ETBU Library Blog

Mary K. Armstrong ca. 1930 The month of October helps us remember those who have gone before us. The entire month seems packed with celebrations, observances, and opportunities to think about our own history. For instance, National Hispanic Heritage month (Sept 15 – Oct 15) is celebrated nationally, Texas Baptists celebrate Baptist History and Heritage Month, and here on campus, we celebrate ETBU Homecoming. When we begin to look back on the history of the library at College of Marshall and East Texas Baptist College, one cannot escape the contributions of Mrs. Mary Louise Ketcham Armstrong who served as librarian here from 1930-1955. So what are we doing? We’re throwing her a 128 th birthday party, of course! This all started when I read a post from a blog I follow – Library Design Share – that discussed the MD Anderson Library’s post humus birthday party for MD Anderson himself. The library used it as an opportunity to celebrate their founder, share their history, an

I remember the first time I walked into a real, honest-to-goodness library.  My elementary schools at that time really only had small rooms (basically closets) with books that our teachers could check out for us - and one room that was a little bit bigger that had someone sitting at a school desk where we could sign the check-out cards with our name and room number.  But I can still picture the scene in front of me when I walked into that public library for the first time. I was seven or eight.  We had just moved to a new state, and for the first time had access to a really good public library system.  We walked through those doors and I was absolutely in heaven.  The shelves full of colorful books and people browsing through them.  The activity at the circulation desk.  But it was the smell that was vivid to me - partly the mustiness of some of the books - but also the glue that held the card pockets in the books and the clear cellophane-like dust jacket protectors.  I thought

Hej! Aloha! Dobar dan! Latha math! All me duty to ye! You've just been greeted in five languages - Swedish, Hawaiian, Croatian, Scottish Gaelic, and Pirate. Okay, Pirate isn't exactly a language, but you can still learn to speak like a Pirate and converse like a native in 70 other languages using the Mango Languages database. Are you heading on a travel study trip next May? Perhaps you're searching your family history and found out some of your ancestors were from Greece or Finland, or perhaps Thailand. Whatever your reason for learning a language, this is the place to go. Currently these languages are available (one caveat: some languages are less developed than others, mainly those that are new to the database - keep coming back to see what has been added): American Sign Language - Arabic (Egyptian, Iraqi, Levantine, MSA) - Armenian - Azerbaijani - Bengali - Cherokee - Chinese (Mandarin) - Croatian - Czech - Danish - Dari - Dutch - Dzongkha - English - Farsi (Pe

Last year we added two history databases to our collections... U.S. History in Context and World History in Context .  Both are available through the GALE/Cengage Learning family of databases. U.S. History in Context "puts the tools of the historian into the hands of students..."  It strives to provide comprehensive coverage of the most-studied topics, from the arrival of Vikings in North America to Vietnam, Watergate, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The database contains the expected journal articles, but also books, photographs, images, government documents, biographies, court cases, and streaming video.  Coverage includes African American Perspectives, American Colonies, the Supreme Court, Economics, Events, Decades, and Cultural Trends, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Political Constructs, Movements, and Organizations, and Wars & Conficts. World History in Context helps the user "understand 5,000 years of civilization from a 21st-century fram

As usual there are some additions in databases and other resources as we begin the new academic year. Graduate students and faculty will find the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses - Section A: Humanities & Social Sciences helpful in their research, but upper level undergraduates  may also find it useful, particularly those working on Honors Papers.  It contains indexes and abstracts to master's theses and doctoral dissertations from around the country.  Anyone in the ETBU graduate programs who produces a thesis as part of their degree requirements can have their thesis added.  Anything found in PQDTA that was produced by student's in our master's programs is accessible in full text.  Dissertations and abstracts from outside our campus may be purchased for a fee.  The library will underwrite those fees (up to a certain point) for graduate students and faculty. Newly acquired at the end of the 2014-2015 academic year was the Nursing Collection of Films on Demand .