Faculty and staff, if you want to get an SCC ID card, take note:  As of May 22, faculty and staff cards will only be issued at the Instructional Media service desk on the first floor of the Learning Resource Center.  

The LRC is closed from May 22 to June 9, but faculty and staff can ring the front doorbell to come in and get an ID card.  Adjunct faculty must bring a copy of their summer employment contract.

Find even more relevant and reliable magazine and journal articles than ever in new library databases (available from the library’s databases page effective July 1):

• Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) - more than 4,700 full text journals, 3,700 of those peer-reviewed. Subjects range from biology, chemistry, engineering and physics to psychology, religion & theology, and everything in between. Replaces ProQuest’s Research Library with about twice the number of full text journals.
• Literary Reference Center (EBSCO) - replaces Gale Literature Resource Center.
• Business Source Premier (EBSCO) - full text for more than 2300 business journals.
• LexisNexis Academic - over 6000 news, business, and legal resources
• Opposing Viewpoints - balanced content on key issues of our time

Contact your librarian to discuss how your existing assignments can be supported by the new databases.

Continuing library databases:
We hope you will also enjoy continuing access to CQ Researcher & Global Reports, ScienceDirect, ARTstor, JSTOR I and II collections, Naxos Music Library, Oxford English Dictionary & Oxford Reference Online.

Finding relevant and reliable magazine and journal articles is much easier now that the library offers Academic Search Premier via EBSCOhost. Academic Search Premier is the preeminent academic collection of full text, peer-reviewed journals. More than 4,700 journals are available in full text, and more than 3,700 of these are peer-reviewed. This is roughly twice the number of full text journals available from ProQuest Research Library. Academic Search Premier provides unmatched full text coverage for a broad array of subject areas, including biology, chemistry, engineering, physics, psychology, and religion & theology.

An additional change to the database lineup is the replacement of the Gale Literature Resource Center with EBSCO’s Literary Reference Center The subscriptions to ProQuest and Gale will be discontinued on June 30, so if you reference either database in course materials, you’ll need to instead reference (EBSCO) Academic Search Premier or (EBSCO) Literary Reference Center. The new EBSCO databases can be accessed from the library’s databases page. Please feel free to contact your librarian to discuss how existing assignments can best be supported using the new databases.

In addition to Academic Search Premier, come July, the library will offer new access to Business Source Premier, LexisNexis Academic, and the Opposing Viewpoints database. If you have any questions, please contact your librarian. We’d be happy to discuss the new databases with you, and hope all Los Rios faculty, staff, and students also enjoy continuing access to CQ Researcher & Global Reports, ScienceDirect, ARTstor, JSTOR I and II collections, Naxos Music Library, Oxford English Dictionary & Oxford Reference Online.

If you believe people who work in a library ought to know what to read, this post is for you.

Heather Bratt: I’m listening to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West on CD. It’s a biography of Dorothy’s Wizard of OZ nemesis.

Jeff Karlsen: I’m currently reading Alex Ross’ The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. I’m still in the first section (1900-33), but really enjoy how it combines cultural history, biographical narrative and descriptions of individual pieces of music - many of which I’ve never heard, and now want to.

Debra Nixon: I was disappointed in the movie There Will Be Blood because the book it was based on, Oil by Upton Sinclair, is so much better. The book focused more on the son and did not portray the father as evil or money hungry.

Catherine Murrillo: Perfume: The Story of a Murder by Patrick Suskind is about a young man with a highly developed sense of smell. Obsessed with capturing the perfect sent, he turns to murder. And Pregnancy & Birth: Your Questions Answered by Christoph Lees is a good resource for first time moms.

Claudia McEnerney: The Known World by Edward Jones is a story about African American slave owners. African American men owning African American slaves is not a concept I ever thought about, but is a fact of United States history.

Rhonda Rios Kravitz: Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald follows four generations of a family. It was an Oprah’s Book Club book.

With research papers due, we thought we’d remind everyone of how useful LOIS (the library catalog) and our subscription databases can be. Clicking on the links below will bring you to a list of books or full-text articles on each topic.  Look for a “refine search” link to tweak the search further.  (If you’re off-campus, or using the campus wireless network, use your access card barcode and library PIN to log in.)

• Periodical articles on how climate change is affecting the food supply in Africa
• Books on the Cold War published within the last twenty years
• Articles on Al-Queda and Osama Bin-Laden published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times in the five years leading up to 9/11
• Scholarly articles on African-American churches
• Articles on sexual harassment of nurses
• The entry for “earmark” in the Oxford English Dictionary

The Spring SCC Library New Book List is now available on the Library web page. Browse your call number areas or search the list by author or title. You can also click directly from the New Book List into the library catalog.

Here’s a bit of what’s new (there are many more):

Owens Valley revisited: a reassessment of the West’s first great water transfer. Gary D. Libecap.
F868.O9 L53 2007

Somebody scream!: rap music’s rise to prominence in the aftershock of Black power. Marcus Reeves.
ML3531 .R44 2008

The bitter sea: coming of age in a China before Mao. Charles N. Li.
P85 .L54 L54 2008

Getting the most out of the research experience: what every researcher needs to know. Brian Roberts.
Q180.A3 .R63 2007

Probabilities: the little numbers that rule our lives. Peter Olofsson.
QA273 .O46 2007

In defense of food: an eater’s manifesto. Michael Pollan.
RA784 .P643 2008

Sustainable construction: green building design and delivery. Charles J. Kibert.
TH880 .K53 2008

Find the newest of the new books in the library second floor New Books area. Get your employee ID card while you’re in the library and borrow a few.

Thank you to everyone who contributed suggestions or donated books. We are committed to building the collection your students need.

Ask a Librarian!

Have a question while working on your coursework from home?

Shoot us an email! The new Ask a Librarian e-reference service is available at anytime, from anywhere. Simply go to the SCC Library homepage and click on the Ask a Librarian link. You will normally receive a response within 24 hours, Monday-Saturday.

We can help students and faculty with questions about library databases and LOIS, the library catalog. Students, we’ll help you choose research topics and find authoritative articles to support your essay. We can point you in the right direction for reliable web sites. Instructors, we’ll help you plan library assignments that really work. Ask us. We look forward to hearing from you!

Do you have suggestions, concerns, ideas, or anything else to say about computers on campus?  SCC will be holding a forum on the topic next week.  Come to LR105 in person from 12:00 to 1:00 on Monday or Tuesday, or leave a comment at the open forum blog.

You really should get outside.  The weather is going to be beautiful and Tuesday is Earth Day, for pete’s sake.  But you’re stuck indoors, hard at work, so how about just an Earth Ten Minutes?  That’s all it takes to pop into these winning websites:

Redefining Progress has a new Ecological Footprint Quiz with results that will surprise you.

Or try Low Impact Living for “the low down on living green” and your home’s environmental impact.

The National Resources Defense Council informs on global warming, environmental pollutants, ocean revitalization, and guidance for activists.

Skin Deep, from the Environmental Working Group, rates hazards to your health and the environment of 30,000 products, from deodorant to bubble bath.

Sierra Club videos will show you how to install a low-flow showerhead or wrap up your water heater.

Share your ideas with others on the World Wildlife Fund blog - or here!

The library delivers Earth Day information every day.  Send your students in for one of these:

• Apollo’s fire: igniting America’s clean energy economy, by Jay Inslee & Bracken Hendricks
• The biodiversity crisis: losing what counts, edited by Michael J. Novacek.
• Conserving the environment, edited by Douglas Dupler
• EcoPoetry: a critical introduction, edited by J. Scott Bryson
• Global warming: the signs and the science (DVD)
• Spirit of the environment: religion, value & environmental concern (ebook)

Ask a librarian for help finding more books, videos, and articles on environmental issues.

It’s 3:00 in the afternoon and we nearly forgot to tell you that today is National Library Workers Day!

On January 25, 2003, a resolution was proposed:
That in order to recognize the hard work, dedication, and expertise of library support staff and librarians that the Tuesday of National Library Week be designated National Library Workers Day; and, that on that day, interested library workers, library groups, and libraries should advocate for better compensation for all library workers and, if the day coincides with National Pay Equity Day, these individuals, groups, and libraries should recognize both days together.

Excuse us while we blow our horn for a sec..

See you at the Library!