Finding a book

Sometimes a person would like to find a book on a particular topic, for example a biography of someone, or a history of a certain country, or a novel by a certain author. In the LITS webpage, which is what comes up on the computers in the library, you'll see a link which says "Find Books." That should do it, right?

When you click on the link though there are a few different choices, so here's a quick guide to the two most important choices. The Library Catalog is what you might guess, it is a catalog of what we own, both physically in this building and online in the case of the ebooks we have nowadays. That would be your first choice, to see if we have that book you want.

If what you want isn't in the Library Catalog, or is checked out, then use WorldCat to find something, either that particular book, or something on your topic. The records in WorldCat are for libraries all around the region and beyond. If you want something you see in WorldCat, use the interlibrary loan link to request it, and we'll get it for you. Simple, right? Well, hopefully, lol, but if it gets confusing, which it can, feel free to ask one of us for help!

Hagia Sophia

Someone was looking recently for information on the artwork of the Hagia Sophia, the great Orthodox cathedral of the Byzantine empire in Constantinople (Istanbul after the Turkish conquest.) The Hagia Sophia is one of the architectural wonders of the world, and is a museum nowadays. ArtStor has some great images of the Hagia Sophia. For articles and books on the Hagia Sophia, Orthodoxy, and the Byzantines, JSTOR, Project Muse and Historical Abstracts would all be good for articles, and then our catalog for books.

Diversity Research

Diversity is important to the college, and is often a topic of student and faculty research. Sometimes though finding good articles, and especially statistics, that relate to diversity can be tricky. Let our Diversity Research Guide help you with these sorts of questions! (The image at left is from the college's 2011 Diversity Conference.)

Got images?

Need images for that project? To place in your Word document, or PowerPoint? There's lots online you can find through Google, but we have a couple of special databases you might want to consider. One is ArtStor, the other is the Associated Press Multimedia Archive.

ArtStor has an online library of over a million images, of both classic works of art, paintings and the like, and images of objects too, for example tribal masks etc. One collection in ArtStor Photographs of Southeast Asia and Morocco is the Barbara Anello Collection, which is "...approximately 750 images of the architecture, arts, and culture of Southeast Asia and Morocco in the Digital Library. Anello, a photographer and art historian, travelled extensively throughout Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Morocco from 2007-2008. Her field photography focuses on architecture, both historical and vernacular, and aspects of traditional art and culture." Another collection is the Art History Survey Collection, which is about 5,000 high quality color images of classic works of art.

The Associated Press Multimedia Archive has many thousands of images, and some audio files too, ranging from the present back into the late 19th century. The photograph here is from the AP site: "Michigan State quarterback Willie Thrower is shown on Oct. 1, 1951. Thrower, the first black quarterback to play in the Big Ten, helping Michigan State to a national championship in 1952, and the NFL's first black quarterback, died of a heart attack at his home Feb. 20, 2002. He was 71."

It's a bird, it's a plane...

It's the intrepid Kim Myers, (left) from Drake Library, ascending up in the cherry picker with a staff person at the University of Buffalo's remote storage facility! She and Charlie Cowling from Drake were there this past Friday to look at the book scanners they use. The facility itself is also quite interesting. It stores all the older bound journal volumes from the UB libraries, freeing up a tremendous amount of space for other purposes. The building was purpose built, with compact shelving, and many other features, such as the cherry pickers being guided via a wire embedded in the floor, helping to avoid crashes into the sides of the shelving!

The scanners they have are integrated with the library interlibrary loan software so when someone needs an article from one of these stored journals they simply put in a request, and the item is pulled, scanned and then emailed to them. A very practical and efficient answer to what to do with all those older bound journals, which do still have some interest, but also take up such room.

Get research help 24/7

The library has extensive hours, and during those times you can ask one of us for help, either in person or online, by phone and so forth, but even as dedicated as we are, we still need to call it a day at some point :-) Our "Research Guides" however are always there to help you with your work. They range across most all the subjects and disciplines covered here at the College at Brockport. Each guide has sections on how to find articles, books and other resources appropriate to the field in question. You can rate resources too, and make comments, to help us better understand what works for you!

State of the Union Address(es)

The State the Union Address that President Obama gave last night is the subject of many news articles and opinion pieces today, and whatever the writer's views, they all tend to take the giving of this address for granted, which is understandable, but one wonders, why do the presidents do this? Have they always? There's a great site online from the University of California, Santa Barbara, the American Presidency Project, that will help answer questions about the State of the Union Addresses, and it also has the full text of all of them, going back to the first one given by George Washington in 1790. It's such a great site that your blogger will add it to our Political Science research guide later today :-)