The Downtown Campus and Evansdale libraries will remain open for extended hours during Dead and Finals weeks.

The libraries will remain open continuously from 9 a.m. Sunday, April 26, until 8 p.m. Friday, May 1, and from 9 a.m.-6 pm. Saturday, May 2. For Finals Week, they will open at 9 a.m. Sunday, May 3, and remain open continuously until 8 p.m. Friday, May 8. They will be open from 1-5 p.m. Saturday, May 9.

For more info, check out the Libraries’ calendar: www.libraries.wvu.edu/hours

The Evansdale Library will close this summer so that the facility can undergo an extensive renovation project.

Doors will close after finals week on May 10 and reopen before the start of the fall semester. In the interim, the WVU Libraries will work with users in retrieving needed materials housed at Evansdale.
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Wanted: WVU students who love movies and like online courses

We have the class for you.

Film and Media Literacy (ULIB300 CRN53044) is taught online. The course is an eCampus course and does not meet in a classroom. Students watch films independently in the private viewing rooms in the Media Services Department of the Downtown Campus Library. These rooms have 42” plasma screens and high quality sound systems to deliver an optimal atmosphere for viewing films. Students also have the option to watch films at home if they rent them.

Here are some quotes from students that took the course:

“This was also one of my first web classes and I felt it was better than other web classes I have taken this semester.”

“I really enjoyed this course and would like to take more classes like this.”

“This was my favorite class throughout all of college.”

In this class, you will choose four of eight genres to study. The choices are: Blaxploitation, Slasher, Gangster, Westerns, Dark Comedy, the Films of Quentin Tarantino, Graphic Novel Adaptations, and World Cinema. You will then select two of the fours genres to focus further on and watch five more films that capture the development of those genres. Finally, you will research and choose a film from lists in your selected genres to critique for your final assignment. You will also study media literacy, film criticism and vocabulary, and film databases.

For more information and a complete film list visit the course web page at http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/instruction/film/.

The Downtown Campus and Evansdale Libraries will open at 9 am on Sunday, April 26th, and remain open 24 hours for most of the next two weeks. See Library Hours for details.

Study hard.

Good luck and best wishes from librarians and library staff.

It will be a busy summer for five faculty members selected to participate in a new information literacy initiative designed to help them enhance their courses. The chosen faculty will work closely with five librarians to design relevant information literacy learning outcomes for their course syllabi.

The WVU Libraries’ Information Literacy Course Enhancement Program, a collaborative effort between the Libraries and the Provost’s Office, is focused on fulfilling the University’s 2010 Plan, www.wvu.edu/~2010plan, for information literacy to become a curriculum component across all disciplines by 2010.

“We needed a way to show WVU what more can happen when librarians and faculty work together in the 21st century information environment,” said Carroll Wilkinson, WVU Libraries’ Director of Instruction and Information Literacy. “I am grateful to Dr. Martin and Dean O’Brien for making this project possible.”
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Consider it a virtual suggestion box for the WVU Libraries. In a few days, about 4,000 randomly selected students and faculty will receive an email requesting they participate in LibQUAL, an online survey taking place this month.

The WVU Libraries want input from students, faculty, and staff on the services and resources they currently provide and what offerings they should add. The survey, consisting of 45 multiple-choice questions and has room for comments, enables library users to share their frank opinions about all aspects of the Libraries.
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If information is today’s currency, wvuScholar is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The recently launched research repository, a joint effort by the West Virginia University Libraries, the Office of Information Technology, and the Office of Academic Affairs and Research, brings together scholarly research from students and faculty and makes them accessible through one search engine.

“WvuScholar is a much better interface than we had before,” said John Hagen, Program Coordinator for the Institutional Repository. “It’s easier to search. You can search full-text, not just keywords.”

Migration of the old WVU eIDR system to the new Ex Libris “DigiTool” repository (IR) system began last fall. The collections include Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs), Electronic undergraduate Honors Theses (EHTs) and the Electronic Scholarly Research Archives (ESRA), a faculty research portal.

Student-driven research has been an important part of the open access initiative. WVU became a pioneer in the field in 1998 when it required electronic submission of all master’s theses and doctoral dissertations. Undergraduate Honors College theses are now a graduation requirement as well.

The enhanced access to research posted online translates into many more eyes reading one’s work than would otherwise happen. An ETD is read thousands of times more than their printed counterparts. Over the past decade, the Libraries have recorded more than 10 million ETD downloads.

“The ETD initiative is a way for WVU to participate in discovering new methods of scholarly communication – how our faculty and student research is made available in today’s changing research environment,” said Frances O’Brien, Dean of the WVU Libraries. “Active communication among scholars and the public is an important part of our mission as a land grant university.”

To search the wvuScholar collections, go to http://wvuscholar.wvu.edu:8881