Using the catalog

Pictured at left is a college library card catalog, ca1958. They don't look like that anymore, do they? Pat Maxwell, pictured on the right (hah hah, just kidding Pat!) is the librarian who handles the IT side of our library catalog, and she will be giving a session tomorrow, Tuesday 3/31, 11:30-12:30 in CELT on how catalogs are used today. Library catalogs are still a foundational research tool of course, and Pat has some interesting observations to make on how people actually use the catalog, and how that information could help people learn to improve their searching. Lots here of interest for anyone who uses library catalogs!

"The greatest thing since sliced bread..."

But when did sliced bread come in anyway? 1930, when Wonder Bread introduced the first automatically sliced loaves of bread! For this and many other sorts of food data and information, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture site. For their list of food firsts, like when sliced bread was first introduced, or when the first LaChoy canned Chinese food was offered, click here.

Banking and financial industry information

The condition of the banking and finance industries has a lot to with the current economic crisis , and a good place to learn more about those industries is the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.) home page. There is a wealth of information there about the banking industry, and the economy in general.

For example, under Data & Statistics, you can click on the link for Regional Economic Conditions (RCON.) RCON has a tremendous amount of data, charts, and tables, state by state, on topics from total employment growth to personal bankruptcy filings and much more. You can always find a link to the FDIC site, and many other useful business and economics resources, in our Business Research guide.

New SUNY chancellor

You may have heard that our SUNY system has a new chancellor, Nancy Zimpher. She comes to SUNY from the University of Cincinnati and starts the beginning of June. As an Albany Times-Union article noted, she faces "challenges aplenty." The official announcement from SUNY is here.

Where the books are...

It can seem a little tricky sometimes to locate books in the library once you have identified them in the catalog. There are floorplans online though, just click on the About the Library link on our main page, then Maps and Floor Plans. Welcome back from Spring Break by the way!

Spring Break

Yep, it's Spring Break week coming up! Click here to see the library hours. If you end up wanting to use library resources, say it's raining in Panama City, and you want to do some research on your laptop, you can access all library article databases etc. from off campus ;-) You can also access any files you might have saved to your FileCity folder - just go to filecity.brockport.edu.

Following up on the news

As an example of the resources you have access to through Drake Library, say you wanted to read more about not only the recent rogue IRA killings in Northern Ireland, but the background to them. For current reports you could certainly read online editions of papers like the Times of London, or the Belfast Telegraph. These only carry articles so far back though; if you wanted to read articles from the '90s for example, when the ground work for the cease fire that held till recently was laid, you could find them in Lexis. The article databases like Academic Search & JSTOR would be rich sources of scholarly, peer reviewed journal articles. We have many books too in our catalog about Northern Ireland. (Photo of one of the murder scenes from the Times web site.)

Your very own folder ;-)

Yes, you can set up your very own folder in Academic Search Premier (and the related Ebsco databases.) Just click on the folder icon at the upper right of the page to create a folder in which you can store items, and even share them if you choose. Your folder and its contents will be there the next time you log in.

Chemistry guide and fun videos

We have just posted a new research guide, one to chemistry. In the periodic table section there is a link to a fun site from the University of Nottingham in England, the "Periodic Table of Videos." Try it, it's quite clever stuff!

360 Search?

You may have noticed a link on our web page in the library news section to the "New: 360 Search." If you're wondering what a 360 search is, read on! Basically it's a page that allows you to search through either all of our online resources, from America: History & Life to WorldCat, or to go into distinct sections, like Art, History, or Physics. Try it and let us know what you think! (Email Logan Rath, who is leading the project, at lrath@brockport.edu.)

Word of the Day

The OED, or the Oxford English Dictionary, is the premier English language dictionary and is available online. You can also enjoy their "Word of the Day" feature, in which a word definition is sent to you via email or RSS feed every day.

Pictured here is James A. H. Murray, the original editor of the OED.