The librarian is reading...

Let's dust off this blog, shall we?

A colleague tweeted a story about a professor at the University of Guelph and her research on Jean Little. I always loved Jean Little's novels as a young girl. Jean Little is a Canadian author who focuses on children with disabilities. She herself has a visual impairment, which influences her treatment of disability in her stories.

You can read Carstairs’ article through the Brock University Library. If you want to more about Jean Little or read some of her novels, search Super Search.

Or learn more here:

Scholastic Authors and Illustrators: Jean Little

www.jeanlittle.ca

Super Search

Have you been using Super Search? Want to know more about using it? Check out our new Super Search FAQ.

June is Aboriginal History Month

June is Aboriginal History Month for Canadians. Our friends at Scholars Portal have gathered a selection of relevant resources from their books and journals platforms. The guide is available on my Aboriginal Studies Research Guide.

June 21 is National Aboriginal Day. For some Ontario happenings, see: http://www.aboriginalaffairs.gov.on.ca/english/events/national_aboriginal_day.asp.

More resources:

Background on National Aboriginal Day
Aboriginal Peoples Channel (NFB.ca)

Resources for Teachers: Aboriginal Canada Portal

Interested in doing some reading? Try this:
Integrating Aboriginal perspectives into the school curriculum: purposes, possibilities, and challenges / Yatta Kanu.
9TH FLOOR OF LIBRARY E 96.2 K36 2011

For a more general history:
A concise history of Canada's first nations / Olive Patricia Dickason
9TH FLOOR OF LIBRARY E 78 C2 D536 2010

Need more? Let me know!

Celebrate Earth Day with The Lorax

What better way to introduce Earth Day than with Dr. Seuss's The Lorax? What a great story! And a jumping off a point for some wonderful discussions and creative activities. Most of these are good for the K-3 set.

From Seussville.com:

What Can Your Class Do? Ideas for Earth Day and every day
A list of discussion ideas and activities.

The Lorax Project
This project helps "generate funding, create awareness and inspire earth-friendly actions." Information about friends of The Lorax, as well as games and activities.

The Lorax Project in the Classroom
Discussion questions, Earth Day toolkit, printable resources, suggested books.

Seussville: The Lorax
Interactive games and activities.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss: Lesson Plan (Scholastic)
Lots of ideas here for science, language arts, visual arts and more.

Family Literacy Bag: The Lorax (Reading Rockets)
Crafts, printables, and more featuring The Lorax and Tell Me, Tree by Gail Gibbons.

And how cute is this?  Learn to make your own Truffula Trees at Craftjr.com.

Earth Day

Earth Day is coming up on April 22, 2012.

Resources for kids and classrooms:

K-8 Enviro-resources (Earth Day Canada)

Free, curriculum-linked K-8 lesson plans, activities and teaching support.

EarthCARE Environmental Quizzes, Handouts, Activities & Lessons (EarthCARE)
Activities and handouts about energy efficiency, water conservation, and waste reduction.


Educational Resources for Educators (Environment Canada)

Replacing screen time with green time is good for kids (David Suzuki Foundation)


I have compiled more online resources about the environment on my delicious site.

Library workshops for faculty and graduate students

From 9:00 to 12:00 on Tuesday, April 10, the library will be offering a number of enlightening workshops aimed at assisting faculty members with their research and teaching.

• Web of Knowledge – Expert Searching
• Citation Management Options: Mendeley, Zotero or Ref Works?
• Google Like a Librarian
• Know Your Author Rights: Copyright in Academic Publishing
• Scholars GeoPortal

• The Cost of Knowledge: Is Open Access the Answer?

Registration and more information available on the Library website.

More new books

Curious about what I do? Part of what I do as the Liaison Librarian for Education is build a great collection of resources for students, staff and faculty. Check out some of the titles that have come in this month at the Brock University Library. A few that look good:

The Sage handbook for research in education : pursuing ideas as the keystone of exemplary inquiry / edited by Clifton F. Conrad, Ronald C. Serlin.

Key issues in e-learning : research and practice / Norbert Pachler and Caroline Daly.

Leadership with a conscience : educational leadership as a moral science / Robert Palestini.

Succeeding with your master's dissertation : a step-by-step handbook / John Biggam.

New books for January

Check out all the wonderful new resources that have been coming in.

Grad students get new space in Library | The Brock News

New grad study space now open!

The new space features:

• 22 large study carrels
• two computer workstations
• 38 bookable lockers nearby for storage
• two lounge chairs
• bookable meeting/presentation/group space for up to 10 students

Read more:

Grad students get new space in Library | The Brock News

New changes made to Scholars Portal Search

New changes made to Scholars Portal Search

A cornerstone resource offered through the James A. Gibson Library will soon get a new look.

The current Scholars Portal Search interface Illumina will be replaced with a new one, ProQuest, that promises to deliver a better search experience.

The switchover will occur on Friday, July 29. Some users who have bookmarked a database or have saved searches via Illumina will then be required to update them.

This change will only affect the Scholars Portal Search interface and not the multitude of other Scholars Portal services currently available. This means that Scholars Portal eJournals and Scholars Portal eBooks will continue to provide an enormous selection of full-text resources to Brock users.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your liaison librarian, the Library’s help desk at 905-688-5550 x3233, or Live Help.

New books: Adult Education

Yikes! Over 2 months since my last blog post--that is not supposed to happen! The lack of activity on the blog certainly doesn't mean there isn't anything going on in the Library! A couple of new books on adult education:

Radicalizing learning: adult education for a just world by Stephen D. Brookfield and John D. Holst
Covers the traditional topics of adult education with a "radical" social justice agenda.
Check out Google Books for a preview or take it out from the Library.

Facilitating group learning : strategies for success with diverse adult learners by George Lakey
This book describes how to design effective learning experiences, and how to facilitate these learning experiences in a group environment.
Check out Google Books for a preview or take it out here.

Two new tools for improving research and getting published!

Introducing a couple of great new resources here at the Brock University Library:




SAGE Research Methods Online (SRMO) is a research methods tool created to help researchers, faculty and students with their research projects. Use SRMO to:

• find links to over 100,000 pages of SAGE’s book, journal and reference content
  
• explore methods concepts for designing research projects
• understand particular methods or identify a new method

Graduate students will love using the Methods Map, a visual search tool that helps researchers explore research methods terms, methodologies, and people in the field. Take a tour!








Cabell's Directories of Publishing Opportunities is another new resource that I have wanted to get for a long time! This online directory replaces the print directories that you may have used a the Brock Library or at Hamilton Campus. This resource helps professors, graduate students, and researchers publish their manuscripts in academic journals by providing contact information for journals, as well as guidelines and submission information, type of review (blind or not), acceptance rates and more!

Contact me with any questions you may have about these great new tools. Interested in a workshop or tutorial? Would you like me to demo SAGE Research Methods in your research methods class? Just let me know!

Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies

We now have access to a wonderful online encyclopedia: Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies. You can search this encyclopedia using keywords or browse the list of entries or subject index.

Chosen as an Outstanding Title by Choice Reviews Online, the Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies contains over 500 alphabetically arranged articles on topics ranging from Academic Freedom to teacher educator Laura Zirbes.

These are just some of the topics that have caught my eye:

Adult Education Curriculum
Early Childhood Curriculum
Learning Theories
Narrative Research
Service-Learning Curriculum

The encyclopedia also includes several biographical essays on such individuals as Nel Noddings, Paulo Freire and John Dewey.

Take a look. As with most of the Library's online resources, this one is available off-campus, too!

Renovations begin on graduate study room!

Did you know that the Library is creating a space just for graduate students? Renovations began in February on a dedicated study space for the exclusive use of graduate students. The enclosed, swipe card accessible study area on the 6th floor of the Gibson Library will include:

• 22 large study carrels with individual task lighting & comfortable seating
• 2 computer workstations
• 38 bookable lockers nearby for storage
• a bookable meeting/presentation/group study space.
  

Check out the Library website for more details.

New Resource: The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Library is pleased to announce online access to The Chronicle of Higher Education for Brock students, faculty, and staff. The Chronicle is the leading news, job, and information source for college and university faculty and administrators around the world. The Chronicle's website features the complete content of the latest issue, news and advice columns, thousands of current job listings, vibrant discussion forums, and more.

Search or browse to find great articles like Are Undergraduates Actually Learning Anything? and Faculty Views About Online Learning.

Explore the Chronicle of Higher Education: http://proxy.library.brocku.ca/login?url=http://chronicle.com.

Family Literacy Day

Today is Family Literacy Day, a day developed by ABC Life Literacy Canada to encourage families to make time to learn together by reading, playing games or enjoying some other learning activity. This year's theme is "Play for Literacy".

We have some great resources that focus on play-centered learning:

Oxford handbook of the development of play
10TH FLOOR OF LIBRARY BF 717 O94 2011

Encyclopedia of play in today's society [electronic resource]

Taking play seriously : children and play in early childhood education--an exciting challenge
8TH FLOOR OF LIBRARY LB 1139.35 P55 L55 2009

Play and learning in early childhood settings: international perspectives [electronic resource]

Play=learning: how play motivates and enhances children's cognitive and social-emotional growth [electronic resource]

For more books, try searching the Library catalogue using keywords like play, play and literacy, family literacy, etc.

For more information, see ABC Life Literacy Canada's Family Literacy Day page or the Play for Literacy page.

Copyright Information

Mystified by copyright? Me too! Yesterday I attended CTLET's copyright session. Together we went through University of Manitoba's Copyright Quiz and learned about some of the changes in copyright in Canada and what our responsibilities are. Take the quiz to learn more!

Check out the Library's new Copyright Information page, as well as the detailed FAQs.

Additional Resources:

Copying Right : A guide for Canada's universities to copyright, fair dealing and collective licensing.

Speak Out on Copyright (Michael Geist)

Bullying Awareness Week

November 15-19 is Bullying Awareness Week. Need some ideas for raising awareness in your classroom or with your colleagues?

The Brock Library has access to the Information Center on Cyber Bullying. This is a searchable information center on cyber bullying made accessible by Ebrary. Includes e-books, posters and a variety of other resources.

There are lots of books in the Library on Bullying in schools.

Some useful e-books:

Bullying prevention: creating a positive school climate and developing social competence [electronic resource]

Stop the bullying: a handbook for schools [electronic resource]

Shaping a culture of respect in our schools: promoting safe and healthy relationships (Ontario Ministry of Education) [electronic resource]

And check out some great websites about bullying in my Delicious links.

Get Organized with RefWorks!

Drop in on one of our RefWorks workshops to learn how to use this tool to organize and cite your research!

Find out more about RefWorks on the Library website.

Library Workshops for Faculty/Grad students on April 20

Curious about how to incorporate library resources into Sakai? Intrigued by eBooks? Discover library resources and services in the annual spring workshops for faculty and graduate students.

This year, we are offering the following workshops:

• Get Organized: Using Refworks to organize your research
• Demystifying copyright and patents: What you need to know and why
• Scholars Portal: An expanding suite of electronic resources
• The Latest Model: eBooks @ Brock
• Sakaibrary: Integrating Research Help and Resources in Sakai
• Stats Can 101: How to find and retrieve data from Statistics Canada

Workshops will be held on Tuesday, April 20 from 9:00 am - 12:00 pm in the Matheson Learning Commons. Coffee will be served. Please register at: http://www.library.brocku.ca/faculty_workshops/

Graduate students who attend will have these workshops recognised on their transcripts.