September 2008 Archives

Friday, October 10, 2008
11 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
James Branch Cabell Library
Library Instruction Classroom, third floor

In this workshop, teaching faculty will learn how to:
-Share images with students and colleagues through ARTstor folders, e-mail and courseware such as Blackboard.
-Upload and manage your own images in ARTstor personal collections.
-Discover the ease of making presentations with the Offline Image Viewer.
-Download high resolution images for use in PowerPoint.

This workshop is open to faculty, staff and graduate students. Please contact Kristina Keogh at 828-6339 for additional information. For a full list of library instruction classes and events on both campuses, visit the VCU Libraries Events page.

Knovel Library has chosen VCU students to participate in the Knovel University Challenge running Sept. 29 until Dec. 1, 2008. Knovel Library is a property and interactive database for engineering, chemistry, material science, environmental science, and microelectronic materials.

To participate in the challenge, students can visit www.info.knovel.com/challenge. To play, search Knovel and correctly answer three engineering questions. Prizes include 2 Nintendo Wiis, 3 iPod Nanos, and 6 iTunes gift cards.

Universities with 100 entries or more are guaranteed entry into a contest-within-the-contest ensuring that 1 student participant with 3 correct answers will be the winner of an iPod Nano.

American Library Association Promotes Banned Books Week
Banned Books Week
Celebrating the Freedom to Read
September 27 - October 4, 2008

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, this annual ALA event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted. This year, 2008, marks BBW's 27th anniversary (September 27 through October 4).

BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

BBW is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association, American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, American Library Association, American Society of Journalists and Authors, Association of American Publishers, National Association of College Stores, and is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

The American Library Association offers more information on Banned Book Week, Frequently Challenged Books including the list for 2007, and the History of Book Burning on their Web site.

Looking for a place to study? Cabell Library and Tompkins-McCaw Library have designated spaces for both collaborative work as well as individual, quiet study. To learn more about the location, hours and technology resources available in both libraries, visit VCU Libraries Study Spaces on the Web.

For additional information, please contact:

Cabell Library, Research and Instructional Services: 828-1101
Tompkins-McCaw Library, User Services, 828-0636

Research Survival Workshops
James Branch Cabell Library
Library Instruction Classroom, third floor

September 26, 10 a.m.
September 29, 4 p.m.
October 1, 3 p.m.
October 3, 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
October 4, 11 a.m.
October 7, 1 p.m.
October 10, 10 a.m.

VCU Libraries offers Research Survival Workshops for new and returning students, faculty or staff. These quick sessions offers an introduction or refresher on searching the library's Web resources for books and articles to support a research topic. Librarians will demonstrate the Catalog and journal databases including Academic Search Complete. This workshop runs 50 minutes, including time for questions.

All are welcome. No registration required.

For more information on this workshop and a full list of library instruction classes and events on both campuses, visit the VCU Libraries Events page.

Additional resources or learning library research skills can be found online including the Undergraduate Research Toolkit, Distance Learner's Toolkit, and Resource Guides devoted to topic areas such as Biological Sciences, Sociology and Anthropology, History, Art Education, and many others.

Nominations are now being accepted for The Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award. The award, administered by ALA's Public Information Office and Campaign for America's Libraries, encourages library users to recognize the accomplishments of librarians who have helped enrich their educational and/or succeed in their research endeavors. Nominations for librarians in college, community college and university libraries opened on September 2 and run through October 15.

Up to 10 librarians in public, school and academic libraries will be honored at a ceremony and reception in New York at TheTimesCenter, hosted by The New York Times. Each winner also will receive a $5,000 cash award, a plaque and a $500 travel stipend to attend the awards reception. In addition, a plaque will be given to each award winner's library.

Each nominee must be a librarian with a master's degree from a program accredited by the ALA in library and information studies or a master's degree with a specialty in school library media from an educational unit accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. Nominees must be currently working in the United States at an accredited two- or four-year college or university.

For more information, including the online nomination form and tools to help promote the award, visit www.ilovelibraries.org/ilovemylibrarian.

September 15 through 19, 2008
Full schedule of events can be found online: www.library.vcu.edu/constitution/

This month, Virginia Commonwealth University joins campuses across the nation in commemorating the September 17, 1787 signing of the Constitution. VCU's week-long series of events and programming is designed to promote greater awareness of this extraordinary document and to foster reflection upon its principles, which continue to influence our daily lives more than two hundred years after its ratification.

Upcoming VCU events from September 15-19 include the new Constitution Day Lecture series, featuring:

The Constitution: Relevant for 200 years. Now are there dangers on the horizon?
Stephen McCullough, State Solicitor General for Virginia
Wednesday, September 17, 2008, 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Forum Room, University Student Commons

Stephen McCullough is the State Solicitor General for Virginia. The State Solicitor General is part of the Attorney General's Office and represents Virginia's interests in the United States Supreme Court. His responsibilities also include defending Virginia laws from constitutional challenge. Over the years, Mr. McCullough has represented Virginia in a wide range of civil and criminal matters in state and federal courts. This past January, Mr. McCullough argued Virginia v. Moore in the United States Supreme Court. In April, the Court decided the case unanimously in Virginia's favor. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and of the T.C. Williams School of Law at the University of Richmond.

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America
David Hajdu, Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
with moderator Tom De Haven (VCU) and guest M. Thomas Inge (Randolph Macon)
Thursday, September 18th, 2008, 7:30 p.m.
Grace E. Harris Hall, Auditorium (Room 101)

David Hajdu is the author of The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America and two other books, Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn, and Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina. He will discuss the federal crackdown on comic books that occurred during the 1950s and led to decades of self-censorship under the so-called Comics Code Authority. More information on David Hajdu is available online.

The discussion will be moderated by VCU's own Tom De Haven, author of It's Superman!, Funny Papers, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, and other comic-themed works. Guest speaker will be M. Thomas Inge of Randolph-Macon College, editor of the Handbook of American Popular Culture and author of Anything Can Happen in a Comic Strip.

The entire schedule for the week-long series of events can be found online at www.library.vcu.edu/constitution/. Questions? Contact Renee Bosman at 828-8978.

VCU Libraries will cease binding personal copies of theses and dissertations beginning September 1, 2008. Binding for the library collections and for university departments that require bound copies will continue until the start of the Fall 2009 semester when an electronic theses and dissertations will be required, except for a few rare cases. Fees for binding required by departments will continue to be paid to the VCU Libraries.

Students who desire personal bound print copies of their work will select a commercial binder. Commercial binders in Virginia have been posted on the VCU Libraries' Thesis and Dissertation Information page. The list on the Website is not an endorsement of the sources, but they are all establishments that can bind copies for students.

The VCU Libraries and the VCU Graduate School look forward to developing VCU's archive of electronic theses and dissertations, and to keeping VCU competitive with other higher education institutions in helping students with their theses and dissertations.

Friday, September 12
Noon - 1:00 p.m.
James Branch Cabell Library
Library Instruction Classroom, third floor

For more information and a full list of library instruction classes and events on both campuses, visit the VCU Libraries Events page.

Friday, September 5, 1:30p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Thursday, September 11, 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
James Branch Cabell Library
Library Instruction Classroom, third floor

ARTstor is a digital image library useful to researchers in Art and Architecture, History, Anthropology, Theatre and Literary Studies. Learn how to search and browse images, create an account and manage folders and image groups, and download and use the Offline Image Viewer.

To learn more, contact Kristina Keogh or Yuki Hibben .