News & Blog

Welcome to Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not know about!  

The UCF Libraries is delighted to announce the latest addition to their streaming video offerings: PBS Videos via Alexander Street. As online instruction has become commonplace, so too has the demand for quality streaming videos. Access to academic videos supports faculty and students in teaching, completing assignments, or developing a better understanding of complex concepts. PBS Videos are a fantastic addition to the sources the UCF Library provides for educational videos!

PBS, short for the Public Broadcasting Service, is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial television network. PBS has a strong reputation for creating programming and content to educate, inspire, entertain, and express a diversity of perspectives. They are particularly well known for documentary-series such as NOVA, American Experience, FRONTLINE, and Ken Burns productions. PBS documentaries open new worlds, news programs that keep citizens informed on world events and cultures, family-friendly content that informs children, and programs about the worlds of music, theater, dance, and art.

Through UCF, you have access to the PBS Video Collection: Fourth Edition. This collection of more than 1,600 streaming videos provides an exceptional range of content: from science to history, art to Shakespeare, diversity to business & economics, and more. You can find a link to the PBS Video Collection on the Libraries’ Database List or can use this URL: https://guides.ucf.edu/database/PBSVideos4

Welcome to Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not know about!

With so much focus on research and academic writing in our college careers, there is one vital piece of information that is rarely ever brought up: the types of scholarly documents. While this may seem like elementary information for some of you, I doubt most of us entered college knowing about periodicals. Below, I provide a run-down of all the terminology you need to know to make your research much easier.

• A periodical is any publication that comes out regularly or occasionally.
• A magazine is a periodical with a popular focus, aimed at the general public, and containing news, personal narratives, and opinions.
• Magazine articles are the individual stories or reports that are inside the overall magazine. They are often written by professional writers who may not have formal expertise in the subject.
• A journal is a scholarly periodical aimed at specialists, researchers, and students.
• Journal articles are the individual research papers that make up the larger journal. They contain original research, conclusions based on data, footnotes or endnotes, and often an abstract or bibliography.

Though magazines and journals are both periodicals and contain articles, there are vital differences between the two that you must understand in order to complete your research accurately. If you’d like to learn more about these types of documents and the distinctions between them, please visit Diamond’s Hidden Gems – Journals vs. Articles in STARS!

Welcome to Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not know about!

Research is an important aspect of any college career; it is a process in which you are exposed to the questions and information that have captured the attention of your field of interest. For students, this often means searching for and identifying free, online, and relevant research articles. UCF helps to mitigate most of this stress by providing students with databases that help narrow down the field of search.

The University of Central Florida Libraries allows students to search databases owned by a number of different vendors for items like scholarly peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, and magazine articles. Each of these databases contains specific publications with similar topics or subjects. By navigating to the UCF Libraries website, you can search for a database by name or topic, or you can browse the list of databases organized by subject or alphabetically.

If you’d like to learn more about databases and how you can access them, please visit Diamond’s Hidden Gems – Databases in STARS!

Welcome to Diamond’s Hidden Gems, a blog series in which I introduce you to the University of Central Florida’s library services that you may not know about!

Publishing student work through journals and magazines is a difficult feat, often requiring rounds upon rounds of revisions. UCF has a way for you to share your work while providing you with tools to assist with the publication process. Continue below to read about UCF’s own digital repository. UCF’s Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship (STARS) provides access to works by, for, and about UCF as broadly as possible, and for as long as possible.

The intention is to provide free, open access to a worldwide audience. It is an institution-wide digital repository managed by the UCF Libraries. STARS is open to all faculty, staff, students, and affiliates of UCF, though student submissions may be subject to an approval process. STARS also documents library contest winners, most recently the “Love Your Libraries” Sticker Contest (which has already ended, sorry!)  

If you’d like to learn more about STARS and the types of materials you could upload, please visit Diamond’s Hidden Gems – STARS.

Downtown Campus Library is bringing you a series of workshops and study breaks to help you achieve your goals this semester.

Join us on September 5th at 1:00PM at the Downtown Campus Library in room 265 of the Doctor Philips Academic Commons to learn more about bullet journaling and how it can keep you organized.

On September 12th at 1:00PM work with library staff to develop a vision board. This visualization exercise will help you display your future goals in a concrete, tangible way.

Our last workshop in our Froggy Productivity Series will be on September 19th at 1:00 P.M. in DPAC 455. Our staff will introduce you to the productivity software Notion. This app offers free membership to students, and it is a great way to streamline and organize tasks.

If you can’t make it to one of our workshops, the library is providing “study breaks.” These are quick, takeaway activities that will help you with time management and mindfulness. Visit the Downtown Library in DPAC 265 from September 4th through 15th to get a Time Management with Pomodoro worksheet. From September 18th through September 29th, we will be distributing worksheets for our mindfulness challenge.

Any UCF or Valencia student who participates in three events or study breaks will be eligible for a prize drawing. Attend more events and study breaks to increase your chances of winning!