Digital Commons – March 2017 Quick Stats

The Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech dashboard and personalized author dashboards contain more than just download counts. They also provide a variety of usage statistics that can be refined by specific date ranges. For example, the readership distribution map shows where in the world users are when they access content. In March 2017, 6 works were downloaded from Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech by users in Fiji. Carly Kratz’s dissertation entitled “Impacts of Climate Change in Soil Microorganisms in Norther Hardwood Forests” is one of those works and was downloaded 3 times.

Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech is a service of the Van Pelt and Opie Library. To learn more about the repository and SelectedWorks contact: digitalcommons@mtu.edu.

 

 

 

Michigan Notable Book Author Tour Presentation

Steve Lehto’s Michigan Notable Book, Preston Tucker and His Battle to Build the Car of Tomorrow tells the story of the man who tried to start his own car company after World War II. He promised an advanced car at an affordable price but his enterprise was shut down before he could build more than 51 cars. Was he merely trying the impossible or were there darker forces operating against him?

Please join us for a presentation by Mr. Lehto on Monday, April 10th, at 4PM in the East Reading Room of Michigan Tech’s Van Pelt and Opie Library. Opportunity to purchase this book will be available before and after the talk. Refreshments will be served.

Steve Lehto has written a dozen books and has a weekly column at RoadandTrack.com. This is his fourth Michigan Notable book.

Van Pelt and Opie Library and the Graduate Student Government to Host SciFinder Workshop

Need info on chemical substances, reactions, and more? Please join the Van Pelt and Opie Library and the Graduate Student Government for an extended Lunch and Learn on the resource SciFinder.
Participants will learn how to efficiently and effectively scour the literature landscape and keep updated on the most relevant research findings in their respective fields. The workshop is applicable to both advanced and entry-level SciFinder users. During the workshop, you’ll be asked to interactively engage with SciFinder, so please bring a laptop if available.

Wednesday March, 29, 12:00PM – 2:00PM
Library East Reading Room

12:00PM – 12:30PM Library Skills Refresher
12:30PM – 2:00PM SciFinder Workshop

Lunch will be available to attendees

Contact library@mtu.edu for more information

Presentation – Red Sports on Lake Superior: The Labor Sport Union in the Upper Peninsula, Northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, 1928-1935

Gabe Logan LSU

 

Please join us for a presentation by travel grant recipient Gabe Logan at 4:00 pm on Tuesday, November 15 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Logan will discuss the Labor Sport Union and its influence in the iron ranges of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. From 1928 through 1935 the United States Communist Party developed the Labor Sport Union. This athletic organization united left wing politics and athletics in an alternative vision of sport and society. The LSU drew much of its membership from the urban cities whose immigrant populations sought recreation beyond the schools and company teams. However, the LSU also found an appreciative audience in the rural iron ore region of Lake Superior. This presentation explains the significance of the LSU in the region and how its members embraced the “red sports” ideology.

Gabe Logan, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of History and the Director for the Center of Upper Peninsula Studies at Northern Michigan University. Logan’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Tech Archives has partnered with the FMTL to help scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at (906) 487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web at http://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

Travel Grant Presentation – The Strength of Steel: Life, Labor, and Politics at the Rouge, 1941-1991

Ford's Alberta complex in Baraga County, Michigan.
Ford’s Alberta complex in Baraga County, Michigan.

 

Please join us for a presentation by travel grant recipient Gordon Andrews at 4:00 pm on Thursday, November 3 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Andrews will discuss unionization efforts at the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford Motor Company was the last of the “Big Three” automakers to unionize. There were serious attempts to organize beginning in the 1930s, but it was not until the workers at the Rouge plant organized a sit-down strike in 1941 that they were successful. The “Industrial Colossus on the Rouge” employed over 100,000 workers, and once organized, it became the largest local in the nation. The presentation will address the parameters of UAW Local 600’s history, from its leadership role in organizing the successful unionization of Ford Motor Company, to the myriad ways in which Local 600 impacted the quality of life, and also the politics of its membership over a half-century. An integral part of that story is understanding the relationships among labor and resources from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the way those affiliations inform what we know about the organization of Ford, especially as employees confronted a brutally oppressive system in the hopes of establishing democracy in the workplace.

Gordon P. Andrews is an associate professor in the Department of History at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan. He has taught at the secondary and post-secondary levels since 1986, and his research fields include history education, modern United States history, and 20th-century labor history. His recent publications include, Undoing Plessy: Charles Hamilton Houston, Race, Labor and the Law, 1895-1950 (Newcastle upon Tyne, London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2014), Collaboration and the Future of Education: Preserving the Right to Teach and Think Historically, New York: Routledge, 2015, co-authored with Wilson Warren, and James Cousins.

Andrews’ research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Tech Archives has partnered with the FMTL to help scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at 906-487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web at http://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

Friends of the Michigan Tech Library to Hold Annual Meeting, Thursday, October 20

On Thursday, October 20, the Friends of the Michigan Tech Library will hold their annual meeting from 4:30PM – 6:00PM in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library.

Following a brief business meeting at 4:45PM, Jonathon Robins, assistant professor of global history in the Social Sciences department at Michigan Tech, will present a talk on his first book, Cotton and Race Across the Atlantic: Britain, Africa, and America 1900-1920.

In 1902, British business launched an ambitious program to transform Britain’s African colonies into major cotton producers, in the hopes of ending Britain’s century-long reliance on the American South for raw materials. In Cotton and Race Across the Atlantic, Jonathan E. Robins explores the complex history of this British project, which brought European industrialists, African-American scientists, and African kings together to reshape the ways in which millions of African farmers worked. Robins will present an overview of the book, and discuss how his work in a number of very different archives and libraries shaped his writing process.

Robins is a historian of commodities, examining the connections between agriculture, industry, and consumers around the globe. He has published articles and book chapters on food history, agriculture, colonialism, industrial organization, and consumerism.

This event is free and open to the public and refreshments will be served.CottonAndRace_Cover

Library Lean Tour – August 10th, 1PM – 4PM

Van Pelt and Opie Library staff invite faculty, staff and students to learn more about continuous improvement at the Library Lean Tour from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m on Wednesday August 10th.

Tour the staffed posters to learn more about Lean concepts and to see firsthand how we’re applying Lean tools. The event takes approximately 45 minutes and is an open hours format, with refreshments, so please come anytime between 1:00 and 4:00.

We look forward to seeing you. For more information please call 7-2500.

Lean Tour Guide

Complete SAE Technical Papers Collection Now Available Online

SAE Technical Papers from 1906 to present are now available through the library’s subscription to SAE Mobilus. SAE Mobilus replaces the SAE Digital Library, featuring an updated search interface as well as menus of most recently published and most popular publications. Journal articles and references to thousands of works in mobility engineering are included.

SAE Mobius may be accessed through the library’s Databases A-Z search on the library’s homepage.

Questions? Contact reflib@mtu.edu.