Library Blog - Indiana University East

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MLKJ Day

holidays January 17, 2011 Matt Dilworth mdilwort

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! For many of us, it’s a day off, and easy to lose the significance of this holiday. Much like how on President’s Day and Columbus Day we don’t honor George Washington or Christopher Columbus personally so much as the main virtue their life exemplified – liberty and discovery, respectively – so too today we remember not so much King the Baptist preacher as the great virtue he dedicated his life to – equality. Modern libraries were founded on the same concept. Because there are few better routes to equality than access to information. Due to the nature of King’s struggle, it is natural to think about multiculturalism today. And we have a number of … Continued

Weather Resources

e-resources, reference databases, weather January 10, 2011 Library Resources, Matt Dilworth mdilwort

Has the bad weather got you down? Well, your library might not be able to make it any warmer, but we have plenty of resources to help you understand it! Among our encyclopedic databases, AccessScience has some good articles on weather and weather prediction. Science Resource Center has similar articles on weather mapping and forecasting, but has the added benefit of linking to a few journal articles and instructions for some novel do-it-yourself experiments, like making a homemade anemometer to measure wind speed. Encyclopedia Britannica Online has some good, easy-to-digest material on the topic as well. And other, more traditional databases like Wiley Online Library have access to a number of weather-related journals such as “International Journal of Climatology” and … Continued

Tin Eye and Image Searching

e-resources, search engines January 3, 2011 Matt Dilworth, Uncategorized mdilwort

When I was asked what my favorite recent website was for the last blog, I immediately thought of Tin Eye (http://www.tineye.com), a reverse photo lookup site, where you upload or link to a picture and it finds matches or near matches, regardless of whether they’ve been altered, cropped, or resized. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to talk about image searching on the web a little more today. There have been efforts to make good photo lookups since the early 90s – the metadata tags that most image search engines rely on are not well suited for multimedia. And most engines use them – Google Images (http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi) and PicSearch (http://www.picsearch.com/), two commonly used examples, both search text about the pictures … Continued

Best of….

e-resources, good information, Website December 27, 2010 Frances Yates, Website fyates 0 Comments

Of course this is the time of year when reflection is rampant and “best of…” lists beset us. So why should the library be any different? So here’s a smattering of selected websites popular with some IU East library staff. Enjoy! Lora uses the Charity Navigator http://www.charitynavigator.org/ as a reliable way to research a charity to see if it is legit and how they spend their monies. For searching 20 different English versions of the Bible Lora recommends the BibleGateway.com http://www.biblegateway.com/ and for a gateway to local U.S. and international newspapers, she suggests NewsVoyager http://www.newspaperlinks.com/home.cfm Several library staff count on Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/ and Truth or Fiction http://www.truthorfiction.com/ to verify urban legends and all those email scams before you forward to … Continued

Daily Life through History

e-resources, reference databases, scholarly resources December 20, 2010 Caitlin Tracey-Miller, Library Resources ctraceym 0 Comments

Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be a Viking? How about a factory worker in Victorian England or a warrior in 17th century Japan? What was life like for the people building the pyramids in Ancient Egypt or experiencing the rise of Soviet power in Russia? If you’re interested in history, or even just curious about what it was like when, then the database “Daily Life through History” is one for you. This valuable resource, available through IU East Campus Library, is easy to navigate and fun to explore. You’ll find concise and helpful articles, citations, pictures, maps, provocative questions, and interesting facts. With this database, you won’t just learn about the rich, powerful or … Continued