AP SoundBank

Working in conjunction with AccuWeather, the world’s largest corporate supplier of weather information and images, AP is now making its sound archive available to schools (K–12) and public and academic libraries. AccuWeather’s mission is to supply copyright-cleared sound to subscribers for educational purposes over the internet, using an interface that is easily and intuitively understood by non-news professionals. The Associated Press (AP) formed in 1848 when six daily newspapers in New York City collaborated on the installation of a telegraphic relay to transmit foreign news brought by ships docking in the harbor. AP began adding audio content to its news services in the early 1940s. Leased wires delivered sound clips to radio stations throughout the country. Today, AP is providing digitized audio to radio stations via the internet. Along with the resulting efficiencies and cost effectiveness, news professionals, students and researchers now have random access to all current and archived news stories

Reference Suite @ FACTS.com

Facts On File was founded in 1940 to serve the radio news business with the publication of the weekly Facts On File World News Digest, the complete database of which contains 100,000 articles that have been meticulously indexed and cross-linked to nearly 1,000,000 records from Facts On File annual indexes. The Web version of these two sources went online as FACTS.com in March 1999. Four modules that have been added are Today’s Science, Issues and Controversies, The World Almanac, and Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia. Together, these five modules make up the Reference Suite @ FACTS.com, which was launched in April 2000. In addition, Reuter\u27s newswire delivers stories that are held for two weeks, thus providing a vital bridge between daily news and the articles added weekly, monthly or yearly by the various publications that make up the Reference Suite

e-global library

e-global library is an information broker that has pulled together excellent information resources, and packaged them in a way that makes them more affordable and readily available through a user-friendly delivery system that is fully tailorable to the needs of individual institutions and libraries. Just as a Wall Street mutual fund is able to give professionally managed stock market access to smaller investors at an affordable price, e-global library is an information broker that gives access to several quality online library services for a price which most educational facilities would be unable to match if they were to implement these services on their own. Of course, most schools already have libraries, so the question is, will they receive enough value from e-global library to justify the added expense

Assessing OER

Assessing open education resources using the 5 R\u27s; retain, reuse, revie, remix and redistribute. Also titled Evaluating OER

Credo Online Reference Service

Credo Online Reference Service, popularly known as Credo Reference, is an e-reference database for K-12, public libraries, and academic libraries. The user-friendly interface provides an excellent place for students to begin their research, or to learn about the process of doing research during information literacy instruction. Instructors are provided with pre-proxied permalinks and embed codes that allow them to integrate any part of this resource into their learning management system

Establishing an Open Access Publication Policy

Marshall University formally adopted an Open Access Publication Policy on November 19, 2020. We will discuss what worked to finally secure this policy which may be viewed at https://libguides.marshall.edu/oap

The physical properties and composition of vega-type disks

Vega excess stars are main sequence stars which are surrounded by a cool dust disk, left as a remnant of the massive disk produced early in the star’s formation. Vega-type disks are typically optically thin, contain little or no gas, and are roughly 100 AU in radius with a cleared region close to the star. This thesis presents a programme of observational studies which aimed to determine the basic physical properties of nearby Vega-type disks, and the detailed modelling and analysis that were required to interpret these observationsThe first part of the thesis presents new sub-mm observations of Vega excess stars, and modelling for all known Vega excess stars which have sub-mm data, using dust grain models with realistic optical properties. Analysis of the resolved targets showed that different objects require very different dust grain properties in order to simultaneously fit the image data and spectral energy distribution (SED). Fomalhaut and Vega require solid dust grains, whilst HR4796 and HD 141569 can only be fitted using porous grains. The older stars tend to have grains which are less porous than younger stars, which may indicate that collisions in the disks have reprocessed the initially fluffy grains into a more solid form, ε Eri appears to be deficient in small dust grains compared to the best fitting model, which may be due to factors which affect the size distribution of grains close to the radiation pressure blowout limit. When the model is applied to the unresolved targets, an estimate of the disk size can be made. However, the large diversity in dust composition for the resolved disks means that it is impossible to make a reliable assumption as to the composition of the grains in the unresolved disks, and there is a corresponding uncertainty in the estimated disk size. In addition, the poor fit for ε Eri shows that the model cannot always account for the SED even if the disk size is known. These two factors mean that it may not be possible to determine a disk’s size without actually resolving it.The second part of the thesis describes mid-IR observations designed to directly resolve the disks around several nearby main sequence stars, and hence obtain a direct measurement of the disk size. An analytical model of the telescope point spread function (PSF) was developed and fitted to observations of standard stars, and this model was used to establish whether the science observations were consistent with a point source, or if they showed evidence for a resolved disk. Though the observations failed to resolve any of the targets, techniques were developed to reduce imaging data of marginally resolved disks, and the observations have provided a clearer idea of what is required for a successful program in the future. The key requirements are regular monitoring of the PSF (i.e. interleaved PSF star observations), a high quality flatfield and fairly narrow band filters. In addition, 20 /im observations are probably needed in most cases. Ultimately, the technique is limited by the stability of the PSF, and on the difference in colour between the PSF star and the debris diskFinally, in the third part of the thesis I present the results of a search for molecular hydrogen using MICHELLE, the mid-IR echelle spectrometer at the UK Infrared Telescope. The aim of these observations was to investigate the controversial ISO detection of H₂ around Vega excess stars, as reported by Thi et al. (2001, Nature, v. 409, p. 60). Due to weather constraints, the observations focused on two pre-main sequence stars, AB Aur and CQ Tau. No significant emission lines were detected from either star, and the upper limits on line flux were significantly smaller than those measured from the ISO observations, which suggests that the emission detected by ISO is extended on scales of at least 6 arcsec, and does not come from the disk as previously thought. This result indicates that the ISO detection of large amounts of H₂ in Vega-type disks may also be unreliable, and further observations are needed to determine their true gas content

UPCC Book Collections on Project MUSE

The University Press Content Consortium (UPCC) has collaborated with Project MUSE to host over 15,000 e-books on the MUSE platform. This database was launched on January 1, 2012, and is fully integrated with MUSE’s content from 500 journals in the humanities and social sciences to form a seamlessly searchable database of books and articles that provides scholarly content from 192 university presses and learned societies at a very affordable price. Carnegie Tier 4 & 5 universities may receive an additional 20% and 40% discount respectively if a purchase contract is signed by Aug. 31, 2012. As has always been the case with journal content on MUSE, UPCC Books on Project MUSE will offer unlimited usage, downloading, and printing for purchasing libraries. Book content is offered in DRM-free, chapter-level PDFs. SUSHI and COUNTER-compliant usage statistics and free MARC records are available

Finding OER

Larry Sheret speaks about finding OER materials such as in open book publishers, directory of open books and Google

Theology & Religion Online

Theology & Religion Online (TARO) is a digital repository consisting of four library collections that focus on Protestant and Catholic doctrine, studies into the historical Jesus, and religion in North America (see Figure 1). It includes newly digitized primary texts by major theologians, multi-volume works, references, e-books, chapters, articles, an image library, peer-reviewed secondary readings on core topics, and commentary on lectionaries. This Christ-focused resource is rounded out with a library covering the diverse religious traditions of North America and the hot topics spawned at the intersection of ethics, social movements, and religion. This database is curated and presented in a way that high school students, college students, and scholars will find easy to navigate with authoritative resources that are comprehensive and regularly added to