ROCC/RODP Start of Semester Problems

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted you to be aware that there have been problems with enrollments and access for students taking ROCC/RODP classes. Here is the latest announcement that students should see when going to login at  http://elearn.rodp.org :

Attention: Faculty & Students

Thank you for your patience as we work through the difficulties with the semester start. We are still experiencing a few issues with enrollments and access. If you cannot access a course you have registered for or if students are missing from your classlist, please contact the ROCC Help Desk at http://help.rodp.org.

Apparently some UNIV 4995 students were not appropriately balanced across all of the offered sections until August 25th.  Some of these students were moved to other sections after already posting their introductory posts. 

Notices were put up on September 1st that many students have not completed their Student Participation Survey which is used as the online equivalent to prove class enrollment and attendance.

My guess is that you will see assignment dates be altered as a result.  Please inform Sharon of any questions by students.  Thanks.

Sharon

ENGL 1020 "Rhetorical Analysis" Paper -- Spring 2015

I taught two English 1020 classes for Laura Dubek last week. Her students are looking for argumentative essays for a rhetorical analysis project. In case you encounter them at the reference desk, they are looking for ONE argumentative essay that is substantial enough for them to analyze in some depth. They are doing a research poster for Scholars Week that examines how the article's author uses rhetorical strategies to make an argument.  

They do not need scholarly articles, news stories, or short opinion pieces. In class, I showed them two options to get started:

Option 1: Opposing Viewpoints. While most of the "viewpoints" in this database are too short for this assignment, I pointed out the Magazines results for each topic, and showed how you can limit your results by Document Types to get "Critical essays," "Viewpoint Essays," and "Articles." See the left column in the image below. They will still need to look through these and find one that is substantial enough to warrant analysis.

Option 2: Reader's Guide Full Text. Again, this isn't perfect because there are tons of short articles here too, but the advanced search does give you the option to limit to Editorial and Opinion pieces. Hold down the CTRL key as you click these options to apply both limits at once.

These are the two starting points I shared in class. If you have other methods that yield good results, please share them in the comments section below. -- Jason

National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints

The National Union Catalog Pre-1956 Imprints has been moved from its previous location in Reference at 018.1 N21 to the Periodicals Area.  It is located in the second row of shelves on the left.  There is a small sign on a shelf with an arrow pointing back to it near the aisle.  The end panel sign shows the call number.  There is also a sign in the Reference Area on the shelf at the previous location directing patrons to the Periodicals Area.  Please note that the assignment requiring students to use the NUC has begun. 

Questions about Printing

 

From Michael W. 1/20/15

 

Here are the questions I have received today from our Reference Librarians concerning the Campus Printing System along with the answers I have dug up.

1.      What happens when there is a problem with the print system, i.e., a meltdown, after ITD Help Desk is closed?

a.      LTS has a direct line which they will call as soon as a major outage has been reported and verified.

2.      How much do MTSU Faculty/Staff printouts cost per page?

a.      Faculty/Staff are not directly charged for their printing.  All charges are billed to the department on campus that employs them.

b.      The amount charged to their department is $.017 per page.

3.      What happens when a student puts in their Pipeline Username and Password rather than their MTmail Username and Password?

a.      A student’s email login and pipleline login are the same, but their passwords may not be.

b.      Since the login system is looking for their email login and password, it assumes that someone is keying in the wrong password and may be trying to break into their account, so it locks their login after a number of missed attempts.

c.      To unlock the account, the patron will have to contact the ITD help desk at 898-5345

4.      What is going on when a patron tries to print and the EIC printers are not coming up?

a.      The campus print system has had a hiccup and the print kiosk requires a reboot.  Contact LTS.

5.      Does it hurt for a student to turn off a PC after they finish?

a.      When the first person of the days logs onto a PC it takes a while for the campus printer to be published to the PC.  The next person who logins in will not have that wait.

b.      If the machine is turned off or rebooted, it starts the whole sequence over again.

c.      Patrons should log off using the desktop Logoff Icon.

6.      Why is duplex printing not working consistently throughout the building?

a.      RJ Young and ITD are working together to get this corrected. 

7.      Should a student log off the release station when they finish printing?

a.      For security reasons each student should log off at the print kiosk after they finish printing.

b.      Not logging off also slows down the traffic flow at a kiosk.

8.      How should we explain what a printed page is?

a.      Maybe instead of referring to it as a page, we should refer to it as each side of a page that is printed.

9.      How do Community/Alumni Patrons print?

a.      When they get a password at the Service Desk they are issued a flash drive (supplied by ITD).

b.      They should print all of their work to the Adobe PDF printer and save the output to the flash drive.

c.      They should take the flash drive to the Community/Alumni printer next to the LTS desk to print their work.

9.      How do I check my print quota and how do I add more pages to it?

a.      The answer is:  go to http://blueid.mtsu.edu and login with your pipeline credentials and it will give you the status of all of your RaiderFunds categories, including Print Quota.  Once you run out of PrintQuota, the system starts taking money from your RaiderFunds to cover the cost.  On that same webpage you can add more dollars to your RaiderFunds using a credit/debit card. 

 

 

 

 

From Kristen W. 1/20/15

 

More about community/alumni printing and photocopying from my own observation and per Al Camp:

• Pay with cash (no coins) or credit card (forget to check which cards it accepts)
• No change returned if using cash
• Cash users will use the card kiosk to obtain a free ExpressPay Cash Card, to which they will then add money (minimum $1)
• Printer/Photocopier accepts credit card (forgot to check which ones) or the ExpressPay Cash Card
• $0.10 each B/W letter or legal page, plus $0.01 tax each page = $0.11 per page
•  Unused funds on an ExpressPay card remain on the card for future use.
•  Documents to print must be on a flash drive. Al says the printer will recognize and print a variety of files including Word, PPT, PDF, JPG and other images, but not an Excel file. User can preview and accept or discard the print before it is made. I watched a user print a Word file tonight. The safest answer, of course, is to have everything saved as a PDF per the instructions below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raider Funds Deposit

Students can go to https://blueid.mtsu.edu to deposit Raider funds for printing. This information is not yet listed on the Raider funds page at: http://www.mtsu.edu/tuition/raider-funds.php (as of today). The Library no longer has any Raider Funds cash terminals.

Digital Sanborn Maps

The Digital Sanborn Maps database is experiencing technical issues and is not presently available.  After we received a complaint from a student Nan Matson contacted their technical support people and received the following response, 

"Thank you for contacting Technical Support today. We are currently experiencing system difficulties and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and your users.

We have every available resource working on the problem with the goal of restoring access to the system as soon as possible. I do not have specific details to share with you at this time.

Again, we apologize for this inconvenience and we appreciate your patience during this process. "

 
Patrons see a login box when clicking on the browse maps button that does not work with their Pipeline MT username and password.

Sharon

Finding "Abstract Journals" for English

This question has come up a handful of times in recent weeks, and it's an odd one.

Students in an upper level English class are needing to find an "abstract journal" as a requirement for a bibliography they are compiling.

I did find something in Harner's Literary Research Guide (Ready reference shelf R 820.9 H 22l 2008) that might be useful: Abstracts of English Studies. It is shelved in Peroidicals, and we have 1958-1979 (Volumes 1-23). The title was discontinued in 1994. I am including a scan of the relevant page from Harner's below.

If you have other suggestions for how to find an "abstract journal" for English, please share!

--Jason

No Walker Library Holdings in Journal Locator

This is a reminder that Journal Locator does not include Walker Library print holdings for the time being. Print holdings for periodicals can be found in the catalog only.

Flow plugins in 272 and 264a

Mike W. is installing a 'Save to Flow' button in the bookmarks toolbar of Firefox and the Flow plugin to Word to the instructor's stations in 272 and 264a. If you don't see the 'Save to Flow button below the address bar, right click on the menu bar and select 'Bookmarks Toolbar'. This will allow instructors to login to Flow and, with a couple clicks, save citations from a browser and import them into a Word document. The plugins will not be installed on the student computers because students would have to login and could leave themselves logged in. Students can create an account and install these plugins on their personal computers. ~Mary Ellen

BAS Computer Lab Hours

Just a reminder about hours at the Computer Lab in the BAS building. The lab is open continuously from 1:00 pm Sunday to 10:00 pm Friday. They are open on Saturday from 9:00 am to 10:00 pm.

Sunday 1:00 pm to Friday 10:00 pm
Saturday 9:00 am to 10:00 pm

The notes at the reference desk about this aren't clear--I'll correct them soon.

-Kristen W

Tutoring and student success - http://www.mtsu.edu/studentsuccess/oncampus-tutoring.php

From: Bonnie J. Allen Sent: Monday, August 25, 2014 11:37 AM To: LIBeverybody Subject: Tutoring and student success

Walker hours for tutoring are:
 Monday-Thursday noon-9
Friday noon-4
Sunday 4-9

The banner is up on the first floor and a student should be there this afternoon to answer questions but tutors will not be there until Sept 8. The online schedule shows Math in Walker and it is in KOM as usual (I reported the error) Biology and Chemistry are in the online schedule but need start dates. Vincent tells me to refer students to the student success website as that is where updates will be posted. Also there is a schedule for the revamped Student Success Series on the student success website. Bonnie Allen Dean, James E Walker Library Middle Tennessee State University Murfreesboro, TN 37132 http://library.mtsu.edu Office: (615) 898 2772 Fax: (615) 904 8505

http://www.mtsu.edu/studentsuccess/oncampus-tutoring.php 

Security Certificate Problem

 

The library webpage’s  security certificate expired over the weekend and we did not receive advance notification that this was about to transpire.  What this means for our remote users is that when they try to go through their browser to the library webpage they receive a warning message that the site is possibly not secure and are advised that it is not recommended to continue to the site.  The warning message varies depending upon which browser is being used.  Nothing bad will happen if the user accepts the security exception as our site is trustworthy.   

 

For Internet Explorer remote users can click on Continue to this website (not recommended).  For Firefox students can select I understand the risks.  They should then be able to proceed to the login box that should work fine with either their MTSU or ROCC logins. 

 Our systems department is working as quickly as possible to get our security certificate renewed. 

 

Sharon

D2L Login Problems After Changing Your Password.

It's Monday so it's time to address all those pesky problems that arose during the weekend.  This message was on the news feed after logging into D2L (MTSU)  this morning:

D2L Log In Problems?

Students and instructors, you may lose the ability to log into D2L after you change your password. If this happens to you call the MTSU help desk, 898-5345. Instructors may also call the Faculty Instructional Technology Center.

Thanks.

Sharon Parente

This information is from an email sent from Dean Bonnie Allen.  Ten undergraduate students from other universities will be on campus from June 1 - July 31st.  They are participating in the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funded by a federal grant. 

• Library Technology has assigned them proxy server login/passwords that will also work with public PC access in the library. 
• They will have a program ID but the campus does not provide them with a full student ID. 
• We are providing them access to our collections including the ability to check out books.
• They do not have access to equipment for check out because the grant would not pay for lost or damaged materials.
• The online group study room reservation system probably would not allow them to make the reservation with their proxy server username and password.  We should have several spaces available for group work if a space is needed.

Please remember to ask patrons who contact us via phone or IM with complaints about accessing our resources remotely if they are part of a special group like this one. Thanks.

Sharon

BAS Computer Lab Summer Location

Temporary University Lab Hours - BAS S302

Open Mon-Fri 9AM-6PM
(when university is open) 

Scheduled Closings
CUSTOMS dates
    various dates/times

Monday, May 26th
    Open May 27th, 9am

Friday, July 4th
      Open July 7th, 9am

Lab closes for semester:
Friday, August 8th, 6:00pm

The main lab offices temporarily located in the BAS Suntrust Room (first floor of the North lobby)

http://www.mtsu.edu/businesslab/about/labrenovations.php 

Phone Chargers for Loan

A reminder about something Al told us in November. I apparently forgot.

Library Tech Services has the following items for loan to students:

5 - Android Phone Chargers (all have micro and mini plugs with the power adapter)
3 - IPhone Chargers (Lightning to USB cable with power adapter for use with IPhone 5, IPad 4 and IPad Air)
2 - IPhone Chargers (30 pin to USB with power adapter for use with previous IPhone and IPad versions)
5 - Headphones with Microphones

-K. West

Random reference question of the week

I lucked into getting this barrage of questions at 4:57 p.m. (three minutes before I left the reference desk) on a recent Friday afternoon. The guy asked to speak to someone "who's been around for a while."

I did a little searching, but ultimately suggested that the student contact ITD on Monday morning. Thankfully, he returned this week and shared his answers with Karen Dearing. I am recording them here for posterity. The answers are apparently courtesy of Robin Jones in ITD.

Question 1. What year did MTSU start issuing email addresses to students?   1994

Question 2. What year did MTSU implement the ability to register for classes via phone system?  1992

Question 3. What year did MTSU implement the ability to register for classes online?  1998

Question 4. What year did MTSU implement online classes? True online courses started in 2000

Question 5. What year did MTSU implement D2L?  D2L was implemented in 2006.  The first course management system actually started in 1998

-Posted by J.V.

Multicultural Americans assignments

We've relied heavily on the Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America in the past, but it's pretty old by now (print copy 1995, ebook copy 2000).

Here are some newer alternatives:

Multicultural America: An Encyclopedia of the Newest Americans (Greenwood, 2011) Print and Online R305.800973M91b
4 volumes. Signed profile articles on 50 American immigrant groups, 10-20K words each (some entries are quite lengthy). Statistics provided, but the text emphasizes history, identity, and culture. Includes bibliographies.

Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia (SAGE, 2013)   R305.800973M91
4 volumes, 900 signed entries on specific ethnic groups and topics related to multiculturalism, appendix of 2010 Census Data, bibliographies, and more. Articles are relatively short.

These and other titles are listed on the SW3200: Cultural Diversity course guide.

-Kristen W