Library Spotlight: Trick or Treat

AU Library and the Instructional Resource Center are participating in the campus-wide Trick or Treat activity on Friday, October 30th from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.  Stop by for a treat and see our spooky window display featuring the illustrations of Arthur Rackham.

Presidential Pens - A New Display in the Library

    You can't deny that it is Election season! Ohio Early Voting began on October 6th this year, and across the country more than 7 million people have already cast their vote. So for this display I focused on U.S. Presidents and their relationship with the written word. 

    There is a written record of every U.S. President from their speeches, letters, Executive Orders, and often, their own memoirs. If you are interested in learning more, the display offers some brief information about works that Presidents have written (and those written by their wives, the First Ladies). 

   If you want to read more about the many complicated men who have held the Executive Office, there are many books within the AU Library's General Collection (both as books and as ebooks), as well as some unique copies in the Special Books Collection (ranging from an 1885 copy of Ulysses S. Grant's memoir to a signed copy of Jimmy Carter's to Harding's Memorial Address). There is a lot to discover within the AU Library collection. In fact, did you know that there is even a whole collection within the General Collection that is focused on John F. Kennedy?

To create your own Presidential Reading List: Wikipedia has a complied comprehensive list of all US Presidential Memoirs here and for the First Ladies here.

If you need any help locating a book or more Presidential information, please reach out to a Reference Librarian. You can contact us via chat, email, phone, or select times in person this semester.

And, don't forget to vote this year -

 either early or in person on November 3rd!

Reference

Costanzo, Michael B. Author in chief: the Presidents as writers from Washington to Trump. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2019. 

Levy, A. "More than 7 million general election ballots cast so far." CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/11/politics/election-ballots-cast/index.html

Author: Curator and Reference Librarian, Jessica Byers

 

Library Spotlight: Active Learning Lab

AU Library, Main Floor

 

Carpet, paint, and technology (oh, my)! The Bernice Fauber Baker Active Learning Lab, located on the main floor of Ashland University Library, is progressing nicely. We can't help anticipating the completion of this exciting resource, and the impact it will have on library instruction and learning.

 

This construction project is funded by a donation from the Bernice Fauber Baker Library Endowment, with a matching gift from the Bob and Jan Archer Challenge Grant. The active learning equipment and furnishings are supported by a grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), awarded by the State Library of Ohio. 

 

 

 

New: LOC Newspaper Navigator

Introducing Newspaper Navigator

New to our database list is Newspaper Navigator, an image dataset of Chronicling America, historic American newspapers, from the Library of Congress.

"Newspaper Navigator is a project being carried out by Benjamin (Ben) Charles Germain Lee as part of the Innovator in Residence Program at the Library of Congress. The goals of Newspaper Navigator are 1) to extract visual content from 16+ million pages of digitized historic American newspapers in Chronicling America and 2) re-imagine how you, members of the American public, can search the visual content using machine learning techniques." - About Newspaper Navigator

One of the best things about this resource: "All Newspaper Navigator photos in the app and dataset are in the public domain!"

Interested? Watch the video to learn more.

OneSearch: Outage Resolved

EBSCO reports that the service outage has been resolved. OneSearch is once again fully functional. Thanks for your patience. If you experience any additional problems, contact us at library@ashland.edu or 419.289.5402.

via GIPHY

OneSearch: Outage Reported

Please note the following update from EBSCO regarding AU Library's OneSearch:

"EBSCO Customer Support has received reports of an intermittent loading issue with EBSCO Discovery Service. Our engineering teams are currently investigating the issue and we will update this page when more information is available."

Welcome

 Welcome back to our AU community! In case you haven't seen it yet, with the new semester we have new displays added to our interior cases. Using withdrawn books and book folding Jessica Byers created a display that we hope welcomes you back to AU. 

Take a closer look the next time you come into the library! These cases are located on the Main Floor surrounding the elevators.  We would love to hear your thoughts. 

If you have ideas about future displays or want to learn more about this display, please feel free to contact Jessica Byers, AU Library Curator and Reference Librarian, at jbyers7@ashland.edu.