The Van Pelt and Opie Library has introduced expanded hours.
The new Library Overnight Services are midnight to 8 a.m. every day for current Michigan Tech students, faculty and staff. Hours for guests, visitors and members of the community have also been increased from 8 a.m. to midnight daily.
Entry into the library for overnight services will be at the library’s main door with an active HuskyCard.
The Van Pelt and Opie Library would like to invite all interested individuals to join representatives from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday, November 6th for a free series of workshops on patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property issues in order to celebrate the official opening of Michigan Technological University’s Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC).
Located in the Van Pelt and Opie Library, the PTRC will benefit University students, faculty, and staff as well as inventors and independent researchers from the surrounding communities. Services offered will include by-appointment individual patent and trademark searching help with trained librarians, access to robust patent-searching databases available only at PTRCs, patent and trademark searching workshops, and books and other helpful materials on the patent and/or trademark application process from beginning to end. Ellen Marks, University Librarian, emphasizes the importance of the PTRC’s services for individuals, groups and businesses located throughout the Upper Peninsula and Eastern Wisconsin — “everyone is welcome to use our services, uncommonly available in rural areas.”
The day’s events will include a ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrating the official opening of the PTRC, followed by a luncheon for all attendees. For a full agenda of the day’s events, and to register, visit: http://www.mtu.edu/library/ptrc. Please register even if you can only join us for part of the day!
Please direct questions to Instruction Librarian Sarah Lucchesi at slucches@mtu.edu or 906-487-3379.
New version of BrowZine, 1.2.1, is now available in the Apple App Store. In this new version we fix a pesky iOS7 bug and speeds up the loading of your holdings data. If you’ve already installed iO7, this new version has likely already automatically downloaded and installed. If you have not yet installed iOS7, please find the new version in the App Store. Thank you!
For updates about Browzine from Third Iron, check out their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thirdiron
The Van Pelt and Opie Library and the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) invite faculty and graduate students to attend a module, consisting of three one-hour sequential workshops, Incorporating Information Literacy into Instruction.
Instruction & Learning Librarian Sarah Lucchesi is delivering the module through the CTL’s University Teaching and Learning (UTL) Seminars program. In this module, using the framework of Michigan Tech’s information literacy rubric for undergraduate students (learning goal #6), we will explore the library’s information resources, digital tools for keeping current in a field of study, and assignment elements that allow students to practice information literacy skills.
Faculty and graduate students are welcome to register only for this three workshop series, or as a part of the complete UTL Course Design program.
The workshop sessions are scheduled for Monday November 4th, 11th, and 18th from 11:00am-12:00pm in Library 242. Please register by 12:00pm Friday November 1st. If you have any questions, please contact instrlib@mtu.edu.
Professor Bill Sproule Explores Copper Country Streetcars: New Book Signing
Please join colleagues and community in celebrating the publication of Copper Country Streetcars (Images of Rail) on Tuesday, Oct. 1 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in the East Reading Room of the library.
William “Bill” Sproule, professor of civil and environmental engineering, will describe how copper mining’s boom period and winters with over 200 inches of snow led to the development of streetcar lines that served over six million riders at their peak in 1910.
Books, along with Dining Services’ cream cake and fabulous citrus punch will be available. For further information, contact the Office of the University Librarian 7-2500 or library@mtu.edu.
The Van Pelt and Opie Library is offering EndNote workshops on September 26 and October 3.
EndNote is a citation management software that helps you to easily create and manage bibliographic information and incorporate references into your writing. In other words, EndNote streamlines the research and reporting process.
Seating for these workshops is limited, and registration is required. To register please visit: EndNote LibGuide.
EndNote Basic I – Thursday, September 26, from 5-6pm
The Van Pelt and Opie Library is offering a one hour introductory workshop on creating and managing references using the citation software, EndNote. EndNote allows you to easily collect, organize and use your research references. No prior knowledge of EndNote is necessary.
In this workshop participants will learn how to:
• Construct an EndNote Library in order to effectively organize references
• Create custom and smart groups to efficiently manage references
Note: Our sessions use EndNote X7 on PCs. Laptop users are encouraged to update their versions of EndNote prior to the session. See the Library’s EndNote Download page.
EndNote Basic II – Thursday, September 26, from 6:15-7:15pm
The Van Pelt and Opie Library is offering a one hour EndNote Workshop on how to incorporate your EndNote Library citations into a written document (MS Word). Attendance of the EndNote Basic I workshop, or prior knowledge of building and managing an EndNote library, is recommended.
In this workshop participants will learn how to:
• Successfully incorporate EndNote Library references into their writing process (MS Word)
• Locate, identify and import specialized output styles
Note: Our sessions use EndNote X7 on PCs. Laptop users are encouraged to update their versions of EndNote prior to the session. See the Library’s EndNote Download page.
Using EndNote – Advanced Topics – Thursday, October 3, from 5-6pm
The Van Pelt and Opie Library is hosting Kristen Faeth, Customer Education Product Training Specialist at Thomson Reuters, to conduct this advanced EndNote workshop. Light food and beverages will be provided.
This workshop will cover the new features in EndNote X7 as well as ways to use your synced EndNote Basic library online. EndNote X7 allows you to easily search hundreds of online resources to collect references and PDFs or automatically import PDFs from your computer.
In this workshop participants will learn how to:
• Create bibliographies with subheadings and utilize new output styles.
• Attach charts, tables and equations as figures to be cited in your work.
• Sync your EndNote library with your online library to share groups of references with other EndNote users and access file attachments from anywhere.
• Easily cite references in your own work using the Cite-While-You-Write plug-in for Microsoft Word.
Prior knowledge of, or attendance of, the EndNote Basic I & II workshops is recommended.
Seating for these workshops is limited, and registration is required. To register please visit: EndNote LibGuide.
“Can Congress Govern? Gridlock, Polarization, and Budget Politics”
The campus is invited to celebrate Constitution Day on Monday, Sept. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in MUB Ballroom B. The guest speaker, David Canon, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will explore the context of gridlock and polarization in Congress, outline the stakes of the current budget battles and speculate about what can be done to improve the political climate in Congress. More information.
Compiling a comprehensive report of citing publications can be a seemingly overwhelming task. Where do you look? What are the quickest and easiest ways to search?
The library can help answer these questions with a new guide to citation searching, located at http://libguides.lib.mtu.edu/citationsearching and created specifically with Michigan Tech faculty and graduate students in mind. Save yourself time by learning the most efficient ways to search a variety of databases for citation metrics.
This guide will help you find citing publications in many different databases crossing all academic disciplines, track citations of topics or other authors’ articles, and assess the relative quality or merit of a publication.
We welcome your suggestions about other resources that would make good additions to this guide. If you know of a database not represented in the guide that allows citation searching, or you know of any other helpful links related to this topic, you can submit them to reflib@mtu.edu or using the submission link on the front page of the guide.
Tours of the Van Pelt and Opie Library are available every Tuesday and Thursday at 1:00PM.
There is no need to sign up, just meet at the Library and IT Service Center near the main entrance.
Congratulations to the winners of the Library’s ‘Empowered by Information’ Writing Contest!
The library received many wonderful submissions. Thank you to all who participated!
Read Megan Walsh’s winning entry, below, and our 2nd and 3rd place entries, here: http://goo.gl/ZsMgZ.
“Sophomore”
As a freshman, college is an entirely new and sometimes terrifying world. So, coming into classes like Perspectives and having no idea how to even start research for my papers was overwhelming, to say the least. The library can seem scary and sometimes pretty awkward when you don’t know how to properly use it. My first experience with the Library was when I was working on my first college research paper about the urban history of Los Angeles, a fairly uncommon topic. Here I am, an embarrassed freshman walking up and down the aisles between the bookshelves, backpack clinging against their metal frame, annoying all of the grad students working on projects I will never understand.
After giving up the hope that I would just magically find what I needed, I walked into a lab, logged in, and went onto the Library’s website to try to find some journals or books on my topic. I knew that there wouldn’t be many but I fumbled around for a couple of hours and walked home, defeated. Let me note that this is not because the Library is not useful but because I had no idea how to make the best of it yet.
The next day in my Perspectives class, my instructor took us on a trip back to that same lab that I felt so overwhelmed in the day before for an informational session on how to use the library resources. A charismatic and welcoming librarian walked in and set up her equipment in the front of the room. For the next hour, she walked us through how to use the online databases and the library catalog. She talked to us about recognizing scholarly sources and using them to boost the credibility of our research. She even came over to me and talked to me on an individual basis about what keywords would be best to use to find what I was looking for. I couldn’t have asked for anyone more helpful than she was.
I made it through my freshman year, as rough as it was at times. I am currently finishing my second year as a Scientific and Technical Communications major and I am happy to say that the Library has changed from being a scary, unknown world to one of my safe places on campus. Aside from it being a wonderful and tranquil area to work and relax in, it has provided me with resources that have guided me through these two years at Tech. By the way, I got an A on that Perspectives paper. However, the best part was not that I received an A, it was that now I have a useful and welcoming new space to carry me through the rest of my time here at Tech. And I plan on making the best of it.