Active Learning Center, planned for 2017, to merge libraries into one – Purdue Exponent: Campus

February 27th, 2014

Purdue plans to merge six of its current libraries into one facility, the Active Learning Center, by the fall of 2017.

via Active Learning Center, planned for 2017, to merge libraries into one – Purdue Exponent: Campus.

Active Learning Center open forum being held March 13

February 26th, 2014

A campus-wide open forum to discuss the new Active Learning Center will be held 1 to 2:30 p.m. March 13 in Stewart Center, Room 310.

Students, faculty and staff are encouraged to attend the session, which will include a project overview, discussing both the project goals and initial space plan, and an open, informal time for questions and answers. The authors of the academic program statement, building stakeholders and project designers (BSA LifeStructures) will be in attendance to gather feedback before the design process begins.

The facility will include classroom space to support the IMPACT program, as well as active learning in general, and it will bring together six campus libraries: life sciences; chemistry; physics; earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences; pharmacy, nursing and health sciences; and engineering.

“The goal of the Active Learning Center is to seamlessly integrate the best attributes of the classroom and library into one facility, creating a new environment that is richer, more efficient and more effective than either can be on its own,” says James L. Mullins, dean of libraries and the Esther Ellis Norton professor.

The Active Learning Center will be located on the current site of the Engineering Administration Building and the Heat and Power North Plant. Construction is scheduled to begin in spring 2015, with the building fully operational for fall 2017.

Purdue is committed to making all programs accessible to participants with disabilities. If you require an accommodation or special assistance due to a disability, contact Rustin Meister in the days leading up to the forum at 49-69477 or rrmeister@purdue.edu.

Purdue marks 100 years of Road School with Indiana Transportation Exhibit

February 17th, 2014

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Purdue University’s Libraries and Special Collections is commemorating 100 years of hosting the Purdue Road School with a special exhibit focusing on Indiana transportation.

“The Crossroads of America: Indiana Transportation in the Early 20th Century,” is on display through March 13 in the Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center on the fourth floor of the Humanities, Social Science and Education Library in Stewart Center. The exhibit coincides with this year’s road school, set for March 11-13, on campus.

The exhibit profiles early transportation in Indiana and includes rare publications on railroads and canals; historical road maps of Indiana; photographs of road construction projects and equipment; documents pertaining to the opening of major highways; and documents chronicling the history of the Purdue Road School and the Joint Transportation Research Project. Themes such as the evolution from horse and buggy travel to streetcars and automobiles, surveying and methods of traffic control, and road and bridge safety, are explored, along with the impact the rise in popularity of the automobile had on rural life.

The Purdue Road School is an Indiana tradition that brings together federal, state and local agency personnel, elected officials and professionals from throughout the field, including industry, consulting and academia. It builds upon a rich tradition dating to professor W.K. Hatt’s efforts to organize a civil engineering conference in 1913.

Purdue Libraries curators for the exhibit include Sammie Morris, associate professor and university archivist, and head of archives and special collections; Neal Harmeyer, digital archivist in archives and special collections; and Michael Maune, graduate assistant in archives and special collections.

Contact: Sammie Morris, 765-494-2905, morris18@purdue.edu

Purdue Libraries Database of the Week: MarketLine, from Informa/Taylor & Francis

February 14th, 2014

Welcome to Database of the Week.  This feature from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics is intended to give you a brief introduction to a database that you may not know, with only basic information to get you started.  Hopefully, you will be tempted to explore this or other databases.

This Week’s Featured Database:  MarketLine, from Informa/Taylor & Francis.

Find it:www.lib.purdue.edu/parrish, Under the column headed Collections, click on List of Business Databases.

Description/focus: Market research reports.

Try it:. MarketLine has an easily navigable interface to find market information on companies, industries, and countries.  The search box has a drop down so you can choose to limit your research to a single type such as industries or case studies, and the resulting list can be filtered  to further focus your search. Click here to see the basics of searching  MarketLine. Beyond the basic search, though, MarketLine also has a group of resources on the home page under the simple heading  Databases, where you can get country statistics, build a list of companies by capital raised, compare categories of consumer goods, or check financial deals.

Why you should know this database:  MarketLine online reports are easy to navigate but are also downloadable. 

Why students should know this database:  MarketLine market research reports include SWOT and five forces analyses.

Cost: Paid annually by the Libraries.

——————————

Database of the Week comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu.  Database of the Week is archived  at https://blogs.lib.purdue.edu/news/category/MGMT/.  For more Purdue Libraries news, follow us on Twitter (@ParrishLib).

Feedback is always welcome.  If you would like us to promote your favorite database, send an email to mdugan@purdue.edu.

New Development Resources Available to Purdue Faculty, Staff

February 6th, 2014

Purdue University Libraries has collaborated with Purdue’s Human Resources Leadership and Organizational Development (LOD) to acquire a subscription to Business Book Summaries — a collection of concise, comprehensive summaries of various business books.

 Access to this resource, which is available to all faculty and staff on the West Lafayette campus, expands employees’ personal resource collection and aids organizations in educating and training leaders and staff on key relevant business topics. Topics covered include communication, diversity, global business, leadership and management.

 Subscribers can create a personal account to save their preferences, organize their folders or create email alerts. Subscribers also can read and/or listen to more than 2,000 summaries, browse more than 20 categories, and translate summaries into 32 different languages. Users of iPhones can download the Business Book Summaries App for access on the go.

 Business Book Summaries can be accessed at the following locations:

 * LOD’s Core Services website at www.purdue.edu/hr/lod/.

 * Libraries’ list of databases, available at www.lib.purdue.edu/find/databases.

 * An organizational leadership resource guide created by Libraries in collaboration with LOD, available at http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/workforcedevelopment.

 Purdue University Libraries has numerous books, journals and databases on topics within the leadership and organizational development discipline that Purdue faculty and staff can access, all of which are listed in the resource guide.

Questions about Business Book Summaries may be addressed to lod@purdue.edu.

All Libraries Closed Wednesday, 2/5

February 5th, 2014

All of Purdue University Libraries are closed today, Wednesday 2/5, due to the university closure. The Libraries will open Thursday, 2/6, at the regularly scheduled hours.

ProQuest Resources Scheduled for Maintenance Upgrades – Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014

February 4th, 2014

On Saturday, February 15, 2014 ProQuest will make improvements to its internal systems to accommodate a growing number of users and to reduce the need for future downtime.

An eight hour (8) maintenance window is needed to perform these enhancements, lasting from 10:00 EST through 06:00 EST. During this time, all ProQuest resources will be unavailable.

A complete list of ProQuest resources can be found here: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/titlelists/tl-menu.shtml

For more information, contact Rebecca Richardson, Electronic Resources Librarian, Purdue University Libraries at (765) 494-9250 or rarichar@purdue.edu.

Integrating Information Book Published

February 3rd, 2014

The first in a new series, the book Integrating Information into the Engineering Design Process edited by Michael Fosmire and David Radcliffe is now available. Michael Fosmire is Head of the Physical Sciences, Engineering, and Technology Division of the Purdue University Libraries and Professor of Library Science while David Radcliffe is Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School of Engineering Education and Professor of Engineering Education. Their collaboration focuses on the practical ways in which library and information science principles can be embedded into the pedagogy of another discipline to power student success. Sharon Weiner, W. Wayne Booker Chair in Information Literacy and series editor of the Purdue Information Literacy Handbooks series, notes that the book is “an outstanding example of the application of information literacy in a discipline. No other work has so thoroughly and capably integrated information literacy with the learning of engineering design. The authors and editors have succeeded in presenting a cohesive and evidence-based approach to an engineering paradigm; the design process.” More information about the book can be found on Purdue University Press’s website.