Masland Library Blog

Things to Know about “The Computer Lab”
By Dan Champa

“The Computer Lab” is a facility that provides students with the opportunity to access information from the internet and various online databases. It also enables a student to perform various tasks with the assistance of word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software. Listed below are a few hints, tips, and regulations that are able to enhance the student’s computer lab experience.

Hints, Tips, and Regulations
1. A student will not be able to print from their account without their student identification card. Access to printing from your account is not granted through your identification number but the microchip that is found inside your student identification card. For example, the computer lab’s printing scanner functions the same exact way as if you were scanning into Chapel.

2. A student will not be able to print a combination of color prints and black and white prints. For example, if a student sets a printing job to color and attempts to also print black and white copies in that setting at a computer lab printer, the black and white copies will appear as a sequence rather than the desired print.

3. If a student needs assistance with a computer issue such as log-in errors or printing errors, please ask the computer lab worker on duty. Our job is to assist you to the best of our ability and if we are unable to assist you, we will immediately contact the TS department for further assistance.

4. If a student needs to print something and forgets their identification card, they can go to the front desk and sign out a temporary card (this is only for emergencies). The use of a temporary card requires collateral (something of financial value such as a cellular phone) and the student will be charged 10 cents per print. The student must also ensure that they log into the temporary card’s account and not the student’s personal account. Otherwise, the student will be unable to locate their print jobs due to the fact that they are located under the student’s account and not the temporary card’s account.

5. If a student needs to print something, they must ensure that they are logged into their account. In other words, students must be aware that a print job can only be accessed through their personal account. For example, if a student forgets their identification card and asks another fellow student if they could use their identification card to print something, they must ensure that they are logged into the fellow students account to print the artifact. In other words, the student must bring the artifact up on the fellow students account through e-mail or a portable USB flash drive.

6. STUDENTS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO TALK IN THE COMPUTER LAB! The computer lab is a facility that is located on the library premises, therefore, talking is still not allowed once you have entered the computer lab. In addition, if a student is warned by a computer lab worker about noise disturbance, the student must realize that it is not a personal attack towards the student but an enforcement of regulations. Students must realize that some students only opportunity to use a computer for educational purposes is with the assistance of the computer lab facility. Therefore, the computer lab must be coordinated to be an appropriate study environment for all students.

Last Thursday, I heard the poet Billy Collins speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia. I would like to say that it was in honor of National Poetry Month, but it wasn’t—I just love Billy Collins. He’s ancient now—his glasses are old enough to be called spectacles, if that gives you any idea. But he wasn’t slow. I thought perhaps he would be boring—excellent writing does not guarantee good public speaking—or, worse, too academic, but happily I was mistaken. Billy Collins was witty, thoughtful, and unpretentious. Sometimes he was all three at once. I suppose I should have known he would be wonderful after having read his poetry. If you haven’t heard of Billy Collins, he writes what I like to call “everyday poetry”—poetry written so that you can understand it; Billy Collins writes about normal things using normal words. I love it. I have never read a Billy Collins poem and, when I’ve finished it, looked up and asked, “What the heck did that even mean?” He writes about regular things we notice every day and makes them unexpected and amusing, like in this poem entitled “Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep a Gun in the House”:

Not something I expected to hear from my professor. Research? Me? Does she KNOW me? I had no comeback except a surprised look on my face. Yet over the next few days I couldn’t get what she said out of my head. What made her say that about me? Being at school for 5 years allowed me the opportunity to write a lot of papers and do a lot of research. I never thought I enjoyed doing Google searches online, scouring through databases, or searching the shelves for books on that particular topic that I needed. But somewhere in the process I realized I began to like it.

I benefitted from knowing which online database to pick and how to put the exact combination of keywords together so that I would find just what I wanted. I relied on the library’s alphabetical system to point me to the right section that would have all the books I needed. I can know anything I want about any topic, at any time. I realized I enjoyed learning, but more importantly, I enjoyed knowing how to learn. Maybe the professor saw something in me that I had not seen in myself: a true satisfaction in research. She was right after all.

And when I graduate, I will actually be able to choose those research topics myself.

Alexa H.

Are you interested in Japanese history and culture? If so, then you will be pleased to know that the Masland Library has over 100 books focusing solely on this subject. In fact, the library recently won a grant from the Nippon Foundation to obtain these books. The Nippon Foundation is a Japanese philanthropic organization that seeks to improve the condition of humanity in Japan and abroad. Established in 1962, the foundation originally aimed to increase the domestic development of Japan. However, in recent years, the Nippon Foundation has expanded to an international level administering aid and promoting education, welfare, and public health in over one hundred countries. With world peace as their fulcrum, the Nippon Foundation seeks to transcend, while maintaining respect for, global cultures to promote global harmony. Therefore, it is appropriate for them to award us for the possessions of more than one hundred books that will help to remove some of the cultural mysteries that exist between the Americans and Japanese people.

Included within the collection are cultural books such as Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage, 1780-1850. This catalog examines the culture of the Kabuki Theater in Osaka and Kyoto. Family and Social Policy in Japan, another novel in our extremely intriguing collection, focuses specifically on the false nature of the stereotype that Japanese culture is unchanging. Other pieces include: Post War Japan as History, Modern Japan, Samurai and Silk, Japanese Economic System and Historical Origins, Japanese Financial Crisis.

Our very full collection of documents that focuses on Japanese society possesses the potential to break some of the modern tension between global cultures. They just need to be read. So, if you desire to know more about Japanese culture and wish to transcend the cultural boundaries between America and Japan, come on out and read from our ever expanding collection of books that reveal the mystery of Japanese culture and History.

Matt O.

In honor of April being National Poetry Month I thought I would take a few moments to reflect on some of the great poets and their works. I could admire the great Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, or even Edgar Allan Poe, for they all have such unique styles and wonderful pieces of literature. Although they are all certainly great in their own way, there is little poetry that is closer to my heart than that of which I read in my younger years. Certainly Shel Silverstein who wrote Where The Sidewalk Ends and The Giving Tree are children’s poetry books that all of us should have read when we were younger. Although these two are great classics and even aimed at children, my personal favorite is not as well known as the works of the great Silverstein, but is written by Carol Diggory Shields. The book is titled Lunch Money and Other Poems About School. I remember reading this book as a child, but forgetting about it until later in a middle school English class when I rediscovered it when analyzing children’s literature (and sure was I glad to find it and reminisce a little bit!) The poems in this book are pretty straight forward with no hidden meanings or themes, but they sure are cute and have some light-hearted humor. If you are an elementary education major you also may get a kick out of some of the poems since they are rather realistic when it comes to the behavior of young children.

Below is an example of one of the poems in the book. The poem is written in cold language (meaning a child with a cold/ is sick) and I think although it is a silly poem, it is certainly a feeling we can all relate to at one time or another.

Code
I dibbin go to school today,
Bom looked at be and said, “No way.”
Wend back to bed and here I’ll stay,
‘Cause I hab a terrible code.

By throad is sore, by eyes are bink,
By node dribs like a leaky sink,
By head’s so stuffed it hurds to think.
I hab a terrible code.

I challenge you in honor of National Poetry Month to take advantage of the library’s collection of poetry. Peruse through the PN, PR, and PS sections of the library when you have a few free moments. Maybe even head over the children’s section and find some children’s poetry, so that you too can reminisce a little.

CJC

Shields, Carol Diggory. Lunch Money and Other Poems About School. New York: Puffin Books, 1995. Print.

April is National Poetry Month. For some, this brings a happy reminder to quiet nights spent curled up in a corner with a slim, old-smelling book. For others, it brings the feeling of immediate incarceration within a bare, near-windowless classroom with badly-photocopied sheets being passed along the desks. But, in general, poetry is not approached with ambivalence.

Almost anyone who had to take any sort of English class knows the challenge (or tedium, depending on the perspective) of taking in a poem. I remember being told to explicate a poem that was written by a man in an insane asylum about how wonderful and angelic his cat was. My teacher did not appreciate my conclusion that the poem meant that the man was exactly where he needed to be. But, at the same time, though rather disgusted with that particular example, I still found myself stealing off with the poetry anthology, wanting to absorb more of the curious words.

One of the poets who I discovered during high school was Billy Collins. I like to think that he understands the inherent frustration in tackling poetry, but I could be wrong. At the very least, here’s his Introduction to Poetry.

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

I doubt that the Academy of American Poets will make anyone magically begin to like poetry by instituting this monthlong celebration. But for anyone who is loves poetry already or who maybe is interested in learning more about how poetry works, the library has a display that contains guides to poetry and a sampling of works from a variety of poets. Read with joy.

abbie.


Collins, Billy. The Apple That Astonished Paris: Poems. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas, 1996. Print.

There has been a lot of talk in the press and news-boards about e books lately. With the arrival of the iPad and other tablets to the market, electronic books are highly visual lately. One of the many debates about e books are the cost, e books are digital representations of books, they aren't something you can stick on your shelf, and yet the cost the same as many paperbacks. However as a PBU student, you have the opportunity to enjoy and benefit from the immediacy of electronic books for your work, and the cost to you is part of your tuition. What is it? Ebrary Academic Complete.

Last year the Masland Library added over 40,000 electronic books to our collection. The books range from Religion to Science, from Literature to Business and everything in-between. The books available are searchable through the PBU Library Catalog and readable on your computer or mobile device. If you create an account for yourself in Ebrary you can also make notes, and highlight sections of a book as necessary.

So if you are in the market for a tablet computer, have a web enabled device, or you are longing for something to read, instead of purchasing a book through the Kindle or BNreader App, use Ebrary- it's free and wonderfully informative. Watch for more reviews of books that can be found in Ebrary!