Monthly Archives

March 2014

Archbishop Ireland Library, Circulation, Libraries, News & Events, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library

New Borrowing Policy for Alumni, Neighbors, and Friends

The UST Libraries will be changing to a new computer system over the next few years. In advance of this development, we’re changing the lending policy for our books (and other physical materials) or alumni, neighbors, and friends borrowing card holders. Your new borrowing period will be 28 days in length, with one additional 28-day renewal available one week before the due date if there are no other hold requests waiting. A six (6) item material limit remains. Review other restrictions by patron category on the libraries’ “Borrowing” page. These privileges are effective Monday, March 31, 2014.

If you have recently moved or changed your email address or phone number, please take a moment to contact the circulation desk of the UST library you frequent and update your contact information with us.

Thank you for being part of the UST Libraries’ community of users. As always, everyone is welcome to use our building and resources when we are open. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about this or any other library policy.

O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library, St. Paul (North Campus): 651-962-5494
Ireland Library, St. Paul (South Campus): 651-962-5450
Keffer Library, Minneapolis: 651-962-4642

March 28, 2014 by clborchardt

Archbishop Ireland Library, Library Week, News & Events

New Ireland Library Academiclete Games date! Tue, Apr 15, 4 p.m.

Ireland Library staff is excited to share the date for the Ireland Library Academiclete Games!

Academicletes, mark you calendars for Tuesday, April 15, 2014, 4 p.m.

Tommies are good academic sports. So we challenge your mental toughness, intellectual flex, academic rigor, and scholastic agility! Compete in the Ireland Games and show us your burn to learn in three Academiclete events.

For the daring, play a round of SkeeBook, sending eager journals rocketing down a banister* like greased lightning with the accuracy of Swiss Biathletes!
For the focused, race against time as you bring harmony to a shelf of books faster than anyone before!
For the adventurous, plumb the stacks for hidden volumes and bring them home for all to see!

Prizes!

First, second, and third place finishers in each event will be awarded chocolate for their efforts.
The best all-around winner will be awarded a $25 gift card from the UST Bookstore.
The first 50 participants will receive a commemorative Ireland Library Academiclete button.
The best Academiclete uniform will be awarded a special prize.

Register now at http://tinyurl.com/IrelandGames!

Fortuna Fortibus Favet!

~ Ireland Library Staff

* Disclaimer: No university library property will be harmed in the playing of these games.

March 26, 2014 by clborchardt

Libraries, News & Events, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library

Art & Music of the French Baroque Chambre – April 1st noonartsound in the Library

noonartsoundApr2014

The O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library’s noonartsound series continues its spring season over the noon hour on Tuesday, April 1st, 2014 and you are all invited.

Noonartsound is an artful blend of musical performance and historical perspective, presented by Drs. Shelly Nordtorp-Madson, chief curator and a member of the clinical faculty in the Department of Art History, and Chris Kachian, guitarist and professor of music, Department of Music.

Shelly Nordtorp-Madson and Chris Kachian

Nordtorp-Madson and Kachian have been performing these popular lecture-concerts together for more than 10 years. The professors are known for their unique style and humor, along with beautiful, satisfying, yet “unstuffy” presentations of their art.

The April 1st program “The Art & Music of the French Baroque Chambre” will provide music of the period, an introduction to French Baroque costume (especially relaxed costume), and a tour through the Palace of Versailles . . . along with all of its gossip!

All are welcome – feel free to bring your lunch – light refreshments will be provided.

After Tuesday’s program, the final in this series will take place on May 6, 2014: “Romantica: Spanish Art and Music of 1880-1910.″

Please plan to join us! We’ll be in the O’Shaughnessy Room – Room 108 – of the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library.

March 25, 2014 by

Business & Economics, Database Highlights & Trials

Job-hunting? Company information search tips

Target Corp. SWOT Analysis

As the temperatures warm up and we move through spring, our thoughts turn fondly to – well, for many students, you’re thinking about job-hunting. You’re thinking about potential employers, maybe you have some interviews lined up. You want to know more about a company as a potential employer, and you want to go beyond what you find on the company’s website and some quick web searching. If you’re a business student, you’ve probably done a good deal of company research for class projects. But if you haven’t done it recently, or aren’t a business student, here are some tips and suggestions.

Get a good overview. Business Insights: Essentials and Business Source Premier are great places to check for a basic overview of a public company (one that sells stock or other registered securities to the public.) This can include a description of the company, financial information, and news stories. BSP, BIE, and OneSource Global Business Browser include SWOT reports, which summarize Strengths and Weaknesses of a business, and the Opportunities and Threats it faces in the business environment.

Focus your search. BSP and ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry each have a way to search for items about a company that’s more precise than keyword searching. This helps a lot with companies like Target or even Google, whose names are part of daily life. (The word “target,” for example, can refer to target markets, target dates, target-based pay, and of course target practice.) In BSP, you can use the pull-down menu to search for Target as a “company entity,” to get articles specifically about Target the company. And in ABI, you can search for Target as a “company/organization.”

Find those private companies, too. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, PrivCo is our newest business resource, covering privately-held companies that average around $50,000,000.00 in annual revenue. For smaller companies, ReferenceUSA is a “business phone book” covering 24 million U.S. businesses. In the Custom Search, you can look for companies by name, business type, business size, location, and more.

Don’t forget the news. Yeah, you can find news on the web, but some precision searching can help here as well. ProQuest Newsstand, like ABI, lets you search for articles on a “company/organization.” That helps focus your search in local news sources, like the Star Tribune or Pioneer Press, as well as major papers from other cities (the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times, just to drop a few names.) And my good friend BizLink has full-text coverage of 40 regional business journals, including the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal and business journals from Atlanta, Denver, Milwaukee, Portland, and Silicon Valley. It’s a great place to search for information on local or regional companies, and you get that local perspective that you don’t find in national sources.

Be sure to check our career and employment resources guide as part of your job search. And good luck!

March 25, 2014 by mdhageman

Libraries, News & Events, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library

O’Shaughnessy-Frey to Shift its Books and Periodicals Collections

Suggestion and allure: Collection shift in OSF

“Education is not furthered by secreting books in which the university has invested funds…displayed to possible readers, the collection becomes alive with suggestion and allure.” So declares an old (1970) book called University Library Administration sitting on my office shelf (mostly for looks, and, honestly, for its ironic value.) I took a look at it today when I was thinking about a big project that we are undertaking – the rearrangement of the books and periodicals in O’Shaughnessy Frey Library. Our goal with the project: move ALL bound journals to the sublevel of the library and rearrange the books on the rest of the floors. We want to make our print collections easier to access, and since the bound journal collection is actually shrinking, consolidating it on one floor is now realistic.

A project like this is major and will involve touching nearly every volume in the library. It is kind of like the sliding tile puzzle pictured above. We’ll be compressing collections on the sublevel, opening up space on level four, and then beginning the shift of the books, finally ending back on the sublevel, to which we’ll move the rest of the bound journals. Our hope is that we can complete the shift in 12 – 18 months, using mostly student labor, under the supervision of library staff. We do not expect that any books will be “out of circulation,” though there will be work going on at some place in the stacks as the books are moved.

At the end of the project, we’ll have opened up some good spaces which we will redesign for student use and we’ll engage the community in the design and development of those new spaces. More on that in the future! We’ll keep you informed on the progress of the big shift as it moves forward.

If you have questions or comments about this project, please let us know.

– Dan Gjelten, Director of Libraries

March 12, 2014 by

News & Events, O'Shaughnessy-Frey Library, Services

Therapy Pets Here for Midterms!

The ever-popular Library Therapy Pets will be in the OSF Library rotunda

6-8pm on Tuesday, March 18th.

The Ides of March and Midterms fall very close together this year, so we thought you might like a little snuggle from a friendly dog to help make it through.

Or maybe watching a few hops from a fluffy (and amazingly talented) agility bunny will inspire an extra boost of energy to power you through finishing that page of APA citations!?

Either way, everyone is welcome to take a few moments’ break from midterms stress in order to receive some fluffy encouragement. What’s not to love about spending time with other animal lovers?

As always, remember that library staff are available to assist you find any information you need to complete your work. Please don’t hesitate to ask!

March 12, 2014 by

News & Events

Art Full Text

The Art Full Text database provides full-text access to many journal articles on art and art history. For articles where only a citation or abstract is provided, click on the Check for Full Text icon to determine availability.

– Other subjects covered in this database include women’s studies, cultural studies, and history.

– Access the Art Full Text database by using the A-Z List of Databases link on the Library Homepage.

– To search only Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals, select this option from the limiters.

Use the Research Guides link on the Library Homepage to explore other subject-specific databases in Art/Art History.

March 5, 2014 by kmburke