Tag: libguides

Book of the Day: It Gets Better

Last year, there was a fairly large campaign to address those suffering discrimination for sexual orientation. In the wake of multiple tragic events, Dan Savage birthed the “It Gets Better” campaign, and many celebrities, sports teams, and companies followed with contributions.

The companion book by Savage,  It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living, is on our New Book Shelf, on the second floor. In addition to text versions of many of the original shared stories, it includes expanded versions and new contributions.

Maybe it’s just this librarian, but reading these expanded versions, a little more thought out than just an on-the-spot YouTube video, have a little more impact when understanding what someone might have to go through, and the impact hurtful actions have on someone’s life.  It also shows that whatever obstacles one must push through, the light at the end is worth getting to.

For similar resources, check out these LibGuides.

Welcome to JCCC, Summer Semester I

What’s crackin’? Summer Semester I is now underway and whether you’re new or returning, we thought it might be a good idea to remind you of some of our resources here:

  • Obviously, we’ve got this blog for noise about what’s happening in the library.
  • We have a Twitter feed and Facebook page, and we’re not above asking to be your friend. Plus, we use the Twitter feed to answer any questions you might have.
  • Our LibGuides area  collection of study resources based around topics that you’re likely to be assigned at some point, as well as an RSS Feed that pumps out all of our new books.
  • And of course, our library’s website has our catalog, a lot of databases, and plenty of other resources to help you out.

Don’t ever hesitate to swing by for help, to relax, or to say hi! We’re glad you’re at JCCC and hope we can be helpful during your time here!

LibGuides! It’s Like Instant Reference!

Barry is just one of the librarians creating LibGuides to help you out!

With the semester winding down, you might be able to squeeze in some reading time. OR! Maybe you’re an avid reader with less time than normal.

LibGuides will not fail you! Check out Marsha Cousino‘s guide, Great Books Around 200 Pages. It’s already one of the most popular guides this year, and its packed with fiction and non-fiction for your (abbreviated) reading pleasure.

But don’t stop there! Plenty of guides covering a variety of topics are out there for you to peruse!

Leading Academic Change

Faculty chairs are a new thing at JCCC, so there’s still some realizing that needs to take place about what the job can entail.  So grabbing a book like today’s BotD, Leading Academic Change: Essential Roles for Departmental Chairs by Ann F. Lucas (and friends), can only help. The library is currently creating LibGuides for this and other faculty-related concerns, which will appear in the Education section when available. There are, of course, tons of resources in there for students, as well, so hit up our LibGuides for some quality readers advisory and subject-based reference!

Veterans Day

wall memorial

 

On this Veterans Day, we invite you to check out our Veterans Affairs LibGuide. We put this together in order to better serve our students, staff, and faculty who have served in the Armed Forces. Hopefully, they’ll find the resources useful.  We have links to bibliographies and filmographies, streaming video resources, articles from our databases, and local organizations who exclusively serve veterans and their families.

The library extends our thanks to those who selflessly serve our country.

Digital Resource Usage

In checking out the digital projects we provide (not subscriptions like journals or e-books), we found some interesting things.

First, the most popular resource we have is our LibGuides collection, which received an insane number of hits over the last two years. The most popular guides are the Gay and Lesbian Film Guide, Autism & Asperger Syndrome Guide, Graphic Novels, and Italian Films & Music.  Now, we made the Autism guide in conjunction with the Autism conference held on campus, so we knew that it would be popular, and the graphic novel guide is one of our oldest.  The biggest from the guides was the Italian Films & Music resource.

Now, even though those guides got good hits, our college repository, ScholarSpace, had a few articles with significant downloads. Hopefully this raises awareness of the resources we have, and hopefully gets more contributors as time goes on.

Here are the Top 20 individual resources:

  1. Gay and Lesbian Film Guide (LibGuide)
  2. Autism & Asperger Syndrome (LibGuide)
  3. Graphic Novels (LibGuide)
  4. Italian Films and Music (LibGuide)
  5. World War II Novels (LibGuide)
  6. The Interactive Research Guide: Will Function Bring Users Content? A Project Model Illustrated by a Proposed Paper-Writing Guide (article by Barry J. Bailey)
  7. Taking Sides (LibGuide)
  8. Into the Great Wide Open… (presentation by Nick Greenup)
  9. Holocaust Fiction (LibGuide)
  10. This Month (Campus Publication): February 2008 (full issue in ScholarSpace)
  11. Japanese Films and Music (LibGuide)
  12. Chinese Film and Music (LibGuide)
  13. Library Newsletter: Spring 2008 (newsletters are stored in ScholarSpace)
  14. Novels About Aging (LibGuide)
  15. Fighting Neurelitism (article by Mark A. Foster from campus publication Many Voices)
  16. Informé 2007 (field report by William McFarlane)
  17. Ethical Dilemmas in Film (LibGuide)
  18. Anthropology Fiction (LibGuide)
  19. The Rolling Stone: Fiscal Close and Fund Structure Design (presentation by Judi Guzzy)
  20. Muslim World: Film and Music (LibGuide)

Welcome Back

So, hey, what’s up?

Welcome to the first day of Fall Semester ’09! The library has a lot of new resources like Mango (learn languages… lots of them!), new LibGuides to help you research, and plenty of new books to help you cheat… at video games.

Okay, you have to do your own coursework… but we’re certainly here to help you along the way.

And we’re able to be reached multiple ways:

  • Leave a Facebook note
  • Reply or Direct Message @jccclib on Twitter
  • Use our chat client (to your right!)
  • Shoot us an e-mail
  • We also still answer the phone
  • And we exist in person

Despite the weather today, it’s going to be a good year.

Back of the Class: Week 1

The depth of my originality sticks to “of the” ilk.

This is the first of at least weekly posts about the class I’m now taking at JCCC, and more specifically, what the library can offer in expanding the value of the class.

I’m currently enrolled in an Interior Design class, and the very first day, we went to the library to learn about several databases which can assist you.  Due to the generality of “first days”, today’s post is quite general as well.

Most of the information covered in the librarian presentation is available on this LibGuide. In addition to the LibGuide, keep in mind that we still get products.  Take, for example, this gem:

Opportunities in Interior Design and Decorating Careers is a book that was added just today that came across the New Item RSS feed. Much like other disciplines taught at JCCC, we’re constantly developing the collection for users with up-to-date and relevant materials.  Unfortunately, we take a pass on purchasing textbooks, but nobody’s perfect.

Reminders and Thank Yous

Clicking the image will let you check out a video on LibGuides.
Clicking the image will let you check out a video on LibGuides.

This has been a very busy month for our LibGuides site, and its only two-thirds over with.  Currently, we’ve received 240 guide hits, more than the last two months combined!  And while that’s not a lot of hits overall, keep in mind that LibGuides are not yet advertised on campus, or even linked from our Web site.  All JCCC traffic has been from limited promotion on this page, and a few demonstrations to faculty and students They’re looking pretty good, and while plenty of people have begun updating, reformatting, and adding features, we’ve still got some fixing to do.

Here’s a page just for you readers:  It is a LibGuide made for our Autism & Asperger’s conference coming up in October.  As you can see, it is still being constructed, but it shows off some of the features that other LibGuides on our page haven’t used yet. You’ll have to follow the link because it is not available from JCCC’s libGuides homepage. Once it is complete, it will be listed, but until then, feedback is appreciated from our blog readers.