Dear Deans, Chairs, and Faculty Library Liaisons,

Welcome to the End of (what felt like a very short) Summer edition of Chambers Chat! I hope you had a wonderful summer break full of rest, renewal, and lots of ice cream. In case you’ve been desperately concerned that you didn't receive any library information/restaurant suggestions over the summer, please let me assuage your fears: the Chambers Chat only goes out monthly during the fall and spring semesters (August to May), so you haven’t missed anything, I promise. And now for a few tips that will hopefully be helpful as you’re preparing for the fall semester: 
 

Plagiarism Instruction 

To help students learn to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively and ethically, our fantastic research librarians have created an online plagiarism guide that presents a plethora of practices to prevent plagiarism (yes, I’m apparently feeling alliterative today). Additionally, if you’d like to request library instruction on plagiarism or any other research topic for your courses, our librarians would be happy to visit your class virtually or in person to share those resources. The library is also offering two workshops in August: one on basic information management tools on Aug. 29 and another on avoiding plagiarism on Aug. 30. Both workshops will be offered in room 226 in the Chambers Library at 10am and 3pm. 
 

Helping Students with No/Low Cost Course Materials 

As I mentioned last spring, open educational resources (also known as OER or open source materials) are materials for teaching or learning that are FREE to students (they are either in the public domain or have been released under a license that allows them to be freely used, changed, or shared with others). The Chambers Library has created an online guide to help you get started if you’re interested in using OER to reduce textbook costs for your students. And please don’t forget that you can also link to the Chambers Library’s digital books and articles (which are free to you and your students) in your D2L courses!  As a quick reminder, multiple students can read an article at the same time, but most of the library’s ebooks only allow one reader at a time because we only own one “copy” (I know that doesn’t make sense, but publishers are frequently more interested in revenue than sense). If you need help using any of these resources, just call 405.974.3361 or email libraryresearch@uco.edu.

 

Featured Database: Dissertations & Theses Global 

This month I thought I’d do a double feature recommendation of a database + a restaurant, so here goes: Dissertations & Theses Global (see link below) provides a comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses that includes citations to dissertations and theses written in over 80 countries from 1637 (let me repeat, 1637) to the present day. The database includes more than 5 million citations and 3 million full text works from thousands of universities, with most of the works created after 1996 being full text. You can follow my example and search for your own dissertation or thesis, but it’s also a great resource for comprehensive literature reviews and citation mining.

 

Restaurant Recommendation

You probably don’t want to get out in the heat (or ask a delivery person to get out, either), but this month’s restaurant for when you leave the house again is La Baguette (7408 N May Ave, OKC). The pecan-crusted baked Brie and the chicken mushroom crêpes are délicieux, but the fabulous desserts are the real attraction – the chocolate mice were always a huge hit with my kids.

 

NB: While I did my best to update the Chambers Chat mailing list for the new academic year, I’m absolutely positive that there are changes of which I am unaware, so please feel free to send me a sternly worded email if you feel you received this email in error so that I can edit as needed.

 

Stay safe and cool!

 

Best,
Lee Anne

 

Lee Anne H. Paris, PhD
Director of Research & User Engagement
Max Chambers Library
E: lparis@uco.edu | O: 405-974-2880

Database Links: 

 
Journal articles, books, book chapters and dissertation abstracts on theatre and performance worldwide.
How to search an EBSCO database
Theater Arts Research Guide