Interested in becoming a Librarian? Great Scholarships!

A representative from the University of North Texas (UNT) will discuss how one may earn a Master's in Library Science and receive a scholarship.

When: Friday, Oct 9
Time: 10am-12pm
Where: Library 118
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Master's Degree program
UNT's Department of Library and Information Sciences is bringing its ALA-accredited Master’s in Library Science program and popular online format to the Upper Midwest. The program starts with students participating in two four-day Web Institutes (in Missoula, MT - September 3 - 6, 2010 or in Billings, MT - January 14 -17, 2011). The rest of the degree is online.

Scholarships!
Four states, South Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana (SWIM), have formed a formal partnership to address library education needs in the region. The SWIM Regional Collaborative Library Education Project will provide scholarships to educate librarians through the UNT/LIS master’s program to work in the region's rural communities. The funding is sponsored by the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

SWIM scholarship includes:

• An opportunity to earn a MLIS degree from an ALA accredited graduate program.
• Financial Support — Recipients will receive scholarships to cover approximately 80% of the cost of tuition, fees, and books (approximately $12, 960).
• Travel stipends for required training, residencies, and state library association conferences in the SWIM region including support to attend the in-person Institute.

The scholarship application is due or must be postmarked by March 15th, 2010. The application will be available in October on the SD State Library’s website.

Banned Book Week: Sept 27-Oct 3

Come to the Williams Library to see the display of
Banned Books and Suppressed Literature

Each September the American Library Association highlights books that people have tried to ban from public and school libraries. Banned Book Week also highlights information freedom, which most US citizen hold dear. Higher education institutions are usually insulated from the continual battle among libraries, schools, and book challengers. Challengers are individuals from various backgrounds who object to the availability of certain library books/materials to children (17 years old or younger) or to their communities. People have the right to challenge materials in any library, and the library board or school board review the request based on its policy. Below are a few examples (more examples) of challenges in 2008/2009 compiled by ALA’s American Libraries magazine.

• Title/Author: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  Reason: A Cherry Hill, NJ resident had objected to the novel’s depiction of how blacks are treated by members of a racist white community in an Alabama town during the Depression. The resident feared the book would upset black children reading it.
  Status: Retained in the English curriculum

• Title/Author: A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
  Reason: An individual in North Stafford, Va. challenged the use of Zinn’s book in a high school advanced-placement history class (2009), even though it’s not the primary textbook because the book is “un-American, leftist propaganda.” Students in the advanced placement class also read an article titled, “Howard Zinn’s Disappointing History of the United States,” which criticizes Zinn’s book.
  Status: Challenged

• Title/Author: Twilight Series by Stephenie H. Meyer
  Reason: In the middle school libraries of the Capistrano, Calif. Unified School District (2008). The books were initially ordered removed by the district’s instructional materials specialist, who ordered that the books be moved from middle school to high school collections. That order was rescinded and the books remain in the middle school libraries.
  Status: Removed from and later reinstated

• Title/Author: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wiched Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
  The book was retained in the tenth-grade honors program of the Canandaigua Academy in Ontario County, N.Y. (2008) despite concerns about the sexual content on a few pages of the book. The district will offer alternative reading for anyone who objects to the book.
  Status: Retained

• Title/Author: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part‑Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  Book was suspended from a Crook County High School classroom in Prineville, Oreg. (2008) after a parent complained it was offensive. The New York Times best seller and a National Book Award winner will remain out of the classroom until the school district can revamp its policies. The book is about a boy growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation who decides to attend an all‑white school. The protagonist in Alexie’s book discusses masturbation.
  Status: Suspended

• Title/Author: The Starplace by Vicki Grove
  The book was challenged at the Turner Elementary School in New Tampa, Fla. (2008) because the novel contains a racial epithet. The book about an interracial middleschool friendship in 1960s Oklahoma was highly recommended by Children’s Literature Review.
  Status: Challenged

*Photo by flickr user florian.b under a creative commons license

Wall Street Journal in Factiva

If you are looking for full-text Wall Street Journal articles try Factiva. Factiva has

• WSJ full-text articles from 1984 to present
• WSJ abstracts from 1979-1984
• a special module for the latest two-weeks (demo)
• many other business and news publications
  

Database hightlight: Historical SD Newspapers

The America's Historical Newspapers - South Dakota Collection is a fully searchable collection from Newsbank, which includes:

• the Aberdeen American (1907-1922),
• the Aberdeen Daily News (1885-1922),
• the Dakota Republican (1862-1875), and
  
• the Yankton Press and Dakotan (1861-1875).

Use this database to find articles on local and regional history.

September 11 resources

A few select resources to remember and review the events of September 11, 2001:

The September 11 Web Archive
This site represents an effort to "to preserve the Web expressions of individual people, groups, the press and institutions from around the world, in the aftermath of the attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001." A collaboration among the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, and WebArchivist.org.

Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress
"In almost every section of the Library of Congress, staff have sought and received an abundance of original material including prints, photographs, drawings, poems, eye-witness accounts and personal reactions, headlines, books, magazines, songs, maps, videotapes and films." related to September 11, 2001. Includes children's artwork and audio reactions, posters and chapbook covers, and aerial views. From the Library of Congress.

The September 11, 2001, Documentary Project
This project captures the heartfelt reactions, eyewitness accounts, and diverse opinions of Americans and others in the months that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93. Patriotism and unity mixed with sadness, anger, and insecurity are common themes expressed in this online presentation of almost 200 audio and video interviews, 45 graphic items, and 21 written narratives.

Complete Coverage: The 9/11 Records
Under court order, "the city of New York [in August 2005] opened part of its archive of records from Sept. 11, releasing a digital avalanche of oral histories, dispatchers' tapes and phone logs. ... For the first time, about 200 accounts of emergency medical technicians, paramedics and their supervisors were made public." This site provides the unedited audio dispatches and oral histories of dispatch transmissions, along with articles and commentary. From the New York Times; some sections require free registration.

America Transformed: NPR Coverage Sept. 11 - Oct. 8, 2001
This is an archive of National Public Radio coverage in the weeks immediately following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The archive includes articles, images, essays, audio, and other resources, "indexed by show with the most recent audio listed first."

The 9/11 Commission report : final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States
The Commission’s Final Report provides a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks, including preparedness for and the immediate response to the attacks. It also includes recommendations designed to guard against future attacks.

Database highlight: ARTstor

ARTstor is a digital library of more than one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.

The Digital Library serves users in the arts, history, architecture and other disciplines (e.g. American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, Literary Studies, Medieval Studies, Music, Religious Studies, and Renaissance Studies, etc). The collection is for all of whom find the images in ARTstor to be relevant to their teaching and research. To learn more, please see our section on Interdisciplinary uses.

In ARTstor you can:

• Browse content by collection, classification, or geography
• Search content by keyword or advanced search terms (e.g., date and geographic origin)
• Sort search results by date, creator, or title
• View images and image data
• Zoom in on and pan images for greater detail
• Print and save images and related data to other hardware (e.g. CD, memory stick, hard drive)
• and more

Please check your library record!

On the back of your NSU ID is your library barcode/username (215…), this barcode allows you to checkout materials, login to databases from off campus, and request materials from other libraries (via interlibrary loan).

Unfortunately, the SDLN server has lost data, which may or may not include your library barcode. Please attempt to login to the library catalog with your barcode and password (your last name). Watch the video demonstration to understand the process.

If the barcode does not work, please contact us or stop in so we may load your barcode in the system.

Phone: 626-2645 or 626-3018
Email: reference@northern.edu

Quality Health Info online

According to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life project, 61% of American adults look online for health information. With this information in mind, below are a few quality resources.

• MedlinePlus.gov - a site for consumers looking for answers to health questions. It brings together authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations
• HealthFinder - a government Web site where you will find information and tools to help you and those you care about stay healthy. It has resources on a wide range of health topics selected from over 1,600 government and non-profit organizations to bring you the best, most reliable health information on the Internet.
• Womenshealth.gov - The Office on Women's Health (OWH) was established in 1991 its Vision is to ensure that "All Women and Girls are Healthier and Have a Better Sense of Well Being." Its mission is to "provide leadership to promote health equity for women and girls through sex/gender-specific approaches."
• Men's Health - Section from MedlinePlus specifically for male health issues.
  

Also, checkout this Consumer Health guide from the University of Iowa

Open Government - South Dakota

Recently, the South Dakota state government created Open SD as part of an open government initiative. This portal currently "provides financial information about state government, in a searchable format, which currently includes over 106,000 different financial records." The hope is that this site will only grow and provide more information to the citizens of South Dakota to help make informed comments and decisions.

Check rumors with Snopes.com

Snopes.com is a great site to check rumors or urban legends you hear on TV or receive online. The staff does its best to find evidence (which is cited) to verify urban legends. It categorizes the stories by color:

• White - complete urban legend
• Green - true (preponderance of evidence to back up), or based on true story
• Yellow - disputed claims, factual items which the available evidence is too contradictory or insufficient
• Red - claims which cannot be established as true by a preponderance of (reliable) evidence.
• Multi-colored - identify claims which are a mixture of truth and falsehood.