Thanksgiving Break

We are closed from Wed. 11/26 @4:45pm till we open again Sunday the 30th @12:30. You can see our schedule of hours here. We hope you all have a wonderful, relaxing break!

Great Depression?

There's a lot of talk nowadays about the current economic crisis and it's resemblance to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Is the situation today really like that? What was the Great Depression all about anyway? We have lots of resources for you if you'd like to look into this!

Our catalog has many books on the Great Depression, the most recent being Amity Shlaes' The Forgotten Man: a History of the Great Depression. You could go to our New York Times Historical Archive site to read articles from the 1930s. And of course our article databases like Business Source Premier and America: History & Life would be excellent resources.

There are some great websites too, like the Library of Congress' American Memory page, which has, among other things, a collection of photos from the 1930s. Pictured here from that collection are two CCC boys at work in Maryland,

Books, books, books...

Did you know that Drake Library has the largest book collection of the SUNY four year colleges? We're proud of our collection, and work hard to maintain and build it for you. If you want to search the collection use our catalog, and feel free to ask one of us if you have any questions. If you'd like to suggest a book for us to order, please contact Deborah Ames who is in charge of our collection management office at dames@brockport.edu.

The Babbage Engine & other computing curiosities

The Times of London has an intriguing article out about the "Top 25 days in Computing History." The first date is December 23, 1834, when Charles Babbage announced his "analytical engine." (A modern day recreation of one of his "engines" is pictured here.) A later date is that of the founding of Hewlett Packard in, well, when would you guess HP was founded? 1989? 1979? Earlier? Take a look at the article and see!

We have many books about the history of computing, and access to articles through our databases, for example Academic Search, ScienceDirect, or the ACM Portal.

NY State budget

There's been a lot of buzz about New York state budget concerns this fall. Governor Patterson (pictured here,) has issued a plan to respond to the current budget crisis. You can read it at the governor's web page. The NY State Division of the Budget also has much useful information. Another source of information would be the many newspapers we get online in our article databases, for example Academic Search and Lexis.

Citation style help!

A lot of papers are being written right now, and typically college papers need to follow one of several formats, for example APA or MLA. We have a web page with some great resources to help make sure your paper meets the standard for the style you are using. Just click on Citation and Bibliography Styles on our home page. For major styles like APA, MLA and Chicago, we provide access to Diana Hacker's helpful guides, which even include sample papers. Ms. Hacker, pictured here, is well known authority on these different styles.

Database de jour

Looking for something a little different in the way of articles? Tired of a bland diet of Academic Search all the time? Don't worry, we have lots of other resources to spice things up for you! For example, history researchers, consider using America: History & Life, or Historical Abstracts (for history outside North America.)

Or you business researchers, while Academic Search is good, don't forget its sister database, Business Source! We could go on, but we won't, lol, just ask one of us to find out more about these and other options.

Font face, sans serif, Lucida....

Ever wonder what all those "fonts" are in Word? How best to use them? The "Crabby Office Lady," pictured here, has a couple of columns that give you a good understanding of the subject. Something to consider when getting ready to write those final papers perhaps!

Juvenile justice, gun rights, financial bailout...

Get the current (and past) hot topics, at CQ Researcher! Each report is an objective, fact filled, readable overview of the topic, a great starting point for your research, from a library reference service of many years standing.

Brown bag sessions

We're holding some "brown bag" or lunch time sessions here about topics of interest to both library staff and our patrons. For example yesterday there was one about government documents. The next one is on Lexis-Nexis. For more information see the schedule.

Now, this was a computer ;-)

Yes, the computer pictured here, the Commodore 64, produced from 1982-1994, was the biggest selling computer of all time! If you're curious to know more, there's a great story on it at PCworld.com. We have some excellent titles in the library on computing history too, for example 2003's Who invented the computer?, QA76.17 .B87 (currently on display on the main floor - feel free to check it out though.)

NYS Digital Collections

NYS has an extensive online digital collection of documents, historical records and more at this searchable site. How did your blogger know about this site? Lori Lampert's research guide to NYS documents!