Graphic Novels fan?

Then you'll  want to take a look at the Ritz' new online resource,Critical Survey of Graphic Novels. An ebook version of one of our reference encyclopedias, the Critical Survey consists of two parts:

• Independents & Underground Classics
• History, Theme, and Technique

The Survey covers over 200 classic graphic novels, including oftem studied titles like Maus, Love and Rockets,  & Watchman. There's  an in-depth essay on each comic's  plot, themes, characters & volumes. Sixty additional  essays contain both historical and social overviews of graphic novels from the medium's beginnings in ancient times to the latest works. These essays  discuss Japanese manga and African graphic novels as well as traditional genres, such as Westerns, science fiction, and superheros.

Access to this title is available on and off campus from the Library's "Alphabetical List of databases" page. or directly through this link. 

 
 

Big Read 2013

Poughkeepsie's Big Read for 2013 features Cynthia Oznick's novella, The Shawl.  Comprised of two short stories, "The Shawl" and "Rosa", the novella captures the pain and devastation wracked on Rosa and her family from Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, commonly considered the beginning of the Holocaust. "The Shawl" is set in 1938 and "Rosa" is set 39 years later in Miami, FL.

Additional information, including links to events relating to the Big Read may be found by clicking here. 

Enjoy a New Playaway Audiobook!

New at the library are 22 Playaway titles, including all three titles of The Hunger Games Trilogy: The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay.  Playaways are portable audio books, smaller than most iPods.  They also plug into most car dashboards that have an audio jack. You can check out a wire from the Ritz Library if you would like to listen to one in your car.

If you need a good laugh, why not pick up Seriously... I'm Kidding by Ellen Degeneres or The Onion Book of Known Knowledge?  Enjoy classical works? There's Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare and The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham. Working on a homework assignment? Perhaps, The Greatest Speeches of All Time or The Great Poets: Emily Dickinson would be useful.  Some business titles that may be edifying are:
Primal Leadership by Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee and The 80/20 Principle by Richard Knoch.

Other titles that have just come in are:

Why Men Fake It by Abraham Morgentaler, M.D.
Zombiestan by Mainak Dhar
Small Favor: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
Self-Hypnosis by Edgar Cayce
Love the Work, Hate the Job: Why America's Best Workers are More Unhappy than Ever by David Kusnet
Sex Changes by Christine Benvenuto
The Art of Procrastination by John Perry
Trap of Gold and the Trail to Pie Town by Louis L'Amour
The Watch that Ends the Night by Allan Wolf
NPR Driveway Moments : Dog Tales

The Playaway collection has grown so much that it's now been relocated.  It is now located in the stacks directly behind the Reference Desk, 3 stacks back, next to the Graphic Novel collection.  If you have trouble finding them, please ask a librarian for assistance!

Digital Scholars Essay Contest

Cengage Learning, a major education publisher, is sponsoring an essay writing contest for anyone enrolled in a SUNY school during the Fall 2013 semester. Two $250 prizes will be handed out in the undergraduate category and submissions must be submitted electronically by December 15th.

The contest's  purpose is to encourage students  to use advanced databases like Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO), so Cengage is providing free access to those resources, as well as other digital collections of primary sources through its new search platform for the humanities, Artemis.

More information on the contest is at 2013 SUNY-wide 18th and 19th century digital scholars essay contest. Links to the databases are on that page.
 

Need clinical health info fast? Try STAT!Ref

Getting up to date and accurate clinical information is probably  the most important part  of doing research for nursing and allied health classes. To make that job easier, the Ritz now has STAT!Ref,  a  healthcare reference service which integrates core titles with evidence-based resources and innovative tools on one site.

Containing 27 ebooks covering nursing care plans, laboratory testing, nursing diagnosis and other medical topics, STATRef! contains links to nursing podcasts and medical news sources. Try it out here.

Apps to search  STATRef! through tablets, smartphones & other handheld devices are available for Android, Apple & Blackberry products.  Access is through  username/ password combo. Initial authentication must be on campus. More info, including links to apps, is at STATRef! Mobile Access.

New databases at the Ritz

The library has gotten two new databases for you to try this summer. The first is Gannett Newsstand. It contains the full text of 85 newspapers from around the country. Many of the papers are from medium sized cities and they provide a good perspective on both local issues and how national and international events are reported locally. This databases contains a number of New York State newspapers, among them:

• Poughkeepsie Journal,
• Journal News (White Plains, N.Y.),
• Ithaca Times
• Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
• Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, N.Y.)

Coverage for most of these titles begins in 2001.

The second database is designed specifically for elementary school students. ebrary Elementary contains almost 400  magazines, newspapers, books, and transcripts. The system also contains thousands of maps, images, educator-approved websites from Homework Central®, and audio/video titles, all selected as appropriate for elementary school studies.

Both of these databases are being supplied by NOVEL, a service of the New yor State Library.

Phoning in PDFs

Not that long ago scanners were big and bulky and required special software to tell text from photos. Now you can  use your phone or tablet  to scan items directly to PDF using a new app called Cam Scanner.

 Available for both Android and IOS mobile devices,  it  features  batch scanning, editing of images and easy uploading to DropBox or Facebook.  Besides creating PDFs from scans , you can also save a scan as an image in jpg format.

Best of all, the producers of Cam Scanner will upgrade the free version of  Cam Scanner to a full version of the app  if you register with an .edu address.

For more info on this product, and to download the app, start at Cam Scanner