College Success!

The campus is live with students making their way to classes, dorms, meals, and of course the library!   We hope everyone has a great semester!   The library wants to help.  Did you know the library has books about how to be successful in college?  That we have an entire Pinterest board devoted to links that will help make the most of your college experience?   Take a look!    http://www.pinterest.com/tarletonlib/college-success/

 If we can can help let us know. You can Ask A Librarian or call (254) 968-9249 to talk to a Librarian.

Motivational Monday

Yesterday evening, I overheard a student proclaim she needed to write a three page paper on motivation that was due today. I told her "procrastination is a motivator in and of itself"(this doesn't mean I think anyone should procrastinate in order to motivate themselves to do school work); this got me to thinking, what truly motivates college/university students to succeed in school? Motivation can come from anywhere, anyone, or anything. My motivation typically comes from a desire to do better and have more in life. What motivates you?

Check out these books in the library on motivation, achievement, and success in college:

1. 9 things successful people do differently
2. Execution: the discipline of getting things done 
3. The little book of coaching: motivating people to be winners
4. A theory of achievement motivation
5. The achieving society
6. Self-theories: their role in motivation, personality, and development
7. Motivating Students
8. Giftedness, conflict, and underachievement
9. Achieving educational excellence: using behavioral strategies
10. Execution: the discipline of getting things done

To find these resources and more, you can Ask A Librarian or call (254)968-9249.

Library + Pinterest = Success? Yes!

Welcome to all of our returning students and to the class of 2017. There are many resources at Tarleton State University to help you while you are a student here.

One of them, naturally, is the library.

One resource for student success that you might not expect us to have is our Pinterest board called "College Success." (Yes, we're on Pinterest!).  It features books and other resources on how to rock your first year of college.

A screenshot of our "College Success" Pinterest Board.

Most of the books on this board will be on our upper floor, or the "general stacks."
Each book has a Library of Congress call number (which is actually a combination of letters and numbers) that tell you what area the book is shelved in.

For example, the book below has the call number LB2343.3 .C62 2009.

A screenshot of our pin of "The Naked Roommate" on Pinterest.

 This means you will look for the L section on our floor plan.

Floor plan created by Tracy Holtman.

 When you find the Ls, you will look at the sides of the shelves for signs that tell you where the LB section is. Then look for LB2300, and so on, until you find your book.

If you need assistance, please ask whoever is at the Information Desk, and they'll be glad to help.

Best of luck during your first year at Tarleton State!

P.S. Don't forget to follow us on Pinterest.

Academic Integrity Brown Bag

Join the Discussion!

• What is Academic Integrity?
• Why it Matters
• Is Academic Dishonesty a Big Deal?
• Causes & Consequences
• Ways to Avoid Missteps
• Where is Help Available?

Thurs., Oct. 14
12:10-12:50
Library MultiPurpose Room

Sponsored by
Office of Judicial Affairs (254-968-9576)
Division of Student Life

Writing a Paper? Try These 7 Research Tips

This article by Lynn Jacobs and Jeremy Hyman in U.S. News & World Report offers practical tips for successfully starting, planning, and finishing papers. The following list gives article excerpts and along with links to Tarleton Libraries' resources and services to help you apply the research tips. Enjoy!

• Start from where you are.
• Pick a topic that interests you. Look to course materials, lecture notes, handouts, and so on for ideas.
• Talk to your instructor to see if your topic is on target.


• Think E.
• “The best place to start is not with Google, Bing, or Wikipedia but with E-reserves that the professor has listed” and made available via your library’s site. Tarleton State University Libraries
• “Next stop: the electronic resources (or E-resources) at the library Web page” for online access to articles, reference books, and more. Tarleton Libraries databases
• Subject guides are useful because they list resources by subject and “can be incredibly helpful" when you start researching a topic. Tarleton Libraries’ Subject Research Guides


• Discover WorldCat.
• “One of the best resources is http://www.worldcat.org, a free and public catalog of more than a billion (with a "b"!) items available from more than 10,000 libraries worldwide. . . . It's available in all modalities including online and mobile (with downloadable apps for iPhone, BlackBerry, and most Web-enabled phones).”


• Learn the shortcuts.
• “Use wild-card characters—typically a question mark (?), pound sign (#), or asterisk (*)—when you know only the first few letters of a word or when you want to find all the words that start with a certain string of letters.”
• “Use the Boolean and operator (typically AND or +) to limit the results of a search, and the or operator (OR or -) to expand the topic.
• “Take out any apostrophes (in words such as O'Reilly) and replace foreign language characters (ç, ü) with their English equivalents (c, u).”


• Use the resources that live and breathe.
• Call, visit or email “the reference desk" to get help with "electronic searches” and locating print resources. Contact information for research assistance at Tarleton Libraries


• Learn about ILL.
• If you need something your library does not have, use your library’s interlibrary loan (ILL) services. “The ILL crew will get you the physical book or a copy of the article from another library, usually free.” Request items as early as possible so you can get them in time.Tarleton Libraries Interlibrary Loan Service


• Look for "gateway" sources.
• When starting a research project, you may want to begin with “sources that survey the problem, area, or subject you're researching and point the way to further, more specific studies. They might have names like Cambridge Companion to X, Stanford Encyclopedia of Y, Grove Dictionary of Z, or Oxford Illustrated History of A.”
  -- You can locate these resources using Tarleton Libraries catalog.
• When “reading any source, look in the footnotes and bibliography” for ideas about other sources.
  -- Then use Tarleton Libraries’ SFX Citation Finder and catalog to locate items.
  -- Use the library’s Interlibrary Loan service to obtain items not available locally.
  -- Remember to Ask a Librarian for assistance whenever you need it.

View complete article: Writing a Paper? Try These 7 Research Tips

15 Essential Web Tools for Students

A recent Mashable post by Josh Catone offers a guide to 15 Essential Web Tools for Students, plus links to the tools and tips for using them. With all the tasks everyone manages every day, these tools are very handy.

• Stay Organized: web applications to help you get and stay organized.
• Evernote -- note taking tool that lets you sync notes between the web, your phone, and any computer
• Notely -- solution for taking notes and staying organized
• GradeMate -- organizer for creating to-do lists, managing due dates, and collaborating
• Backpack -- tool for keeping research organized
  
  
• Study Better: web tools to help you get the most out of your study time.
• StudyRails -- for people who have trouble blocking out distractions when it comes time to study
• Diggo -- web-based highlighter and sticky note system for annotating your web research and sharing work with classmates
• Delicious -- tool for collecting web resources for a class, project, or paper under a single tag
• Mindmeister -- organize your thoughts and research through mind maps
  
  
• Work and Collaborate: web-based and social tools that help you get your work done and collaborate with others on group projects.
• Google Docs -- online word processing and spreadsheets applications that let you work together on group assignments
• EtherPad --collaboration tool that lets a group of people edit a document at the same time and see what everyone is writing as they write it
• Sliderocket -- online presentation building tool for creating multimedia presentations that are accessible from anywhere
• Wikidot -- a simple, wiki hosting solution for creating an unlimited number of wiki pages to organize projects and group research
  
  
• Cite Right: tools to help you keep track of your sources and cite them properly.
• CiteMe -- search the world’s largest library catalog by title, author, subject, or ISBN and get formatted citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, or Turabian style
• EasyBib -- automatically create citations in APA, Chicago/Turabian, and MLA styles
• Zotero -- automatically collects your research sources and lets you create citations in any of one of over a thousand different styles

Check 'em out!

Choosing Sources

• Know you need to locate articles for a project or paper?
• Not sure which types of periodicals would be the best to use?
• Not quite sure how to tell the difference between the different types of periodicals?
• Not sure why you should care about the difference between different types of periodicals?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, know that you’re not alone.

Because the types of sources used in projects and papers often (if not always) influence how well your finished product will be received (what grade it will receive or what your supervisor will think about your abilities), it’s important to learn how to tell the difference between the types and how to use them appropriately.

A brief overview of periodical types -- their characteristics and uses -- is provided by the YouTube video Scholarly vs. Popular Periodicals, which was created by Peabody Library at Vanderbilt University.

Need more assistance figuring out what type of article to use, where to find the articles, and how to cite them? Tarleton Libraries are here to help!

• Call us: Dick Smith Library, Reference Desk 254-968-9456.
• Email us: http://www.tarleton.edu/~library/askaref.html
• Drop by and talk with us: library hours

What do you think? Call Mom & Dad?

Many colleges and universities are reluctant to reach out to parents when there are signs of trouble, such as a missing or potentially suicidal student. Citing a federal law meant to protect student privacy, many schools rope off young people's records from parents and authorities. But in one area, administrators are increasingly exploiting an exception in the law that allows them to reach out: drinking and drugs. A growing number of colleges, such as Texas Tech and Ohio University, are deciding to call mom and dad about underage drinking and illegal drug use, often at the very first signs of trouble.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119690910535115405-Cv0wTZ_BMaCF7joUpFDoQDBSn9A_20081205.html?mod=rss_free

(Taken from the Kept-up Librarian)

What do you think? Should college administrator's have the right to contact your Mom & Dad?

Increasing the likelihood of YOUR college success

• Are you known as “conscientious and hard-working”? If you are, congratulations! This may be a better indicator of success in college than your SAT scores. See the whole article at http://www.newsroom.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/display.cgi?id=1329
  
  
• Do you hate those group project assignments? --Don’t! "Students learn better and develop higher-level skills by participating in cooperative (team) activities...”, according to a study at Penn State.
  See the whole article at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071105095721.htm
  
  
• A timely question with finals looming:
  “Will an all-nighter actually help your grade on a test? The correct answer is ‘no’”.
  Read whole article All Nighters Equal Lower Grades at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071130162518.htm
  
  

And this is too late for you, but pass it on to your younger connections:

• “Students with the most rigorous high school preparation in mathematics perform significantly better in college courses in biology, chemistry, and physics.”
  The whole article is available at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/0700726142071.htm