If you’re a fan of the UW-Whitewater mascot, Willie Warhawk, you are going to love this video. In addition to being the campus mascot and attending athletic events, Willie likes to live the life of a typical college student. He spends time in the Andersen Library working on his homework, and then blows off steam. Check out this video below:
And you’re going to be at HawkFest today, so will we! Make sure you stop by!
My blog posts usually promote Library events, services, & resources. But I saw this video on a blog about how to promote a reference chat service, and I simply could not resist sharing it! Maybe I can claim it’s relevant to the Library because we are constantly striving to get the word out to people about what we offer so that they make use of our resources and services, but I wouldn’t say that’s really like “herding cats” because people are pretty receptive when we talk to them. Well, in any case, enjoy.
The Friends of the Irvin L. Young Memorial Library (Whitewater’s public library) are having their annual book sale through Friday Sept. 4, 2009.
The library is located at 431 West Center Street. The library’s hours are M-TH 9am–8:30pm, F-Sat 9am–5:30pm (closed on Sundays).
The Monty Hall Problem:
The Remarkable Story of Math’s Most Contentious Brain Teaser
By Jason Rosenhouse
QA95 .R67 2009
New Book Island, 2nd floor
“What’s behind door number one?” The famous question of Let’s Make a Deal’s Monty Hall has spawned much discussion on strategy, bringing in mathematics, probability, psychology and philosophy into the arena (and made the front page of the New York Times). After you’ve selected the door of your choice and Monty reveals what’s behind the one of the other doors, do you stay with your first choice or do you switch to the other doors? That, my friend, is the Monty Hall Problem.
Rosenhouse, math professor at James Madison University, set out to compile his notes about the problem spawned from the game show and present them in book format. However, he ran into some difficulty when he started researching because the problem attracted the attention of more than just mathematicians. The author therefore has incorporated the aspects of psychology and philosophy that have been studied in relation to the conundrum presented by the prizes behind the doors. Rosenhouse does explain in his preface that while chapters three and four are pretty math-heavy, the rest of the book is relatively easy-to-understand.
The Library Catalog had a significant upgrade right before Orientation Week (convenient timing, isn’t it?!).
We’ve named our new catalog HalCat (short for Harold Andersen Library Catalog). It needs more tweaking, and we are experiencing some technical difficulties with its functionality (which are not local), so please bear with us.
If you want to search other UW System campus library catalogs and borrow materials, either click on the “Universal Borrowing” link on the Library home page’s left sidebar, or once in the catalog click on “Change” on the line where it tells you what catalog you are searching (and then scroll down to click on “Select”):
Database:UW-Whitewater (HAL CAT) Change
After you do a search and you are looking at the record for a title you want to borrow, look at the blue box on the right side of the display. Click on “Make a Request” and log in when prompted.
Yesterday morning and again this morning we are all getting an error message when we try to use this capability. I hope they can fix it again so we can all use it later today…and we apologize for any inconvenience.
The Library is involved in several events during Orientation Week and we’d like you to know about them!
Google for Scholarly Research
Presented by Martha Stephenson, Reference & Instruction Librarian
27 August 2009 (Thursday) — 9-10 AM — UC 261
Google is ubiquitous, yet constantly evolving. Advances and improvements in Google products offer opportunities to more effectively and efficiently find information on the internet. This Googleology workshop features Google Scholar, Books, and Reader, which offer vital contributions to scholarship. By participating in this workshop, you’ll learn to:
- Personalize Google Scholar to hybridize Andersen Library resources and the free internet:
→ Search with Google simplicity and find quality articles and books available through the Andersen Library
→ Interlibrary Loan materials not available in our library system
- Use Google Books to find relevant books, book chapters and quotes.
- Use Google Reader to aggregate pertinent RSS feeds.
Library Services & Online Resources
27 August 2009 (Thursday) — 2:30-3:30 PM — Andersen Library 2211 (BI Lab)
We’ll provide an introduction and overview of library services & online resources for new faculty and instructional academic staff (if you need a refresher, that’s OK too!). You’ll also get a chance to meet the library director and your librarian liaison. There will be refreshments served and the first fifteen attendees will receive a FREE t-shirt!
Tabloid Valley:
Supermarket News and American Culture
By Paula Morton
PN4888 .T3 M67 2009
New Book Island, 2nd floor
I’ve always been fascinated and entertained while standing in line at the checkout because I have a chance to catch up with what really matters in our society, like who dressed to impress or who has found themselves unexpectedly expecting. That’s right, the celeb rags have captured my attention and curiosity for the rich and famous people important enough to grace those pages. This week’s featured title talks all about the tabloid industry and the dirt that it has managed to spread throughout time.
Morton, a freelance author, explores the history and culture of Tabloid Valley, the Silicon Valley equivalent for the gossip industry. The six major publications were all headquartered through Palm Beach County, FL, until they were bought up by AMI in 1999. The author examines the industry’s rise to fame and prominence within grocery stores everywhere and how their outlandish headlines and sensationalist stories have infiltrated our culture for all-you-can-handle celebrity news. Written in a similar format to a tabloid, Morton interviewed many of the tabloid insiders and provided the list of sources she used in compiling her story. You will find yourself bouncing back and forth between fact and fiction.
What’s a card catalog, you say? It’s OK, you must be a freshman.
Beloit College has released their annual Mindset List, a listing of interesting factoids about the incoming class of new students that arrive in approximately twelve days. According to the list, the card catalog, arguably one of the most identifiable objects associated with our fine establishment, is practically a dinosaur to the fresh crop of kids. They also have never understood what RSVP stands for (I don’t either), only known postal abbreviations for states to contain two letters and (this one’s probably the saddest) have never been Saved by the Bell, in prime-time anyway.
As a precaution, please make sure that you’re in a good mood because it may be a little depressing to think how well you remember some of the things that the class of 2013 never experienced.
When you have some time to kill, you can spend it helping Google “improve the quality of Google’s image search results.” Go to Google Image Labeler.
They’ve made this into a “game.” When you start labeling you are paired with a partner (someone else who happens to be playing at the time). Each of you is shown the same series of images, one at a time, and you enter descriptive labels until the two of you match on a label. Points are awarded based on “how specific your label is.” At the end of two minutes you get a total score.
Now, I’m not sure how much this will improve image retrieval, because I often matched my partner on very simplistic labels like “woman,” “people,” and “black and white.” And sometimes I just had NO IDEA what an image was. so my descriptive labels may have been way off.
Try it for yourself, but I think the time limit influences players to stick with very simple labels and discourages coming up with more interesting (and useful) ones, which would be less likely to match your partner’s labels.
Believe it or not: This came to my attention at a meeting of librarians (Yes, that’s right, we get together sometimes, and you just never know what you’ll learn when we do!).
Andersen Library has materials on Palestine. Search the HalCat library catalog to find titles such as The case for Palestine: an international law perspective (3rd-floor Main Collection, DS119.7 .Q7219 2005) and Culture and customs of the Palestinians (3rd-floor Main Collection, GN635.P19 F37 2004).