Alkek Library News

After Graduation, Keep on Using Online Resources Through Texas Public Libraries

You've graduated. Now what? You can still use our public access computers physically here in Alkek, although remote online resources are restricted to current students.

Have you thought about getting a library card for your local public library? Your local public library in Texas offers online access to journals, business resources and ways to enhance your career skills. Don't forget to check out audio cd's so you can continue to build your body of knowledge during commutes....

Here's a list of public libraries in the state of Texas.

 

October 18-24 is Open Access Week

What is Open Access? In the academic setting it is scholarship that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder.   One way Texas State University supports Open Access is through eCommons@TxState.  This institutional repository provides open access to the knowledge generated by our university community.

How can Open Access benefit you?  Watch this short cartoon!

 

Need to know more? Click here for more information about Open Access, or here for more information about Open Access week.

Internet Archive and The Librarian

I haven't been to the Internet Archive website for a while and didn't realize how much has been added in the past years. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is still an interesting tool to see the evolution of websites, some as far back as 1996. Alkek Library's evolution goes back to 2003 under the Texas State name, and under SWT.edu you can see our very first website. Usually the pages aren't complete due to images no longer existing and the links sometimes don't work, but it is interesting to see what has changed and what is still the same. Enter a URL into the search box to be taken back to the archived internet pages.

What brought me to the Internet Archive most recently is a colleague sent a link to the video that's included in this post. The Internet Archive is actally a digital library and since it began in 2002 has grown to include moving images (147,000+ movies), live music archives (over 62,000 with a Grateful Dead Collection), audio (322,480 recordings) and texts (well over a million texts including many historical and literary favorites.)

The National Film Registry Picks includes favorites such as the Fall of the House of Usher (1928), The Phantom of the Opera(1925) and many more.

The Librarian is part of The Prelinger Archives which includes many educational, advertising and industrial films. I loved The Librarian which was a vocational guidance film. It shows the work of library personnel circa 1947. Its amazing how so much has changed, yet so much is the same.

National Oral History Project Interviews Dr. Bill Mears

Capturing the stories of retired librarians has been one of the 2007/2008 presidential initiatives for American Library Association President, Dr. Loriene Roy and one of the first librarians to participate is retired Alkek Library director, Dr. Bill Mears. Dr. Mears tells his story to  Stephanie Langenkamp who also worked at Alkek at one time, and is currently the director of the San Marcos Public Library.

Life histories will be collected by volunteers at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim June 26-July 2, 2008. The purpose of the project is to capture librarians at the end of their careers. Their experiences are being made accessible to library school students, new librarians, and colleagues via the project website. It may also be of interest to anyone who has an interest in librarianship, oral history projects, or digital libraries.

The platform used by the project allows the user to watch the interview, download the transcript, or both using Glifos. Here is a link to the PDF documentation about the digital library platform.  The UT iSchool and Harry Ransom Center has also collected and digitized the Mike Wallace Interviews using this same MediaWiki-based system.

To watch Dr. Mears' interesting interview about how he became a librarian, the experience he went through during the construction of the new library building, and other challenges he has faced since retiring from Texas State University,  click here.

You can also check the Project website after the ALA annual conference for more interviews.