On this Veterans Day, we invite you to check out our Veterans Affairs LibGuide. We put this together in order to better serve our students, staff, and faculty who have served in the Armed Forces. Hopefully, they’ll find the resources useful.  We have links to bibliographies and filmographies, streaming video resources, articles from our databases, and local organizations who exclusively serve veterans and their families.

The library extends our thanks to those who selflessly serve our country.

Our New Item RSS feed is working again, and just in time for me to give you a ridiculous Book of the Day.

 

I haven’t read it. Maybe it is horrifying, but… I dunno.  Behold:

 

Stephen King’s Under the Dome. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?  Simpson’s Movie. Or Houston…

The library has a Twitter feed, and you should follow it!  Provided, you have a Twitter account of your own (or you are RSS savvy).

But maybe you’re curious about Twitter, or maybe you have horrid Twitter etiquette:  I’m looking at you, ladies who retweet everything @diablocody posts! But as with all social networking, there’s professional “rules” on top of the basic ones. For that check out Twitter for Business: Twitter for Friends. It is a fantastic guide for not just how to avoid upsetting people, but also how to reach out to the avenues you’re interested in, broadcast to a larger base, and even a little bit about different applications and APIs. So check it out, hit us up, and see what it’s all about.

The Ledger is almost up to present.  This year’s volume is currently the only thing we have left to enter, so check it out here.  If you’ve tried to use our catalog today, you know our server is hiccupy, so stay with us while we go through the pains of updating.

…here’s a better attended library blog from K-State: Talking in the Library. Between our posts here, it’s a great time killer, and helpful for your general informationing needs. The video? It’s just bonus.

It is a shameful part of American history often brushed under the rug too easily considering what was happening on enemy soil at the time. Nonetheless, during World War II, following the attacks on Pearl Harbor, the United States government thought rounding up everyone of Japanese descent would keep us safe.

Though there is little collected, some material recording this 3+ year forced relocation has survived.  In Moving Pictures: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration, Jasmine Alinder collects some of these images to present a view from the inside of what was happening. To learn more, also check out Time of Fear in our DVD section.

I’m told (by my little sister when I moved here) that Overland Park is in the heart of Tornado Alley.  Aside from the fact that she is 12, it is worth noting that the Tri-State Tornado, the nation’s worst tornado disaster, occurred in Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. In your face, 12 year-old!

In all seriousness, Tri-State Tornado: The Story of America’s Greatest Tornado Disaster recaps and examines the night in 1925 that claimed nearly 700 Midwestern lives in just 3 hours.  That is absolutely crazy.  The author, Peter Felknor, was able to secure interviews with 14 survivors. As a native Missourian, Felknor had heard stories of the tornado and went on to get college degrees in the field of atmospheric sciences.  The book is available today at the library, as indicated by our New Books RSS feed (to your right in the blog, folks: subscribe!)

In checking out the digital projects we provide (not subscriptions like journals or e-books), we found some interesting things.

First, the most popular resource we have is our LibGuides collection, which received an insane number of hits over the last two years. The most popular guides are the Gay and Lesbian Film Guide, Autism & Asperger Syndrome Guide, Graphic Novels, and Italian Films & Music.  Now, we made the Autism guide in conjunction with the Autism conference held on campus, so we knew that it would be popular, and the graphic novel guide is one of our oldest.  The biggest from the guides was the Italian Films & Music resource.

Now, even though those guides got good hits, our college repository, ScholarSpace, had a few articles with significant downloads. Hopefully this raises awareness of the resources we have, and hopefully gets more contributors as time goes on.

Here are the Top 20 individual resources:

1. Gay and Lesbian Film Guide (LibGuide)
2. Autism & Asperger Syndrome (LibGuide)
3. Graphic Novels (LibGuide)
4. Italian Films and Music (LibGuide)
5. World War II Novels (LibGuide)
6. The Interactive Research Guide: Will Function Bring Users Content? A Project Model Illustrated by a Proposed Paper-Writing Guide (article by Barry J. Bailey)
7. Taking Sides (LibGuide)
8. Into the Great Wide Open… (presentation by Nick Greenup)
9. Holocaust Fiction (LibGuide)
10. This Month (Campus Publication): February 2008 (full issue in ScholarSpace)
11. Japanese Films and Music (LibGuide)
12. Chinese Film and Music (LibGuide)
13. Library Newsletter: Spring 2008 (newsletters are stored in ScholarSpace)
14. Novels About Aging (LibGuide)
15. Fighting Neurelitism (article by Mark A. Foster from campus publication Many Voices)
16. Informé 2007 (field report by William McFarlane)
17. Ethical Dilemmas in Film (LibGuide)
18. Anthropology Fiction (LibGuide)
19. The Rolling Stone: Fiscal Close and Fund Structure Design (presentation by Judi Guzzy)
20. Muslim World: Film and Music (LibGuide)

So, hey, what’s up?

Welcome to the first day of Fall Semester ‘09! The library has a lot of new resources like Mango (learn languages… lots of them!), new LibGuides to help you research, and plenty of new books to help you cheat… at video games.

Okay, you have to do your own coursework… but we’re certainly here to help you along the way.

And we’re able to be reached multiple ways:

• Leave a Facebook note
• Reply or Direct Message @jccclib on Twitter
• Use our chat client (to your right!)
• Shoot us an e-mail
• We also still answer the phone
• And we exist in person

Despite the weather today, it’s going to be a good year.

Follow our twitter feed, http://twitter.com/jccclib for updates from the conference! Should be good!