• February 2, 2012 at 10 am – 12 noon
• February 13, 2012 at  3 – 5 pm
• Boreham Library, Room 202

The Faculty Seminar Series will begin with a session entitled “Academic Research in the Electronic Library” on February 2 from 10 am – 12 noon and again (repeat session) on February 13 from 3-5 pm in the Boreham Library, Room 202. The first hour of this session will involve an overview of all of the services available for faculty involved in research activities. During the second hour, one-on-one assistance will be provided to faculty with specific research needs. The facilitators will be Robert Frizzell, Elizabeth Burden, Martha Coleman, Carolyn Filippelli, Dennis Van Arsdale, and Steven D. Shelton from the Boreham Library. Please contact phillip.russell@uafs.edu if you will be participating in this session so that preparations can be made.

We will be open regular hours Saturday (10-4) and Sunday (2-10) on January 14 and 15.

While the library is closed, materials may be returned to the green metal drop box on the north side of the Breedlove building.

PLEASE NOTE: due to construction, access directly to Waldron is temporarily blocked.  You can go around (or through) the Gardner Building, or around the Fullerton Administration building, and approach from the west instead.

This is being done for everyone’s safety, so we hope everyone will make allowances, especially around the heavy construction equipment and trucks moving around the building.  Please remember that workers in helmets and safety goggles, running construction equipment and trucks, may not be able to see you as easily as you see them.  Assume they cannot see you or avoid you, and please keep yourself and your classmates well out of their paths.

Access to the library is now from the sidewalk down from Vines/Gardner, and the construction contractors have installed an ADA-compliant ramp for wheelchairs and those who prefer not to use the steps.

Please pardon our dust and fencing!  This should be changing around August of 2012, when the first stage of the project is planned to open up with a new entrance on the southwest corner.

A number of the problems that come up for students trying to access your materials in the Library can be avoided with these tips.

Also, remember we have Electronic Reserves available online.

Search for free ebooks and find where you can download them.

Search for free audiobooks to find something great to listen to.

Want to spice up your PowerPoint?  Get some free music.

Or add some clip art (from books of it, or download online).

These sites were selected because they offer (at least some) free for use.

[graphic courtesy of clip art site TimTim]

There is an alternative!

Aside from the labs, most of the computers in the Library now run Windows 7, and the calculator is more versatile.

Check this article from TechRepublic on things like the Standard, Scientific, Programmer,  and Statistics modes.

You can show the History (under the View options), if you need to do long formulas or lists of figures.

You can can convert one kind of unit of measurement into another unit of measurement. The categories of units you can convert range from angle to weight/mass.

Under the Worksheets menu item, you have four additional worksheets for calculating:

• Mortgages
• Vehicle leases
• Fuel economy in miles
• Fuel economy in kilometers

Keep it in mind!

You can get an automatic email on just the subjects that interest you, as narrow as you want them, and only when something new that fits is available.

That’s right — YOU make the search, save it to your own library record, and set it to send you an email whenever something that exactly fits shows up.

Faculty — this also works with our Programs search for your subject area.

Set up searches for your major, for your hobby, for your interests.

All the instructions are here and you can log into your own library record here.

The Library now has downloadable ebooks available for use online, or on your computer (and many ebook readers).

Click here for the list.  By The Way: this list will be growing in the future!

You can read these online with any Internet-capable device that handles Adobe Acrobat Reader or a comparable PDF reader program.

You can also download the books and use them for up to 21 days with any device that can handle the free Adobe Digital Editions software.  The file will deactivate at the end of 21 days, but you can download a fresh one again.  (This preserves the rights of the copyright holders according to the ebook license.  21 days is our standard loan period.)

Click here for supported ebook readers.  You can also download the ADE software and read on your computer or netbook — click here for an article on using netbooks as ebook readers.

Note: some ebook readers, such as Kindle, focus primarily on their own ebook format.  The Library chose to use the Adobe Digital Editions format which runs on a wider variety of devices, including different ebook brands, AND computers using either Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) Windows Vista® (32-bit or 64-bit), Windows® 7 (32-bit or 64-bit), OR Mac OS X v10.4.10 or v10.5.  Also, any web browser with Adobe Acrobat Reader can use the ebooks online.

By The Way: you don’t need to download to read, so the computers in the Library don’t have the ADE software — you can read an ebook online.  If you need to install it on your own computer or ebook reader and can’t get it online, download the ADE file here to your device or USB flash drive, install it on your device, and then download the ebook file to your device.  We can’t guarantee it will work on everything, but let us know if you have a compatible computer, netbook, or ebook reader in the lists above and still have a problem.  This is new for us, too!

Open your Adobe Acrobat reader and select the Edit dropdown menu, and then select Preferences.

Click on Internet and check the box to “Display PDF in browser”.

internet settings

This should get you the left sidebar with the contents and all the NetLibrary options for your ebook.  You should also have the top bar with the page changing buttons.

Don’t want the left sidebar options?  With the ebook open, click and drag the border of the sidebar over to the far left, and the book page window will expand.

Want to print the book out?  Sorry, but copyright licensing won’t allow that.  You’ll be able to print only one page at a time.