The Bookmark - Spring 2016

Issue 6

February 2016

Texas A&M University—Texarkana

The John F. Moss Library

“No winter lasts forever;

no spring skips its turn.”

-Hal Borland

A new, exciting semester at Texas A&M University—Texarkana is just beginning, and the John F. Moss Library has so much to offer! Take a look through this newsletter to see our calendar of upcoming events. Glance over a review of last Halloween’s witchy fun. Plan ahead with us for Library Week in April, and keep an eye out for announcements about events and contests open to students, faculty, and staff alike. Learn about our exciting new eBook & audiobook service, OverDrive. Bone up on recent bestsellers. Find out about our newest art exhibit. And be excited for the new year!

There’s so much still to come.

In this issue: Library Calendar Events Recap Events Preview Art in the Library New Resources  Database Connection Book Review  Bestsellers

John F. Moss Libra

Our “Little Free Library” on the 1st floor of the UC building has grown leaps and bounds in the last few months! Go take a look, and feel free to take a book or leave one!

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nue 7101 University Ave d Floor University Center 3r South 3 Texarkana, TX 7550 (903)223-3100

New S unday

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

-Jorge Luis Borges

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cALenDar oF EvEnTS (=]__________) To register for any events, go to http://tamut.libcal.com/ and choose the event to enter your information.

[February] 11th—Database Training, 4pm-5pm, UC324 11th—Virtual Database Training, 5pm-6pm 15th—Art Show featuring Curtis Ferguson: Presentation at 6pm, reception following at 7pm, Eagle Hall 16th—Curtis Ferguson presentation, 12pm, Eagle Hall 18th—Book Club: “Witch & Wizard,” 12:15pm-1:30pm, Library Atrium 23rd—Database Training, 4pm-5pm, UC324 23rd—Virtual Database Training, 5pm-6pm 25th—Database Training, 11am-12pm, UC324

[March] 3rd—Art Reception, 5-7pm, “The World is Our Studio,” Artists Betty Miller and Paulla Lewis 7th—Database Training, 10am-11am, UC324 9th—Database Training, 4pm-5pm, UC324 9th—Virtual Database Training, 5pm-6pm 13th—Closed (Spring Break) 14th-17th—Open 8am-5pm 18-19th—Closed (Spring Break) 22nd—Book Club: “Pride & Prejudice & Zombies,” 12:15pm-1:30pm, 3rd FL 27th—Closed (Easter)

[April] 11th – Library Week: Free Magazines 12th – Staff Character Dress-up Day 13th – Edible Book Contest 11am-12:30pm 14th—Book Club: “Cinder,” 12:15pm-1:30pm, 3rd FL

Follow Texas A&M Texarkana—John F. Moss Library on Facebook for updates or changes on events at: http://www.facebook.com/TAMUTLIBRARY

RECAP

Halloween was a great success at the library this past October. We went witchy!

The witches’ lair was decorated with skulls, a cauldron, potion bottles galore, and all sorts of creepy details. Complete with spooky soundtrack and a coven of witches, it’s no wonder the library won Best Decorated! The staff went all out to provide a fun and haunting Halloween experience for students, faculty, and staff to enjoy. Check out LOTS more pictures on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TAMUTLIBRARY.

by Kendra Harrell

PREVIEW

by Kendra Harrell

The library will be holding multiple classroom and online training sessions, please make the time to come to one and learn more about how to research your projects with our wonderful collection of databases.

The library will have monthly Book Club meetings, be sure to follow our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ TAMUTLIBRARY for updates and future titles!

Library Week will be April 10-16 this year.

Our theme will be “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”

The library will have an Edible Book contest, the staff will dress in costume, and more! Check out our events calendar for more details.

Art in the Library

by Ann May

The John F. Moss Library at Texas A&M University - Texarkana is currently hosting an art exhibit called “Flowers in the Dirt” featuring artist Curtis “Derall” Ferguson. Born in Flint, Michigan, Mr. Ferguson graduated from Texas High School, where his art teacher, Harding Deon, Jr., introduced him to oil painting techniques. After studying art at Henderson State University and Texas A&M University— Texarkana, he embarked on a career as an art instructor.

He has had more than 25 years of experience in public education and has won several Teacher of the Year awards from various school districts. Mr. Ferguson currently resides in DeSoto, Texas, where he is a visual arts instructor for Dallas I.S.D. Specializing in oil painting, his work has been shown in various exhibits and galleries. He also does commissioned portraits, paints murals, and teaches private painting lessons and workshops. In addition, Mr. Ferguson owns two businesses, is active in community projects, and often speaks to today’s youth about the achievement of excellence and success.

Mr. Ferguson created the exhibit “Flowers in the Dirt” for Black History Month. The title is attributed to his mother. When asked by her grandson why flowers grow, she responded that they grow because they want to get out of the dirt and stand. Thus, this exhibit represents the desire of all humans to rise above their negative circumstances and stand. The artwork is done in acrylic on board and inspired by artists such as Salvador Dali and Vincent Van Gogh. The colorful paintings depict human figures, who are shown without gender, age, or race. These figures not only symbolize humanity’s struggle to stand, but also present a pleasant and positive picture of hope.

Everyone is invited to the library to enjoy this exhibit, which is on display through February 29th. There will be a presentation by Mr. Ferguson on Feb. 15th at 6pm in the 3rd Floor Atrium, with a reception to follow. Mr. Ferguson will also be giving a talk on the 16th at noon in Eagle Hall entitled “Create Your Masterpiece.” Plan to attend one of these events!

Join us for our next art show “The World is Our Studio,” starting March 3rd, featuring artists Betty Miller and Paulla Lewis.

New Library Resources

by Kendra Harrell

Statista is a wonderful resource for data, infographics, charts, and graphs. Providing you with access to relevant data from over 18,000 sources, their focus is firmly based on professional, clear, quick and consistent results. Find data from market research, business, government, and more.

You can export data in png, xls, and ppt formats, and you can choose how to display the data.

Best of all, everything is cited in detail!

Overdrive is a BYOD (bring your own device) eBook and audiobook resource for some academic books, but mostly leisure reading. You can check out a book, send it to your Kindle or Nook, or read it on any computer or tablet with your browser. When the book is due back, it will return automatically! Overdrive is accessible through the library’s webpage and your TAMUT login. See this newsletter’s “Database Connection” on the following page for more details.

American Society for Microbiology is over 100 years old and publishes works covering a broad range of disciplines relating to the topic of microbiology. The library has purchased 19 new titles from their collection, including Cheese and Microbes, Forgotten People, Forgotten Diseases, Clinical Microbiology Procedures Handbook, and more. The eBooks will be accessible through http://www.asmscience.org/content/books, or through the library’s A-Z Database list.

Science is a well-known journal of original scientific research, science news, and commentary.

With the university’s subscription, you have full access to the current publication as well as archives of the journal online. Science will be accessible through the library’s webpage, or through www.sciencemag.org/

Mango is a fun, interactive language-learning software program available online. There are over 60 languages to choose from, including Spanish for Latin America and Spanish for Spain, Mandarin Chinese, Swahili, and Icelandic! The selection even includes English for speakers of various different languages.

Mango is easy and fun to use — you’ll be speaking in another language more quickly than you’d expect! You can access Mango through the library’s A-Z Databases list on our website.

by Kendra Harrell

OverDrive is an exciting new offering from the library. It is a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) eBook and audiobook library that you can visit anytime, anywhere — all you need is your university login! You can check out electronic resources, request holds on resources already checked out, and recommend new titles to us through the website highlighted below. And best of all, returns are automated, so you don’t have to worry about late fees.

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http://tamus.lib.overdrive.com

You have access to hundreds of eBooks and several audiobooks already! You can download them directly to your own e-reader, read them in your web browser, or use the OverDrive app (available for iOS, Android, Chromebook, Mac OS, Windows, and Windows Phone).

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OverDrive is focused on leisure reading, but there are many academically useful titles available as well, with over 100 titles in “literature” and over 100 books in “nonfiction” that are available to check out now. From best-selling novels, classic literature, selfimprovement guides, foreign language titles, and more, OverDrive has something for everyone!

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University students, faculty, and staff can access and use this service for free. To get started enjoying eBooks and audiobooks, visit http://tamus. lib.overdrive.com. You can find helpful tools and information, as well as a link to contact support.

An exciting new semester is beginning for you, but with all the new possibilities in store comes the very real risk that you might not have all the time in the world for everything you have planned. We’ve all been there: the one TV show you’ve been putting off is in reach, but you also have to read an entire novel by tomorrow for a test; your dishes are piling up and you need to do your laundry. Even with the best time management, there just isn’t enough time in the day.

That’s why, while the semester is young, I would like to strongly recommend audio books as a useful option you might not have explored. Gone are the days of carrying around heavy, unwieldy boxes full of CDs--with smartphones and better distribution services, audio books have never been easier to pick up. And with our library’s new Overdrive system, you already have a vast library available to you! Just download the file and pop it into your phone and you have the world’s greatest works of literature being read to you by talented voice work.

As an English graduate I cannot stress just how useful audio books would have been while studying for my degree; with three classes dedicated entirely to literature, simply finding time to do every assignment was a challenge, not to mention the other classes’ workload piling up on their own. Forget leisure time, being able to get homework done at all was nothing short of a miracle. Without exaggeration having access to audio books of the quality (and quantity) of the assigned reading material would have lightened stress by an order of magnitude, so as somebody who’s been there I cannot recommend enough trying out an audio book for yourself.

This is not to say audio books are perfect, or that they are necessarily for you. If you’re not a reader already, chances are audio books are not going to change your mind. If you’re a fast reader or cannot concentrate on a monotone string of talking, you might want to look elsewhere. And even in light of my recommendations for English students, that comes with the caveat that you should not strictly use them in lieu of your professor’s assigned reading; if the available audio book is being read from a different edition from the assigned book, the text might be altered in meaningful ways. This is all merely a suggestion; try it and see if it works for you!

Aside from our amazing selection on Overdrive, Amazon has a service called Audible which compiles hundreds of thousands of audio books read by professional actors and actresses. You may benefit from having a Prime account, but if not the service has a promotion to sign up for two weeks free, which includes one audio book of your choice. I use this service myself and absolutely love it, but I suggest taking a look at your choices on Overdrive. So go out and enjoy some literature on the go, in your car, while folding the laundry, or just to relax.

If you’d like to read more of my reviews, head over to subjective-objective.blogspot.com.

New Bestseller Titles Find these on the Bestseller display inside the library on the 3rd floor

by Sandra Holmes The official novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the highly anticipated blockbuster film directed by J. J. Abrams, featuring an 8-page color photo insert of thrilling images from the hit movie. More than thirty years ago, Star Wars burst onto the big screen and became a cultural phenomenon.

When Elvis Cole is secretly hired to find a grief-stricken mother, he's led to an ordinary house on a rainy night in Echo Park. Only the house isn't ordinary, and the people hiding inside are a desperate fugitive and a murderous criminal with his own dangerous secrets.

In this gorgeously illustrated, full-color graphic memoir, Stan Lee—comic book legend and co-creator of SpiderMan, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Incredible Hulk, and a legion of other Marvel superheroes—shares his iconic legacy and the story of how modern comics came to be.

Since his first collection, Nightshift, published thirtyfive years ago, Stephen King has dazzled readers with his genius as a writer of short fiction. In this new collection he assembles, for the first time, recent stories that have never been published in a book. There are thrilling connections between stories; themes of morality, the afterlife, guilt, what we would do differently if we could see into the future or correct the mistakes of the past.

An audacious jewel heist. A murdered actress. A killer case for NYPD Red. In a city where crime never sleeps, NYPD Red is the elite task force called in only when a case involves the rich, famous, and connected.

Descriptions are supplied by the publishers.

Discover your library

at Texas A&M University - Texarkana

Newsletter content by Sandra Holmes, Ann May, Chris Depineda, and Kendra Harrell Edited by Ginger Mann Layout & Graphics by Kendra Harrell Questions about this newsletter?

Contact kendra.harrell@tamut.edu