Wagga Wagga Learning Commons

If you've been to the Wagga campus library recently you may have noticed there's been a lot going on! Work has begun on Wagga's new Learning Commons, which will see the library building transformed into a state-of-the-art learning space that will bring together a number of key services (such as Student Central, the Library, the Cashiers office) and the development of a range of study spaces to create a student-centred environment that will support you in your studies.

If you'd like to find out more about this exciting project including what's going to be included and the timeline, you can read more on the University's Facilities Management website.

The Wagga Library building is going through the first stage of refurbishment and there are changes in the way you will access the Library’s facilities and collection. If you're planning to visit the Wagga campus Library, please note that:

• From Monday 4th April, access to the computer training room from the main library entrance will be blocked. Access to the training room will be via the Emergency Exit door on Level 1 located at the rear of the building closest to the pond. Directional maps will be placed at the loans desk, front entrance door and Emergency Exit door on Level 1. The Training Room will be accessible from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday only. Weekends and after hour computer access will be available from the Jack Cross Centre.
• Computers and print facilities from Level 2 (ground floor) have been relocated to the level 2 training room
• All library collection including AV, CRC and newspapers have been relocated from levels 1 and 2 up to levels 3 and 4
• Group study tables have been relocated from levels 1 and 2 up to levels 3 and 4.
• No access to the student lift, all access to the collection will be via the main staircase.
• No access to the ground floor (Level 1)
• Student Central and Cashier facilities will soon be relocated adjacent to the Library Loans desk.
• Floor plans of the completed Wagga Learning Commons will be on display in the Library Foyer.

We'll keep you up to date with the progress of the Learning Commons, so make sure you keep an eye on this Blog (YourLibrary@CSU), our Twitter stream or the Library Website.

Albury-Wodonga Campus Library Hours

Due to the proclaimed public holiday for the Albury Gold Cup on the afternoon of Friday 25th March, the library at Albury-Wodonga campus will close at 12pm. Students can continue to access the 24 hour zone of the Learning Commons. Students at Albury-Wodonga can still contact library staff by ringing 1800 808 369 or by using our Live Chat service.

Free Library postal service for Distance Education students in Australia

The Division of Library Services is proud to announce an exciting new service for Distance Education students. From March 22, the Library will include replied paid postage labels with all library items lent to DE students living in Australia.

This means that onshore DE students will now receive a completely free postal service from the Library.

A postage paid return address label will be included in each DE postage parcel. This label can simply be affixed to each parcel when posting back to the Library.

At this stage the return postage service does not include items borrowed through the InterLibrary Loans scheme and does not extend to DE students living outside of Australia.

Help guides about this service can be obtained from the following webpages: Information for DE Undergraduate & Postgraduate students and Information for DE Higher Degree students under the I Need Help menu of the Library Homepage http://www.csu.edu.au/division/library/

World Water Day 2011

The theme for this year is “Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge”

Today, one in two people on the planet live in a city. The world’s cities are growing at an exceptional rate and urbanisation is a continuum. 93% of the urbanization occurs in poor or developing countries, and nearly 40% of the world’s urban expansion is growing slums. Investments in infrastructure have not kept up with the rate of urbanization, while water and waste services show significant underinvestment. The central problem is therefore the management of urban water and waste.

International World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. Find out more about this campaign here

Scavenger Hunt

We're celebrating O-Week with a Scavenger Hunt, and every CSU student can join in! The Scavenger Hunt will guide you around the library website and show you all the amazing resources we have that will streamline your research and help you successfully complete your assessments.

Regardless of your mode of study - Offshore, DE or Internal - hold your mouse cursor over the SuperHer-O Librarian on the Library homepage and follow the clue to where he's hiding next. Follow all of the clues and the final one will tell you how to submit your entry.

You have until the 31st of March to complete the hunt and send us your entry. Five winners will be drawn and notified by email. The Scavenger Hunt is open to all CSU students (except for CSU Library employees) and you can win one of five $20 iTunes vouchers.

St Patrick's Day

Who was St Patrick?
Despite St Patrick being one of the most recognised and widely known saints in Christianity little is really known about him. His legend has inspired countless stories, but most of these seem more fabricated than true. Only two writings authored by St Patrick survive and these give the most accurate glimpses into his life. Read about what we do know of St Patrick here

The Legend of the Leprechaun
When the Vikings inhabited Ireland, they stored hordes of treasure all over the land. According to the legends, when they left, they forgot to take several stashes of gold with them. The leprechauns found the gold and divided it among themselves. Noting that human greed would always be a problem, the leprechauns buried the gold. However, according to the stories, a rainbow will end where a leprechaun has hidden his pot of gold.

Other legends show leprechauns possessing other benefits that humans would like to have, for example Leprechauns can grant three wishes to a human who catches them. Leprechauns as literary figures can also represent the human conscience. Read more about leprechauns here

Ideas to Celebrate All Things Irish

• Music: The twentieth anniversary collection. Check availability
• Fiction: Molly Fox’s birthday / Deirdre Madden. Check Availability
• Fiction: Bog child / Siobhan Dowd. Check Availability
• DVD: The Magdalene sisters. Check Availability
• DVD: Angela’s ashes. Check Availability
• DVD: A fork In the road. With Pria Viswalingam. Check Availability
  

Grocery Shopping at the Local Public Library

Many Baltimore residents live in a food desert, these are areas across the city's poorest neighborhoods where fresh fruits and vegetables are scarce because there are no grocery stores. This is adding to a compounding health problem for Baltimore as one in three residents are now obese.

Most people in these food deserts don't own a car, and the local corner stores are expensive and don't offer a great range of fresh produce. Additionally takeaway food places are plentiful. This leaves residents without much of a choice for healthy food.

To address the shortage of supermarkets, the city created a program that allows low-income residents to order groceries online at selected library branches and have them delivered there with no delivery charge. The groceries can be picked up the very next day from the library. Libraries are a lifeline for Baltimore residents.

According to Laura Fox from Baltimore City Health Department “Studies have shown that if you increase the access to food, especially foods like fruits and vegetables, you’ll lower the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke, and all these other obesity related co-morbidities.”

Read more about this program here

Highlights Of New Titles Recently Added To The Library Collection

• Website design and development - 100 questions to ask before building a website. Check Availability

• Pursuing information literacy - Roles and relationships. Check Availability

• Mastering the world of pyschology - A brief paperback text focused on supplying the most support for student learning and student success. Check Availability

• The law of politics - Elections, parties and money in Australia. Check Availability

• Youth justice - Your guide to cops and court in NSW. Check Availability

• Social services and the ethnic community - History and analysis. Check Availability

• Effective interviewing and interrogation techniques - A practical manual which provides the forensic practitioner/investigator critical insight into human behavior. Check Availability

• Biology - Life on earth with physiology. Check Availability

• Nursing, study and placement learning skills - All the advice and skills nursing students need for the classroom and placement in a single book. Check Availability

• Accounting handbook 2011 - Contains the Australian Accounting Standards (equivalent to IFRS) for 30 June 2011 financial year ends. Check Availability

• Vintage jewellery - Collecting and wearing twentieth-century designs. Check Availability

• Stage lighting design - The art, the craft, the life. Check Availability

• SPSS - Analysis without anguish version 18.0 for windows. Check Availability

• Willing and unable - Doctors' constraints in abortion care. Check Availability

• Soil ecology and management - The study of interactions between the physio-chemical components of the soil and organisms living within the soil. Check Availability

• Fundamentals of pharmacology - Presents key scientific and clinical principles to facilitate a greater understanding of pharmacology. Check Availability

• Pocket guide to APA style - An ideal tool for students writing research papers across the disciplines. Check Availability

DVD's:

• Eat pray love - Check Availability

• Elizabeth: the golden age - Check Availability

• Little fish - Check Availability

• Tomorrow when the war began - Check Availability

• Kill Bill. Volume 1 - Check Availability

The complete list of new titles can be accessed here

New discovery service: Search@CSU Library

In 2011 you will be introduced a new way of finding Library resources.

Search@CSU Library will enable CSU staff and students to simultaneously search for local and remote resources – books, journals, journal articles, and digital resources, e.g. CSU Research Output (CRO), CSU theses, using a simple intuitive search tool, with more advanced search functions available if required.

Search@CSU Library will be introduced as an alternative to the current Library catalogue and SmartSearch in April 2011. The Library will seek user feedback during this period, with the aim of replacing the catalogue and SmartSearch with Search@CSU Library, later in 2011.

Search@CSU Library is based on Primo, a demonstration of which can be seen here:

Library Website Unavailable

The Library Website has been experiencing some technical difficulties today and has been unavailable periodically through the day. If you're looking for a particular resource, try these links:

• Journal Databases

• Library Catalogue

• Subject Reserve - you can access Subject Reserve through the Library Catalogue (just click the blue "Reserve" button on the Catalogue page and enter your subject code to see the readings for that subject.

We apologise for this inconvenience and hope this interruption will be resolved as soon as possible. We will keep you updated as we know more about this situation.

Success for Stony Stratford's Library

In an attempt to stop their local library from being shut down, residents in Stony Statford (located near Milton Keynes, in northern Buckinghamshire) protested by borrowing all 16,000 items from the library in a campaign called 'wot no books'. For more information on this story see our previous CSU library blog post

A month after the 'wot no books' campaign the fate of Stony Stratford's library was determined by Milton Keynes Council. The library will remain open for another 12 months, but this will be reviewed in one year so the threat of closure is not completely gone.

Whilst celebrating the success, Friends of Stony Stratford Library are still very aware that they can't afford to completely relax. They aim to get members from different ages, ethnicity and backgrounds to help have their say on what the library should look like.

Read more about the successful outcome here

International Women's Day 2011

Today is International Women's Day (IWD), a day celebrating the achievements of women past, future and present:

"On March 8th, the world will celebrate 100 years of progress towards gender equality. International Women's Day, however, is both a day to celebrate and a day to draw attention to the challenges that remains before gender equality is truly realised... For the women of the world, the symbolism of International Women’s Day has a wider meaning. It is an occasion to review how far women have come in their struggle for equality, peace and development. It is also an opportunity to unite, network and mobilise for meaningful change." (source: International Women's Day)

"UN Women Australia, together with the six National Women's Alliances, are coordinating a range of activities, events and campaigns on diverse issues pertaining gender equality. From issues ranging from positive body image to honouring the contribution of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island women, activities and awareness raising campaigns are being organised all across Australia. To find out more the exciting plans of the six National Women's Alliances, please click here." (source: International Women's Day)



Connect - Some interesting social resources for International Women's Day:

• UN Women Australia Twitter Stream
• UN Women Australia Facebook Page
• To join in the conversation, check out all the Tweets for #InternationalWomensDay and make sure to use the hashtag so your Tweets
  

Resources from the Library's Collection: The Library has heaps of resources covering all sorts of issues relevant to women - here are just a few resources you might like to check out:

Sacred cycles : the spiral of women’s well-being by Sara Wickham (Book) - "Have you ever thought about how you would like to be born, wondered why tampon adverts always use blue liquid or dreamed of living in a society with Government-funded luxury hotels for women who needed space? Have you ever wondered why so many women living in the West still believe their bodies are inferior to men's and that others hold responsibility for their health and well being? By comparing the things we have been taught about our bodies, to real women's experiences, women-centred research and common sense wisdom, this book explores women's reproductive health and well being through the eyes of women themselves, examining myths and opinions and questioning whether the things we learn from the media and through education systems are serving us well." Check Availability

The vagina monologues by Eve Ensler (Book) - "The Vagina Monologues is a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery." Check Availability

The strength from within : Sista Girl Yarnz (Book) - "For eight weeks, 12 Aboriginal women met every Friday to learn about different styles of writing. They used writing as a means to express their experiences with domestic violence ... each workshop would focus on one key style of writing including poetry, prose, letter writing, diary writing, autobiography, death notice and procedure. ... The writing in this book is comprised of each woman’s courageous journey to document how they personally found the spirit from within to break from from domestic violence." Check Availability

Women of the sun : twenty five years later (DVD) - Women of the sun is a remarkable drama series that told the Aboriginal story through the eyes of Aboriginal women in their own language. Now, 25 years later Bob Weis, the producer of the original film sets out to find out the impact of the film on five of the women who played major roles in the original series. Check Availability (the original documentary is also available here)

Hard knocks : domestic violence and the psychology of storytelling (eBook) - This book draws on interviews carried out over a period of eight years, as well as novels, films, and domestic violence literature, to explain the role of storytelling in the history of the battered women's movement. Check Availability

** If you'd like to see more resources, you can do a search on the catalogue for "women". Just change the drop-down menu to 'subject begins with...' or 'subject keywords' and press 'Go' to see what books, dvds and other resources we have in our collection.

Endnote x4 has arrived!!

The CSU Library is pleased to announce that Endnote x4 is now available for installation on home computers and on staff machines.

For those unfamiliar with EndNote, EndNote X4 enables you to organise bibliographic references and produce reference lists in a range of standard and custom styles,

Students and staff wanting to use Endnote X4 on their home computers can download the installation package from the DIT Core Software page.

• Please Note: There are two installation packages available, Mac or Windows. Please ensure that you download the correct installation package for your machine.

Staff wanting to install Endnote X4 on the CSU managed computers in their office can simply click on the 'Install Software' icon on their desktops and select Endnote X4 from the list.

• Note: you need to close any Microsoft Office programs that you have open, most importantly, Outlook and Word, before you can install Endnote

The Endnote support website at CSU is currently being updated for Endnote X4, but you can still find lots of general Endnote support information on the current pages.

Academic staff and higher degree students can get assistance by contacting the Library's Faculty Liaison team. All other students and staff can get EndNote support by calling 1800 808 369.

How a Library Made a Homeless Man a Millionaire...

Curt Degerman was a common sight around his Swedish town. He was often seen riding his bike or foraging through garbage cans, collecting bottles and cans to be recycled. When he passed away in 2008 at the age of 60, most thought that he had left nothing of any value behind.

When it came time to sort through Curt's estate though, it was discovered that he had earned a fortune totaling nearly $ 1.4 million, leaving it all to a cousin who was kind enough to visit him occasionally in the years before his death.

Curt Degerman made his investments after a life time spent studying Swedish newspapers. He was a frequent visitor to the town's public library because he wouldn't buy newspapers, so instead he utilised the free resources at the library and poured over the financial columns. From doing this he became an expert on the stock market, investing the modest sum he earned from recycling in stocks and mutual funds, valued at close to a million dollars.

Upon discovering the wealth of Curt Degerman after he passed away, his extended family contested the will. The battle was eventually settled outside of court for an undisclosed amount. Read more here

O-Week - Librarian Superheroes!

O-Week 2011 was all about superheroes. So we thought in true superhero style, our librarians would bust some of the myths that evil villains have spread about us.

Myth 1: libraries are places that only have books
WRONG - yes we still do have books but also have access to thousands of online journals, eBooks, hundreds of bookmarked websites in Online Reference, subject support pages customised to support your area of study, as well as Google Scholar set to search our databases

Myth 2: libraries are yesterday's heroes
WRONG - libraries embrace technology. We use Twitter and this blog to keep you informed, chat to provide you with real time help, eBooks that can be downloaded to mobile devices, laptops for loan on campus, wireless internet connection, Delicious to bookmark websites, and databases that can be searched on mobile devices.

Myth 3: libraries are places of quiet
WRONG - libraries are vibrant spaces housed in newly renovated learning commons with areas for group study, playing games, reading newspapers, grabbing a bite to eat or getting that much needed caffeine fix from our coffee shops.

Myth 4: librarians are only there to read books and lend them out
WRONG - librarians are your original Google search engines. Lending books is now done by self check machines freeing staff time to provide you with relevant and up to date resources to support your study. You can also print and photocopy while in the library, and get one on one help and support from your librarians regardless of your location.

Myth 5: all librarians are old women who wear their hair in a bun and glasses
WRONG - many famous people both in fiction and non-fiction have been librarians. Benjamin Franklin, Giacomo Casanova, Batgirl, Mao Tse-tung, Golda Meir and J. Edgar Hoover are just a few names that spring to mind.

If you would like to take a quick tour of the presentation we used to support the above mythbusting and also meet our very own superhero, Captain Libraryman, click on the play button below. Once the video has loaded you will simply need to click on the forward arrow to progress through each slide.

And after you have enjoyed our presentation, maybe you would like to join our Scavenger Hunt to go into the draw to win an iTunes voucher. The hunt starts on the Library Homepage.

Library Superheroes 2011 on Prezi

Live Chat Hours Have Been Extended

Great news! Our live chat service has been extended and you can now reach us in your time. Our new hours (Australian Eastern Daylight Time) are:

• 9am - 7.00pm, Monday to Thursday

• 9am - 4.30pm, Friday

For other time zones, the equivalent times are available from this page

New to the Library's Chat Service? Ask A Question: Live Chat is an instant messaging chat service, which will allow you to chat with Library staff in real time. Just click on 'Ask A Question: Live Chat' on the Library website and type in your question - no accounts, downloads or personal information is required.