Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Convenience-by-proxy

For your convenience, Polk Library permits authorized patrons to check out materials for other patrons. Any patron who wishes to give another patron (their “proxy”) the authority to use his privileges may file a form at the circulation desk.

Two easy steps:
  1. Go to the Polk website at the site listed and print off the Proxy form*, fill it out and return it to the Polk Circulation staff. http://www.uwosh.edu/library/pdf/proxypatron.pdf  This will enable your proxy patron to check out and pick up your items. 
  2. The proxy must present his/her valid TitanCard and give your name when s/he wishes to check out materials for you. 

CAUTION: Proxies will be unable to check out materials if you or your proxy has outstanding library fees or overdue items.

*A department can submit a list of proxy patrons for an entire department by attaching a list of faculty members who wish to be included. Each faculty member’s signature must accompany this list. This would be handy for  graduate assistants, PAs, work study student workers and colleagues.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Some great sites to check out in 2010

The American Library Association's Eleventh Annual Best Free Reference Web Sites was released recently. Here are a few of the the highlights:

BBC Country Profiles

   "This site supplies information on the history, economy, and politics of countries and territories. Each profile includes an overview, map, facts, and current leaders. A media overview provides information on the press, television, radio, news agencies, and number of Internet users." - from the Best List 2009

The Blue Letter Bible

   "Containing 14 searchable versions of the Holy Bible, Blue Letter Bible offers an extensive insight into one of the world’s most popular books... Additional resources include charts, outlines, timelines, and maps, plus four streaming audio versions, are available from each passage’s page." - from the Best List 2009

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre

   "This site is one of the fastest ways to find information about the exploitative practices of 4000 businesses worldwide, which would be difficult to locate by other means. Users can begin searching by company name, issue, country, or topic. Balanced coverage is provided via news, announcements, and special resources while providing responses from the accused companies." - from the Best List 2009

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

   "Sponsored jointly by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), this site provides select digital access to American newspapers from 1880 to 1910 and from mainly ten states." - from the Best List 2009

Online Conversion

   "This site boasts that one can “convert just about anything to anything else.” And with 50,000 conversions and 5,000 units, it has an impressive range. Sure, it has the popular conversions: length, temperature, speed, volume, weight, cooking, area, fuel economy, and currency. But it also contains measurements for women’s clothing sizes between countries, light-years, density, torque, horse height, meeting room size needed for attendees, gauge and much more."  - from the Best List 2009

Check out the full list for other best-of sites, including the American Presidency Project, PubChem,  and Lexicool

Thursday, August 6, 2009

New Databases & Changes

Polk Library has made a number of new electronic resources and databases available to you beginning August 1, 2009. We are very excited about these additions, please see the list below.

However we have also either cancelled or lost access to several previously held electronic resources as well. If you had a smart link to articles or databases in course pages, D2L, electronic reserves to one of the resources that we no longer have access to, it will no longer work. In the case of course pages, it has been removed.

Contact Ron Hardy (424-2097, hardyr@uwosh) if you have any questions regarding this.

New Electronic Resources to Polk Library (Summer 2009)
  • Alt Health Watch
  • Business Source Premier;
  • Education Administration Abstracts
  • Education Research Complete;
  • Film & Television Literature with Full Text;
  • Gale’s LitFinder;
  • Green File
  • Historical Abstracts;
  • History Reference Center;
  • Humanities International Complete;
  • LGBT Life with Full Text;
  • Literary Reference Center;
  • MEDLINE with Full Text;
  • Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies;
  • Morningstar Investment Research Center;
  • The Music Index
  • Oxford African American Studies Center;
  • Points of View Reference Center;
  • Political Science Complete;
  • Public Administration Abstracts;
  • Reference USA – Business information and market analysis;
  • Science Reference Center
  • SocINDEX with Full Text;
  • Wildlife & Ecology Studies Worldwide;
Electronic Resources Polk Library No Longer Has Access To (Summer 2009)
  • Cambridge Sociological Abstracts
  • Corporate Resource Net
  • Earthscape
  • McClatchy-Tribune Collection
  • Mergent Online
  • Newspaper Source
  • RILM
  • Social Services Abstracts
  • Wilson Web (Applied Science & Technology FT, Art FT, Business FT, Education FT, General Science FT, Humanities FT, Readers Guide FT, Social Sciences FT, Wilson Omni File)