What do the 2008 books Google Web Toolkit Applications and How to Be a Complete and Utter Failure in Life, Work & Everything: 44 1/2 Steps to Lasting Underachievement! have in common? They are both part of the Library's new Safari books ebook collection. The Library has just gained access to 629 ebooks on the Safari platform. The books are on engineering, computers science, and a wide range of business topics. To review the list of Safari books, search the Library Catalog, Vikat, using 'Safari' as a keyword.

As a member of the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of academic libraries in the Pacific Northwest, the Library gains access to the collections of 35 member libraries. This translates into access to over 8 million titles through Summit.

Now, the University of Washington Libraries will start lending some of its bound and unbound periodicals through Summit. This pilot will be held during the Spring quarter, then will assessed to determine if the pilot should continue. The periodicals will circulate through Summit with a shorter loan rule of 3 days with one renewal. UW's notice about this change states: "We have benefited from the generosity of those Alliance libraries which already lend such materials and are pleased to expand the range of materials we lend as well. Summit borrowing is a wonderful example of regional collaboration and its value to users is very clear."

Thank you to UW Libraries for providing this expanded access to resources for us during the Spring quarter!

During the Winter 2008 term, Portland State University surveyed first-year undergraduate students who entered the University with a high-school GPA greater than 3.0 and who earned at least a 3.0 GPA in their first term at PSU. These high-achieving students provided valuable data, including their perceptions of the Portland State Library. When asked, "What services have you found useful as a first-year student?," the number one reply was "library service."

We're pleased to receive this feedback from our students and we're proud that high-achieving students rank the Library as the top service provider in their first year. Let us know how we can continue to deliver exceptional service to meet your needs!

Event: Spring Faculty Symposium 2008 - Copy Rights Matter

Date and Location: Friday, April 25 in Smith Memorial Ballroom

Time: 8:30 am - 2:30 pm

Have you ever had to ask for permission to use your own work? Or have you wondered if there is a way to create coursepacks that are more affordable for your students? Do you know if it is okay to show "The Great Gatsby" in class or post video clips from "Saving Private Ryan" to Blackboard?

The Portland State Copyright Working Group has organized an informative and provocative symposium on copyright and its effects on higher education. The speakers and breakout sessions will cover the topics that faculty at Portland State have asked about:

• Author’s rights and Open Access publishing alternatives
• Fair use (and the public domain)
• Library resources (e-reserves, subscriptions, licenses, etc), photocopying, and coursepacks
• Visual media and copyright
• Using digital materials in Blackboard
• Mechanisms to manage & share innovations, technology, educational materials created at PSU

Information about the symposium and links to the agenda and speaker biographies can be found at http://www.pdx.edu/oaa/springsymposium.html.

The exhibit, ZoomUganda, shares the journey of 12 girls given 12 cameras and 24 hours in which to tell their own stories through their own lenses, empowering its participants to stand in the centers of the world and show you the view from there. Come see this important exhibit at the Portland State Library this April! Julie Resnick, the ZoomUganda project director, is delighted to share her vision to raise awareness about this program, which contributes to the St. Andrew Secondary School in Matale,
Uganda:

I handed out the cameras with their names written on duct tape to
each girl. I drew a camera on the blackboard and explained each
part: 'This is the lens. This is the shutter. This is the zoom.' The
girls immediately repeated 'zoom!zoom!zoom!' in many voices. They
had named their project!

-Julie Resnick, ZoomUganda Project Director

ZoomUganda is sponsored by the Harambee Centre, a nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, which connects people and groups in the United States with the peoples and cultures of the African continent.

Learn more about ZoomUganda at http://www.zoomuganda.org. Visit the exhibit on the first floor of the Branford P. Millar Library, April 1 through April 30.

PSU Library’s coverage of dissertations has taken two big steps forward. We have upgraded from the Dissertation Abstracts International (DAI) database to the Dissertations and Masters Theses database. The Library can now provide the full text of dissertations completed in most North American (and some European) institutions from 1997-present. (For dissertations done at some institutions, the full text coverage dates back further than 1997.) View complete description of the Dissertation and Theses database.

Additionally, as previously reported in this blog, the Library’s full text offering of PSU dissertations now includes all dissertations from 1980 to the present. Review the list of these dissertations here.