With 5,446 items in WKU’s Research and Creative Activity Database, TopSCHOLAR® attained 201,219 full-text downloads to date and 121,999 downloads in the past year. Check out digitalcommons.wku.edu and contact connie.foster@wku.edu for more information on how your efforts can be accessed globally! TopSCHOLAR® allows for hosting conference sessions, publishing journals, and extending other intellectual efforts to the world.
Connie Foster, Head
Department of Library Technical Services
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GaleCengage now allows unlimited user access to Biography & Genealogy Master Index (BGMI) and Times Digital Archives at no additional cost. This initiative means no turnaways when trying to access these databases that previously were limited to 1-3 users. Usually when a library increases user access, the publisher pricing model increases significantly, especially for unlimited access–the most costly access configuration.
This move is a response to tight economic times for libraries and publishers. WKU also has the Testing & Education Reference Center, already with unlimited users.
Connie Foster, Head
Library Technical Services
December 8, 2009
WKU Libraries joined the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (ndltd.org) as an additional way to increase access to the University’s research at the graduate level. The NDLTD catalog provides an additional discovery service that supports the international outreach for disseminating scholary research at WKU. Among the member institutions are Yale University, Rice, major state universities (Texas, NC, Tennessee), and institutions in Sweden, Kenya, United Kingdom, Zimbabwe, and many more. The platform that allows our theses to be harvested for additional databases is TopSCHOLAR®.
Through these initiatives, and others, we support a more robust and open scholarly communications system that allows the world to view our intellectual assets.
If you need additional information, contact Connie Foster at 745-6151.
September 16, 2009
In case you could not attend the Southern Kentucky Book Fest or just didn’t have enough disposable cash to purchase all the books you liked, we now have in the circulating collections many titles of authors featured at the 2009 festival by authors who wrote about Kentucky or who are from Kentucky.
For the Ed Center: Penny and the Punctuation Bee, Kentucky’s Boone, and Down Sand Mountain.
For the main collection, check out WKU’s English Professor Elizabeth Oakes’ The Luminescence of All Things Emily; Kentucky Horse Country; A Backward Glance ( by emeritus English Department Head Joseph Millichap); New Growth; Kentucky Clay; Josie Underwood’s Civil War Diary (by Kentucky Special Collections Librarian Nancy Baird); The Narcotic Farm, Society’s Child; Louisville and the Civil War; 1864: Lincoln at the Gates of History; Who Killed Art Deco?; Born Amish; Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountain Top Removal; Prehistoric Cavers of Mammoth Cave.
Connie Foster, Head
Library Technical Services
July 21, 2009
TopSCHOLAR® is a now registered trademark of Western Kentucky University. The name is ours alone and signifies both a permanency and priority for The Research & Creative Activity Database of WKU. The process and the results indicate nearly a two-year effort by the Dean of Libraries Mike Binder and Associate Vice-President Sadiq Shah, with legal counsel. We appreciate the effort and are proud to have the library’s first registered service. TopSCHOLAR® continues to grow daily with the deposit of new content and the creation of new communities and series to house the content. Researchers around the world have used these resources. If you have any questions or want a series created for your department or unit, we will do it for you and upload your content! Call Connie Foster at 745-6151, or email: connie.foster@wku.edu. Thanks.
Connie Foster, Head
Library Technical Services
March 9, 2009
WKU Libraries has access now to the 20th edition of the Encyclopedia of Social Work through Oxford University Press. Go to TopCAT and click on the Linked Resource which takes you to http://www.oxford-naswsocialwork.com/. This e-resource provides access to all WKU students and faculty. It is part of Oxford Digital Reference Shelf and provides a quality resource for our growing online collections.
Connie Foster, Head of Library Technical Services
The Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education (AORE), the Wilderness Education Association (WEA), and the Western Kentucky University Research Foundation (WKURF) launched the Journal of Outdoor Recreation, Education, and Leadership (JOREL) earlier today in San Diego, California at the 22nd Annual AORE Conference on Outdoor Recreation and Education. The three organizations have teamed together to create and manage this new peer-reviewed publication located at http://www.ejorel.com/. This announcement included the inaugural “Call for Papers.â€
The journal’s mission is to improve outdoor recreation, education, and leadership through the publication and dissemination of peer-reviewed manuscripts centered on professional practice, research, and theoretical discussions. Manuscript submissions are encouraged from authors inside and outside of academia to help improve research and practice with a goal of reducing the disparity between the two in the represented disciplines.
Relevant topic areas (centered on outdoor recreation, outdoor education, or outdoor leadership) for the journal include, but are not limited to: outdoor recreation, adventure recreation, outdoor education, outdoor leadership, pedagogy, administration, programming, risk management, wilderness medicine, certification, participant behavior, trends, diversity, training, and outcomes. Manuscript submission guidelines are found on the journal’s website.
The founding journal advisory council (representing AORE, WEA, and WKURF) includes: Raymond Poff, Ph.D., Western Kentucky University; Tom Stuessy, Ph.D., Green Mountain College; Eric Frauman, Ph.D., Appalachian State University; Marni Goldenberg, Ph.D., Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo State University; Bruce Martin, Ph.D., Ohio University; and Connie Foster, MLS, Western Kentucky University.
The Editor-in-Chief is Aram Attarian, Ph.D., of North Carolina State University. Raymond Poff, Ph.D., Western Kentucky University will serve as the journal’s Managing Editor.
The journal, hosted at WKU, uses resources available through TopSCHOLARâ„¢ http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ a University-wide, centralized digital repository dedicated to scholarly research, creative activity and other full-text learning resources that merit enduring and archival value and permanent access. TopSCHOLARâ„¢ uses the Digital Commons platform from Berkeley Electronic Press http://www.bepress.com
The Association of Outdoor Recreation and Education (AORE) http://www.aore.org/ provides opportunities for professionals and students in the field of outdoor recreation and education to exchange information, promote the preservation and conservation of the natural environment, and address issues common to college, university, community, military, and other not-for-profit outdoor recreation and education programs.
The Wilderness Education Association (WEA) http://www.weainfo.org/ promotes the professionalism of outdoor leadership through establishment of national standards, curriculum design, implementation, advocacy, and research driven initiatives.
The Western Kentucky University Research Foundation (WKURF) http://ored.wku.edu/ is organized to support Western Kentucky University efforts to promote the development, implementation, and coordination of extramurally sponsored programs involving research, instruction, public service, and to legally protect, manage and commercialize intellectual property resulting from research, scholarship and creative activities on behalf of Western Kentucky University.
For information, contact Dr. Raymond Poff at (270) 745-2498.
TopSCHOLARâ„¢ surpassed the 1,000th mark today, reaching 1004 papers in The Research and Creative Activity Database of Western Kentucky University. What else? Over 12,000 downloads to date, graduate theses being routinely uploaded and the SelectedWorks personal researcher sites being created to increase the accessiblity of faculty works.
Do you want your productivity published in TopSCHOLAR? Do you need to publish and cannot find the right outlet? Tired of bad links and want permanent URLs? Check out digitalcommons.wku.edu and contact Connie Foster soon.
Posted Sept. 12, 2008
Connie Foster, Head
Library Technical Services
Need additional resources about Kentucky architecture, politics, oral history, or just Kentucky writings? These new or standard titles by or about Kentucky are available in the Cravens Library circulating collection:
The Death of Luigi Trastulli and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History
To Western Woods: The Breckinridge Family Moves to Kentucky in 1793
Antebellum Architcture of Kentucky
Clay Lancaster’s Kentucky: Architectural Photographs of a Preservation Pioneer
America! What’s My Name? : The “Other” Poets Unfurl the Flag (ed. Frank X. Walker)
The Politics of Despair: Power and Resistance in the Tobacco Wars
If you have any other titles that you would like to see in the collection about Kentucky or by Kentucky authors, please let us know.
Connie Foster, Head
Dept. of Library Technical Services
July 16, 2008
Want Conversations with Wendell Berry or need to check on the Mammals of Kentucky or Bees in America? Check out these titles and more by Kentucky authors or about Kentucky. Perhaps you need to know more about fiddles or dulcimers. How about Dulcimer Maker: The Craft of Homer Ledford and Play of a Fiddle: Traditional Music, Dance and Folklore in West Virginia. Speaking of folklore, tryLynwood Montell’s Tales from Kentucky Doctors. Maybe you need to focus on women in Kentucky. Try Eliza Calvert Hall: Kentucky Author and Suffragist or Moving Mountains: How One Woman and Her Community Won Justice from Big Coal, or Sue Mundy: A Novel of the Civil War. Still not finding your niche? Move on to Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology, The WPA Guide to Kentucky, or work by Frank X Walker,When Winter Come, or the prolific David Dick.
These are available in the main library. Check us out!
Connie Foster
April 4, 2008
