Thanksgiving: Library hours

clip art of horn of plentyPlan ahead! Hours of the Andersen Library and Food for Thought Café are affected by the Thanksgiving holiday.

The Food for Thought Café will be open until 3:30pm on Mon. Nov. 25, until 2pm on Tues. Nov. 26, and then closes for the rest of the week. You can see other Thanksgiving Break hours of service for campus dining online.

Andersen Library also adjusts its hours for the holiday this week:

  • Wed., Nov. 27th: 7:30am-4:30pm
  • Thurs., Nov. 28th: CLOSED
  • Fri., Nov. 29th: 8am-4:30pm
  • Sat., Nov. 30th: CLOSED all day
  • Sun., Dec. 1st: 3pm-2am

Please remember that even when the physical Library is closed, you can:

  • Search the article databases (login when prompted with your campus Net-ID, same as for your campus email or D2L),
  • Search the HALCAT Library Catalog and use links to online titles, including ereserves for classes,
  • Renew checked-out books, government documents, etc. (once) through your Personal Record (unless you’ve already used up your allowed renewals),
  • Consult online guides for help, including citation guides for APA, MLA, and Turabian format, and class assignment guides, and
  • Ask a librarian for help using email or chat (UWW librarians respond to the emails when the Library is open, but chat is covered 24/7 by non-UWW staff).
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T3: Easy Webpage Creation and Hosting with Google Sites

Do you need to create a webpage for a class, project, or for your own personal use? As a student, faculty, or staff member of the university, you have access to software to help you design a webpage and storage space on UW-Whitewater’s servers to host your finished site. Sometimes, the idea of designing your own webpage and hosting it on a campus server is too daunting or time-consuming to contemplate. In that case, Google Sites may be the answer.

As part of UW-Whitewater’s suite of Google Apps, Google Sites allows you to create and publish webpages using a simple editing interface that works like Google’s document creator. Once you pick a template for your site, it is easy to quickly build a functional website in an hour or so. All you need are a few clicks of the mouse to publish your page after you finish filling in the content.

Log in to your UW-Whitewater Google Sites page and get started!

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Trans & Gender Identities

Mara Keisling, Founding Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, spoke to a crowd of students, staff, and administrators on Thursday morning last week, covering a lot of ground, including the intersection of gender identity and other characteristics like race and disability (if she isn’t supporting rights for people with disabilities, for example, she isn’t helping all trans people), issues transgender people have with insurance coverage, employment discrimination, and medical care. The one thing that all transgender people have in common…they’re people! So treat them like people! Keisling closed quoting Roger Ebert’s version of the Golden Rule:

“I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

Andersen Library can help you can learn more, either about topics Keisling brought up or about gender identity in general. Ask a Librarian if you’d like help.

Cover of Transgender VoicesSearching HALCat would find titles such as In a queer voice: Journeys of resilience from adolescence to adulthood (3rd-floor Main Collection HQ76.27.Y68 S23 2013), The transgender studies reader 2 (3rd-floor Main Collection HQ77.9 .T72 2013), I’m just Anneke: The family journey (2nd-floor Academic DVDs HQ77.9 .I4 2010), and Transgender voices: Beyond women and men (3rd-floor Main Collection HQ77.7 .G57 2008). You also would find government information, such as Employment Non-Discrimination Act ensuring opportunity for all Americans , a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions that is available online. (See an update on ENDA from CQ Weekly dated Nov. 11, 2013.)

Search article databases, such as LGBT Life with Full Text, for articles such as “A Transwoman’s No Cakewalk” (Between the Lines, 2013:Jul.11, pp.8-9) and “Managing uncertainty: A grounded theory of stigma in transgender health care encounters” (Social Science & Medicine, 2013, vol.84, pp.22-29).

FDLP logo Andersen Library is a federal and Wisconsin depository library with federal and state government documents on a variety of current and relevant issues available to you in various formats (print, DVD/CD-ROM, online). Check out your government at Andersen Library!

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New Stuff Tuesday – November 19, 2013

Toy time:  From hula hoops to he-man to hungry hungry hippos: A look back at the most-beloved toys of decades past

Toy Time:
From Hula Hoops to He-Man to Hungry Hungry Hippos: A look Back At the Most-Beloved Toys of Decades Past
by Christopher Byrne.
GV1218.5 .B96 2013
New Arrivals, 2nd floor

This tiny tome neatly encapsulates the essence of American childhood from the 1940s to the 1980s — at least for those kids brought up in mainstream culture. Even today’s college students can identify with many of the featured toys and games: Tonka Trucks (1947), Play-Doh (1956), Frisbee (1957), LEGO (arrived in US in 1961), NERF Ball (1969), UNO (1971) and Care Bears (1983), to name a few.

Toy industry expert, Christopher Byrne, takes a trip down memory lane to find out why these toys became popular and what became of them. Many of the toys are still in production and have burned their way into cultural memory. But some, like Thimble City and Crazy Clock (both introduced in 1964), were faddish and quickly vanished from the landscape.

The pictures will bring back lots of (hopefully) happy memories for anyone who played with these games or toys. And the Library’s Teaching Tools Collection (part of the Curriculum Collection) even sports a few: LEGO (1961), UNO, and Trivial Pursuit.

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T3: Digital Writing Month

Have you heard that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? If you want to participate in a collaborative, tech-focused writing project check out this Digital Writing Month (DigiWriMo) project: the Digital Writing Makerthon.  The Digital Writing Makerthon, sponsored by UW-Madison Continuing Studies, is a “unique creative, artistic, multimedia attempt to make a text that is more than a text — what we’re calling a “makertext.” Hundreds of collaborators will work together to tell a single story using words, sound, video, hyperlinks, code, tweets, and more, in just 48 hours.”

The fun starts at 11:59 p.m. on Friday, 15 November and lasts for two days. You can participate by signing up at www.readmake.com and following @Jessifer, @slamteacher, and #readmake on Twitter.

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Get Your Game On: Mario Kart Tournament

In honor of International Games Day (Saturday, 16 November) and the Playful Learning Summit happening on campus this Thursday and Friday, Andersen Library is hosting a Mario Kart Time Trial Tournament this Saturday from noon until 2:00 p.m. in the TV area.

  • Play up to 2 times each course (3 courses)
  • Best time on each course wins a prize pack
  • Free to participate—just show up!

All this week you can enjoy the many types of games we have in our collection by stopping at the tables near the circulation desk to try out some of our games.

IGD12-logo-medium

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Veteran’s Day Celebration

In honor of Veteran’s Day, Andersen Library has created a display highlighting the soldiers of the Civil War.

IMG_20131112_153924

The Civil War display was done in coordination with the Roberta Fiskum Art Gallery in the University Center. Another display featuring Library materials and artifacts from the Civil War era in honor of Veteran’s Day is located in the University Center, on the second floor, at the top of the stairs in the hallway. Feel free to drop by and check it out!

A book truck filled with books and DVDs about the Civil War era, along with personal stories and author insights on the history of the war and the life of the soldiers, is available for browsing near the Circulation Desk. If interested in more about the topic, feel free to stop by the Reference Desk to get more guidance about Civil War research.

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New Stuff Tuesday — November 12

Writing the Gettysburg Address

Writing the Gettysburg Address
by Martin P. Johnson
E475.55 .J65 2013
New Arrivals, 2nd floor

I’m a big fan of Abraham Lincoln. I’ve been to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. I’ve visited the Lincoln Tomb. I’ve been to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC, and to the Lincoln Memorial. I don’t know, Abe just seems like someone you could trust, unlike so many politicians today.

I chose this week’s book, Writing the Gettysburg Address, because next Tuesday, November 19, is the 150th anniversary of that speech. You know the one: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth….”

Lincoln’s address is what most people remember about that day in 1863. It’s hard to believe, really, when you view the image of Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten speech online. It’s only 1.5 pages long. It probably took about 2 minutes to read. But 150 years later, his speech is what all of us remember about that day in history.

The bigger issue, and what Mr. Lincoln would want us to remember, is that he gave the speech at the dedication of a cemetery for Union soldiers who died in the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1-July 3, 1863). You can read about what actually happened at the dedication in an article published in the November 20, 1863 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer, “‘Gettysburg’ Celebration,” including who was there, the weather, the ceremony, and the text of the President’s speech (as reported by the journalist).

I’m sure Mr. Lincoln never thought that one day someone would write an entire book about his little speech (remember what he said: “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…”), but that’s exactly what Martin P. Johnson did in the book, Writing the Gettysburg Address. He talks about the different drafts of the speech, the procession to the cemetery, and the ceremony. He talks about which words the President emphasized in the speech, and about people’s impressions of the President that day. There’s even an entire chapter on the process of confirming what the President actually said in the address, because there were several written drafts, and many different versions were published in newspapers after the ceremony (including the one in the Philadelphia Inquirer, above).

Honestly, I admire Martin Johnson’s dedication in writing an entire book around one short speech. But what I admire more is the speech itself: simple, to the point. No flowery words. No fancy phrasing.

Bravo, Mr. Lincoln. Even 150 years later, your address at Gettysburg is one of the best.

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Friday Fun: Harry Houdini Scrapbook Collection

Even though the famous escape artist Harry Houdini lived in Wisconsin for many years of his youth, the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center houses his papers, including a scrapbook collection related to the history of magic. Some materials have been digitized. The description of the scrapbooks on the web site says, “Most of the content falls into two categories: notices and reviews of performances by magicians, and articles about magic and spiritualism. Nearly every scrapbook contains elements of both categories.” Some of the scrapbooks were originally owned by other magicians, five are “thematic” and contain mostly articles about “magic tricks, and related subjects.” Houdini liked to debunk spiritualists, and even incorporated that into his acts.

If you browse the collection you will see choices such as “Spiritualism Scrapbook” and “Scrapbook about snake charmers and other conjurers.”

I read interesting articles that explain how the popular seances of the day were done, with techniques such as “sleight of foot” (see, for example, page 25 in the snake charmer book, “Ghost and Spirit makers” from Pearsons Weekly, December 25, 1902).

Enjoy.

And if you’d like to learn more about Houdini, Andersen Library has resources from books such as Spellbinder: The life of Harry Houdini (3rd-floor Main Collection, GV1545.H8 L35 2000) to articles such as “The bonds he did not break: Harry Houdini and Wisconsin” (Wisconsin Magazine of History, 2002, vol.85:no.3).

Please ask a librarian for assistance if desired.

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T3: DOIs and APA Citation Style

Today’s tech tip addresses advances in scholarly communication technology and co-evolving citation styles. As scholarly publishers create new, increasingly flexible methods for organizing and tracking born-digital documents, citation styles reflect these changes. Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) provide a way to uniquely tag a scholarly article (or, really, any digital object) using a string of numbers and letters (similarly to the way that ISBNs and ISSNs identify books and serials). Armed only with a DOI, a reader can track down an individual article and discover how best to access the full text of the article (most likely through his or her library’s website).

CrossRef, the official DOI link registration agency for scholarly publications, used to recommend that authors and publishers format DOIs as doi:10.NNNN/doisuffix in all documents. Now, since most readers view references to DOIs in an online environment, CrossRef recommends that authors and publishers format DOIs as URLs: http://dx.doi.org/10.NNNN/doisuffix. The new format cuts down on unnecessary cutting and pasting as internet browsers interpret these as active links.

According to the 6th edition of the APA Style manual, a writer should include the DOI of a journal article using the format doi:0.NNNN/doisuffix.  Since CrossRef changed its rules last summer, the editors of the APA Style manual now accept either the URL format of the DOI or the doi:10.NNNN/doisuffix format. Here is a sample reference in both formats:

Old Way:
Herbst-Damm, K. L., & Kulik, J. A. (2005). Volunteer support, marital status, and the survival times of terminally ill patients. Health Psychology, 24, 225-229. doi:10.1037/0278-6133.24.2.225

New Way:
Herbst-Damm, K. L., & Kulik, J. A. (2005). Volunteer support, marital status, and the survival times of terminally ill patients. Health Psychology, 24, 225-229. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.24.2.225

Both ways are correct but remember to always be consistent: pick one way and stick with it!

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