Update on taking new books to Valerie

More about getting the new books through the reference area: Valerie has pretty well cleared out the discharge backlog over at Circulation and says that when trucks are ready to come from Reference to Circ you can just park them by her cubicle. She'll take the "in process" status off and get them onto Circ trucks so the Cataloging trucks can go back upstairs.

Mayo

Weather Record Assignment

Students in COMM 2200 have an assignment that asks them to find the record temperature high and low for their hometown. First go to the National Weather Service website at http://www.nws.noaa.gov . Next locate and click on Tennessee on the map. Scroll down the navigation bar on the left side and locate and click on Climate Local. Next look at the horizontal tabs and click on Local Data Records. Once this option has loaded look for and click on All-time Records for Various Middle Tennessee Locations. Looks like 109 and -19 are the extremes for Murfreesboro.

Sharon

School Crimes Study

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) has just published School Crimes Study: A Study of Offenses, Offender, Arrestee and Victim Data Reported to the Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System. This report provides valuable insight into the characteristics of crimes reported by Tennessee public and private school systems from 2006-2008. The report for the most part exlcudes college and university reported crimes although it was not possible to completely remove all occurences from the study. The URL for the report is http://www.tbi.state.tn.us/Press%20Release/School%20Crime%20Study%20Final.pdf
I am adding it to the LibData database.

Sharon

Curriculum Collection Tips

I always manage to learn something new in the Curriculum Collection if I hang around long enough. I know we don't get many questions about this, but you never know...

• Some preservice teachers looking for books to use in the classroom expect to see books shelved by grade order. One quick thing they can do is take a title they think might work and see what reading level Amazon has assigned it (thanks for that tip, Kim!).

• Students often expect to see all the unit plan idea books in one section, when they are in fact shelved at the Dewey number corresponding to the topic of the unit. If you can convince a student to use Voyager, a good way to find these books is to keyword search the Curriculum Collection and add the words thematic unit to the search. Teacher created is another phrase you can add to the search, because Teacher Created Materials is a prominent publisher of these resources.

What do you know about the Curriculum Collection that might be useful for the rest of us Reference Desk staffers?

-Kristen

Off-Campus Access Problems

Currently enrolled students who can access Pipeline but can't access any library databases need to contact the ITD helpdesk at 898-5345.

ITD makes all that happen as a matter of course, but at the beginning of the semester, a few accounts always fall through the cracks.

-Kristen

Taking new books to circulation

Hi all,

If you take trucks of new books over to circulation it's important that you check with Valerie about where to put them (it depends on how backed up they are in discharge) and to let her know that they have not had the "In Process" status taken off. I've been using some of my reference desk time to take the status off before taking them over to Circ. They then are ready for a student to work with. However, I haven't been keeping up so it's ok to take them over but make sure Valerie knows the status.

Thanks. Mayo

Broken Computers

Just a friendly reminder about broken computers and printers in the EIC:

Please be sure that if you put up an "Out of Order" sign that you submit an online problem report, call Systems, or talk to Al. When others see an out of order sign they will assume the problem has been reported, and it sometimes turns out to not be the case.

Mike said this morning that he prefers we NOT submit a problem report for the EIC printers but that we call Systems directly (x5666). This will help get the printer back in working order as soon as possible.

-Kristen

SciFinder Scholar

SciFinder Scholar is moving to the web! The client version will phased out over the next few months. I have removed the resource for the client version from the Chemistry subject guide. Those who are now using the client can still access SciFinder Scholar, however, users that are new to the database should begin with the web version.
A portion of our seven simultaneous users is now allocated to the web version.

Users can register here: SciFinder Scholar registration page.

They may then access the SciFinder Scholar Web .

Tutorials on the web version are available on the SciFinder Support & Training - Web Version page.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

The best place to find data on FDI seems to be the UNCTAD website.

Main FDI data page
By Country.
Historical data (1970-2004) on all countries/regions. Click on the link that says Free Registration. As far as I can tell, though, you don't actually have to register for anything.

--Amy