Picture of the Day

Daniel Meyer (History major) positioned himself outside the Daniels Boardroom wearing a sandwich board sign to petition the Board of Trustees for higher admission standards. He was able to meet members of the BOT and share his thoughts.

LITC BOOK REVIEW: Just Kids by Patti Smith

Reviewed by Donald Quist:

Just Kids is the National Book Award winning memoir by musician, writer, artist, Patti Smith. The book's main focus is to serve as an homage to Robert Mapplethorpe, her former friend and lover, and not to mention one of the most famed photographers of all time! This book has become one of my instant favorites. Smith’s narrative voice is so strong and the relationship between her and Mapplethorpe is so compelling, I forgive her redundancy and endless name dropping. She is a braggart, offering readers a glimpse behind the velvet curtain of the arts scene in 1970’s New York, and though that is somewhat the book's biggest appeal—the sense of voyeurism and exclusivity that sells tabloids—she is sincere. I found myself immediately drawn to her vulnerability, how her words read like a letter from a really close friend. If you strip away the cameos, her story is still meaningful and hopelessly romantic. There is a line in the book where Smith, speaking about Mapplethorpe’s work, says, “His obscenity was never obscene.” Her writing is very much the same. Smith approaches even the darkest aspects of her recollections, things like carcinoma, contracting the clap, head lice, intravenous drug use and dating two male prostitutes, with the frothy poeticism one would expect from a literary romance. But that is what it is, a story about two young people in love, with their art and each other, trying to craft an identity for themselves, walking in the shadows of giants and inevitably becoming giants themselves.

Share your thoughts on Just Kids, Friday, April 8th, 2011 @ 3:30pm, as the Coker College Library hosts a public book discussion with the Chair of the Art Department, Professor Jean Grosser in Room 228.

New E-book Collection!

Great news! We have added Springer E-books to our collection! By the end of this year, this collection will grow to over 25,000 books!

As always, e-books are a great resource that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

An advantage to the Springer E-book collection is that we have unlimited access to each title that we own: all 1200 Coker students, staff, and faculty could technically have the same book open at the same time!

There are no restrictions for printing, as most titles are opened as PDF files. Also, these files can be loaded on any mobile device without any modification or compatibility issues.

For now, search the link on the E-books link on the library homepage. We will be adding the books to our online catalog later in the semester.

Spring Break Hours 2011

It's that time already! Spring break hours start this weekend:

We will be closed on Saturday and Sunday, March 5-6.
Monday-Thursday, March 7-10: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Friday, March 12: 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 12: Closed
Sunday, March 13: 1 p.m. to 11 p.m.

New Resources

We've got a few new products to announce: two new psychology databases and campus-wide access to newspaper.

Up first, we have the additions of PsycCRITIQUES and PsycEXTRA to our stable of behavior and social science databases. Both are companion databases to our larger PsycARTICLES and PsycINFO databases.

As per the vendor's website: "PsycCRITIQUES®, produced by the American Psychological Association (APA), is a database of full-text book reviews featuring current scholarly and professional books in psychology. It also publishes reviews from a psychological perspective of popular films and trade books. PsycCRITIQUES includes approximately 40,000 reviews dating back to 1956 and is indexed with controlled vocabulary from APA's Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®."

Film and popular culture classes might also find PsycCRITIQUES useful.

Next up, PsycEXTRA:

"PsycEXTRA®, produced by the American Psychological Association (APA), is a bibliographic and full-text companion to the scholarly PsycINFO® database. The document types included in PsycEXTRA consist of technical, annual and government reports, conference papers, newsletters, magazines, newspapers, consumer brochures and more.

This database complements PsycINFO and the other APA databases with extensive coverage of gray literature relating to psychology and the behavioral sciences; it contains around 200,000 records that are not indexed in any other APA database. Furthermore, content from the Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP) collection is expected to increase the number of records substantially. PsycEXTRA is indexed with controlled vocabulary from APA's Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®."

The addition of gray literature and conference proceedings will be highly useful for all levels of psychology research.

Finally, we are adding an online campus-wide subscription to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

From their website: "The Chronicle of Higher Education is the No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators.

Based in Washington, D.C., The Chronicle has more than 70 writers, editors, and international correspondents.

Online, The Chronicle is published every weekday and is the top destination for news, advice, and jobs for people in academe. The Chronicle's Web site features the complete contents of the latest issue; daily news and advice columns; thousands of current job listings; an archive of previously published content; vibrant discussion forums; and career-building tools such as online CV management, salary databases, and more."

We will continue our print subscription to The Chronicle.

Writer's Studio Hours for Spring 2011

From Dr. Jasna Shannon, director of the Writer's Studio:

The Writer's Studio will open Monday, January 24, 2011.

Spring 2011 Hours:

Monday-Thursdays 2:00-10:00 p.m.
Closed Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

The Writer's Studio is located upstairs in the LITC.

Meet the Staff

Megan Anne Johnson
Age: 25
Height: 5ft 3inches
Favorite Books: Harry Potter Series and Pride & Prejudice

"Librarians are needed now more than ever before because there is so much information online. It can be very frustrating when your search results turn up a lot of irrelevant items. You know there is something out there published on your topic, but you can't find it. That's where I come in!"

Meet the newest member of the LITC, Megan Johnson. She's a Reference Librarian and she'll be on hand to help patrons use library resources. Megan assists users in changing their search terms, utilizing databases, and finding the most relevant items for their topics. Imagine the library as a vast ocean. Megan would be a captain in our fleet, and these are familiar waters. She genuinely enjoys academic research, and helping people, and is looking forward to making a positive impact here at Coker College. "I truly do want to help in re-defining ready," Megan said. "I am excited about the opportunity to inspire and engage students in becoming better researchers by utilizing library resources."