Today’s Special – Page 7 – Mary and Jeff Bell Library Blog

Open Access Week is October 21-27!

Post author:Alexa Hight
Post published:October 22, 2019
Post category:News @ Your Library Things to Do Today's Special

What is Open Access? Open access (OA) refers to information that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. This can include journals, books, databases, and more. Why did the open access movement begin? There are several reasons, like most things, one is due to cost. Between 1986 and 2011, serial expenditures rose 402% (see graph). For four decades, subscription prices have risen significantly faster than inflation and library budgets. Another reason for the open access movement…

Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Librarian Selected as SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow

Post author:Jennifer Anderson
Post published:September 3, 2019
Post category:News @ Your Library Today's Special

Ms. Lisa Louis from the Mary and Jeff Bell Library has been selected as a fellow in the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, an intensive professional development program to empower library professionals with the knowledge, skills, and community connections to lead successful open education initiatives that benefit students. The two-semester program blends online, peer-to-peer, and project-based learning to build a comprehensive understanding of the open education space coupled with practical know-how to take action on campus and beyond. Lisa is one…

100 Years After the Storm

Post author:Amanda Kowalski
Post published:August 30, 2019
Post category:Things to Do Today's Special

While Hurricane Harvey is still fresh in everyone’s memories, this is not the only storm to leave an impact on Corpus Christi. Hurricanes have marked Corpus Christi’s history and culture. Each storm impacted the city and changed its landscape. The engineering of downtown revolves around the impact of hurricanes. In the late 1800s many hurricanes molded Texas. A storm leveled Indianola in 1875 and again in 1886. After these twin storms the settlement disperse instead of rebuilding on the coast.…

Penny Wall

Student Sculptures Featured at Bell Library

Post author:Bell Library
Post published:July 12, 2019
Post category:Library Randomness Today's Special We Made This

Site-sensitive installation art, according to Island University Assistant Professor of Art Leticia Bajuyo, can include materials ranging from paint to steel to sound, as these artworks not only take up physical space but also space in our minds. This is one of the philosophies that shaped the spring 2019 Sculpture III course at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and led to its focus on public art installations. In collaboration with the Mary and Jeff Bell Library, eight student-created sculptures are now…

Where Did the Makerspace Movement Begin?

Post author:Bell Library
Post published:June 21, 2019
Post category:Tech in the Library Today's Special We Made This

Makerspaces have grown at an exponential rate over the past decade and this popularity is felt around the world. According to Popular Science (2016), there are 14 times as many makerspaces as there were a decade ago, in fact numbers show nearly 1,400 active spaces across the globe. But, if you’re anything like me, you begin to wonder, where did this all begin? What was the catalyst that set off the spark to this hot bed of creativity? According to…

Looking for Game of Thrones? We GoT It!

Post author:Bell Library
Post published:June 11, 2019
Post category:Books & More Today's Special

This blog is spoiler free! Winter is coming…. Well, Winter has ended but, that doesn’t mean you can’t binge watch over 72 hours of Game of Thrones! If you love dragons, epic battle scenes, medieval politics, and beautiful musical scores, you are sure to become an instant fan of the show. Set in the mythical land of Westeros, nine noble families contend for rule of the land and to lay claim to the Iron Throne. You will adore, or hate, the…

Cuba’s Pirate Internet: A Short Story

Post author:Bell Library
Post published:May 3, 2019
Post category:Library Randomness Today's Special

Tourist hotels line the beaches of Havana; you can see their lights to the north as you ride the P5 bus along Avenida 41. You've never been inside, but you know they contain another world: a world filled with people from places that have never even heard of El Paquete Semanal. The sellers of El Paquete, the paqueteros, all say that's where the 'real' internet lives, that the Maestros all have connections inside, that the hotels are modern-day pirate ships.…

A Review of The Library Book

Post author:Bell Library
Post published:April 16, 2019
Post category:Books & More Today's Special

I admit it. When I think about sitting down with a good book to read purely for enjoyment, I think of fiction…specifically science fiction or fantasy. So when I checked out The Library Book by Susan Orlean from the Library’s Popular Reading Collection, I was thrilled to discover how enjoyable and engrossing it was. On the surface this book tells the story of the 1986 fire of the Los Angeles Public Library main branch, one of the worst building fires in the…

Frame of the Day: Authority is Constructed and Contextual

Post author:Bell Library
Post published:April 2, 2019
Post category:Library Hacks Today's Special

Last Friday, the Dean of the Library, Cate Rudowsky, wrote a blog post discussing the upcoming Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), information literacy, and why it’s all important. I’m going to dig a little bit deeper and talk about the actual concepts as they have been outlined in The Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education, the go-to resource on everything you need to know about information literacy, which for the sake of my typin’ fingers, I’m just going to refer to…

It’s All in Your Head: Psychological Thrillers and the Unreliable Narrator

Post author:Trisha Hernandez
Post published:March 19, 2019
Post category:Books & More Library Randomness Service for You Today's Special

You’re a liar…delusional...confused…insane! No one is EVER going to believe you! Ok, well not you per say (theoretically at least, I don’t really know you, so…), but this is a common accusation made in many of the best psychological thrillers available today. Take the box office success, The Girl on the Train, staring Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, and a bunch of other names that Wikipedia lists. The movie, based on the New York Times best seller by Paula Hawkins, follows Rachel Watson, an alcoholic divorcée who is…