Author Archives: mdilwort

Author Archives: mdilwort

Unique spaces to meet your learning needs

Unique spaces to meet your learning needs

Matt Dilworth
We’ve had a busy summer, re-designing and re-purposing library space to get maximum use and to create specialized areas focused on student needs. With another semester of record-breaking enrollment at IU East, the Library provides learning spaces dedicated to both general and specific uses. If you need formal group study space, Hayes 101 is convenient for 10-12 students.  Prefer more informal space?  Try the Library Living Room on the 2nd floor, with its eclectic and comfortable décor, complete with bean bag chairs.  It is open for groups anytime a class is not scheduled to use it (the schedule is posted on the door). And if you need to spread out with your school projects, whether individually or as a group, … Continued
Author Access from Anywhere, Anytime

Author Access from Anywhere, Anytime

Library Resources, Matt Dilworth
What do Shakespeare, Chinua Achebe, Euripides, Madeleine L’Engle, Herman Melville, and Beatrix Potter have in common? They are all included in the Literature Resource Center.  IU East subscribes to this key resource for discovering literary criticism and background about authors. This database has been especially tailored for an undergraduate audience, focusing on the 2,500 authors most frequently read in colleges and universities.  That’s not to say grad students won’t find plenty of great information – but it’s a perfect fit for newer researchers.   In addition to literary criticism the LRC contains biographies, reviews, work overviews, and timelines.  There’s even a guide for how to include these resources in a properly MLA-formatted paper.  And it covers authors throughout human history, … Continued
Historical Research Resources: real-time and real perspectives

Historical Research Resources: real-time and real perspectives

, , Frances Yates, Library Resources, Matt Dilworth, Research
Suppose someone living in the year 2025, or even 2225, wants reliable information about what happened in 2011? Where would be the best place to get information (assuming by then all our brains aren’t pre-wired at birth to the Internet or whatever comes Next)? There are unique considerations when doing historical research, for whatever type of questions you seek to answer.  One facet of historical research is the need for primary sources – that is, things written and said by the people actually involved with those events.  Having access to primary documentation is of vital important to historical study.  Newspapers are also of great value, providing contemporary perspectives that can be critical to understanding the perceptions about events and people … Continued
Intentional Spaces

Intentional Spaces

, , Interns, Library Services, Matt Dilworth
This year, while attending the annual American Library Association conference, graduate intern Sarah Gilchrist presented on “The Library Living Room: Creating Learning Relationships” (you can see her poster behind her in the picture).  Thousands of librarians from all over the country attend the ALA annual conference, and Sarah’s presentation gave us a chance to share with others the success of that unique learning environment, even as she learned about their new ideas.   The Library Living Room is a great space, and an excellent study or hang-out area for students (when classes aren’t running there!).  But it is just one of many intentional spaces in the library.  We’ve changed a lot of rooms in the library to better suit student … Continued
Independence Day

Independence Day

Library Resources, Matt Dilworth
Happy Fourth of July!  Whether you celebrate with family or cookouts or fireworks, our country’s birthday is a good opportunity to reflect on freedom. And the freedom that our Founding Fathers most espoused was the freedom of ideas.  “I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain,” John Adams wrote to his wife.  We are a generation with the freedom to study these things, and anything else we want, because of what they did 235 years … Continued