Add a favorite poem to the library wall

April is both School Library Month AND National Poetry Month!

As your librarian and a poet, I’m rather enamored with this combination and it makes this month a perfect time to feature POEMS treasured by MLWGS Dragons – students & faculty – on the LIBRARY’s message wall.

So…please help me amplify poetry awareness in our school library.

How, you ask? Please pick a favorite poem, print it, and post it on the library’s message wall.  Include the poet’s name on the printed copy. Then, after you print it, jot a note on the paper that indicates “posted by [Your Name].”

“To Be of Use” by Marge Piercy and “No Help for That” by Charles Bukowski have already been posted today.  Which poem will you add?

Need more poetry? Beside the message wall, you’ll find six contemporary American poetry books on display. These are just a small sampling of the classic and contemporary American poetry available in the MW Library.  For more new favorite poem possibilities, browse 808.81 and 811 on the library shelves. British poetry is in 821. Looking for poems in other languages? You’ll find French poetry in 861, Spanish poetry in 861, Russian poetry in 891, and Chinese poetry in 895.

 

Bypass paywalls with these legit tools

Have you found a science journal article but hit a paywall that prompts you to pay $30+ for the article?

The article may be available in Science Direct (we have on-campus access @ MLWGS), Explora, PowerSearch, or if it’s 5+ years old, JSTOR. Passwords and JSTOR access instructions are in the Student Information Course in itslearning under Resources.

However, if you can’t find it in one of those databases, try a tool that searches legitimate Open Access (OA) repositories for a copy of the article. This won’t work every time, but when it does, it’s fantastic.

Open Access Button – paste the article’s URL, DOI (Digital Object Identifier), PMID, title, or citation into the search box OR install the Chrome extension. If it’s NOT available, it will facilitate asking the author to upload a copy to a legit OA repository. Do you have a list of article DOI’s for which you’d like to find a full-text version? Try their OASheet option (requires email address).

Unpaywall (pictured above) – Install the Chrome extension and when you’re on a web page for an article with a DOI, a padlock will display on the right of your screen: gray if an OA version is NOT available; green if one IS available. Click on the green padlock to go to the OA version. Do you have a list of article DOI’s for which you’d like to find a full-text version? Try their Simple Query tool (requires email address).

What about Google Scholar, you ask?  Those search results mix OA and paywalled sources which can slow you down. If you hit a journal paywall in your Google Scholar results, try the tools above.

Two limitations of these cool tools:

• They usually don’t work for journals in the humanities (literature, history, etc.)
• They usually don’t work for book chapters, only journals (however, sometimes you may find that a book chapter was first published as a journal article)

That said, they can improve your research experience and efficiency in science!

 

Games in the Creativity & Calm cabinet

In addition to origami paper, magnetic poetry, coloring books, rainbow looms, and a puzzle, there are games in the Creativity & Calm cabinet.  We’ve had Othello and Ingenious for awhile, but this week, Pandemic has joined the board game options. This cooperative role-playing game for 2 to 4 players can be played in about 45 minutes and involves working together across the globe to halt the spread of a pandemic while finding a cure for the disease. The clock is ticking…

 

Subject handbooks – a bridge to understanding scholarly studies

Ms. DeGroat is currently evaluating Oxford Handbooks Online to see if it might fill a research gap in the library’s online toolbox. Subject handbooks provide scholarly overviews about topics that can often serve as a bridge between reading articles from encyclopedias, newspapers, and magazines about a topic and understanding scholarly studies in that discipline.

MLWGS students and teachers can access Oxford Handbooks Online through April 22^nd. Although this free trial includes all subjects, a school subscription would be for a specific subject or subjects, so if you give this a test run, it would be VERY helpful if you could jot down the title of specific handbooks that prove useful. You may submit feedback about this resource @ http://bit.ly/tryhandbooks.

Our school login for this free trial is available in the library and on the Student Information course in itslearning.