About MSU Libraries

09/24/2014

What's New @ Your Library

Library Expansion Project

A $7 million bond package was signed Friday April 23, 2014 by Gov. Phil Bryant to fund expansion of Mississippi State's Mitchell Memorial Library. Another floor will be added at the northeast corner to the university's main library located opposite the Charles H. Templeton Sr. Music Museum. The expansion will enable the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library to relocate from the first floor to the fourth. The new facility will include exhibit galleries, research room, administrative offices, climate-controlled archival storage facilities and conference rooms. Construction on the 21,000 sq ft addition will begin May 2015 and will take approximately 18 months to complete.

New Databases

The following databases are the newest electronic resources provided by the Mississippi State University Libraries. Access to these resources is available via our Databases page both on and off campus with a current NetID and NetPassword.

• PsychiatryOnline
  PsychiatryOnline.org (POL) offers the most comprehensive online access to psychiatric textbooks, journals, and professional development tools. This all-in-one virtual library provides psychiatrists, researchers, students, and mental health professionals with key resources for diagnosis, treatment, research, and professional development. PsychiatryOnline is a powerful web-based portal that features DSM-5™—the most widely used psychiatric reference in the world—and The American Journal of Psychiatry as the cornerstones of an unsurpassed collection of psychiatric references from American Psychiatric Publishing.
• Ancestry.com Library Edition
  Ancestry.com Library Edition provides a means to discover, preserve and share your family history as well as create your own family tree. The site has billions of records from the US, Canada and Europe ready to discover. Sources include censuses, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, directories, photos, maps, and many more.
• JSTOR Music Collection
  Music theory research just got easier at MSU. The JSTOR Music Collection contains the complete back runs of 33 titles dedicated to scholarly research and theory in the field of music. The collection includes journals published in the Netherlands, Croatia, Hungary, Germany, and France.
• African American Newspapers, 1827-1998
  The MSU History Department and the University Libraries partnered to provide access to African American Newspapers, 1827-1998. Funded by the History Department, this full-text database provides online access to 270 historically significant African-American newspapers from across the U.S. African American Newspapers, 1827-1998, provides access to newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience.

New website, online catalog and chat service software

Over the last year, the MSU Libraries' Web Services team researched best practices, conducted usability studies and analyzed survey results as a part of its overall plan to develop a new Library website. The goal was to develop a new website that was designed specifically with the end-users in mind, one whose organizational structure was not departmentalized and one designed to operate on any device (e.g. computers, tablets, smartphones, etc.). The new website was launched on August 4, 2014. As a part of the new website the Library released a new online catalog providing patrons with a more intuitive search experience, a more robust search engine and additional search features.

The MSU Libraries has offered virtual research help for more than a decade by chat and email through our popular Ask-a-Librarian service. In an effort to expand the reach of our service, the Library now utilizing SpringShare's LibChat/LibAnswers product. We now offer text messaging and Twitter reference, in addition to live chat and email. This new system also features a robust FAQ search engine that has been populated with an all-new database of common questions and answers here at the library. These new services will make it easier than ever to get help from the MSU Libraries, wherever you are, when you need it.

Embedded Librarian Program

In order to better serve the students and faculty by having a library faculty member holding office hours in an academic department, the MSU Libraries has expanded its Embedded Librarian program. Drawing on the successfully partnership with the Honors College and the College of Human Sciences, three additional librarians have been designated as Embedded Librarians.

• College of Education: Rachel Cannady
• College of Forest Resources: Brad Brazzeal
• School of Human Sciences: LaDonne Delgado
• The Shackouls Honors College: Hillary Richardson
• Social Science Research Center: Sheeji Kathuria

Finale, AutoCAD, ArcGIS, Camtasia, and Snagit available

This summer the Library upgraded and added additional software at the request of students and faculty. Finale 2014, AutoCAD 2015, ArcGIS 10.2 (including ArcMap), Camtasia, and Snagit are now available in the Instructional Media Center located on the 2nd floor of Mitchell Memorial Library. Professional staff are ready and waiting to assist students and faculty in the use of these and many other applications. Just stop by the IMC to see what we have to offer.

Coming soon: Simple Scan Document Center

With the decline in photocopying and the increasing interest in quick scanning capabilities, the Library will reduce the number of photocopiers from 6 in Mitchell Memorial Library to 4. At the same time, the Library will add 2 Simple Scan Document Centers in the Copy Center at Access Services. The scanning stations include a document scanner, flatbed book scanner, a touch screen monitor and an easy-to-use interface that walks the patron through the process of scanning documents, books, and photos into PDF, JPEG, HTML and Word file formats. Patrons will have the option to save the digital files to a USB drive, Google Drive or send them via email.