Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Banned Books Week 2010

Welcome to Banned Books Week 2010!

The purpose of Banned Books Week is to remind people everywhere of the dangers of censorship, our history of censorship, and the promise of reading a variety of books for educational and recreational purposes.

Libraries across the country will often display books that have been challenged or banned in the past so that the public can see for themselves and think about why that book was challenged or banned. Banned Books Week gives everyone time to think about what they choose to read and why they choose to read the books they do. It's an important time to reflect on the choices we make and provides us with an opportunity to consider reading something new in the future that we may not have considered before.

At the Grand View Library we have put together a small display as well. Please come by and take a look. The books are available for checkout, so pick one up today. There are some really good ones in this batch as well.






Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Portfolio Drive & Laptop Printing

When you think of the library, you probably have an image of lots of books in your mind. And yes, we do have over 90,000 volumes. However, the library is not just about books anymore. We are also a place that you can go to ask questions about technology and computer help.

For example, have you recently had a professor tell you that you needed to start saving your documents to your portfolio drive? You might have been thinking to yourself, "Where is my portfolio drive? How do I access it? Who can see my files?" One of the questions we get most often at the library has to do with the portfolio drive, so we decided to make a video showing you, the user, how to save documents to your portfolio drive. Once you learn how, it's a tool you will find yourself using again and again.

Another issue you might encounter is trying to print from your personal laptop to a Grand View printer. How do you set that up? How do you know which printer it's going to go to? Well, we've made a helpful video about that too. It's called the "Web Print Feature" and anyone can do it from their own laptop on campus. So the next time you need help printing from your laptop, check out our new video showing you how to do it.

We have plenty of other videos where those came from as well. They are an easy way to remind yourself how to do certain tasks associated with the library and the research process.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Grand View Library Web Directory: High Quality Websites

We use the web every day and we do quite a bit of searching. We all know that there are some really bad websites out there and just as many mediocre ones as well. Where are all the high-quality websites? If you're working on a project for class and need a variety of good websites, how do you know which ones to choose?

One suggestion is to critically evaluate each website you visit. Find out who the author is, how accurate the information is (compare it to another site), and determine how much bias exists on the site.

Another suggestion is to try out our new Grand View Library Web Directory. This site has dozens of good websites that you can choose from when researching a topic. If you like one of the sites that you find there, let us know and we'll make sure to keep it in the future.

Good luck searching and browsing!

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Collaboration Cart


One of our newest additions this fall is the Collaboration Cart. This new device is a compilation of a flat-screen tv, a laptop computer, a wireless keyboard, and a wireless mouse. Plus, the whole thing is on wheels so you can move it around a little for better viewing.

So now you're asking the question: Why do we have this big cart?

The Collaboration Cart exists to help groups work on projects together. The flat-screen allows for optimal viewing by all members of the group. The wireless keyboard and mouse allow for any group member to take control and show an example on the screen. Plus you can take turns working on the project by sharing the keyboard and mouse. The laptop gives you wireless web access and access to all of Grand View Library's resources.

So as you can see, this new set of tools really helps you work together on projects in ways you've never tried before.

Come try it out!