NY Times Best Illustrated Books of 2009

The New York Times just released their annual Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2009. Check out the slideshow to see which 10 they picked! I think my favorite is "White Noise" by David A. Carter (pictured). It is rare that pop-up books receive much acclaim. One can never get too much of a good pop-up book.

Reference Librarian on Jimmy Kimmel Live

If you are not a late night tv watcher you probably missed it, but White Library's very own Reference Librarian, Marry Kelly, was on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night promoting her blog, "Awful Library Books." You can check it out on Hulu. Her segment starts at 26:41 and runs about 5 minutes.

E-books have arrived.

As you have been searching the SAU library catalog you may have noticed "E-books" in place of call numbers. Do not fear the E-books. We have gradually been adding more and more electronic books throughout 2009. Just click on the title of the book, then click on E-book, and follow it from the library catalog to the electronic version of the book.

You are able to flip through each page as if you were looking at the physical copy of the book itself. You can even search the entire contents of the books of keywords or phrases. We recently added 41 nursing books to our E-book collection.

Fall Break is almost here!

This Friday there are no classes on main campus for Fall Break. The library will still be open, but the hours are slightly different. There are no reference desk hours on Friday and Saturday. The hours for the weekend are:

Fri, Oct 23 -- 9am-5pm. Computer lab open until 9pm.

Sat, Oct 24 -- 1pm-5pm. Computer lab open until 9pm.

Sun, Oct 25 -- 5pm-11pm. Computer lab open 1pm-2am.

Have a great Fall Break. It is a good weekend to take a break from studying if you have been working hard. If you have not been working hard, it is a great time to try to get caught up.

Another Abstract Database

The library has added a new database titled, "ComAbstracts." ComAbstracts is a database of article abstracts, books, bibliographic records, and other sources of relevance to researchers, scholars, and students interested in fields related to human communication studies. A title list of all the publications in the ComAbstracts database can be viewed on their website.

You might be asking yourself, "What is an abstract?" According to the Duke University Writing Studio, "An abstract is a brief digest that summarizes the essential information of an article. Abstracts often help readers decide whether to read the article." An abstract does not provide access to the full article (full-text).

Your next question might be why would I take the time to look for an article I can't view immediately? The short answer is because you can perform a more comprehensive search of communication literature than.

Let's say you found an article in ComAbstracts and would like to be able to gain access to the entire article. How would one go about doing this? First, go the SAU Journal list on the library homepage. The SAU Journal List allows you to search the title of a Journal and will tell you if we have "full-text" access to that journal along with where you can access it. If we do not have access to that journal, send an email with the article information to sauill@arbor.edu or saulibrary@gmail.com and we will try to get the article for you from another library.

More Social Work

In addition to the recently purchased “Social Work Abstracts”, the library has also recently purchased online access to the “Encyclopedia of Social Work.” Both can also be accessed via the “article databases” page from the Library website.

While we own the print version of the to the Encyclopedia of Social Work in the reference section of the library, having access to the online edition will give greater access to this information for off-campus students.

New Database - Social Work Abstracts

The library just gained access to this new database, Social Work Abstracts. You'll note the word "abstract" in the title. This is not a database that has full-text access to the articles you will find, but it reviews over 500 U.S. and international journals and publishes approximately 900 abstracts each quarter. You can search Social Work Abstracts going back all the way to 1960.

If you find an article in Social Work Abstracts that you would like to view in its entirety, you can search for the title of the journal in the SAU journal list to see if we have full-text access to the journal in another database or a print copy. If you find that we do not have access to that journal, send an email with the article information to sauill@arbor.edu or saulibrary@gmail.com and we will try to get the article for you from another library.