Comments Off on October 2009 is National Information Literacy Awareness Month

By sneal, October 5, 2009 9:26 am

Check out President Obama’s declaration of October 2009 as National Information Literacy Awareness month:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Presidential-Proclamation-National-Information-Literacy-Awareness-Month/.

The statement points to many concepts that are taught here at Butler during library instruction sessions.

Comments Off on RefWorks Now Available to Alumni

By Scott Pfitzinger, October 5, 2009 8:08 am

RefWorks-COS is pleased to announce that the Alumni Program
will now be offered as a standard feature of RefWorks, providing lifelong
access to users that are alumni of subscribing institutions. As long as an
institution subscribes to RefWorks, alumni will have access, allowing them to
continue using their personal research databases for future professional and
academic endeavors.

Lifelong access to RefWorks will be an added benefit for
alumni, and help academic institutions maintain the healthy alumni
relationships that are so essential for donations, rankings and other ongoing involvement.

To learn more about the Alumni Program, please click here.

Comments Off on Banned Books Week begins Sept. 26

By Scott Pfitzinger, September 25, 2009 10:34 am

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is
observed during the last week of September each year. This year it is
from Sept. 26 – Oct. 3. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds
Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.

Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the
freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be
considered unorthodox or unpopular. It stresses the importance of
ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints
to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist
only where these two essential conditions are met.

From 2001 to 2008, of the 3,736 challenges reported to or recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom:

• 1,225 challenges due to “sexually explicit” material;
• 1,008 challenges due to “offensive language”;
• 720 challenges due to material deemed “unsuited to age group”;
• 458 challenges due to “violence”
• 269 challenges due to “homosexuality”; and

Further, 103 materials were challenged because they were
“anti-family,” and an additional 233 were challenged because of their
“religious viewpoints.”

1,176 of these challenges (approximately 31%) were in classrooms;
37% were in school libraries; 24% (or 909) took place in public
libraries.  There were less than 75 challenges to college classes; and
only 36 to academic libraries.  There are isolated cases of challenges
to materials made available in or by prisons, special libraries,
community groups, and student groups.  The majority of challenges were
initiated by parents (almost exactly 51%), while patrons and
administrators followed behind (10% and 8% respectively). 

Links

• Banned Books Week 2009
• About Banned & Challenged Books (and the difference between them)
• Banned Books Week Video: I’d Like to Find *BLEEP*
• Why Banned Books Week?
• The Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2008

• The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of the 1990s

• Google Map of Banned Book Sites
• Google Book Search’s Banned Books Page
• American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression

Comments Off on Reserve a study room at Irwin Library!

By bmatthie, September 3, 2009 1:40 pm

Did you know that Irwin Library has two reserveable study rooms?

To find out more please check this link.

Comments Off on Chalk & Wire

By Scott Pfitzinger, August 28, 2009 3:30 pm

If you are a student interested in training for Chalk & Wire, please visit the list of I.T. Training Sessions. The Information Commons will be supporting use of Chalk & Wire, but not actually performing initial training. That will be done in the I.T. Training Sessions and in individual classes as professors begin to use it.