Digitization, Digitization, Digitization!

Snowden Library and the College Archives recently participated in a mass digitization pilot project with 13 other libraries, large and small. The digitization was done by the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization whose purpose is to build an Internet library that offers permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format.

Looking forward to Lycoming’s bicentennial celebration in 2012, we chose to digitize a selection of College yearbooks from different decades of the twentieth century and the History of Lycoming College and its Predecessor Institutions, published in 1958.

Check out our yearbooks and the College history on the Internet Archive site by clicking here. You can browse through the books using the “flip book” viewer, and you can also download PDF copies of each book. The most exciting thing is that now these books are available to anyone, any time, and they’re full-text searchable, too!

Sample page from 1948 Arrow Yearbook.

The program is coordinated by PALINET, a network of more than 600 libraries, archives, and museums in the mid-Atlantic region, with a goal of making electronic copies of interesting books available to the public via the internet. Funding for the project came from the Sloan Foundation.

Moving Journals

The library continues to move physical materials around in order to best meet our community's needs. Our latest shifting project is to move certain print chemistry journals to permanent storage. These journals are all titles that we currently have access to online, but will retain the print as back-up. The titles are as follows:

All volumes to storage:
Analytical chemistry
Biochemistry
Discussions of the Faraday Society
Faraday Discussions of the Chemical Society
Inorganic chemistry
Journal of organic chemistry
Journal of physical chemistry.A & B
Journal of the American Chemical Society
Journal of the Chemical Society Faraday transactions*
Journal of the Chemical Society Faraday transactions I*
Journal of the Chemical Society Faraday transactions II*
Organometallics
Transactions of the Faraday Society

Volumes from 1995-2003 to storage, keep others in library:
Analytica chimica acta
Tetrahedron
Tetrahedron Asymmetry
Tetrahedron letters

Volumes from 1998-2005 to storage, keep others in library:
Chemical Society reviews

Volumes from 1997-2004 to storage, keep others in library:
Chemical Communications

Volumes from 1997-1999 to storage, keep others in library:
Dalton Transactions

*No online access: For the three titles that we have no online access we promise 24 hour delivery Monday through Thursday. Requests for material on Friday through Sunday can be retrieved on Monday.

Transitions

There is a general trend in libraries to move towards digital resources, particularly within journal articles. It is often cost-effective for us so we can provide you with more titles, and it is also more convenient to have full text access from any computer in the world.


One concern that recently arose prompted this post. The concern was traditionally some professors require students to browse tables of contents of recent issues of scholarly journals to pick a paper topic so they are finding out what's going on in the current scholarly dialog. With print, you just opened up an issue with a recent date. Online, the databases are designed to help more with subject searching than browsing. But it is possible and usually very easy to do!

Start with our Periodicals A-to-Z List and look for the journal title that was recommended, for example Personality and Individual Differences. You will see we have full text access to this journal through the Science Direct database from 1995 to present. Click on the Science Direct link. You will then have the option to select which volume and issue you want, and will be able to read all of the titles for that issue, just like a traditional table of contents!

Each database vendor may offer slightly different options, but this is pretty similar throughout our database offerings.

If you have any questions, please contact any librarian (particularly me, Mary Broussard) and we'll be happy to help further!

Student Spotlight - October 2008

Annie Haas

1. What’s your year, major and hometown?
I 'm a Junior Business Management and Marketing Major from Turbotville, PA.

2. To what campus organizations or clubs are you a member?
President of the Marketing Association, Study Buddies & IMS Scholar

3. What was the last book you read?
The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

4. What do you like to do for fun?
Dance

5. What have you learned while working at the library?
I can photocopy with the best of them!

Student Spotlight Archives

Banned Book Week Winners

Congratulations to Chelsea Holbert and Professor Sarah Silkey, our two winners from the Banned Books Week raffle! Chelsea won a $5 gift certificate to the campus bookstore, and Prof. Silkey won a $2 gift certificate to Jazzman's.

Catcher in the Rye won favorite book with 11 votes. Close runners up include The Giver, Of Mice and Men, each with 10 votes, and Go Ask Alice with 9 votes.

The favorite controversial author was J.K. Rowling with 26 votes. Runners up include Stephen King with 17 votes, John Steinbeck with 13 votes, Mark Twain with 12 votes, and Lois Lowery with 11 votes.

We had a record number of votes this year (136), so thank you to all who participated and helped make this year's Banned Books Week a success!

Salinger, Vonnegut & Silverstein

Although my list of favorite books is a long one, three of my favorites appear on the banned book list: A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut and A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein. These titles actually have quite a bit in common other than the fact they are on my favorite list and the banned list. Both Salinger and Vonnegut’s main character are outsiders of sorts and the journey they each take is one of personal growth and insight into the human condition. They are asking the questions to which everyone wants the answers. In the same manner many of Shel Silverstein’s poems are also seeking answers. I have read each of these books several times at different periods in my life and with each reading discovered new insights and ideas. These books speak to each of us in a unique and illuminating way and should be on the “Must read” list, not on the Banned Book list.

--Wilma L. Reeder