Council of Canadian Academies, asks if “In the rapidly growing infosphere, has the wisdom of crowds left no room for the sagacity of experts?” In the following article, Edward Tenner argues that “Books, newspapers, and other printed media have enduring advantages, even in the digital age . . .” – especially because they’re more difficult to produce.

“The Intellectual in the Infosphere”

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i27/27b00601.htm

“The Prestigious Inconvenience of Print”

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i27/27b00701.htm

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Posted by Site Administrator at 10:14 AM | Permalink

AS STUDENTS BEGIN THOSE PAPERS . . .

In the "long ago past," before the Web at any rate, instructors combated student use of encyclopedia articles and other non-scholarly resources in papers. A common admonition was that student authors could only use materials from "refereed journals." Today's internet-enabled student often poses an even greater challenge. You might want to check out a recent report in the Chronicle of Higher Education that notes that "THIS SPRING, STUDENTS IN HISTORY COURSES at Middlebury College will find a new disclaimer on syllabi warning them that, while Wikipedia is fine for some background research, it is not to be used as a primary source."

SEE http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/02/2007020101t.htm
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HISTORICAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES ONLINE

When you're students are looking for just the right source for that historical data to verify what they've found on Wikipedia, send them to Ramsey Library's Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition (Cambridge University Press). There they'll find the hard data on population, work and welfare, economic data, government and international relations from colonial times to the present.

http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/scripts/redirect.pl?db=hsus.cambridge.org

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STUDENT RETENTION

First among UNC system priorities approved by the Board of Governors in May 2006 is "Student Success: Access, Retention, Graduation, and Affordability." An ad in Presidency, a publication of the American Council on Education, describes the contents of a relatively new book by stating that "In spite of all of the programs and services to help retain students, only 50 percent of those who enter higher education actually earn a bachelor's degree, according to the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Enrollment management and the retention of students remain top priorities of federal and state government, colleges, universities, and parents of students who are attending college and of students themselves. This book offers a formula for student success intended to assist colleges and universities in retaining and graduating students." College Student Retention: Formula for Student Success Edited by Alan Seidman is available in Ramsey Library under the call number LC148.2 .C65 2005. You may also be interested in:

Retaining African Americans in higher education: challenging paradigms for retaining students, faculty, and administrators / edited by Lee Jones Publisher Sterling, Va.: Stylus Pub., 2001, ASU/LC148.2 .R48 2001

Changing student attendance patterns: challenges for policy and practice / Jacqueline E. king, Eugene L. Anderson, Melanie E. Corrigan, editors. San Francisco, CA : Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2003, UNCA/LB2331.72 .N48 no.121 2003

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RESEARCH RESTRICTIONS

On March 2, the electronic Chronicle of Higher Education reported that "PUBLIC ACCESS TO PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS came under scrutiny in the U.S. House of Representatives as a panel of archivists, historians, and lawyers told a subcommittee about threats to access, and lawmakers introduced two bipartisan bills that would reform key aspects of how presidential documents are preserved and controlled." For more, see

http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/03/2007030201n.htm

Posted by Site Administrator at 11:45 AM | Permalink

The Information Commons and the Future of Innovation, Scholarship, and Creativity

Please excuse the late invitation. If interested and if time permits, I hope you will all be able to join in an EDUCAUSE online seminar entitled “The Information Commons and the Future of Innovation, Scholarship, and Creativity.” The program will be from 1 to 2 pm, Thursday, 2/15 in the Kimmel Lab (behind the Reference Desk on the main floor) in Ramsey Library.

This seminar will discuss how intellectual property law and communications policy affect competition, innovation, creativity, and free speech. Gigi B. Sohn, cofounder and president of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization that addresses the public’s stake in the convergence of communications policy and intellectual property law, will discuss current policy debates before Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and the U.S. Copyright Office that could impact these values and the higher education community.

For more information see http://www.educause.edu/LIVE073.

Posted by Brandy at 10:53 AM | Permalink

BLACK HISTORY MONTH AT RAMSEY LIBRARY

Take just a moment to visit a very special new web page featuring Black History Resources in D. Hiden Ramsey Library's Special Collections. You’ll find an excellent slide show crafted by the library’s Web Services Librarian Brandy Bourne drawing on Special Collections’ images and the expertise of Curator of Special Collections Helen Wykle.

http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/projects/slideshow.html

Collection: Heritage of the Black Highlanders
photographs, oral histories, and ephemera (late 1800s - 1970s)

Lucy S Herring Collection
personal correspondence, photographs and papers of educator Lucy S. Herring

Voices of Asheville Oral History Collection
abstracts and transcripts of recordings held in Special Collections

"Making Congregation out of Segregation: the African American Culture and Community in Asheville, early 20th century" research conducted by student, Jenny Wallace

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THE HIGHLAND MESSENGER

The next time you're by Ramsey Café for a coffee and Danish, or if you just need a break, be sure to stop by the current newspaper area on the main floor of Ramsey Library. There you’ll find four pages of the Highland Messenger newspaper of 1841, vol. II, issue 15, an early Whig newspaper published in Asheville, North Carolina, representing one of the earliest newspapers to be printed in western North Carolina. Only the North Carolina Spectator and Western Advertiser and the Carolina Gazette, both Rutherfordton, NC newspapers, appear to be earlier. The pages (two, front and back), in remarkably good condition, contain a prospectus of the newspaper, want ads, local information on slaves, education, women's rights (or non-rights), medical practice, political commentary, humor, and other topics of current interest and entertainment. The early newspaper, published weekly, was priced at two dollars and fifty cents per annum in advance (or "THREE dollars if payment be delayed of the receipt of the 10th number from the time of subscribing.") The circulation is unknown, but it is known that the city of Asheville around 1841 had a population of approximately 500 people. In 1860 the population had more than doubled to approximately 1,100. The newspaper, which began in 1840 and apparently persisted until 1848, when it ceased, would have been published during a time of rapid growth and change in the city. During its brief life the newspaper was also published as the Asheville Messenger, later to be called, simply, The Messenger, from July 22, 1842, to February 3, 1843. The last known issue of the paper was on August 17, 1848.

The newspaper was donated in a matted and framed condition which was not archival. The decision was made to remove the paper from its original housing and to place it in a better archival housing that would allow for the two sides of each of the pages to be seen. Little regarding the provenance of the newspaper is known. Andrew Fischel, nephew of Richard Richards passed the framed paper to his uncle and Richard "Dick" Richards presented the item to the university in September of 2006. Small tears and holes had been repaired with archival tape, but other than these minimal degradations and the loss of pages [?], the newspaper is in remarkable condition for its age. Fragments were removed from the original frame, enclosed in museum glass, framed so that both sides of the two pages might be viewed, and the whole frame, mounted for public viewing by the UNCA facilities staff.

http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/mss/richards/richards_highland_messenger.htm

Posted by Brandy at 10:55 AM | Permalink

ENDNOTE WEB

Before the Holidays, Ramsey Library was very pleased to announce the availability of the bibliographic software package EndNote Web for free use by UNCA students, faculty, and staff. We want to repeat at the risk of sending you too much mail because this can of such great assistance to you and your students.

Provided as a complement to the citation database WEB OF KNOWLEDGE (i.e., WEB OF SCIENCE), EndNote Web is a Web-based reference organizer, and, as the company claims, "It is the ideal, time-saving solution for students and researchers." With EndNote Web you can:

* Search ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed and hundreds of library OPACs directly
* Import references from hundreds of online bibliographic databases
* Store up to 10,000 records per user account
* Edit reference detail — add notes and keywords, modify any field
* Use over 2,300 publishing styles to format in-text citations and bibliographies
* Cite While You Write™ in Microsoft Word (requires plug-in)
* Format papers in other word processors using RTF (rich text format) files
* Simplify collaboration with colleagues — share EndNote Web folders
* Use EndNote Web toolbars in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla® to access your reference library in one click, and capture citation data easily (requires plug-in)
* Transfer references between EndNote Web and EndNote X seamlessly (desktop to Web or Web to desktop)

To find more information about
EndNote Web, click on / or follow the EndNote Web link under "Spotlight" on the Library home page
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/. Be sure to check the "For More Information" block on the right of the page. There you'll find a link to follow to "Learn more via recorded presentations." The 8 minute "Introduction to EndNote Web" is very useful and provides instructions on how to set up your account.

I (Jim) did set up an account so it is possible for the near illiterate. It can be confusing. If trying from on campus:

1. Click on "start using EndNote Web today" under "For more information" on the EndNote Web information page http://www.isiwebofknowledge.com/endnoteweb. That will take you to the ISI Web of Knowledge home page.
2. On the Web of Knowledge home page, look to the RIGHT where you'll find "Please Register for More Features." If you have not registered previously, click on "Sign in to access EndNote Web."
3. The next screen will ask for your full email address (e.g., kuhlman@unca.edu) which become your user name to access EndNote and for you to create an 8 character password. Be sure to click on the rules for password construction. This password must contain at least one of a certain set of characters.
4. That should do it.

If signing up from off campus you must access the ISI Web of Knowledge home page by going through the library page so that the proxy server will recognize that you're an authorized user. If you simply click the link under spotlight, you won't see the part of the page that let's you create an account. try these steps:

1. Go the the library home page, http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/.
2. Click on "Research Databases."
3. On the next screen, click on "Browse the Title List."
4. On the next screen, click on "S-Z".
5. On the next screen, click on "W."
6. On the next screen, finally, click on "Web of Science."
7. From here on out, it's the same as on campus access.

Please let us know if you have any questions or need any assistance. We hope that your semester is off to a great start.

Posted by Brandy at 11:08 AM | Permalink

ENDNOTE WEB

Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the availability of the bibliographic software package EndNote Web for free use by UNCA students, faculty, and staff. I wanted to let the bibliographically enthused members of our community know of EndNote's availability as soon as I could in case you find yourselves sated with holiday feasting and looking for a project far from the madding crowd.

Provided as a complement to the citation database WEB OF KNOWLEDGE (i.e., WEB OF SCIENCE), EndNote Web is a Web-based reference organizer, and, as the company claims, "It is the ideal, time-saving solution for students and researchers." With EndNote Web you can:

* Search ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed and hundreds of library OPACs directly
* Import references from hundreds of online bibliographic databases
* Store up to 10,000 records per user account
* Edit reference detail — add notes and keywords, modify any field
* Use over 2,300 publishing styles to format in-text citations and bibliographies
* Cite While You Write™ in Microsoft Word (requires plug-in)
* Format papers in other word processors using RTF (rich text format) files
* Simplify collaboration with colleagues — share EndNote Web folders
* Use EndNote Web toolbars in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla® to access your reference library in one click, and capture citation data easily (requires plug-in)
* Transfer references between EndNote Web and EndNote X seamlessly (desktop to Web or Web to desktop)

To find more information about
EndNote Web, click on / or follow the EndNote Web link under "Spotlight" on the Library home page
http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/. Be sure to check the "For More Information" block on the right of the page. There you'll find a link to follow to "Learn more via recorded presentations." The 8 minute "Introduction to EndNote Web" is very useful and provides instructions on how to set up your account.

I (Jim) did set up an account so it is possible for the near illiterate. It can be confusing. If trying from on campus:

1. Click on "start using EndNote Web today" under "For more information" on the EndNote Web information page http://www.isiwebofknowledge.com/endnoteweb. That will take you to the ISI Web of Knowledge home page. 2. On the Web of Knowledge home page, look to the RIGHT where you'll find "Please Register for More Features." If you have not registered previously, click on "Sign in to access EndNote Web." 3. The next screen will ask for your full email address (e.g., kuhlman@unca.edu) which become your user name to access EndNote and for you to create an 8 character password. Be sure to click on the rules for password construction. This password must contain at least one of a certain set of characters. 4. That should do it.

If signing up from off campus you must access the ISI Web of Knowledge home page by going through the library page so that the proxy server will recognize that you're an authorized user. If you simply click the link under spotlight, you won't see the part of the page that let's you create an account. try these steps:

1. Go the the library home page, http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/. 2. Click on "Research Databases." 3. On the next screen, click on "Browse the Title List." 4. On the next screen, click on "S-Z". 5. On the next screen, click on "W." 6. On the next screen, finally, click on "Web of Science." 7. From here on out, it's the same as on campus access.

Actually, I hope your holidays are too interesting and too filled with joy for you to bother with this, but . . . .

From all of us at Ramsey Library, the HAPPIEST OF HOLIDAYS!!

Posted by Site Administrator at 5:34 PM | Permalink

USING HUMANITIES LECTURE HALL
A reminder from the stalwart folks in Media Services – when you book the Humanities Lecture Hall for any kind of a program, please be sure to schedule media tech support with Media Services (media_request@unca.edu) (6996 or 6540). The new equipment requires trained support and your reservation via Will White do not complete the arrangements.

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HISTORY & THE BURGEONING USE OF DIGITAL MAPS

Historian and Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at U. of Virginia Edward L. Ayers confesses that when he announced that he was going to grad school in history his mom, a 5th grade teacher, asked "What for, honey? We already know what happened.” So you know this guy has to be believed!? Anyway, take a look at Dean Ayers’ article on the use of digital maps and GIS to make historical data more visual. There’s much here for the application of technology and visualization techniques for UNCA.

From the Chronicle dated November 10, 2006

With Digital Maps, Historians Chart a New Way into the Past
A push to make historical data more visual could yield a better understanding of events

“While other disciplines have found ways to represent complex phenomena using illustrations that overlay many types of information, Mr. Ayers says, history has for the most part focused on written narratives, linear stories that set forth an overriding argument. But since life is messy, and the lives of so many individuals are sure to be influenced by a variety of forces in ways that are hard to describe, pictures might prove to be history's next frontier.”

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i12/12a03301.htm

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UNIVERSITY PRESSES SET STANDARD FOR USE OF RECYCLED PAPER

As universities in general, and UNCA in particular, work ever harder to preserve and enhance our environment while serving as exemplars to our wider society, it’s good to note that scholarly publishing is helping to lead the way. This one you might want to share with your students.

From the Chronicle dated October 6, 2006

University Presses Set the Standard in Use of Recycled Paper

University presses are opting for recycled paper in their books, finding that they can do good while doing well.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i07/07a01901.htm

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Posted by Site Administrator at 5:47 PM | Permalink

NEW REFERENCE SOURCES FROM NC LIVE

You'll recall that Ramsey Library provides access to electronic products paid for by NC LIVE -- a collaboration of UNC system, public, community college, and private college libraries largely funded by the legislature.
These include some mainstays such as WorldCat, InfoTrac, and ABI-Inform and frees funds so that we can buy other materials you and your students need.
NC LIVE recently purchased some additional electronic reference sources which are available via the libraries web site . You'll find some of the titles in the Gale Virtual Reference Library more appropriate for K-12, some may be of particular interest to you or your students. The latest edition of the COLLEGE BLUE BOOK is available in this collection as well as several encyclopedias under "History." You'll also find the 9th edition of the AFRICAN AMERICAN ALMANAC, the 3rd ed. of the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOETHICS, and the 2004 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ISLAM AND THE MUSLIM WORLD. You'll find these and more listed under GALE VIRTUAL REFERENCE LIBRARY at:

http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/eres/erestitle.html

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CQ WEEKLY REPORT ONLINE

Another precious and important gift from our friends at NC LIVE is online, full-text access to the CQ (Congressional Quarterly) WEEKLY REPORT. The paper version and its annual cumulations into the CQ ALMANAC have long offered basic news and insiders' insights into goings on in the federal government. Give the online version a try if you're at all interested in national politics. Don't let your political science buddies use it up!

CQ WEEKLY REPORT: http://library.cqpress.com/index.php

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Posted by Site Administrator at 5:37 PM | Permalink