Mount Hood

Pulling back the curtain on ILL

Interlibrary loanYou may know about Summit, the “lending club” of academic libraries in our region, but in this term’s library newsletter we pull back the curtain a bit to talk about the bigger picture of resource sharing among libraries. The Interlibrary Loan (ILL) cooperative involves over 10,000 academic, public, and special libraries across the United States and the world!

Check out this story and more in the spring term issue of the Hamersly Library newsletter.

Results of last year’s library survey

survey word cloudLast spring, almost 1,000 of you responded to the library’s survey evaluating the use and quality of the our collections, services, and facilities. That’s 584 WOU students, 143 faculty, 128 members of staff, and 100 graduate students. Thank you so much for your participation!

We’ve crunched the numbers and created an executive summary with the results and some info about what we’re going to do with your feedback. It’s available in WOU’s digital repository, Digital Commons@WOU.

Pages 1-3 summarize the survey itself, basic demographics, overall results, improvements made since the survey, and what’s next. Pages 4-7 are single-page reports of results from specific groups: undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff.

Cameras, computers, camcorders, and more for checkout

Equipment available for checkout

Did you know you can check out a digital camera from Hamersly Library? A laptop for in-library use? A USB microphone? In fact, the library manages over 500 items in its Equipment Lending program.

Most equipment has an initial loan of 4 days, with a 3-day renewal possible. A few items have a 4-hour loan. Library patrons can make reservations for equipment though Primo. You can can get these items from the Checkout Desk all hours the library is open. Learn more about the Equipment Lending program from our fall term library newsletter.

Check out the Spring 2015 issues of PURE Insights

PURE cover 2015The newest issue of PURE Insights is now available! 
PURE Insights
is WOU’s peer-reviewed undergraduate research journal comprised of works by WOU undergraduate students working closely with a WOU faculty mentor.

This year’s issue includes a wide variety of articles from the fields of Psychology, Biology, Art, Mathematics, Anthropology, and Communication Studies.

Enjoy!

Don’t pack your library books!

book dropAs the year comes to a close and you start packing up for summer, don’t forget to return any items you have borrowed from the library.

The last thing you want is to realize in July that you packed that book/DVD/CD you borrowed from Hamersly in May!

So, make a pile called “Library” while you’re packing up and bring ’em all back before you head out for summer break. Your friendly library staff (and your bank account) will thank you.

 

Noodle Tools will make your life easier

Working on a research paper or project? Save time and make your life easier by using Noodle Tools! As a WOU student, you can create a *free* premium account.

What is  Noodle Tools? It’s an online tool that helps you organize your research sources and create citations in APA, MLA, or Chicago/Turabian formats. Using Noodle Tools, you can create a new project for each of your research assignments and store your bibliography for as long as you’re working on the assignment — or longer, it’s up to you. You can add notes to individual sources reminding yourself how you’d like to use them in your paper. And you can reuse sources for different projects in the future, even automatically changing to another citation style if necessary.

Access Noodle Tools here to sign up for your free, premium account and get started.

Hamersly has lots of music for your studying needs

CDs from the libraryLooking for some study music? The library has hundreds of CDs available for checkout from all sorts of different genres.

From Bon Iver to Kanye West, Bela Fleck to Etta James, Taylor Swift, and The Beatles: whatever your taste we’ve got something for you.

Search Primo (above) for the name of your favorite band or artist to get started.

Happy studying!

Get some light Spring Break reading @ the library

Just in case you need another reason to be excited that Spring Break is coming up… We just put out some fun “Spring Break Reads” on the 1st floor. Whether your idea of fun is a light beach read, a suspenseful mystery, a sci-fi thriller, or a collection of humorous essays.

No matter what genre, you can be sure they’re perfect for whiling away those lazy break days. Take a study break and check them out!

Spring Break reads

Spring Break reads

It’s OK to order things OnDemand!

When you run across an article in your research that is available through “Get It Now” or “OnDemand,” don’t let that stop you from getting the article you need.

These terms mean that Hamersly doesn’t have access to the journal that published the article you are looking for, but we can still get the article for you. In order to get access, you will go through a short process – since the library pays (on average around $30) each time an article is viewed through the Articles OnDemand provider’s website, we want to make sure you actually want the article. We budget for Articles OnDemand use though, so we want you to use it when you need it! We simply ask that you:

  • Read the abstract of each article to determine how likely it is to suit your needs before viewing the full text and incurring charges.
  • Be sure to save the article somewhere you will be able to get back to it (e.g. your H:/ drive, My Documents folder on your personal computer, a USB drive) so that the library only pays for it once.

Happy researching!