New Books in the Recreation Collection

We just got a fresh, new batch of books for the Recreation Collection on the first floor of Hamersly. We have something for everyone – from thrillers and mysteries to celebrity memoirs (we have A LOT of new celebrity memoirs) and everything in between!

Below is just a sampling of our new arrivals. Browse the collection online or in-person to see all of our recreational books!

Rainbow in the Cloud: The Wisdom and Spirit of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou. Call Number: REC ANG

From Goodreads: a “collection of sage advice, humorous quips, and pointed observations culled from the author’s great works…Rainbow in the Cloud offers resonant and rewarding quotes on such topics as creativity and culture, family and community, equality and race, values and spirituality, parenting and relationships. Perhaps most special, Maya Angelou’s only son, Guy Johnson, has contributed some of his mother’s most powerful sayings, shared directly with him and the members of their family. A treasured keepsake as well as a beautiful tribute to a woman who touched so many…”

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Call Number: REC ELW

From Goodreads: “From actor Cary Elwes, who played the iconic role of Westley in The Princess Bride, comes a first-person account and behind-the-scenes look at the making of the cult classic film filled with never-before-told stories, exclusive photographs, and interviews with costars Robin Wright, Wallace Shawn, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Mandy Patinkin…”

And if you like celebrity memoirs, you should also check out:

Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography by Neil Patrick Harris. Call Number: REC HAR
Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol. Call Number: REC IDO
True Love by Jennifer Lopez. Call Number: REC LOP
Yes Please by Amy Poehler. Call Number: REC POE
Special Deluxe: A Memoir of Life & Cars by Neil Young. Call Number: REC YOU

The Secret Place by Tana French. Call Number: REC FRE

From Goodreads: “The photo on the card shows a boy who was found murdered, a year ago, on the grounds of a girls’ boarding school in the leafy suburbs of Dublin. The caption says, I KNOW WHO KILLED HIM…The Secret Place is a powerful, haunting exploration of friendship and loyalty…”

The Wild Truth: The Untold Story of Sibling Survival by Carine McCandless. Call Number: REC MCC

From Goodreads: “In the more than twenty years since the body of Chris McCandless was discovered in the wilds of Alaska, his spellbinding story has captivated millions who have either read Jon Krakauer’s iconic Into the Wild or seen Sean Penn’s acclaimed film of the same name.

And yet, only one person has truly understood what motivated Chris’s unconventional decision to forsake his belongings, abandon his family, and embrace the harsh wilderness. In The Wild Truth, his beloved sister Carine McCandless finally provides a deeply personal account of the many misconceptions about Chris, revealing the truth behind his fateful journey while sharing the remarkable details of her own.”

The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books by Azar Nafisi. Call Number: REC NAF

From Goodreads: “A passionate hymn to the power of fiction to transform people’s lives, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.”

Streamlined Summit Requesting

Summit logo You may remember that last summer, Hamersly Library migrated to a new system, Primo. Our library was part of the third cohort of the Orbis Cascade Alliance’s shared library system project. Now that the final cohort has migrated, we are now ready roll out an enhancement to the Summit requesting process.

Currently the Primo link “Request item (about 5 days)” moves you to another system, summit.worldcat.org, to handle the request. Even when you’ve signed in on Primo, you have to authenticate again on the requesting server.
Starting next Tuesday, Jan. 20, Primo will handle requesting as well as discovery. Fewer authentication prompts for you, and Primo’s My Account area will display the status of your requests alongside your loans, saved queries, and e-Shelf collections.

What do you need to do?

Probably nothing except to enjoy the better process. Hooray! Just a few things to consider:

Do you have links in Moodle, browser bookmarks, citation management software, etc. to records on the summit.worldcat.org server? (or to our old catalog server, library.wou.edu?). They will need to be changed to link to the Primo server. (See Get the URL for a Primo record.)

Likewise, if you have linksto the general search page summit.worldcat.org, change to the new search URL:

https://alliance-wou.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?vid=01ALLIANCE_WOU:WOU

While the Summit group within WorldCat is going away, WorldCat in the larger sense remains a valid resource to discover and request items that are beyond the holdings of the Summit libraries, through Interlibrary Loan. Please continue to find the link to WorldCat in the bottom right corner of the Primo Search box on the library’s main page.

You can learn more about the system, see video tutorials and screenshots, and share comments and questions at our Primo Guide.

Most popular books of 2014

January book display Interested in what the WOU community was reading for fun last year? Looking for a good book to dive into before classes get busy? Check out our new display showcasing the most popular books of the past year from Hamersly’s Recreation Collection: from thrillers like Gone Girl to series sensations like The Hunger Games to nonfiction explorations of mental health and military history.

The display is located on the first floor of the library between rooms 108 and 107, and the rest of the Recreation Collection is on the other end of the first floor.

“Can I send someone to check out those books?”

We often get asked if a family member, friend, or graduate assistant can pick up materials on behalf of a borrower. Our system now makes it easier for us to manage these requests by documenting a borrower’s proxy. As a Hamersly Library patron, you may grant permission for another person (or persons) to check out materials from the library on your account.

Proxies can pick up materials that arrive for you through Summit and Interlibrary Loan, and Hamersly-owned items that are on hold for you.

You can designate a proxy for just a few days, to accommodate an illness perhaps, or longer term, for continued access–it’s up to you.

Call for submissions

The Program for Undergraduate Research (PURE) invites you to submit your work to Western Oregon University’s peer-reviewed undergraduate research journal: PURE Insights.

The submission deadline is December 31, 2014.

Students and recent graduates (with a faculty mentor) can submit original research and creative work including technical papers, research articles, expository articles, poems, short stories, photographs, videos, and other creative works from all academic disciplines. All submissions to the journal must have a faculty sponsor. [wpspoiler name=”Learn more”]

Here are three reasons to submit your paper:

It looks great on resumes. A publication in a peer-reviewed journal will make you stand out from other candidates applying for jobs or graduate school.
Going through the process of research – from drafting ideas to publication – will prepare you for more advanced research at the graduate and professional level.
All articles published in PURE Insights will be discoverable in major search engines, such as Google Scholar, making them accessible for anyone and contributing to the global body of knowledge.

The current issue of PURE Insights as well as complete guidelines and a link for submitting your work is available online at: http://digitalcommons.wou.edu/pure

The next online issue will be published May 2015. For questions about PURE Insights or the submission process, please contact Camila Gabaldon (gabaldoc@wou.edu). [/wpspoiler]

Meet your Hamersly staff: Stewart Baker

Each term, we introduce you to a few of the people who work to make Hamersly your favorite place on campus to do research, study, print your papers, meet with a group, or simply kick back and read in a quiet place.

This week, meet Stewart Baker, our Systems & Institutional Repository Librarian. He was an integral part of the team that made the switch to our new library system, Primo, over the summer. And if you take classes in Computer Science, Social Sciences, Modern Languages, or Philosophy your class may get a visit from Stewart at some point. Here’s more about him:

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What do you do in the library? I work on our website- and catalog-related things, including the recent migration to our new library system, Primo. I also provide reference services and teach library instruction sessions.

How long have you worked in the library? Since late October, 2013.

What is your education and professional background? I have a BA and MA in literature (with a focus on Medieval Europe and critical theory) and an MLIS in library science. I had a long and varied undergraduate career, taking courses in computer science, graphic design, art history, philosophy, and linguistics. Prior to starting work at WOU last October, I worked for 5 years as a reference and web services librarian at California State University, Dominguez Hills, located on the outskirts of the urban sprawl that is Los Angeles.

What is one thing about the library you think everyone should know? Librarians like answering questions, anything from the ones that seem too easy to ask about to the ones that seem impossible and weird. Please bring them all to us!

What is the last good book you read? I’m always reading, so there are too many to list. The last book I read which I really couldn’t put down was Ha Jin’s In the Pond.

What was your favorite book as a kid? As a younger kid, anything by Roald Dahl. As a teen, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, parts of which I can still quote from memory. (“Life? Don’t talk to me about life!”)

Tell us a fun fact about you! I am semi-fluent in Japanese, and spent half a year living and studying in Japan in 2005.

Connect Google Scholar to WOU for full text access

Rule #1 of using Google Scholar to do research for your class assignments: never pay for an article. Rule #2 of using Google Scholar to do research for your class assignments: never, ever pay for an article!

In many cases, links to full text scholarly articles (like the kind that Google Scholar finds) are through subscription sources. The library pays for subscriptions to many of these sources already so that you, as a WOU student, can access them for free. But Google Scholar doesn’t know you’re a WOU student, and so it will often ask you to pay for the full text of the article results it provides.

That is, unless you tell Google Scholar you are a WOU student! You do this by changing your “Library links” settings in Google Scholar. Want to see how to change these settings? Watch this short video.

Once you change this setting, Google will recognize you as a WOU student and will show you “Find It @ WOU” links with your results. Get more info & tips for searching Google Scholar here.

Important tips for researching with Google Scholar

Rule #1 of using Google Scholar to do research for your class assignments: never pay for an article.

Rule #2 of using Google Scholar to do research for your class assignments: never, ever pay for an article!

In many cases, links to full text scholarly articles (like the kind that Google Scholar finds) are through subscription sources. The library pays for subscriptions to many of these sources already so that you, as a WOU student, can access them for free. But Google Scholar doesn’t know you’re a WOU student,and so it will often ask you to pay for the full text of the article results it provides.

That is, unless you tell Google Scholar you are a WOU student! You do this by changing your “Library links” settings in Google Scholar. google scholar settings

Once you change this setting, Google will recognize you as a WOU student – provided you are signed into your Google account when you search (e.g. by signing into the Portal or into your email). Want to see how to change these settings? Watch this short video.

If you’re signed in and have set your “Library links” to connect to WOU databases, Google Scholar will show you the “Find It @ WOU” link with your results. This link will give you access to the full text of the scholarly article if possible, or it will tell you how to request the article you want through the library. Either way, you don’t have to pay for it! google scholar find it at wou

More tips for using Google Scholar:

Google Scholar doesn’t have everything. You will find the most results in science and technology and the least results in the humanities. If you are searching for a topic in the humanities, try searching in a database specific to your subject.
Find a good article on your topic? Google Scholar gives you a list of other articles that have cited the article you are looking at. So if you find a good article, this will help you find more just like it. Look for the “Cited by” link to use this feature.
Try to only use first initials when searching for author names. Many articles only include the first initial of the author.
Google Scholar casts a wide net when searching, which often means you initially get an overwhelming number of results and will need to make your search more specific. Using the “advanced search” feature is the easiest way to narrow your results. The advanced search form will pop up if you click on the arrow on the right end of the Google Scholar search box. From there, you can fill in more search information.

google scholar advanced search form

Scary books for Halloween

Does your idea of a good Halloween include curling up with a scary book? If so, this list is for you! Here are some of the books we have right here in Hamersly that will give you a fright. Happy Halloween!

“Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special twelve-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.” – Goodreads
Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. Call Number: REC KIN (1st floor)

A collection of short, but no less terrifying, stories. Ideal for reading aloud to scare your roommates.
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King.Call Number: PS3561.I483 S55 1986 (3rd floor)

If you’re looking for a more old-school Halloween experience, give this classic tale a try. “Jonathan Harker, incarcerated in a Transylvanian castle, has an alluring but terrifying dream of three women, eager to prey upon him. His host and jailer is none other than Count Dracula, or Nosferatu, the Un-Dead, controller of the wolves.” – Goodreads
Dracula by Bram Stoker.Call Number: PR6037.T617 D7 2011 (3rd floor) or as an eBook.

Most people ignored the outrageous reports on the news. But they became too frequent, they became too real. And soon, they began happening down the street. Then the Internet died. The television and radio went silent. The phones stopped ringing. And we couldn’t look outside anymore. – Goodreads
Bird Box by Josh Malerman.Call Number: REC MAL (1st floor).

Another timeless classic – short and perfect for reading aloud. “Holmes and Watson are faced with their most terrifying case yet. The legend of the devil-beast that haunts the moors around the Baskerville families home warns the descendants of that ancient clan never to venture out in those dark hours when the power of evil is exalted. Now, the most recent Baskerville, Sir Charles, is dead and the footprints of a giant hound have been found near his body. Will the new heir meet the same fate?” – Goodreads
The Complete Sherlock Holmes – The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle.Call Number: PR4620.A5 .M67 1953 (3rd floor).

A collection of stories by the legendary horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Prepare to face terrors beyond your wildest imaginings…
Tales by H.P. Lovecraft.Call Number: PS3523.O833 A6 2005 (3rd floor).

Need a midterm break? Check out Films on Demand

Watch online streaming videos about everything from biographies of famous musicians to the history of unions in the U.S. to tips for writing fiction from famous writers (and much more!) for free. Watch the videos in Films on Demand for class or for a study break – there’s something for everyone.

Films On Demand is almost like the library’s version of YouTube, except it’s all legal and appropriate for use in class assignments!

The vast Films on Demand archive currently includes more than 6,100 complete titles and 63,000 shorter video segments. You can browse by subject, such as Health & Medicine, World Languages, Nursing, Criminal Justice & Law, or Archival Films & Newsreels, under the ‘Collections’ menu option. Or you can simply search for videos using keywords.

Happy watching!