Stressed About Finals? #NoWorriesUM!

Students and Colleagues,

The library plans special events each semester around final exam time to help students relieve study-related stress and anxiety.  The library has held breaks centering on free cereal for students and the response has been enthusiastic.  Last night the always popular Cereal Night had an estimated 150 students attend.  Stop by tonight for more cereal!

This year the library is adding activities to help you unwind from finals.  Please consider stopping by and participating in some of our new activities!

• Starting Wednesday  at 2:00 pm:  Help knit the world longest scarf!  Carmichael Library is trying to break the record for the World’s Longest Scarf and we need your help! The record is 33.74 Miles and it took 3 years but we can beat it! Not only are we going to beat the record but we are putting our knitting skills to work by also doing community service. Once we beat the record we will divide our scarf into multiple scarves to donate to Shelby Emergency Assistance to help families in need of warm clothes. A knitting station can be found in the Browsing Area on the main floor of the library. Together we can do it!
• Wednesday and  Thursday and Friday 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.  Experts will be available to teach you to knit.  Calling all knitters! Come out and help.  The knitting station will be open Wednesday after 2:00 p.m.  through Friday for anyone to stop by and take a moment to knit.  Stop by and knit to help us break the World’s Record.
• Tuesday at 3:00 p.m. Crafts in the Library! 3:00 p.m. Wednesday through Friday at 3:00 pm learn a new craft!  Make a Christmas tree ornament from the pages of old books!  The craft table will be open whenever the library is open. The craft table is in the Browsing area on the main floor in Ollie’s café.
• Games: Check out your favorite board games. Just sign up with the student on duty at the welcome desk on the ground floor and take a board game to play! We have Candyland, Uno, Taboo…take a look at the assortment of board games at the welcome desk on the ground floor.  A Giant Checker game is set-up right outside the JA Brown Room.
• Bubbles:  Bubble wands are on a table outside the front entrance of the library. Pick up a wand and wave your stress away! The Bubble machine outside the front entrance of the library will be on most of the day and night. 
• Secret Prizes: Check out the Carmichael Library Facebook Page and find the Secret Phrase. Come to the library and Say the Secret Phrase to the student assistant or librarian at the Reference desk on the main floor to claim your Final Exam Survival Prize. Like us on the Carmichael Library Facebook and look for the Secret Phrase.
• TV screen main floor:  Watch the Friends of Felines Rescue Center 24 X 7 live feed.   
• TV screen on the ground floor:  Relax while watching a crackling log fire. Bring your Snuggie and study by the virtual fire.

Also, follow our web resources to reduce finals stress, chosen by our library staff! We're sharing them this week on Facebook and Twitter

#NoWorriesUM Tweets

ILLiad to Be Unavailable Monday, December 1st

Next week will bring some temporary down time for our interlibrary loan service as we perform a system upgrade. ILLiad will be unavailable for requests between the hours of 12:00-2:00 p.m. on Monday, December 1st.

Prior to 12:00 p.m. on Monday we will temporarily disable our interlibrary loan web pages at http://libguides.montevallo.edu/illiad. Over the next several hours we will still accept requests for articles and books; for help submitting a request during this time, please use our Ask a Librarian web pages. Remember that any electronic requests submitted during the maintenance window will not be saved in our system. We will post to social media on Monday once the system upgrade is complete.

Thanks for your patience as we perform this update to our systems!

Announcing Digital History: History 411 for Spring 2015!

Detail of Spring 2014 HIS 411 Project by Hannah Givens

This news from Assistant Professor of History John Bawden: History 411 is open to students from all majors!

The course explores the way digital technology is changing the face of humanities research. Students participate in a number of exciting online projects related to the use of digital tools and media.

Carmichael Library has provided ample support for this course and other courses focusing on the digital humanities. HIS 411 students have gotten hands-on experience working with archival and other primary source documents to create rich, interactive timelines. For examples from Dr. Bawden's Spring 2014 class, check out our Timelines Page.

Course Details:

CRN: 10994
Meets: M 5:00-7:30 UMOM 309
Instructor: Dr. John R. Bawden
Contact: jbawden@montevallo.edu (205) 665-6179
Pre-requisites: History 101 & 102

Depression and Suicide Awareness Resources

The college years are a challenging time for many people. In addition to pursuing studies many students also juggle work and family obligations. But what if the stress of trying to keep up with all of these things becomes overwhelming?

UM's Office of Counseling Services endeavors to help students through these trying times. The Office provides free and confidential services to students including individual and group counseling.

Carmichael Library is partnering with Counseling Services to highlight the twin problems of depression and suicide. According to the Jed Foundation, one in four people will experience a depressive episode by age 24. Unfortunately, research shows that college age people are among the least likely to seek help for mental health issues.

Carmichael Library and Counseling Services have a shared goal of contributing to the academic success of all of our students. To that end, we've compiled a Depression and Suicide Awareness Resources list. The list contains nearly 20 book titles chosen by UM counselors and librarians to help students who may be struggling with depression, or to serve as resources for those who are helping a friend or loved one.

Our Depression and Suicide Awareness resource shelf is located on the east side of the library's Main Floor, near the Browsing Collection and restrooms. All of these items are available for checkout. While you're visiting the resource shelf, consider taking one of the cards, which have been supplied by Counseling Services. The cards list some of the signs and symptoms of depression.

To learn more about the Counseling Services office, visit their website or give them a call at (205) 665-6245.

Celebrating Day of the Dead

This week brings one of the library's favorite programs, the annual celebration of the Latin American observance Day of the Dead (Día de Los Muertos.) Since 2002, Dr. Eric Vaccarella has assigned his students the task of researching this tradition and of constructing a ceremonial altar (ofrenda) in honor of someone who has passed away. As in recent years, students are building their altars to persons of Mexican or Mexican-American heritage. This year's honorees are:

Cuauhtémoc (ca. 1500-1525) – Last Aztec Empire

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695) – Poet and advocate for women’s equality

Antonio López de Santa Anna (1791-1876) – Mexican president, political leader, and soldier

José Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913) – Popular artist and cartoonist

Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919) – Revolutionary

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) – Painter

Diego Rivera (1886-1957) – Painter and Muralist

Remedios Varo (1913-1963) – Painter

Selena Quintanilla-Pérez (1971-1995) – Singer

Ricardo Montalbán (1920-2009) – Actor

Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012) – Writer and Nobel Prize winner

The library is hosting the display and dedication of the altars on our ground floor. This year's display includes artifacts from Dr. Vaccarella's personal collection, as well as selections from the library's new Day of the Dead bookshelf.

The campus community is invited to attend as Dr. Vaccarella's SPN 201 students present their work during regular class times this Friday, October 31 from 10:00-10:50 and 11:00-11:50. Refreshments, including the traditional Bread of the Dead (Pan de Muerto,) will be served. For those who cannot join us this Friday, don't worry! The altars will remain on display through Friday, November 7.

This year's celebration is sponsored by Carmichael Library and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Introducing the W.M. "Mack" Wyatt Digital Archives

Wyatt as Alabama College's acting executive secretary (1943-1944)

Carmichael Library is pleased to announce the formation and dedication of the W.M. "Mack" Wyatt Digital Archives. This new collection serves as a repository for archived newspapers printed in Montevallo and Shelby County, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As this digital archive expands, newsprints appearing in various formats will be added.

Browse pages from the 1941 editions of the Montevallo Times

Wyatt got his start as a printer and typesetter at the age of 15 in 1907 in Clanton, Alabama. After graduation from high school in 1913, he bought a half-interest the next year in the Union Banner newspaper in Clanton. His younger brother, Gene Wyatt, bought the other half of the paper in 1917 and the two brothers published the paper for the next 18 years. In the early 1920’s, Mack left the Union Banner for a brief stint editing the DeKalb Herald in Ft. Payne, Alabama, but he soon returned to Clanton and the Union Banner.

Wyatt bought the Montevallo Times in 1935 and edited it until 1954. He started the Calera Herald in 1951 and edited it until 1954. Finally, he consolidated the Montevallo Times and the Calera Herald into the Shelby County Times-Herald in 1954 and published that paper until 1959 when he sold out to the Shelby County Reporter.

This advertisement for a cold medication ran in the January 10, 1901 edition of The Sentinel (Montevallo, Ala.)

The library invites members of the UM community as well as the general public to explore this trove of primary source documents. Among the advanced search and sharing options available in our collection is the ability to embed a mini book reader, as seen above. The collection includes runs from five local publications including W.M. Wyatt's Montevallo Times and an older weekly publication that ran under the name Montevallo News (1891-1895.)

A view of the imprint for the Montevallo Times taken from the February 20, 1941 edition.

This collection is made possible by a gift from Clayton M. Nordan (M.A. ’76).

Recognizing National Hispanic Heritage Month

National Hispanic Heritage Month is observed from September 15 to October 15 annually in celebration of the contributions made by American citizens whose ancestors hail from Spain, Mexico, and the rest of the Latin American world.

Begun in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week, the observance was expanded to a month long observation by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. The day of September 15 is significant as the day of independence for several Latin American nations. Mexico also celebrates its independence on September 16.

In 2013, UM professors Eric Vaccarella and Jason Cooper wrote a successful application for funding from the IL|UMinate grant program. Administered by the Office of the Quality Enhancement Program, the IL|UMinate initiative is a competitive funding program that is used to support the goals of information literacy in coursework across the campus.

This year, the library is pleased to display the result of this grant: a bookshelf of 30 titles, which will support teaching and learning about the Day of the Dead tradition, as well as other aspects of Mexican and Latin American culture. The complete list of resources may be viewed on our Day of the Dead Bibliography list in WorldCat Local.

We invite our students and faculty to join us in recognizing a rich cultural tradition, as well as the creative and intellectual contributions of Latin Americans living in the United States and abroad.

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Resources for July 15 Primary Runoff Elections

Alabamians will have another opportunity to head to polls tomorrow Tuesday, July 15. Light turnout is expected, but there are several state Senate and House primary contests that need to be decided. Locally, voters must choose between two GOP candidates running for the U.S. House Sixth District seat, which will be vacated by Rep. Spencer Bachus next year.

Alabama Votes website

Voters have a variety of tools for researching candidates, as well as easy-to-use online tools to check registration status and polling places. Alabama Votes, which is a service of the office of Secretary of State provides a registration lookup form, as well as a polling place search. These tools are especially helpful for verifying your state House and Senate district. Also available at this site is detailed information on recently-enacted voter ID laws. (While most voters will show their driver's license at the poll, you may be interested to know that your UMID is a valid form of identification for Montevallo students and employees.)

Other Useful Sites for Voters:

Sponsored by the nonpartisan Lucy Burns Institute, Ballotpedia has detailed coverage of elections at all levels. The site has an impressive and detailed entry on the so-called Cotton Amendment, which is the only ballot initiative that will appear across the state on this Election Day.

Project Vote Smart is an excellent site for researching candidates and elected officials. The site includes candidates' voting records, biographical data, issue positions, campaign finance records, and more. Voters in our state may be interested in a page dedicated to tomorrow's legislative primary runoff elections.

Vote411

Lastly, Vote411 is a vital resource for information on state election laws. A project of the League of Women Voters Education Fund, the site also contains an online voters' guide with a ballot building tool.

Be sure to head to the polls tomorrow and make your voice heard!

Restructuring History Education, at All Levels

Screeds warning students about the impracticality of graduate education in the humanities are a dime a dozen. But maybe it's not the education itself that is the problem, but instead the way that said education is structured. For a long time, leading professional organizations like the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Historical Association (AHA) have watched profound changes in the academy take place, yet they have not done anything substantial to revise what graduate education looks like.

A character sketch from the 1943 College Night Production Materials, which are housed in the Annie E. Crawford Milner Archives. This item was digitized by Taylor Kerr in HIST 411 Digital History.

Finally, it seems, that's not the case anymore. As was discussed on the most recent episode of the Digital Campus podcast, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the AHA a $1.6 million grant to assist four prominent history departments as they restructure their doctoral programs. The AHA has recognized that the process of educating people to conduct research and teach in universities across the country is not sustainable. The problem isn't just that people who study history aren't getting jobs. It's much greater than that. Instead, the technological developments and rise in digital culture has transformed the acts of producing and consuming history (for more on this, see N. Katherine Hayles's How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis). Now, "producing history" requires a vastly expanded array of digital literacies and information seeking skills.

This is why the Mellon Foundation awarded the grant to the AHA, which will in turn fund four programs: UCLA, Columbia University, University of Chicago, and University of New Mexico. According to James Grossman, executive director of the AHA, the grant will help create curricula that train doctoral students to find employment in business, government, and the nonprofit world, thus "widening the presence and influence of humanistic thinking" outside of academe.

So what would such revised curricula look like? Examples include:

• New "clinic" courses to examine how history intersects with public organizations
• Training with digital tools for work in archives, libraries, and museums
• Project development that is policy-oriented and reaches out to the public
• Work with presentation strategies that are more common outside of higher education

At the University of Montevallo, we believe that this revised educational model should begin at the undergraduate level. In the past year, several history classes have developed with national trends in mind and have begin to implement digital history methods into the classroom experience. Robert Barone has facilitated successful archive projects on The History of Ireland and Medieval European History. John Bawden has taught an upper-level course in producing digital history. That class worked on a digital archive that produced collections associated with our archives. Similarly, Carey Heatherly is in the process of teaching a class on Oral History in which students interview members of the campus community and create digital records of those interviews.

We hope that students will gain skills that transfer to many contexts, not just graduate school in the humanities. Further, we hope that their work will lead to an increased body of knowledge produced by the university. Take some time today to visit the library for our History Day event, and while you're here, check out some of these digital projects.

Reflection on Archiving Irish History

This semester, students in Robert Barone's HIST 411/511 seminar have been studying the History of Ireland and have created a digital archive of items pertaining to Ireland's history. The final result is an Omeka site, The History of Ireland, which features pictures, videos, primary source documents, and other items related to the political and social life of Ireland.

Students from the class will present their digital exhibits in the J.A. Brown Room in the Carmichael library tomorrow, April 15 from 6-7 PM. The presentation will also include a roundtable discussion on the process of digitizing historical objects and creating digital history exhibits with Omeka. Some of the questions we'll consider include:

• What is the value of doing Digital History as opposed to doing traditional forms of historical research? 
• What kind of research did you do to create items on the Omeka archive? How did it compare to the historical research you've done? 
• What are some difficulties you had with completing the Omeka project? What do you wish we could've done differently? 
• What other or future uses do you see a tool like Omeka serving? Can you think of any examples on campus? 

 If you're interested in digital history methods and and would like to know more about this process, please join us for the discussion. Anyone is welcome to attend. Light refreshments served.

Resources on Finding and Growing Local Food

Photo by Stephanie Lamphere. Creative Commons license.

Spring is now here and with it, the opportunity to grow your own food or to buy foods that are produced in your own community. The last few years have seen a sharp increase of interest in locally grown food and in the development of community gardens. The Community Garden Coalition for Birmingham lists over 30 community, church-, and school-affiliated gardens. Separately, the state Farmers Market Authority counts eight farmers markets in Shelby County, including one in Montevallo.

Montevallo boasts two community gardens, both founded in 2010. Montevallo Seed to Table offers educational programs on growing healthy food. The university's Organic Community Garden was founded as a project of the UM Environmental Club and produces thousands of pounds of food annually. Much of this produce is donated to Shelby Emergency Assistance.

Last year, I endeavored to collect my own list of area farms and community gardens. Since so many of these have a presence in Facebook, I used the social network's Interest List feature to collect them in one place. You can get to my List here: Birmingham Area Local Food and Produce.

In addition to supporting community gardening, the university's Summer Harvest course is an interdisciplinary offering designed to teach students about the basic issues of food insecurity, food distribution, and food equality. You can learn more about this course at the university's Environmental Studies course page.

Carmichael Library holds several books and videos on producing local food. You can view a sample of them here: Resources on Finding and Growing Local Food. In addition to information on growing food in your backyard, this list includes some coverage of the food industry and the debate on organic versus genetically-modified foods.

Lastly, the Carmichael Library has supported classroom learning on a variety of topics in the environmental sciences. One example of our efforts is our Environmental Studies Research Guide.

Are you planning a food garden this spring? Let us know in the comments and keep in touch. We'd love to know what you're growing and what works for you!

Winners of the Nook giveaway!

Jerrie Rochester on left, Faith Vines on right.

During Fall semester, Carmichael Library distributed a survey about eBook usage and preferences. Survey participants had the opportunity to enter their email addresses for a chance to win a NOOK, generously donated by the University of Montevallo Barnes & Noble.

Our two winners were UM student Faith Vines and UM staff person Jerrie Rochester.  Congratulations Jerrie and Faith and thanks to the UM community for your feedback!!

Temporary Outage of WorldCat Local and Other Systems

At around 11:00 a.m. this morning we were notified that our WorldCat Local catalog was not working. We discovered shortly thereafter that other OCLC systems were down. As I write, WorldCat Local is again up and running, but we want to point our students and faculty to some alternative methods of searching as the restoration of OCLC services is currently ongoing.

For book searches: Our Classic Catalog remains available. You can search by title, author, Library of Congress subject, or simply do a keyword search. This system can also be used to find DVDs, scores, and other materials within the library building.

For article and journal searches: The overwhelming majority of our databases are not affected by this system outage and can be searched as they normally are. OCLC Firstsearch, CAMIO, and select other databases may be temporarily down. Our complete databases A-Z list is available on our website.

For Interlibrary Loan requests: Our ILLiad system for Interlibrary Loan has so far not been affected by this outage.

For research assistance: We remain available via phone, text, and social media. Check our Ask a Librarian page for the many ways to reach us and get assistance with your projects.

Still Need Spring Break Plans? Join Us

We're almost one month away from Spring Break. If you don't have any plans yet and are interested in serving other people, consider joining the 2014 Office of Service Learning and Sustainability Alternative Spring Break experience. This year we'll be traveling to Escambia County, AL to team up with BamaCovered, a grassroots healthcare advocacy group. The trip will take place during the week of March 24-28. We currently have about 5 spots left. If you're interested, please sign up here.

About the Trip 


Escambia County, AL is the second-most highly uninsured county in the state. According to the most recent American Community Survey 5-year estimate, 21.9 percent of its population does not have access to health care. The work we will do in partnership with Bama Covered will help hundreds of people find access to coverage under the provisions of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

Trip Details

• Availability: The trip is open to ten students on a first come, first served basis. To apply for the trip, please fill out this form.
• Cost: $250 per student. A deposit of $50 is due by March 3 and the full payment is due by March 14. Dates: We will leave Montevallo early on the morning of Monday, March 24 and return in the late afternoon of Friday, March 28. 
• Agenda: During the first three days, we will be facilitating access to health care in Escambia County, AL. Then, we will retreat to a beachfront property in Pensacola, FL for a time of reflection upon our service. 
• What’s included: Your trip fee includes transportation, lodging in Escambia County and Pensacola, and meals on the trip. You will need a small amount of money for miscellaneous meals and personal expenses. 
• Expectations: Our Alternative Spring Break trip will be a time of service, fun, learning, and reflection. You will be asked to complete a training session in preparation for the trip, and there will be several reflective exercises on our journey. The first training session is February 25, and anyone is welcome to attend.
• Leaders: Andrew Battista and Lauren Wallis of the Carmichael Library will lead our trip.

Donate to Campus Food Pantry at Carmichael

Inspiration guards the food donation box

The Social Work Club is running a food drive for the Campus Food Pantry, and you can donate at Carmichael Library.  The pantry is accepting canned foods, non-perishables, and toiletries from now until March 5.  The items go to members of the campus community.

Dr. Delores Brumfield White Collection Program Saturday, February 8

Photo credit: Mike Price

College Night 2014 brings a special exhibit and event to the campus library. In conjunction with this year's homecoming festivities, Carmichael Library introduces the Dr. Delores Brumfield White Collection at the university's Milner Archives and Special Collections.

This year marks White's 60th Montevallo homecoming and it affords the library a chance to celebrate a unique era in sports and women's history. Delores "Dolly" Brumfield White was a member of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) from 1947-1953. The league was formed in 1943, when the nation's war efforts were claiming some of Major League Baseball's best players. Chicago Cubs president Philip Wrigley and other business leaders envisioned a league that would entertain fans as well as keep stadiums open.

Dolly was only 14 years old when she reported for Spring Training in Havana, Cuba in 1947. She was subsequently drafted by the South Bend (IN) Blue Sox. She was part of two pennant winning teams with the Fort Wayne (IN) Daisies. Dolly played for three teams over her seven seasons of professional baseball and posted a .332 batting average in 1953.

After graduating Alabama College (University of Montevallo) in 1954, Dr. White spent 40 years in the teaching and coaching profession including 30 years at Henderson State University where she was a professor and coach.

An exhibit featuring memorabilia from Dolly's career is now on display on the library's main floor. The library will host a program and reception in her honor this Saturday, February 8 starting at 10:00 a.m. This event is free and open to the public.

Now Live: Spring 2014 Instruction Workshop Series

The Carmichael Library announces the Spring 2014 Instruction Workshop Series. We've hosted sessions like these in past semesters, and now we introduce an expanded lineup on topics like blogging, using Twitter for information management, crafting online presentations, and more.



Instruction workshops are hands-on experiences where you learn how to create projects or manage information with online tools. You can come and ask questions, work on your own class assignments, or just observe. And because the sessions are informal, there's no need to make reservations. Arrive late or leave early. We don't mind! 

Earn Badges & AIM Event Card Punches

Now, this semester, if you attend an instruction workshop, you will get credit for AIM events.

Some professors may offer extra credit if you attend an instruction workshop session, but more often than not, you may want to come and learn simply because you're interested. However, you may also want to earn badges. If you attend a workshop, you are entitled to earn a badge (see the lineup on the above slideshow), and you may also opt in to our semester long badges competition. Those who accumulate the most badges will receive prizes, which may include print cards to be used in the library. We'll keep track on a leaderboard, which is displayed on the Instruction Workshop Series homepage.

Congratulations to Thomas Dunklin, who was our winner for the Fall 2013 semester!



This first session is tomorrow, January 14 in the EBSCO room.  Lauren Wallis will lead us in a discussion about using Apple and Android apps to do better research.

Spring 2014 Instruction Workshop Series Schedule

Apps for Research  - Jan 14, 5:00-6:00 PM How can you make the most of your iPhone or iPad to succeed academically? Lauren Wallis workshops some apps and shares ideas on using apps for research.

Informed Blogging - Jan 23, 4:00-5:00  Are you taking a class that requires you to write on a blog? Are you interested in writing for an online audience? This workshop will help you understand the Wordpress blogging platform. Andrew Battista will explain the conventions and technical skills needed to blog effectively.


Navigating WorldCat Local - Jan 29, 5:00-6:00 PM  Learn smarter organization strategies and search better with WorldCat Local.

Pedagogy and ARTstor - Feb 4, 4:00-5:00 PM Catherine Walsh helps us use ARTstor to organize information and image collections for teaching and personal research.

Curating with Twitter - Feb 13, 4:00-5:00 PM In this session, Andrew Battista will demonstrate how to organize and consume information via Twitter, a microblogging platform that limits user contributions to 140 characters. We will cover the skills of attention management and will explore supplementary Twitter apps and platforms.

Building Archives with Omeka - Feb 18, 5:00-6:00 PM Omeka is a content management system that allows users to digitize resources and display them in collections. Learn about Dublin Core and other elements of archival creation with Omeka.

Developing GIS Projects - Feb 27, 5:00-6:00 PM  GIS projects are visual representations on maps of complex social, economic, natural, and cultural patterns. GIS projects help students form questions about people and places and translate them into a map that represents data that shows some kind of change over time. In this workshop Andrew Battista will explore GIS projects with Google Fusion Tables.

Charting History with Timeline JS - Mar 5, 3:00-4:00 PM  Do you want to tell a story about how ideas or things develop over time? Timeline JS is a tool that allows you to display data as a linear, interactive narrative. All you need is a Google Account. In this workshop, Andrew Battista will share ideas about incorporating creative media sources into Timeline JS projects.

Technology for Presentations - Mar 11, 5:00-6:00 PM Learn how to use free online resources to enhance your next class presentation. Lauren Wallis will demonstrate using Prezi, Glogster, Storify, and Pic Monkey to support engaging presentations.

Editing and Producing with iMovie - April 2, 5:00-6:00 PM Involved in a movie or video project? Mike Price of the Digital Media Lab shows us how to edit videos and produce content with Apple's iMovie software.


Podcast Editing with Audacity - April 8, 5:00-6:00 PM  Learn to create and produce audio projects with Audacity, a free editing software. Andrew Battista will facilitate a hands-on editing workshop. You are encouraged to bring your own laptop.

Showcase: World Regional Geography Map Projects

The Fall 2013 semester marked another successful cycle of Geographic Information Systems Projects (GIS) at the University of Montevallo. In GEOG 231 World Regional Geography with Virginia Ochoa-Winemiller, students explored issues like immigration, wage earnings according to gender, education attainment, and economic growth in the wake of Disney World. The groups were instructed to identify several indicators and represent social changes over time via Google Fusion Tables. Here's a sample list of projects:  

• The Impact of the Creation of Disney World  
• Elderly Voting in the 2008 Election 
• Between Religion and Poverty: Megachurches and Poverty in California 
• Immigration: Crossing the Line  
• Gay Marriage and Population  
• Gender Wage Gap in the U.S.A.: 1999 vs. 2012  
• Comparison of Graduation Rates and Median Income Levels in Alabama Counties 
• Population Change in Arizona After the 2008 Recession

In one of my favorite projects, Emma Schlesinger, Maggie Thompson, Lauren Davis, and Shyanne Erickson discovered that even though legislation like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 has been passed, wage inequality across gender lines persists across the United States, and Alabama ranks near the bottom in terms of pay equality.

A map that represents home values in the U.S. The darker green represents higher percentages of homes (by county) that are owner occupied and worth less than $50,000. I made this map in five minutes.

In 2014, GIS studies in Montevallo are made even better by the Carmichael Library's permanent acquisition of Social Explorer. This Oxford University Press resource presents current and historical U.S. Census data and make it exceedingly easy to create visually appealing maps.

GIS is not just a tool of learning for Geography classes; just about any question or concept can be mapped. Get in touch with librarians at Carmichael if you are interested in exploring map-based  learning in your classes.

Learning Enrichment Center Hours for Spring 2014

The Learning Enrichment Center has announced its hours for the Spring term. The Center will be open Monday-Thursday from 8:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. and Friday from 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. The Center provides free tutoring services for the students of the University of Montevallo in a number of different courses. Services include individual tutoring, small group tutoring, and facilitated group study.

The Learning Enrichment Center is located on the lower level of Carmichael Library.  You can reach the Center by phone at (205) 665-6113 or by e-mail at enrichment@montevallo.edu.