Also known as the Summer Solstice, the first day of summer is the longest day of the year, and usually occurs on June 20th or 21st. This means that the North Pole is titled towards the sun, which happens only once a year (the opposite happens on December 21st when the South Pole is titled towards the sun, called the Winter Solstice).

  *

 

In the United States, there will be about 14 1/2 hours of daylight today, so get out there and make the most of it!

-------------------------- 

* Van H. English, "Solstice," in AccessScience@McGraw-Hill, http://www.accessscience.com.

On June 28-29, DePaul University will not have access to e-journals hosted on the Blackwell-Synergy and Wiley Interscience platforms. During this scheduled downtime, all Blackwell-Synergy e-journals will be transferred to the Wiley Interscience platform. On June 30th, DePaul University’s access to Blackwell-Synergy and Wiley Interscience e-journals will be restored on the Wiley Interscience Platform.

On June 23, the DePaul Libraries will launch ILLiad, a service that will improve the efficiency and transparency of interlibrary loan requests. The ILLiad system is used to borrow books or copies of journal articles not held at DePaul or in the I-Share libraries. (Note: The library catalog system will not change, and it remains the quickest way to request books available at DePaul or in I-Share.)

Using ILLiad to request books or articles not available at DePaul has many advantages:

• Easy login with your library borrower ID (begins with 20511) and last name – no need to fill out a form with your personal information.
• Track status of requests online in your ILLiad account – no more wondering what happened to your request.
• OpenURL functionality for full citations – no more typing in the article details.
• Online delivery of scanned articles from other libraries – no more waiting for photocopies in the mail. (DePaul faculty, staff, and distance learning/suburban students will also receive scanned copies of articles held at DePaul in print periodicals).

Using ILLiad is simple:

• To request books, look for this link in the WorldCat database: Request via ILLiad (there will no longer be an ILL button).
• To request articles, look for this link in library databases: Find full text. The link will take you to a new window where the word Article will appear if it is available online through another DePaul database. If not, the ILLiad link will appear; just log in and click Submit. 

Using ILLiad in Google Scholar:

• You may also use the “Full Text @ DePaul” link in Google Scholar if you set your Scholar Preferences to include DePaul.
• To set your Scholar preferences, go to the Preferences page, and look for the section labeled: Library Links. Search for DePaul as your library, and then save your settings:

 

• Then, in your Google Scholar search results, use the "Full Text @ DePaul" link to see if DePaul owns the article you are looking for, or easily request it using ILLiad:

 

The Library's CONTENTdm image server, containing the Vincentian Postcards, Geographic Image and Lincoln Park Neighborhood collections, will be upgraded this coming weekend of June 13-15, 2008. To perform this upgrade, the server may be taken offline on Friday night and at times throughout the weekend. Normal service should resume by Monday, June 16, 2008.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. The Library's other image server, containing the Library's Curricular Image Collection, should not be affected.

For most of June and July, construction will take place within the Rinn Law Library, located in the Lewis building, to install a fire sprinkler system. This work is necessary in order to bring the building into compliance with local and state ordinances. Since there may be a heavy amount of noise associated with this construction, certain areas within the library may not be quiet places to study.   

Please see the Rinn Library's blog for complete details: http://depaullaw.typepad.com/library/2008/06/notice-construc.html

This past Saturday, the Library participated in Vincentian Service Day, and I have to say, we had a lot of fun! There were over 1,000 volunteers for Service Day, made up of students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and this year, DePaul Alumni groups organized community service projects all across the country for the same day. Some of the sites DePaul works with wait all year for Service Day and really count on our small army of volunteers to accomplish much needed projects.

 

The Library was assigned to work with the Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church and Shelter on Fullerton, and found out that a lot of DePaul students already volunteer in their shelter. They put us to work sanding bookcases, gardening, painting, and helping to sort through a storage closet. Next time you're on Fullerton,  take a look at the flowers we helped to plant around the Church's walkway :)

 

 

Q. Are carrots really good for your eyes?

A. Mom was right! Carrots are loaded with Vitamin A, which is an essential vitamin needed to keep eyes healthy. 

"You never see any rabbits wearing glasses!" says Dr Stuart R. Dankner, a pediatric ophthalmologist and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology. "Seriously, carrots contain high concentrations of carotene and vitamin A, both essential ingredients for the retina to remain healthy."¹

 

But, carrots won't help you get rid of your glasses or contacts. You can also find high levels of vitamin A in milk and eggs, and spinach and broccoli are a good source of lutin, which is also great for overall eye health. 

 

  1. Cohn, Jessica. "Seeing and Believing." Current Health 2 34.2 (2007): 8-10.

Q: When is it apporpriate [sic] to capitolize [sic] the words "congress" and "president?"

A: You only have to capitalize "president" when it precedes a name.¹ For example, "President Bush." But you can say "The president arrived for the press conference." In the case of "Congress," you do capitalize it when you're referring to the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, but not for other groups that have "congresses."² For example, "Congress voted overwhelmingly against the bill." But, "Faculty and students formed a congress to examine the issue."

 

_1. "Civil Titles." The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

2. "Governmental and Judicial Bodies." The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Just to get it out the way, first of all, I love Firefox. It's tabbed browsing functionality has changed the way I work, and it has been a valuable contribution to the open source community.

Now, what's a plugin? For those of you who are not familiar with plug-ins, the open source status of Firefox means that anyone can access the underlying code that makes it run (which is cool, trust me), and therefore, programmers can develop their own tweaks and addons in their free time to firefox that make our computer lives easier.

For me, my add-on of choice is the Download Status Plugin. Essentially, what this did is remove the download status pop-up window that was constantly getting in the way, and replaced it with an intergrated status bar at the bottom of my browsing window. Now, I can keep an eye on my downloads without battling with a pop-up window.

There are hundreds of addons for Firefox, and you can find everything from Forecast Fox, which lets you keep an eye on the weather from your browswer's status bar, to FoxyTunes, a music manager. Check out all the available addons: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/ 

Last week in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Judith Tabron, the director of faculty computing services at Hofstra University, wrote a commentary entitled, "How to Find What clicks in the Classroom." http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i29/29a03801.htm

I can still remember when submitting an assignment by email, rather than handing the professor a print copy, seemed like cutting edge. These days, educational technology has gone way this point, and, in fact, a student can now complete an entire degree program without ever setting foot on a college campus. Obviously, some technologies, like course management software (Blackboard, Moodle), have enjoyed more success than others, and new tools seem to constantly pop up. In her article, Tabron makes a strong argument for trying out new technologies in the classroom, regardless of cost, and the impact it can make on teaching.  

She comments, "It may seem that the seeds are too expensive, but we have a compelling reason to pay the price: Our students live online. They fall in love, they shop, they order pizza on the Web. Their iPods, TV's, and Xboxes are sophisticated technologies. They instant-message their blogs from their cellphones, and they can't picture college having a place in any of this, because we haven't shown them that it can. It will be a dismal future if the only thing our graduates cannot do online is learn."