New Books!

The Tri-County Technical College Library faculty and staff made its annual Books-a-Million run! We purchased titles for all three campuses.  Each campus will have a display during June that will feature the new books. Many of our faithful library patrons have made requests for casual reading, as well as for subject areas that needed up-to-date information for student research purposes. Some of the subjects that we purchased materials for are: the Romanovs, NCLEX, ASVAB, credit repair, personal finance, Military history, local history, alternative medicine, weaponry, gardening, cook books, and architecture. Some of the popular titles that we purchased are: Inferno by Dan Brown, NOS4A2 by Joe Hill, Waiting to be Heard by Amanda Knox, Winter of the World by Ken Follett, Getting in!: the Zinch guide to College Admissions and Financial Aid in the Digital Age by Steve Cohen, et al, The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloots, and My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor, as well as many, many more. The new titles have not been fully processed so they are not yet available for check out. We will keep you informed on the progress of the processing of these books.  If you made a specific request, we will send you an email to let you know when your title is ready.

Library Gets a Face Lift

For the first time in over 20 years, the TCTC library will be remodeled.  This summer project will include new furniture, a new circulation and reference desk area, new carpet, new paint on the walls, and a café area.  We are especially proud of the anticipated updates to the large study rooms.  These rooms will include a large screen monitor that is hooked to individual input stations.  By using this technology students can bring 21^st century skills to their team group projects.  See Backbone Media Platform. Additionally we will be adding a Mac Bar area that will include Mac computers. Colors will focus on the TCTC colors of red, black, and khaki.  Planning for this project started a few years ago and ramped up in December, 2012, with the choice of KI as the furniture vendor and designer.  During January, February, and March, colors, patterns, and furniture was discussed between a number of staff and faculty and students. In April, the library staff began the process by shifting some of the shelving so that the large back window area became more open.  We are in the process of moving the bound periodicals to another location. That area will become the Legal area and support the new paralegal program that starts in Fall, 2013.  The next steps will be redoing the carpet, painting the walls, and updating the study rooms. There will be different times that specific areas of the library will need to be blocked off to accommodate all these adjustments.  Furniture should arrive by the end of July.  We anticipate the entire project to be complete for the beginning of the fall semester.  A color board and design plans are at the circulation desk. Feel free to stop by and look at the redesign.

 

 

National Library Week: Like Shark Week, but with Cardigans

NLW was 4/15/13-4/21/13 this year.  I usually don’t pay too much attention to it, but when I worked at the Oconee County Public Library we liked to make a big deal of it.  We created displays, scheduled programs at each library location, and sometimes even had “Fine Free Week” if overdue books were returned.

I’ve been the main Instruction Librarian at TCTC for almost 6 years, so most students have attended a workshop in which I guided them through the process of using an academic library.  Part of the English 101 workshop explains the differences between academic journals and magazines.  I use a journal article called “library anxiety among students” as an example of research results published in academic journals.  When I talk about “library anxiety”, many students giggle self-consciously, then furtively glance around to see if others in the room also just realized that they suffer from a touch of it themselves.

The quote, National Library Week:  Like Shark Week, but with cardigans, is from a listserv of community college librarians.  While it was posted in jest, it makes me wonder why the general population continues to see librarians as (at best) uptight shushers and (at worst) sharks in sweaters.  Here at the TCTC library all of us strive to be friendly, approachable, and helpful to students, so rest assured that we are here to assist you with whatever you need.  I’ve answered plenty of reference questions, but I’ve also given people directions to hotels, helped them register for next semester’s classes, given out BandAids, and on one occasion found enough safety pins for a student to fix the zipper in her pants.  Obviously, a shark in a sweater would not do that!

A New Discovery Service

Students engage in information searches through Google on a daily basis.  As we work to meet the needs of our students, the library wanted to adopt a Discovery Service that reflects a similar search experience.  This service, called MegaSearch, is one that many students take advantage of on a daily basis.  It feels like a Google search, retrieves many hits like a Google search, and is easy to use.

Most of our databases and the library’s catalog can now be searched via this tool.  Additionally, hits obtained from a single search can be filtered through a source selection feature of the service.  Are you looking specifically for a reference source, a magazine, or possibly a newspaper article?  If so, select the box on the left side of your results screen to access this feature! 

The MegaSearch box can be found on the TCTC library’s home page.  The address is http://library.tctc.edu.  Good luck!

Additional Practice Tests added to Learning Express

Learning Express has added additional practice tests to its database.  You can access these by going to the Library Career webpage at http://library.tctc.edu/Careers . Most of these are listed under the Jobs and Career tab.

NCLEX-PN Practice Exams
?       NCLEX-PN Practice Exam 1
?       NCLEX-PN Practice Exam 2
?       NCLEX-PN Practice Exam 3

AP Biology Practice Exams
?       AP Biology Practice Exam 1: Section I
?       AP Biology Practice Exam 2: Section II
?       AP Biology Practice Exam 1: Section I
?       AP Biology Practice Exam 2: Section II

Additional Civil Service Practice Exams
?       Civil Service Practice Exam 3
?       Civil Service Practice Exam 4

ISEE Practice Tests
?       ISEE Practice Test: Lower Level
?       ISEE Practice Test: Middle Level
?       ISEE Practice Test: Upper Level

SSAT Practice Test
?       SSAT Upper Level Practice Test

New eBooks
?       GED Vocabulary Flash Review
?       Civil Service Exams: Power Practice
?       Math for College Placement Exams in 20 Minutes a Day

Latest Editions of Popular eBooks
?       Firefighter Exam, 5e
?       Health Occupations Entrance Exams, 3e
?       Medical Assistant Exam, 2e

Dr. Norman Hoyle retires

            The Library staff  will bid a fond farewell Friday, March 29, to Dr. Norman Hoyle, who retires after 17 years as a reference and electronics resources librarian.

            For Norman, who is 78 years young, this is his second retirement – he was a professor for 25 years in the School of Library and Information Science graduate program at the State University of New York at Albany, as well as working in the library of Washington State University and as a professor of English at Linfield College.

            “Norman is very focused on projects until they are done. He is detail oriented,” added Library Director and good friend Marla Roberson, who referenced the large scale literature database, numerous research guides, and the design of the library website as his major accomplishments since he became full time in 2007.

            He created and mainained a database that provides online access to  thousands of scholarly analyses and interpretations of individual literary works.  “This is a unique resource --  no one has anything like this.  It’s a Norman invention,” said Marla.   All of our literature courses rely heavily on the database.  His second accomplishment was designing the library subject portal pages.  He also created coding for MegaSearch, which simultaneously searches all of the TCTC Library’s catalogs and databases; additionally, he created Journal*Browse, which provides faculty and staff  an easy means to keep up with the literature of their field by browsing online the tables-of-contents of selected professional journals and printing out articles of interest.

            “He created remarkable products that will last a long time,” said Marla. “Student surveys always refer to him and applaud his service.”

            “In terms of student success, if we didn’t have the literature database and the subject portal pages he created himself, we’d be back to the 1980s.”

            “I’ll miss working with the people here,” said Norman.  “I take pride in the projects I have been responsible for, what they have done for students, and how these readily accessible resources have contributed to their success.”

            “There’s not another Norman,” said Marla. 

          Berry McMurray, discovery service engineer, EBSCO Publishing, agrees.  “I still remember the first day we met way back when I first started in sales at EBSCO.  I have met many librarians over the years, and it was quite clear even that first day that you were truly committed to your profession and diligently worked to make resources easily available to your patrons/customers/students.  It was a pleasure to have had the opportunity to work with you, and I wish you the best of times in your retirement.”

 

And the winner is...

During the month of February and some of March, the library sponsored a contest that focused on the Mango database. Mango is the on-line language database that is available free-of-charge through the Library. Languages available: Spanish (Latin American), French, Italian, German, Russian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Mandarin), Irish, Japanese, Korean, Latin, and ESL for Arabic Speakers. To be eligible to participate you needed to sign up and do at least one lesson. The folks that did the most lessons were winners twice. Anderson and Easley had additional ways that you could win. This contest was open to all at TCTC - student and staff. Winners for the first part of the contest that picked up their prize: Wanda White, Amber D. Floyd, Lynn Shook, Heather Redd, and Violet Price. (FYI, we had a number of folks that were notified but never picked up their prize!) Grand prize winners were Heather Redd and Lynn Shook. Thanks so much for "playing" and learning a bit of a new language.