Tag Archives: Top News

Easier Access to the Chronicle of Higher Ed – on iPads Too

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The Chronicle of Higher Education is the primary industry newspaper for the field of higher education. It is regular reading for both faculty and administrators – and graduate students. The Temple University Libraries purchases an annual site license to the Chronicle of Higher Education. That means any member of the Temple University community may access the full-text of every Chronicle article – and has access to the full-text of every archived article. Getting access from remote locations is now even easier. The Chronicle will recognize your Temple University email account and allow full-text access to all the content. In order for this to work you simply need to register as a Chronicle user with your Temple University email account. Once you have an account you should consider registering for the Academe Today daily newsletter that will give you access to the latest Chronicle articles. Please know that if you already have a Chronicle account you can simply add your Temple email to the existing account by editing your profile. Establishing a completely new one is not necessary. If you own an iPad and prefer reading your newspapers and magazines on it, you can now download an app for reading the Chronicle. The app is free to all Temple University community members. If you have any questions about obtaining access to the Chronicle of Higher Education as a member of the Temple University community contact Steven Bell for assistance.

It’s Career Week and Temple Libraries Are Here To Help

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Career Week is a series of events that lead up to the Career Fair. It’s an opportunity for juniors, seniors and graduate students to connect with potential employers. This year the Career Fair takes place on Thursday, February 23 at the Student Center. Students should take advantage of every opportunity to prepare themselves so they’ll be ready to impress the employers. A well-designed resume and the right clothes help, but it’s also critical to prepare by gathering the best information available about the company and the industry in which it operates. That’s where the Temple Univesity Libraries can help. We offer dozens of specialized information databases that can make gathering information about companies and industries easier and less time consuming to conduct. For example, Business and Company Resource Center is a great starting point for both public and private companies. You can use Lexis/Nexis to get the latest news about a company by tapping into thousands of newspapers from around the globe. Stop by the Paley Library on Tuesday, February 21 at 2:00 pm to get on-the-spot help with your company research from Adam Shambaugh, our business research specialist. Help is always available at the Paley “Ask Here” Desk or stop by the Science & Engineering Library (SEL) if you are researching companies in the sciences or engineering. Whether it’s Career Week or any week of the year, the information experts at the Temple University Libraries are availalble to help all Temple students be better prepared for a job interview.

Paley’s Vending Machine Offers Basic Office Supplies

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On any given day many students will stop at one of the service desks in Paley Library and ask for any of the following: * a pen * a flash drive * a highlighter Unfortunately, we are unable to provide such supplies to all the students who ask for them each day. Fortunately, students in need of these supplies can now conveniently purchase them in Paley Library. Vending machine stocked with office supplies. We have just added an office supplies vending machine that features all of the above items, plus notebooks, headphones, CD-ROM disks, and more – and we’ll be adding some personal items too, such as tissues and aspirin. Since Paley is open most nights until 2 am, there’s a new options for acquiring these supplies when you need them. You will find the vending machine in the corridor between Paley Library and the Tuttleman Center on the main level of Paley Library. If you have any suggestions for items you’d like to see us offering in the vending machine, let us know with a comment.

Do You Know the Top Two Complaints About Paley?

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As the library staff member who receives all the suggestions and complaints that come from members of the Temple University community I can answer this question. Perhaps you already knew the answer: 1) Noise 2) Food Despite the efforts of the library staff to create an environment that is welcoming to all students, we are occasionally challenged to meet everyone’s needs. Whether it’s two students talking in one of the quiet zones, students getting a little too loud in the noise-tolerant zones, students talking on cellphones, a food mess left on a study table or a student eating a food truck meal that for one reason or another is distracting to other students, we continue to experience situations that leave someone dissatisfied with their Paley Library experience. In recent months we’ve been asked to create very strict, zero tolerance rules about both noise and food. One student even asked us to hire a security guard to force students to be quiet. We believe that strict rules about food and noise are difficult if not impossible to enforce in a building of Paley’s size, and we want to treat students as responsible adults. Sign stating top two library complaints are noise and food odors, to be respectful of others, and keep the library clean, (linked to larger version).
 All that said, we do need to create a better environment in Paley Library, and to do so we need the help of everyone who uses this great community resource. In an effort to remind all those who use Paley Library about the top two complaints we have designed a small card with this information, and have placed these cards throughout the Paley Library. You will see them on desks, carrels and computer workstations. It’s just a reminder. We know the vast majority of those who use the Library are considerate of their fellow library users. Sometimes we could all use a reminder that this is Your Library and together it is Our library. Paley belongs to all of us. Let’s make it the best Library possible so that everyone has a great experience each and every time they are here. If you have any ideas to share about improving Paley Library, be it noise and food issues or any other situation, please leave a comment.

Passing: What is it?

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Robin Washington.           Lewis Gordon

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On November 14, 2011, The Center for Afro-Jewish Studies held its 6th Annual Symposium on “Passing”: Religion, Politics & Peoplehood, a topic inspired by the 50th anniversary of the publication of John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth.

“Both Griffin and Fanon, though primarily concerned with racism and colonialism, were in dialogue with Jewish history and experience. “Passing”: Religion, Politics & Peoplehood will explore both the impact of their works at their time of publication and the after-effects of the texts’ publication in Jewish and African-American communities in America and Israel.” —from Pre-symposium press release

Press Release      Symposium Program

Before the symposium began, I spoke with two of the day’s participants, Robin Washington, editor of the Duluth News Tribune, and Lewis Gordon, Temple professor of religion and philosophy and director of the Center for Afro-Judaic Studies.

—Fred Rowland

Frederick Ahl on Wordplay in the Aeneid

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On September 30, Professor Frederick Ahl of the Cornell University Classics Department spoke at Temple University about “Wordplay in the Aeneid”. The Zeta Beta Chapter of Eta Sigma Phi invited him to campus for its second annual lecture. Zeta Beta is a group on campus that promotes the teaching, study, and appreciation of Latin, Greek, and the ancient world.

On Saturday morning, Oct. 1, I interviewed Professor Ahl. We discussed wordplay in the Aeneid, the unease with which modern scholars encounter and interpret wordplay, and his love of the plays of Gilbert & Sullivan, on whom he is currently writing a book. Anyone who is interested in wordplay, or in the cultural and intellectual life of the ancient world, will find this interview very interesting.

Sustaining Scholarly Publishing

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In September, I sat down with the director of the Temple University Press Alex Holzman to speak about an AAUP report entitled “Sustaining Scholarly Publishing”, which he helped to organize during his tenure as president of the American Association of University Presses (AAUP). The 2011 report tries to make sense of recent changes in scholarly publishing. Though increasingly fractured by the proliferation of business models, the current publishing environment also provides excellent opportunities for future scholarship.

[The report is available from two different sources.]

The interview with Alex Holzman provides an excellent overview of the Temple University Press as well as the contemporary business, economic and academic environment in which university presses operate. Although we use the report as a touchstone for our conversation, there a lot of details included in the report that we do not cover. I strongly recommend taking the time to read the comprehensive and clearly written report.

Listen to the audio of Part I

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Listen to the audio of Part II

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—Fred Rowland

Library Prize: eligibility expanded

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The eighth annual Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and the second annual Library Prize for Undergraduate on Sustainability & the Environment will be held in the Spring 2012 semester. The purpose of the prize is to encourage the use of the Libraries’ resources and to highlight the best research among Temple undergraduates. This year’s prize submission deadline is Wednesday, March 28, 2012 at 5 pm.

This year the eligibility requirements have changed to include students participating in the McNair Scholars Program, The Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship (CARAS) Program, and students who finish their coursework in December 2011 and graduate in January. Below are the complete eligibility requirements.

To be eligible to win the 2012 Prize, applicants must:

  • be Temple undergraduates at any class level and in any discipline, and be enrolled, i.e. taking a class or classes, in the Spring 2012 semester or having completed all undergraduate coursework during the Fall 2011 semester (i.e. graduating in January 2012).

  • have completed their research project for a credit course at Temple during the Spring 2011, Summer 2011, Fall 2011, or Spring 2012 semesters, or began The Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program in the Summer of 2011 or received funding for The Creative Arts, Research and Scholarship (CARAS) Program during the Spring or Fall of 2011.

  • agree to contribute to a display about their research in theLibrary during the year following receipt of the Sustainability Prize

  • agree that all winning prize materials will become permanent property of the University Archives and may be displayed on the Library’s website

  • agree to attend the Library Prize Awards Ceremony during the week of April 30 to May 4, 2012.  (You need to attend the Awards Ceremony in order to win the Library Prize.)

We look forward to another great year for the Library Prize. If you have any questions about the new eligibility requirements, or any other questions, please email the libprize@temple.edu. 

Surviving Crunch Time – Know Where To Start Your Research

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As Temple students head home for the Thanksgiving holiday, thoughts of relaxing with family and friends may be more on the mind than research and final papers. But rest assured, when the calendar hits that last week of November, its the official start of crunch time – the last few weeks of the semester. The big challenge for many students is getting started on those final research papers. The librarians at Temple University know that getting started is the hardest part of any project. That’s why we have created lots of Research Guides to get you started in the right place.

Our Research Guides are designed to provide direct links to the top research databases and resources for students who may not be sure where to begin – and they are equally helpful for students who want to expand their research beyond the same one or two databases that always get used. We have over 600 databases, e-book collections, thousands of full-text journals and much more. Cut through the confusion. Start with a Research Guide. Where else could you get started? How about Summon. That’s our newest research tool for searching a huge amount of the content the Libraries offer – and you don’t have to even think about where to get started. Summon will get you there by providing lightning fast results that offer links to articles, books, and more – and when you follow these links it will lead to new resources – that’s why we call it a “discovery engine.”

Still not sure where to get started. Talk to one of our human discovery engines – your subject specialist librarian. No matter where you start your research, Temple Libraries has you covered for getting through crunch time.