LIBRARIES

An initiative between the WVU Libraries and the Provost’s Office will help up to five faculty members enhance their courses while earning a $3,000 stipend.

The WVU Libraries’ Information Literacy Course Enhancement Program is focused on integrating information literacy into the classroom. The University’s 2010 Plan, www.wvu.edu/~2010plan, states that information literacy will be a curriculum component across all disciplines by 2010.

Each of the selected participants will receive a summer stipend, or other relevant professional remuneration if 12-month faculty apply, and will work with the WVU Libraries’ Director of Instruction and Information Literacy and their librarian liaison to create discipline-specific active learning assignments that address information literacy concepts. The revised courses will be taught during the fall 2009 or spring 2010 semester.

Participants will also take part in a Showcase of Information Literacy Learning Progress Forum during the academic year.

To apply for the program, visit www.wvu.edu/~acadaff/faculty and click on WVU Information Literacy Course Enhancement Grants. For more information, contact Carroll Wilkinson, Director of Instruction and Information Literacy, at 293-0308 or carroll.wilkinson@mail.wvu.edu

Throw some confetti and drop the balloons. The WVU Libraries have recently delivered the one-millionth book to be requested through the popular E-ZBorrow service.

“I was really excited when I learned we hit the milestone,” said Hilary Fredette, Head of Access Services for the Downtown Campus Library. “I knew that the one-millionth request was due at any time, but I didn’t think that WVU would be the library to get the request.”

The book, The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories by Gore Vidal, was requested by a University of Pittsburgh student.

E-ZBorrow is similar to Interlibrary Loan but offers some advantages. The service enables users to log onto a Web site themselves and simultaneously search the library holdings of more than 50 colleges and universities. After finding the desired title, users can then request the book be sent to a library on their campus.

The service was created by the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium Inc., or PALCI, a group of academic libraries with a reciprocal lending and borrowing agreement. WVU joined PALCI in 2004 and is among a handful of members outside of the Keystone State.

Talk about hitting the one-million mark began in August 2008 when the 900,000th request arrived, said Randy Jenkins, Manager of the Libraries’ Depository. It took just 20 weeks for the libraries in PALCI to fill 100,000 requests, which translates to 5,000 transactions a week.

The WVU Libraries contribute significantly to E-ZBorrow operations, receiving and filling about 300 requests a week.

WVU students and faculty also benefit greatly from this service. While the WVU Libraries have 1.6 million books, the agreement gives students access to combine collections totaling near 30 million. Last year, students and faculty here used E-ZBorrow to obtain about 15,000 books.

“The service is another user choice,” Libraries Dean Frances O’Brien said. “You could try to find the complete text of an out-of-copyright book online, you could purchase the book from Amazon or Alibris, you could plan a trip to Philadelphia to visit Penn’s Van Pelt Library, or you can try E-ZBorrow.”

Students can get free help with chemistry, biology, math, physics, and statistics in the Downtown Campus Library Reference Department. Peer tutors from the Academic Resource Centers will be on hand from 7 pm until 11 pm every evening from Sunday through Thursday. You’ll find them in Room 1020 on the first floor.

The service is free and no appointments are necessary.

Tutors from the WVU Writing Center will be joining the schedule soon. Watch for the announcement of their hours.

Stay ahead of the game this semester. Take advantage of this free service.

The Libraries are pleased to announce an upgrade to the MountainLynx Library Catalog coming this spring. Users will find many enhancements and new features that will improve using the catalog of the Libraries’ holdings. Library catalog users can find out what books, journals, newspapers, microforms, and audiovisual materials the WVU Libraries own. MountainLynx contains holdings for all the WVU Libraries including the Downtown Campus, Evansdale, Health Sciences, and Law Libraries, and the West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

The coming redesigned user interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate. Other features to look for include individual record displays that are more readable and distinct. The action buttons (Print, Export, and Add to List) are visually connected to the records they affect. Users can apply one or multiple filters to narrow the results by date, location, medium, or any of the other standard limiting options. With a default link to Google Book Search, users can view results with the enhanced features such as full text, book previews, cover thumbnails, etc. The easy-to-use “My Account” display offers a more complete picture of transactions and account information. It is now supported on the Firefox 2.0 Web browser.

MountainLynx will still be on the same platform and retain all the features of the old system, so experienced users should not have any trouble finding their way around. One change that users may need to take note of is that the choice named “Assisted Search” in the old system will be called “Advanced” in the new one. When the new system comes up, users will be able to try it out or use the old system until after Spring Break (March 16th) when the classic version will be taken down.

Research material for papers and projects is just a few web clicks away whenever you need it. WVU Libraries provide 24/7 access to online resources for WVU students, faculty and staff through our list of Databases.

Resources in the Databases list include a wide variety of types of material and cover every academic discipline. Some of the things you will find are:

collections of peer-reviewed journal articles in JSTOR
news from broadcast, print, and internet sources in Lexis Nexis
early books from Eighteenth Century Collections Online
encyclopedias AccessScience and Grove Art for specialized topics
collections of eBooks in engineering from Knovel
extensive company information from Mergent Online

Browse the Databases list for complete listings and descriptions of the more than 300 online sources available.

If you have questions about which might be useful for your research, you can always Ask a Librarian for recommendations.

The Health Sciences Library faculty and staff will play host to the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Medical Library Association’s annual conference to be held Oct. 20-22 at the Waterfront Place Hotel.

The meeting will bring to campus about 150 health sciences librarians and other information professionals from the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. The last time the MAC conference was in Morgantown was in 1993.

“We are looking forward to hosting the conference to show off our new Health Sciences Library and Learning Center, as well as the rail trails and Wharf District near the Waterfront Place Hotel,” said Susan Arnold, Director of the Health Sciences Library and Local Arrangements Chair for the conference. “Our theme is ‘Almost Heaven—Exploring New Vistas’.”
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An introductory workshop on U.S. patent searching will be held from 9-11 a.m. Oct. 21 in room 130 of the Evansdale Library.

The workshop will cover introductory information on the patenting process, preliminary patent searching including classification, Public PAIR, and hands-on instruction in using the U.S. Patent Office’s online database of patents from 1790 to the present.

For more information, contact Marian Armour-Gemmen, 293-9758, or marmour@wvu.edu.

The Daily Athenaeum, October 9, 2008

By Katlin Stinespring

West Virginia University students can now experience more of Don Knotts’ background beyond Barney Fife, his character on “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Knotts’ widow, Francey Yarborough-Knotts, is fulfilling his wishes to donate various belongings and memorabilia to his alma mater.

“Throughout his life, (Knotts) maintained pretty close ties to Morgantown and always considered himself a West Virginian and a fan of WVU. (Yarborough-Knotts) is following through on his behalf,” said John Cuthbert, curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection.
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In celebration of the first international Open Access Day, the WVU Libraries will host a live, worldwide broadcast at 7 p.m. Oct. 14 in the computer classroom at the Health Sciences Library.

The presentation will feature an appearance from Sir Richard Roberts, PhD, FRS, who was the joint winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering split genes and RNA splicing. Currently working at New England Biolabs, he was one of 26 Nobel Prize winners to sign the Open Letter to the U.S. Congress in support of taxpayer access to publicly funded research.
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What happened after Deputy Fife hung up his gun holster, Mr. Furley left the landlord business, Mr. Chicken overcame his fears, and the Apple Dumpling Gang rode off into the sunset? That’s when Don Knotts, the comic genius and WVU alum, returned to his first love, live theater.

This lesser-known aspect of Knotts’ acting career is chronicled in the latest gift of memorabilia from his widow, Francey Yarborough-Knotts, to the WVU Libraries’ West Virginia and Regional History Collection.

“Don Knotts had a very long and broad career in live theater,” said John Cuthbert, Curator of the WVRHC. “This donation is quite extensive and provides a comprehensive look into Don’s career, including his early career.”

Among the gems are a thick stack of playbills, many with covers bearing Knotts’ wide grin, that mark his work in dozens of stage productions over a span of decades.

Don Knotts, a Morgantown native and WVU alum, starred in dozens of plays during and following his stellar television and movie career.
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The Daily Athenaeum, September 30, 2008

By Ryan Hoffman

By the start of the Fall 2009 semester, the West Virginia University Evansdale Library will feature a brand new coffee house and other renovations.

“The whole idea is to reconfigure the first floor,” said Mary Strife, Evansdale Library director.

Although the numbers are not final, the renovation, including the cafe is expected to cost between $750,000 and $1 million, Strife said.

The money will come from the Office of the Provost and WVU Libraries, although the details are not yet final.

The spending plan must be finalized by June 30, 2009, the end of the fiscal year.

All monies must either be spent or designated to a specific area of spending; otherwise the funds will be lost.

“We are very excited about the renovations and hope that it is a very busy summer for us,” Strife said.
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The Daily Athenaeum, September 23, 2008

By Katlin Stinespring

The West Virginia University Libraries are mailing 10 books this week to Fort Wayne, Ind. to be digitized for public access from any location via the Internet.

This plan is part of a grant project which makes digitized copies of books available online on www.archive.org, and makes out-of-print or out-of-copyright books available to anyone. The books are scanned and imported to the online archives.

The University is sending books selected from the rare books collection, many of which are written on the history of West Virginia, WVU and the Civil War.

The digitization of the rare books makes the content more accessible, where in the past, patrons had to make an appointment or in some cases, come to Morgantown.
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Think you know how to read a book? Good battery life on your laptop may one day be as important as good lighting.

The West Virginia University Libraries are among 14 institutions picked to participate in a book digitization pilot project. The goal of the project is to digitize a selection of rare and significant books from the participants’ collections and make the electronic versions available via the Internet.

“I hope books never go away, and I don’t think they will, but digitization makes a book available to anyone, anywhere in the world, who has an Internet connection,” said Frances O’Brien, Dean of the WVU Libraries. “I think that’s valuable for people who live a distance from a research library.”

William Rafter, Head of the Libraries’ Cataloging Department; Frances O’Brien, Dean of Libraries; Jo. Brown, the Libraries’ Appalachian bibliographer; and Harold M. Forbes, Rare Books Collection Curator; examine a sketch in one of the books selected for the book digitization pilot project.

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This fall, the WVU Libraries launch a collaborative effort with the WVU Writing Center and the Office of Student Affairs. Beginning Aug. 25, peer tutors will be available for drop-in tutoring sessions on the first floor of the Downtown Campus Library on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Student Affairs tutors will be available from 7-11 p.m. and will provide tutoring for chemistry, physics, biology, math, and statistics. Tutors from the WVU Writing Center will be available from 7-9 p.m. and will work with students to improve their writing.

Summer is a good time to tackle that to-do list and make some positive changes. Lose some weight. Get into shape. Renovate your library.

The latter has been the focus of the West Virginia University Libraries this summer. When students and faculty return to campus for the fall semester, they will find multiple enhancements to the Downtown Campus Library.

The makeover will provide users with a flexible environment in which to work and a convenient link to academic assistance while writing a paper or technical support while working on a computer.

“Our main goal is to respond to student needs,” said Myra Lowe, WVU Libraries Associate Dean. “We want to provide them with a place that is conducive for studying, working on assignments with others, creating multi-media projects, and obtaining needed assistance along the way.”

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Watch any show on HGTV and you will probably hear someone espouse the virtues of proper storage and the need for adequate closet space. The same conversation has been happening for a while at the West Virginia University Libraries.

The Libraries now have 12,000 more square feet of space to house lesser-used books, journals, and other materials thanks to the newly opened addition to the Libraries’ Depository in the WVU Research Park.

“This off-site storage is designed to preserve our collections but still make them available to WVU students and faculty through the MountainLynx catalog,” Libraries Dean Frances O’Brien said. “I think it’s a good solution to the increasing demand for more study and learning space in the campus libraries.”

Randy Jenkins, Depository Manager, oversees the migration of materials from the Downtown Campus, Evansdale, and Health Sciences libraries to the new Depository addition.
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Materials from the Math Library are now located in the Downtown Campus Library or the Libraries Depository. Ask for help at the Reference Desk.

WVU Today, June 18, 2008

Call West Virginia University’s John Cuthbert “old school,” and the library curator will laugh and thank you for the compliment.

That’s because in today’s whiz-bang, jump-cut, computer graphic-enhanced, “just roll tape” age, he still thinks there’s a lot to be said for the compelling drama of the humble photograph – preferably one that is sepia toned, from a time gone by.

“I always think about what went on right before and right after the picture was snapped,” Cuthbert said. “I’m always drawn to the faces and surroundings. You can see the baby who grew up to be a great-grandmother or the miner who unfortunately died the day after the photograph was made. A good photograph is a little slice of someone’s soul, and I mean that in a good way.”
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The Daily Athenaeum, June 18, 2008

By Candace Nelson

On June 20, 1863, West Virginia was created from the secession of several northwestern counties of Virginia during the Civil War. West Virginia is the only state created from another without the parent state’s permission and the only to achieve statehood by the proclamation of a president.

In honor of West Virginia Day on Friday, West Virginia University Libraries is holding a series of free events to celebrate George Bird Evans.

Evans’ family enjoyed the outdoors, and, coincidentally, his middle name (Bird) was a family name.

“It’s a great opportunity for students and staff to know about our history. (Evans) may not be well-known, but (this display) will benefit the students,” said Monte Maxwell, a representative of WVU Libraries.
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Stop by the Downtown Campus Library on June 20 to celebrate the state’s founding. The WVU Libraries will mark the day by paying tribute to artist, author, outdoor enthusiast, and West Virginian George Bird Evans.

“We are focusing on George Bird Evans in honor of the donation of the Evans’ papers and manuscripts to the WVU Libraries earlier this year,” said John Cuthbert, curator of the West Virginia and Regional History Collection. “Evans was a giant in the field of upland game bird hunting literature. His writing about the subject, which included well over one hundred books and articles, reflected a connoisseurship that harked back to the European tradition of the gentleman sportsman.”

Evans began his professional life during the late 1920s working as an illustrator for leading magazines and other clients in New York City. After serving during World War II, he turned his talents to writing a series of acclaimed mystery novels. It was not until the 1950s that he began writing about his passion for birds, dogs, and the West Virginia mountains. He passed away in 1998.

Festivities begin at 9:30 a.m. with a reception in the Milano Reading Room. A dedication ceremony for the George Bird Evans Collection follows at 10 a.m., with Evans’ biographer Catherine Harper delivering the keynote address.

An exhibit of Evans’ work opens at noon in the Davis Galleries on the sixth floor of the Wise Library. The 2008 West Virginia Day posters will be distributed at that time to those present.

The day concludes with a reception at “Old Hemlock,” the rustic Preston County home of Evans. The reception will include a barbeque, tours of the home and grounds, and demonstrations of Pointers, the dog breed Evans immortalized in drawing and word.

A native of nearby Uniontown, Pa., Evans settled permanently in Preston County in 1939. His home near Bruceton Mills became well known to sporting literature enthusiasts throughout the country during the late twentieth century. His writings were largely based upon his experiences at “Old Hemlock” and in the nearby hills and mountains.

Evans’ extensive collection, now housed in the WVRHC, includes personal papers, manuscripts, books and other materials by and about Evans and his wife, co-author and editor, Kay Harris Evans.

All events are open to the public.