Valentine’s Day and the Library

What’s on the library shelves this Wednesday? Good things for your valentine at no cost to you! Check out “Love Songs from the Movies” for background music, “English Love Poems” for some traditional verse, “Love Poems of Ovid” for a really classical approach, or “Nothing But You: Love Stories from the New Yorker” for a …

Parliament of Fowls Reading

The Cup & Chaucer, located in the lobby of the Van Wylen Library, will be hosting a read-aloud of Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Parliament of Fowls” on Valentine’s Day at 11a.m.This poem is the first reference to the idea that St. Valentine’s Day is a special day for lovers.All are welcome to come and be part of …

Lent and the library

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent. Forty days are set aside before Easter as a time of preparation. For some this might include extra devotions, prayers, fasting, or giving up favorite treats. Between the College and the Seminary we have many books about this season, but I would like …

Getting citations just right

We receive countless questions about formatting citations. We help by using tools built into many databases, checking style guides, and using the bibliographic manager RefWorks. As a shortcut to answers to some of the most common citation-related questions, we recently updated our Services for Students web page. Use it to discover online tools that will …

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This week the nation celebrated a day honoring the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There are hundreds of books and videos in the library about the life of Dr. King, about his beliefs and political ideas, showing his speeches and sermons, and illustrating how his life has affected the lives of others. But did …

Creating links to Databases and Online Articles

“How do I create links to electronic journal articles,” is a common question asked by faculty. There are two parts to this. First, it is necessary to identify the correct link to use, and second, the link may have to be modified to work for off-campus users. Identifying the link In some databases, it is …

Politics in the Stacks

Yesterday was primary day in Michigan. We have a lot of books about politics and elections; the kind of books you would expect to use to write a political science paper. But we also have books by politicians which are, perhaps, more inspiriational than historical. Three examples are: “Faith of my Fathers” by John McCain, …

Keeping Up: RSS Feeds and Email Alerts

As we all get busier, one of the more difficult things to stay on top of is the explosion of journals and journal articles that may be of interest in your field. This can be especially difficult with electronic journals. Most databases and journal publishers have built-in alerting services to help you keep up with …

Being a Perfect Stranger

Islamic New Year begins at sundown tonight. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I know that there are many resources in the library that I can use to learn about the religions of the world. One of my favorites is a book called “How to be a Perfect Stranger: the Essential Religious Ettiquette …