Special access to COVID-19 academic resources

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Databases, research

Many academic publishers have opened up selected resources for free access during the coronavirus pandemic. Here are some we’ve added to the Library website:

• Internet Archives eBooks typically give readers access to the full content of a book. Users must create their own account, then they can check out or put a hold on a title they want to read. Internet Archive eBooks are currently searchable through our WorldCat Library search, along with all our other print books and eBooks.
• MUSE In Focus: Contextualizing Pandemic is a collection of more than 25,000 eBooks and 300 scholarly journals that “bring some historical, cultural, and social context to the COVID-19 crisis”.
• JSTOR free access to selected COVID-19-related articles. This large collection can be browsed by topic.

Follow the Library’s COVID-19 guide to keep up to date on any other additional resources that become available, and for information on the Library’s many subscription databases and eBooks that we continue to make available to our students, staff, and faculty.

Anti-Racism: Learning to Confront Bigotry

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books, Kirkwood Community College Library, Kirkwood Library Services, reference, research

In the days since May 25, when a white police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis, protests and passionate conversations have focused our attention on racial prejudice. As the following books help us to see, this bigotry has been a disease in American society since its origins. Perhaps with continued study we can understand more fully why racial injustice has remained so intractable, and our conversations could, we hope, carry us closer to a time when we might finally begin to grow past it.

The books listed below are available through the Kirkwood Library in eBook format, so our Kirkwood community of students, faculty, and staff can read these even while the campus library locations are closed due to the pandemic. This is just a small sample of the materials in our collection to aid in the study of anti-racism; we encourage you to seek out additional book titles and articles using our catalog search at www.kirkwood.edu/library. When the campus reopens, our print books will be available as well (a few important print titles in our collection are listed at the end of this post).

Because our current crisis has as its focus the oppression of African Americans, the books listed here tend to focus on the black experience in America; of course oppression takes on many forms, and additional materials are available that address discrimination against other groups and in global contexts.

We are also offering an Anti-Racism libguide (research study guide) with further recommendations for study of racial injustice from our library databases and internet sources, plus a few notes on developing news, that can be viewed at guides.kirkwood.edu/ under “Anti-Racism.”

Note: Because Kirkwood buildings, including the library locations in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, are currently closed due to the pandemic, the following are eBooks that can be read online by the Kirkwood community. The links will take you directly to those. Below it are print books in our library collection that will be available as the campus begins to open.

eBooks:

Antiracism, Inc.: Why the Way We Talk About Racial Justice Matters by Felice Blake. Punctum Books, 2019.

Art for Equality: The NAACP’s Cultural Campaign for Civil Rights by Jenny Woodley. University Press of Kentucky, 2014.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. Ballantine Books, 2015. Temporarily available via Internet Archive. Also in print format, Call Number: Iowa City Library Popular Books HAL; Main Library 320.5 L778a 2015

Beyond the White Negro: Empathy and Anti-Racist Reading by Kimberly Chabot Davis. University of Illinois Press, 2014.

Black Marxism by Cedric J. Robinson. University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. 1970; Vintage International, 2007. Temporarily available via Internet Archive. Also in print format, Call Number: Iowa City Library OR Main Library 813.54 M882b 2007

Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock Against Racism by Ian Goodyear. Manchester University Press, 2009.

The End of American Lynching by Ashraf H.A. Rushdy. Rutgers University Press, 2012.

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. 1963; Vintage International, 1993. Temporarily available via Internet Archive. Also in print format, Call Number: Iowa City Library 305.896 B181f

Long Past Slavery by Catherine A. Stewart. University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Also in print format, Call Number: Iowa City Library 305.896 S849L

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. New Press, 2011. Also in print format, Call Number: Main Library 364.973 A377n

Racism and Anti-Racism in Europe by Alana Lentin. Pluto Press, 2004.

Rethinking Racism: Emotion, Persuasion, and Literacy Education in an All-American White High School by Jennifer Seibel Trainor. Southern Illinois University Press, 2008.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Crossing Press, 2007. Temporarily available via Internet Archive. Also in print format, Call Number: Iowa City Library 814.54 L867s

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. 1937; Perennial Classics, 1998. Temporarily available via Internet Archive. Also in print format, Call Number: Iowa City Library OR Main Library 813.52 H966t 1998

 

Print Books

links are to the Kirkwood Library catalog. We are also acquiring eBook versions of some of these titles:

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble. New York University Press, 2018. Call Number: Main Library 025.042 N752a

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Spiegel and Grau, 2015. Call Number: Iowa City Library OR Main Library 305.896 S982b

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. Graywolf Press, 2014. Call Number: Main Library 811.6 R211c

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. One World, 2019. Call number: Main Library 305.8 K335h

Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman, Jr. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. Call Number: Main Library 364.973 F724L

Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. 4^th edition. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2014. Call Number: Main Library 305.8 B715r

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. Seal Press, 2018. Call Number: Main Library 305.8 O529s

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. Beacon Press, 2018. Call Number: Main Library 305.8 D538w

Library resource highlight: library eBooks

Tags

Ebooks, faculty, research, students

About Kirkwood’s eBooks

Kirkwood Library Services has a huge collection of eBooks, and all can be found through our main library search (WorldCat search). Kirkwood’s eBooks look and work quite differently from the eBooks or audio books you might check out from your local public library. In general, instead of loading them to a mobile device through a special app, our eBooks either appear immediately in your browser, or download in chapters as PDF files.

How to search for eBooks

There are a few different ways to search for eBooks:

1. Use the library search from our homepage, also called WorldCat Discover. This is a “meta-search” that searches multiple eBook collections at once. For a demonstration of searching for eBooks, see this video on our Research Help guide. You can search by topic, title, or author.
2. Search individual eBook collections to use special search features or filters of a certain collection. The following databases all contain eBooks:
   1. EBSCOhost eBooks contains our largest collection of eBooks at over 150,000 titles. Titles can be read immediately on a computer or tablet, and portions can be downloaded. Page limits for downloading vary from title to title. Many titles may be checked out and downloaded using Adobe Digital Editions. Directions for this can be found in the Library’s Research Help guide.
   2. Project MUSE is a scholarly collection of eBooks and journals from major university presses. Many titles are also open access, making them even easier to share with students and make print copies for yourself. Open access titles are marked with “OA” and have an open padlock icon.
   3. Gale eBooks, formerly known as Gale Virtual Reference Library, is a unique collection containing many encyclopedias as well as some scholarly titles. If you want to search for encylopedia articles, this is going to work much better as a direct search, instead of trying to get at those articles through the WorldCat search.
   4. Salem Press is another specialized collection containing encyclopedic type articles from books. Most titles are related to history topics, and include collections of primary historical documents.
   5. DSM Library contains an online edition of the DSM Manual of Mental Disorders, as well as a few other selected APA published titles.
   6. Opposing Viewpoints contains a collection of essays from the popular “debate book” collection that has long been a staple of both Kirkwood libraries. Essays are browsable and searchable by topic.

Note to faculty

All eBooks can be linked directly from Talon. Most databases will provide a link or “permalink” that will provide a consistent link to a specific title or chapter. If you’re unsure about how to link to these resources, please contact the library for help.

Just as faculty can request book purchases for the library, you can also request eBook purchases. Not all book titles are available as eBooks, but we are happy to investigate any book you want to provide access to for your students. Just email the library (library AT kirkwood.edu) or chat using the “Ask a Librarian” function on the library website to make a request.

Vital Statistics

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reference, research, Tech Tip, Vital Statistics

What it is and why to use it?

One of the mainstays of our reference collection is Vital Statistics of the United States: Births, Life Expectancy, Deaths, and Selected Health Data. A vital statistic is a record of birth, death, or marriage. Although in the genealogy world it is often used to reference information on a particular person, this source congregates and analyzes mass data for the entire country.

Want to know the rate of marriage in Iowa? The total number of divorces across the country in 2012? The current life expectancy in the US? (78.8 years FYI) The percent of babies born to non-married women? All of that and more is available for use in both informational and persuasive papers and speeches.

Where to find it

The last time we were going to re-order our paper version for reference we discovered that the Center for Disease Control had this information online for free. So if you are looking for charts of data of vital statistics (birth, death, and marriage, etc.) check out this link instead.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm

Caution

There is sometimes an expectation that the numbers will be up to the minute when they will often be two or three years behind. That is because the data the numbers are extracted from needs to be collected at the end of the year from state governments and other sources and then analyzed and imputed to the CDC’s various reports. This causes the delay, so don’t look for results from this year yourself or expect your students to find them.

Sarah Uthoff is a reference library at Kirkwood Community College. LIKE the Kirkwood Community College Library on Facebook and find links to Sarah all over the web at her About Me Profile.

Welcome Back!

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Ask a Librarian!, books, del.icio.us, hours, research, website

The staff at the Kirkwood Libraries hope you had a fun and relaxing Spring Break. Library hours are now back to normal. Now it’s time to get back into the swing of things and start those final papers and projects you may have been putting off until later. The library Web site: www.kirkwood.edu/library has many resources available to help you research your topic. You can search our catalog to find a book, search our databases for magazine and journal articles, or check our list of “librarian approved” Web sites. If you hit a roadblock in your research, Ask a Librarian! for help. As always, the library is a great place to study for finals or just curl up with a good book. Come visit us!

Easy Off-campus Access to Databases

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Ask a Librarian!, research

Remember the bookmarks for the library with the huge list of passwords on the back for accessing library databases? Well, you can throw those away now. The library has successfully implemented a new proxy-server that will allow Kirkwood students, faculty and staff to access all library databases from home using a single login: your k number and password.

To access Kirkwood Library databases, simply go to the library homepage: http://www.kirkwood.edu/library, click on the database you wish to search and if you are off-campus, you will be prompted to login with your k number and password. If you are on-campus, you will not be required to login.

Good luck with your research! And as always, if you need help, Ask a Librarian!

Another FREE H1N1 resource

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H1N1, reference, research

Gale has also given us free access to their H1N1 resources.  There is information on the science and history of H1N1 as well as global news on the topic. This information is available at http://www.gale.cengage.com/flu/.

Successful Remote Research Workshop

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research, workshop

Kirkwood librarian Steve Sickels is offering a new 50 minute workshop for Kirkwood Distance Learning students called “Successful Remote Research“.

It is a presentation for distance learning students of online access to Kirkwood’s hosted library research databases demonstrating the following:

• Approach the finding of supporting materials using various books, video, periodical databases and the internet
• Obtaining immediate full text, downloads and interlibrary loan materials
• Illustrate the narrowing of a topic, the transition to controlled vocabulary and the recursive nature of research
• Address evaluation and citation of resources

Students can best utilize this presentation by trying out the information and attending the next week’s session and noting the distance learning students’ questions and experiences.

The workshop will be held during the activity hour (11 – 11:50 AM) on Tuesday, February 10th in KTS 1 classroom.  The follow-up workshop will be held during the activity hour (11 – 11:50 AM) on Tuesday, February 17th in KTS 1 classroom.

If you can’t make it this month, don’t worry, Steve will offer the workshop again on March 24th and 31st (same times and locations).

More new databases

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Ask a Librarian!, research

It’s research paper time!  For those of you who prefer to do your research online, the library has added more new databases to its growing collection:

Wilson Web Databases

• Current Issues: Reference Shelf Plus – provides full-text articles from key publications covering a variety of current social, scientific, health, political, and global issues.
• Current Issues: Health – provides full-text article from key publications covering a variety of health issues.
• Library Literature & Information Science Full-Text – delivers full-text articles cover to cover from over 100 select library publications.
• Science Full-Text, Select Edition – covers some 320 science journals with full-text articles, indexing and abstracts

Gale Database

• Literature Resource Center – provides information on literary figures from all time periods writing in such genres as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, journalism, and more.

If you need help searching or for off-campus access, please Ask a Librarian!

New Reference Database!

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Credo Reference, dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference, research

The Kirkwood Community College Library continues to put your money to good use with the purchase of a new database: Credo Reference.

Credo Reference provides online access full-text articles from 150 reference titles, including specialized dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks, guidebooks, thesauri, atlases and chronologies.  Credo’s advanced search allows researchers to search within specific subjects, book types, book titles and entry types.  For visual learners, there is an excellent concept mapping feature.

So, the next time you need to do some research, check out Credo and let us know what you think!