What’s New at Cleveland State University Library http://library.csuohio.edu

University Library News

Spring 2009

Cleveland State University Library2121 Euclid AvenueRhodes Tower 501Cleveland OH 44115-2214

Campus Mail

Cleveland State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution.

Layout & Design, Editor:Barbara FlorjancicContributing Editors

Glenda Thornton & Bill Becker

Library Learning Commons

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Library Learning CommonsContinued from page 1

We are no longer simply your traditional academic library—the Library’s first floor is now the Library Learning Commons! The many changes that the University Library has made over the last few years allow us to join other progressive institutions who offer similarly grouped services. So what is a Library Learning Commons (LLC) and what does it mean to the students and faculty at CSU? The LLC still offers traditional reference service using printed books. However, since most resources are available electronically, providing online access to them in the LLC is imperative along with skilled reference librar-ians who provide professional guidance and interpretative assistance to information seekers. This takes place in the Reference Center, but now more services are also available. In addition to the resources, students have access to Microsoft Office applications so that after they have done their research, they can begin writing their papers while sitting at the same computer sta-tion. Even though students are technology-savvy, they often have questions about specific computer applications. The Library Computer Technology Team (LCTT) offers technology help at the Reference Center in the LLC

twelve hours each week. Librarians also answer these types of questions and can frequently help students when LCTT members are not available. All of these services are offered from a function-al new reference desk that students find approachable and inviting. As at many other schools, the LLC partners with other units on campus. The Writing Center is located in the west wing of the first floor. Here students can get help with their writing assignments after getting help with their research from librarians. The Learning Communities and Study Abroad programs have permanent dis-plays at the east end of first floor and they also use that space as an informal gathering area. Additionally, the Tutoring and Academic Success Center (TASC) uses this area for supplemental instruction sessions often required for Learning Community classes. Cleveland Public Library participates in the LLC by offering students popular magazines, books on CD, current popular fiction and nonfiction, as well as materials that support general foreign language study and the Middle East Studies program. Near the CPL@CSU lounge is the Library’s primary display area where partners from all areas of campus seek exhibit space for a wide va-riety of topics of interest to the entire campus. Recently this area was the location of a campus-wide event sponsored by the College of Science to celebrate Darwin’s 200th birthday. Throughout the first floor there are displays of books ranging from recent acquisi-tions, to faculty and staff publications, to rotating topical displays, to the Friends of the Library perpetual book sale. Current news sources are provided in the other lounge area, which houses daily newspapers and a large-screen TV that plays CNN with closed captioning. During the inauguration of President Obama the sound was turned on for the large audience who came to watch the event. For those who need a contemporary account of recent or historical events, the Library’s microform collection is also in this area and includes back issues of current newspapers as well as many historical newspapers. Almost any time you walk into the Library, you will be amazed at the amount of activity on the first floor. There may be classes in session; special programs or displays, people checking out and returning materials from the CSU Library, OhioLINK, and CPL; and there will be students studying, networking, or us-ing library computers for research and writing. CSU students are clearly engaged in the learning process in the Library and that is the key to a successful Library Learning Commons—a common area where students can learn in many different ways.

OhioLINK Institutional Repository on the Way!

Distance Learning Opportunities

To celebrate writing by and about women, the Library, in conjunction with the English Department, the Poetry Center, and the Women’s Studies Pro-gram, is hosting a Read-In Day on the first floor of the Library from noon to 1:00 on Thursday March 26th. The campus community is invited to hear fellow faculty, staff, and students read aloud both fiction and non-fiction prose and poetry that is significant to them. This event is free and open to all faculty, staff, and students. If you would like to participate as a reader contact Professor Barbara Walker, English, at 687-2563 to discuss your selection and to schedule a time (limited to 5 minutes). Time slots are filling up quickly—sign up today! Read-In Day is a national initiative that is sponsored by the National Coun-cil of Teachers of English that focuses on literacy by encouraging reading.

Read-In Day — Celebrating Women’s History Month

Digital institutional repositories are becoming popular for faculty, students, and staff across the country to store, preserve, and share their intel-lectual output and creative works on the Web. The Library is now in the final stages of collaboration with OhioLINK to create CSU’s own iteration of a digital institutional repository. This repository will be available to all academic institutions in Ohio, although it will appear as if each participat-ing institution has its own repository. Those interested in preserving their depart-ment’s digital content for the future or looking for a place to share grant funded research should consider this as an option. It is a site where the university will be able to store and preserve all types and quantities of digital content including articles, preprints, working papers, newsletters, conference papers, presentations, images, audio, video, and data sets. In addition, institutional repositories serve as a means to increase the vis-ibility of what a university is producing. By participating as a member of OhioLINK’s Digital Resource Commons, materials stored in the institutional repository will be accessible alongside other institutional repositories avail-able at Ohio universities. Faculty who may have something to add or who have questions, please contact Kiffany Francis at k.a.francis10@csuohio.edu.

Kiffany FrancisMetadata/Communication Librarian

Kathy DobdaAssistant Director, Public Services National Library Week

National Library Week is an annual celebration of the contributions of our nation’s libraries and librarians. All types of libraries—school, public, academic and special—participate. National Library Week is April 12 through April 18, 2009 and will be celebrated with the theme, “Worlds connect @ your library.”

WORLDSCONNECT

@ your library

Faculty teaching courses with a Distance Learning component have two exciting options available to them through tech-nologies provided by Integrated Media Systems and Services (IMSS—formerly Instructional Media Services or IMS). The professionals at the IMSS Head End on the 7th floor of Rhodes Tower can help you teach to distant sites through interac-tive video distance learning (IVDL). From designing facilities and installing state-of-the-art technology, to offering training and assistance to those using these systems, the IMSS staff provides powerful, easy-to-use instructional technology that expands CSU’s reach to locations throughout Ohio and the world. Currently, the IMSS IVDL system enables CSU to col-laborate with five other Ohio institutions (the University of Akron, Kent State University, Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, Ohio University, and Youngstown State University) to offer a Master of Public Health. IVDL also is used at CSU and the University of Akron to facilitate a joint Master of Social Work program. And CSU students have at-tended classes via IVDL with their counterparts in Germany, Chile, Croatia, Botswana, and Sierra Leone. For more infor-mation, please call Martin Heyer, Head of Integrated Systems & Classroom Support, at 687-5206. To free up more class time for discussion, projects, and group work, or to enable students to easily review lecture material at anytime, faculty can use Mediasite—from captur-ing entire courses, to making one-time events such as panel discussions and special lectures available to the campus community. Mediasite provides a fast and easy way to publish media materials online, and it delivers those materials to the end user within an elegantly designed interface. To learn more about Mediasite, please call Melinda Smerek at 687-2363.

Melinda SmerekCoordinator, Multimedia Services

IMSS Head End

New Reference Desk

University Library Personnel News

In January, Sarah Benedict was hired as a Library Media Technician in the Library’s Technical Services division. She previously worked at the Cuyahoga County Public Library, Garfield Heights branch while pursuing her education at Cleveland State University. Sarah received Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees and a Masters degree in Sociology at CSU. Shortly after graduation she became part of Tri-C West’s adjunct faculty in the Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Department teaching Sociology. Currently, Sarah teaches on Saturdays at Corporate College West. Gary Valente, the Evening Supervisor for the Equipment Circulation Unit, recently left the Library. Gary has been with the University since 1995, working in Instructional Media Services in various capacities, including Video Production. He is now at Savannah College of Art & Design in Georgia. The Library wishes him well.

Friends of the Library Spring Programs

Major Acquisition Boosts Engineering Collection

Sarah Benedict

The Friends of the Library welcomes the Campus Community to attend its spring programs:

Local Authors Book Talk Series

On Wednesday, April 15, 2009, the Friends Local Authors Book Talk Series continues. Cleveland author Kristin Ohlson will visit CSU to discuss her experiences in Afghanistan and her book Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (co-writ-ten with Deborah Rodriguez). There will also be a question and answer session followed by a book signing. Books will be on sale at the event courtesy of the CSU bookstore. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women

who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom. Kristin Ohlson’s book is on sale now at the CSU bookstore and available for checkout from the CSU Library.

Book Discussion

On Thursday, May 7, 2009, the ever-popular Richard Fox, Head of the Popular Library at CPL, will return to a book discussion on Rebel Angels by Robertson Davies. In this astoundingly funny book, Davies both lampoons academia and shows his love for it and for the wisdom it produces. On one level, Davies’ novel is “about” four academics: Maria Theotoky, the brilliant, beautiful graduate student; her adviser, the ascetic Dr. Hollier; Simon Darcourt, the bon vivant priest; and Parlabane, once an outstanding scholar, now sycophant to his former class-mates. Then there is the basic plot theme: Who will end up with the girl? Standard stuff. Yet the real focus here is on the spiritual and/or mystical personal explorations of the main characters (from Library Journal review). Rebel Angels is available for checkout at the CSU Library and on sale at Amazon.com. Refreshments will be provided at these events, which are free and open to the public. They will both be held in the Library, RT 503 at 3:00 p.m.

The Library is happy to announce its recent acquisition of approximately 3,500 volumes of several IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Conference Proceedings titles in print format. The volumes, which range in date from 1968 through 2004, are currently being added to the book collection on the 4th floor of the Library. The volumes may be checked out or individual papers may be photocopied. Please note that this is not an all-inclusive set. However, these proceedings are a great addition to the collection as the Library has been unable to purchase electronic access to IEEE proceedings due to cost constraints. CSU does subscribe to IEEE online journals, which can be accessed through Journal Finder. These publications are used by both faculty and students in most of CSU’s Engineering departments, as well as in the Department of Computer and Information Science. IEEE is known as the “world’s largest technical professional society” that has been promoting knowledge in electrical engineering and related areas for many years. In fact, the non-profit association is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year. How appropriate it is that the Library is able to significantly increase the number of IEEE publications in its collection during this notable occasion.

Theresa NawalaniecSciences & Engineering Librarian

Do your students seek out and cite sources that adequately support their research and arguments? Do they tell you that nothing has been written on their topic or that the Library doesn’t have anything? If you long for well-researched papers with valid and properly cited sources, maybe an information literacy session with a librarian is what your students need. Information literacy is a skill set that students need to be successful academi-cally and it also supports lifelong learning. Although it is one of the skill areas in the new GenEd08 Curriculum, many people still do not understand exactly what it means. According to the Association of College and Research Libraries, information literacy requires individuals be able to “recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed information.” It is a lifelong learning skill that is useful for everything from finding a recipe online, to getting infor-mation before buying a new car, to evaluating what is broadcast in the media. Here at CSU, librarians are involved in promoting information literacy in the ASC 101 course for freshmen, in the English 102 course, and in other classes where stu-dents need to locate, evaluate, and use information. Librarians are willing to come into classes to help students learn how to efficiently search for information, but they also work with individual students who stop at the Reference Center and with students who make appointments for lengthy consultations in librarians’ offices. Information literacy is also a skill that is valued in many high schools. There is a committee of librarians from Ohio high schools and colleges who are working together to help high school students gain information literacy skills that will help them transi-tion to college-level information seeking behaviors. Ann Marie Smeraldi, First-Year Experience Librarian, is involved with this committee and has also worked with several high schools that have brought their students to CSU for the experience of doing re-search in a college library. Faculty members who would like to know more should contact the librarian who works with their subject area or Kathy Dobda at k.dobda@csuohio.edu.

What is “Information Literacy”?

Kathy DobdaAssistant Director, Public Services

CSU Dissertations Available in Electronic VersionThe Library is making scholarly publications of graduate students available in elec-tronic form. Since December 2007 all CSU dissertations and theses have been submit-ted to the OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETD) Center at http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/, with the exception of creative works withheld at the request of the author. These scholarly works are available to the public without restriction. The Library is adding links from the Scholar online catalog to electronic versions of dissertations in the Dissertation Abstracts database, produced by UMI/ProQuest. Links to full-text PDF versions of dissertations are being added to records for the paper version of older doctoral dissertations approved before December 2007. Access to electronic versions at UMI/ProQuest requires a current CSU ID.

Tracy KempCoordinator, User Services

Kristin Ohlson coming to CSU on

April 15

Gary Valente

On January 20, more than 250 students, faculty, and staff gathered in one of the Library’s lounges to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Faculty SeminarsThis spring, the Library is encouraging faculty to attend two seminars. The first is a panel discussion at noon on Thurs-day, March 26 titled “Did YOU really write this? Dealing with Plagiarism.” The panel will include William Beasley, Director, Center for Teaching Excel-lence; Mary McDonald, Director, Writing Center; Kathy Dobda, Assistant Director for Public Services and Head of Instruc-tion, Library; and Valerie Hinton Hannah, Student Judicial Officer. Then join us at noon on Thurs-day, April 23 to learn about the recent enhancements the Library has made to its facilities—this includes a brief tour of select areas of the Library. Both programs will be held in Rhodes Tower, room 502 and will include a light lunch. For more information or to reserve a seat for either or both of these seminars, call 875-9734. Sponsored by the Friends of the Library.

Reduce your Fines with Library Elf!

Elf offers library customers a way to keep track of their borrowed items from mul-tiple libraries (including CSU, Cleveland Public Library, and Cuyahoga County Public Library) in one place by email or browser. Receive email courtesy notices when items are due, overdue, or ready for pick up. Text messaging for holds is also available. For more information or to sign up visit: www.libraryelf.com/.

Barbara Strauss, Assistant Director Technical Services