Featured Databases. This Week’s Focus: Science Majors.

On Tuesday, the “Featured Databases” board in the Information Commons will feature two new databases. This week’s databases will be geared toward science majors (i.e. chemistry, biology, and physics but not the social sciences); they are Scirus and ScienceDirect.

Scirus is a free search engine specifically for science topics. With Scirus, you have access to general and specialized full-text journals, e-print collections, reports, and abstracts from more than 200 million science-related websites. For more information about Scirus, click here.

ScienceDirect allows you to access more than 1,800 full-text articles from peer-reviewed journals. You can often find articles that are still in press. The journals and reference works you have access to are exclusive to ScienceDirect. For more information about this database, click here.

Take some time to check out these and our other science-related databases, or click here for more databases.

-CS

Rohrbach Library Celebrates Black History Month

This month, Rohrbach Library is dedicating its Voices and Choices Center to a celebration of Black History Month. From now until the end of February, there will be a different event each week to commemorate this month.

On Thursday, February 11, from 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. come listen to Frank Gilyard speak about the history of the Underground Railroad in Berks County. Gilyard is a local historian and president of the Central Pennsylvania African American Museum (CPAAM).  CPAAM is located in the Old Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on North 10^th Street in Reading. Gilyard will talk about the museum, about the Underground Railroad, and about the 177 years of African American history in Berks that he’s been studying.

The following week, on Thursday, February 18 from 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m., local artist Ed Terrell will speak about African Art. This will be followed by a reception and question and answer session from 12:00 p.m.-1:00 p.m. Terrell is a painter who was born in Philadelphia but grew up in Reading. He currently works in the ACOR Gallery in Reading’s Goggleworks.

The last Thursday of the month, February 25, brings two special events. First, from 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m, listen to Dr. Ellesia Blaque, KU English professor, speak about African American writer Maria Stewart’s role in abolition in and feminism. Dr. Blaque’s area of expertise is in Africana and ethnic literatures. In addition to teaching, she runs her own website (http://www.ellesiablaque.com/) and her own publishing company, banned Books & Company, in Sinking Spring.

In addition to Dr. Blaque’s presentation, join us for a viewing of the short film “Out of Obscurity.” This film details an anti-discrimination sit in in Alexandria, Va., in 1939. The event took place when a small group of African American men went to a public library and asked for library cards. When they were denied based on their race, the men sat down at a table and began to read. These men were soon arrested. A discussion will follow the movie. There is no time or location set to view this movie yet, so listen for updates.

With the exception of the movie, all of these events take place in the library’s Voices and Choices Center; this is on the second floor. We hope you can join us as we celebrate Black History Month and honor an important part of our nation’s history.

-CS

Featured Reference Items of the Week

Each week this semester, we will feature a different item from our Reference Collection on a bulletin board near the computers in the Information Commons area of the Library. This week we are featuring four style guides (MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian) commonly used to create citations.

For your convenience, we have linked the PDF’s of these handouts here for you to use.

• MLA Style Guide
• APA Style Guide
• Chicago Style Guide
• Turabian Style Guide

Next we will feature a guide for graduate school: Peterson’s Annual Guide/Graduate School

Featured Databases. This Week: Business Majors.

This week’s featured databases are for business majors; they are ABI/Inform Complete and Compustat. ABI/Inform Complete allows you to search 1,000 worldwide business publications for information on advertising, marketing, finance, taxation and more. You can find information from 1971 to the present. Compustat provides financial, statistical and market data for more than 21,000 U.S. and Canadian businesses. You can find annual, monthly and quarterly company information such as stock ratings and financial ratios from 1962 to present. For more information on ABI/Inform Complete, Compustat and the other databases available to business majors, visit the library’s Electronic Resources and Periodicals website.

Next week’s featured databases will be for science majors. You can check the blog for the databases, or check out the “Featured Databases” bulletin board behind the printers in the library’s Information Commons.

-CS

Happy Anniversary, GLBTQ Resource Center!

Kutztown University’s GLBTQ Resource Center will celebrate its fifth anniversary on February 3. The center will hold a reception in Old Main room 4 at 4:00 p.m.  After the reception, head over to MSU 218 where the GLBTQ Center will show the movie “Breaking the Surface: The Greg Louganis Story.” This movie was written and co-produced by KU professor Alan Hines. If you can’t make it to the reception but want to catch the movie, be in MSU 218 by 6:00 p.m. The reception and movie are free and open to the entire university community.

Happy Anniversary, GLBTQ Resource Center!

-CS

Good-bye, J.D. Salinger

J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, died of natural causes today at his home in New Hampshire. He was 91 years old.  Read the BBC article for more information.

-CS

Databases/Reference Tip of the Week

Have you ever wondered what databases are applicable to your major area of study? Or even to you minor or concentration? And do you want to learn some quick reference tips? Rohrbach Library can help you learn all of these things with two new bulletin boards in the Information Commons.

The “Featured Databases” bulletin board, which is located on the wall behind the printers in the Information Commons area, features two databases for a specific major each week. This week’s board is geared toward business majors. The two databases are ABI/Inform Complete and Compustat.

ABI/Inform Complete allows you to search 1,000 worldwide business periodicals. You can also get information on more than 60,000 businesses. Compustat provides comprehensive financial, statistical and market data for more than 21,000 U.S. and Canadian companies. This database is only accessible on campus. Click here for more information on ABI/Inform Complete, and click here for more information on Compustat.

The “Reference Tip of the Week” board is located to the side of the Information Commons printer. This week’s focus is Style Guides.  Get a quick overview of MLA, APA, Chicago and Turabian styles. For more information on the style guides, click here.

These bulletin boards are great, easily accessible resources for students, faculty and staff; they are quick references that anyone can check out while passing through the Information Commons. And if you don’t make it to the library often, don’t worry! Each time the bulletin boards are changed, a blog will be posted.

Stop in and check out our new learning tools!

-CS

“Birthday Party in Dorm” from KU’s Digital Collection

“Birthday darty in dorm of Ellen Hermany Klingaman.” No, this isn’t something off of a Facebook page. It was an event some students from the Keystone State Normal School attended. And word of the party spread via postcard. This information was written on the back of a Keystone State Normal School postcard from December 11, 1909.

Between 1902 and 1922, Kutztown University, then the Keystone State Normal School (KSNS), paid W.W. Deatrick, a faculty member with an interest in photography, to take photos of the school so that KSNS could make postcards. These postcards were used to communicate campus information to people on and off campus. And yes, this is the same Deatrick whom “Deatrick Hall” was named after.

Now you can go online and find 88 pages of historical postcards that give a photographic history of Kutztown University from 1902-1922. This is a collection that, until recently, could only be seen by physically visiting the Rohrbach Library Archives Collection.

To see these postcards, click here and select Kutztown University from the drop down menu. You can also get to the collection by visiting the library’s home page, and by clicking on “Digital Collections.” Then choose Kutztown University from the drop down menu on the Keystone Library Network page.

-CS

The book room at Keystone State Normal School.

Children’s Literature Collection – TOGETHER AT LAST!

Today is the day! The “Libsci” collection is no longer separated by the middle wall and bathrooms on the ground floor! The biographies were just moved over to the wall next to the fiction shelves.

The only exceptions to the Library Science Collection books all being on the right-hand side of this area are a few oversized books and the Libsci reference books. The reference books are located under the bulletin board that you face as you come through the tunnel, and the oversized books we have are located on top of the CMC poster files for the present time.

Thanks for your patience as we moved the collection during this past semester. I am thrilled to have the books all together at last and in a logical order. It took a decade of waiting, but it has been worth all of the work.

I’d love to hear your feedback! Feel free to leave us a comment about the new arrangement. Also, what should we tackle next?

“Quoth the Raven, Nevermore”

You’ve probably heard that Edgar Allan Poe poem more than once. Today I’m channeling that famous quote to honor Poe’s birthday.

Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Mass. Unfortunately Poe’s parents died a few years later, and Poe and his siblings were split up and sent to live with different families. Poe was sent to live with the Allan family in Virginia. Poe’s foster father was a wealthy merchant, and the family traveled to England.

Poe eventually landed back in the U.S. to attend the University of Richmond in Virginia. He studied Latin and poetry, but a gambling problem strained his relationship with his foster parents and forced him to drop out of school. He then enlisted in the army, during which time he wrote poetry. In 1827, his first poem and his first book were published.

In 1836, Poe married Virgina Eliza Clemm and they moved to New York City. Then, in 1838, his first and only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, was published.  Also in 1838, Poe and his wife moved to Philadelphia, Pa.

The Poe house in Philadelphia is a historic site and tourist attraction. Poe spent six years here, during which time he wrote some of his most famous poems and short stories. These included The Murders in the Rue Morgue (which is considered the first detective story), The Tell-Tale Heart and The Fall of the House of Usher. He also began work on The Raven while he was here.

Poe finished The Raven after moving to the Bronx in New York. It was here that his wife Virginia died. He then married Elmira Royster, a sweetheart of his from Richmond. The two embarked on a poetry reading and lecture tour, which Poe hoped would help raise funds for a magazine he wanted to start.

Eventually Poe and Elmira settled in Baltimore, Md. He died here on October 7, 1849, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Baltimore’s Old Westminster Burying Ground. Poe’s death is shrouded in mystery, with many conflicting accounts of it ranging from alcoholism to murder to death from diseases.

Today is not a day to hypothesize about his death, though. Today is a day to remember Poe’s life and to celebrate his works. Click here to find out what Edgar Allan Poe holdings Rohrbach Library owns.

Happy Birthday, Poe!

-CS

Sources: The Literature Network, My Travel Guide