News & Blog

This summer the UCF Libraries purchased a large bundle of primary source databases as a result of deeply discounted pricing and negotiations with the vendor. The databases cover an extensive variety of fields, from advertising to American Indian newspapers to World War I. This was a one-time purchase to which the Libraries have perpetual access.

The vendor, Adam Matthew Digital, is an academic publisher based in the United Kingdom The company publishes collections of digitized primary source materials from different historical eras and has collaborated with various source archives and institutions including the Amistad Research Center, British National Archives, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, Hoover Institution, Newberry Library, and the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, among others.

Here are the 28 databases that have been purchased:

• African American Communities- www.aac.amdigital.co.uk
• Age of Exploration – www.exploration.amdigital.co.uk
• American History – www.americanhistory.amdigital.co.uk
• American Indian Newspapers – www.americanindiannewspapers.amdigital.co.uk
• Apartheid South Africa – www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/Apartheid
• Confidential Print: Africa – www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/CP_Africa
• Foreign Office Files for Japan – www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/FO_Japan
• China, America and the Pacific – www.cap.amdigital.co.uk       
• China: Culture and Society – www.chinacultureandsociety.amdigital.co.uk  
• Church Missionary Society Periodicals -www.churchmissionarysociety.amdigital.co.uk
• Colonial America: www.colonialamerica.amdigital.co.uk  
• East India Company – www.eastindiacompany.amdigital.co.uk
• Eighteenth Century Drama – www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk
• The First World War: A Global Conflict – www.firstworldwar.amdigital.co.uk
• Gender: Identity and Social Change – www.genderidentityandsocialchange.amdigital.co.uk
• Global Commodities – www.globalcommodities.amdigital.co.uk
• J. Walter Thompson: Advertising America – www.jwtadvertisingamerica.amdigital.co.uk
• Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism – www.masstourism.amdigital.co.uk
• Literary Print Culture – www.literaryprintculture.amdigital.co.uk
• Market Research – www.marketresearch.amdigital.co.uk
• Medical Services and Warfare – www.medicalservicesandwarfare.amdigital.co.uk
• Migration to New Worlds – www.migration.amdigital.co.uk
• Popular Medicine – www.popularmedicine.amdigital.co.uk
• Race Relations in America – www.racerelations.amdigital.co.uk
• Shakespeare in Performance – www.shakespeareinperformance.amdigital.co.uk
• Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice – www.slavery.amdigital.co.uk
• Socialism on Film – www.socialismonfilm.amdigital.co.uk
• Trade Catalogues and the American Home – www.tradecatalogues.amdigital.co.uk

Each database is available on the Libraries’ A-Z listing at https://guides.ucf.edu/databases.

Welcome, Knights! Join UCF Libraries on a grand tour road trip to help Knightro and friends find their way around the library.

Knight Travel Trivia Contest
Tuesday, August 27th
2:00-3:00pm
John C. Hitt Library, 223

Come challenge your fellow Knights to see who knows the most about UCF and road trips. The winning team takes home prizes!

Knightro’s Research Road Trip
Wednesday, August 28th
2:00 – 4:00PM
John C. Hitt Library, main floor

Knightro is going on a research road trip and needs to pick up all his friends! Venture into the John. C Hitt Library where you will use your research savvy to find clues & solve puzzles and locate Knightro’s road trip pals. Several excursions will help you discover the research skills you need for academic success. Highly trained Knights should be able to locate everyone in 20 minutes and all Knights who collect stickers for each friend will be rewarded with a snack and be entered to win prizes! The first 150 students earn an exclusive UCF Libraries’ water bottle and InSomnia Cookie.

LibHacks
Thursday, August 29th
10:00-11:00am
John C. Hitt Library, room 235C

New to UCF, let us help make research stress free! Looking for time-savers when hunting for books and journal articles? Come meet helpful librarians and learn how the Libraries can make your life easier. One lucky attendee will win a prize pack (including an exclusive UCF Libraries water bottle)!AuthorMegan Haught

UCF Libraries, in partnership with the College of Graduate Studies Pathways to Success, is offering a full slate of graduate workshops during the fall 2019 semester including Library Research & Literature Review Strategies, Planning Poster Sessions, EndNote & RefWorks: Citing Made Easy, Apps to Help Optimize Your Research Life, Optimizing Your Online Presence, Where to Publish & Author Rights, Presentation Skills, and Introduction to Data Documentation. Online sessions have been added to several of the workshops.

Registration for these workshops is required and is done through myUCF (Student Center → Graduate Students → Pathways to Success)

Library Research & Literature Review Strategies
What strategies are you using to conduct literature searches for your research or projects? This session highlights effective strategies to locate related sources using citation tracking and search strategies, tips to customize Google Scholar, and options to organize sources and stay updated on publications.

Please bring a laptop to follow along with the presentation. Consider also attending the related topic, Where to Publish: Finding the Right Venue to Publish Your Research that follows this session.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 9/19/19 4:30pm-5:30pm
⋅ Wednesday, 10/16/19 12:00pm-1:00pm

Library Research & Literature Review Strategies – Online
After registering in myUCF, you will receive an email with a link to participate in the online session.
⋅ Tues., 11/5/19 5:00pm-6:00pm

Where to Publish: Finding the Right Venue to Publish Your Research
How do you decide which journals are the best fit for your manuscript? Are there other potential publishing venues that might be a good fit for your research? This workshop covers criteria to consider when planning where to submit your work for publication. We will look at factors like acceptance rates, audience, indexing, cost to publish, and open access, among others. This session is part one of a two-part workshop that explores where to publish and author rights.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 9/19/19 5:30pm-6:30pm
⋅ Wednesday, 10/16/19 1:00pm-2:00pm

Author Rights: Understanding & Protecting Your Rights
Learn to be a savvy author! Do you know that all rights to a work are often assigned to publishers when a manuscript is accepted? Are there other options that allow you to retain the copyright of your work? This workshop will provide an overview of general copyright and what author rights mean to you, as a researcher. We will also explore how these rights may be negotiated when publishing and how you can use your works post-publication. This session is part two of a two-part workshop that explores where to publish and author rights.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 9/26/19 5:30pm-6:30pm
⋅ Wednesday,10/23/19 1:00pm-2:00pm

Planning Poster Presentations
Planning a research poster session? Learn the basics of poster design and tips for editing free PowerPoint poster templates. This session reviews poster elements for layout, graphics, printing, and includes examples of well-designed posters.

Please bring your laptop if you would like to follow along with the presentation.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thurs., 10/10/19 4:30pm-5:30pm

Optimizing Your Online Presence
Learn more about evaluating research impacts and managing your online research profile. This session will cover citation metrics & measuring your publishing Impact. Citation metrics provide quantitative data used to evaluate the impact of a scholar’s research. Learn about methods and tools to obtain citation counts and impact data (ISI Web of Science, Google Scholar, and others), and metrics to assist scholars in identifying key journals and notable researchers in your field. The session will also discuss why it’s important to develop an online profile as a researcher, how to promote your work and connect to other researchers, using sites such as ORCID, Research Gate, Academia.edu, PIVOT, Plum Analytics, and Google Scholar.

Please bring your laptop to follow along with the presentation. Consider also attending the related topic, Author Rights: Understanding & Protecting Your Rights that follows this session.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 9/26/19 4:30pm-5:30pm
⋅ Wednesday,10/23/19 12:00pm-1:00pm

Presentation Skills
Does the idea of giving a presentation freak you out? I have good news and bad news. Bad news – presentations are unavoidable in your courses and in your future career path. Good news – presentation skills are something you can easily improve! This session provides tips, tricks, and ideas for how to become a better presenter. There will also be time at the end of the session for Q&A (and practice speaking to a crowd!).

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thurs., 9/5/19 2:00pm-3:00pm
⋅ Tues., 10/10/19 10:00pm-11:00am
⋅ Tues., 10/22/19 10:00-am11:00am
⋅ Thurs., 11/7/19 3:00pm-4:00pm

Presentation Skills – Online Session
After registering in myUCF, you will receive an email with a link to participate in the online session.
⋅ Tues., 9/24/19 10:00am-11:00am

Apps to Help Organize Your Research Life
Do you ever wonder if there is a great app out there that you are missing out on? Need help staying organized, taking notes, or need a better way to communicate with classmates over shared projects? Well look no further as this session will introduce helpful and important apps that all grad students should love and use! We will cover organization, project management, reference, and science apps that will keep you at your best while you are in grad school and beyond.

Please bring your mobile device or laptop as we test drive the apps during the presentation.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Tues., 9/24/19 1:00pm-2:00pm
⋅ Wed., 10/22/19 2:00pm-3:00pm
⋅ Thurs., 11/13/19 12:00pm-1:00pm

Endnote & RefWorks: Citing Made Easy!
Citation Management Tools allow you to dedicate more time to research! Join us to learn how to export citations from library databases, organize citations, generate bibliographies, and format citations in a Word document. Endnote & RefWorks can help make managing your references and formatting citations easy! Sessions will cover BOTH products.

Please bring your own laptop if you would like to follow along with the presentation.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thurs., 9/12/19 5:30pm-6:30pm
⋅ Tues., 9/17/19 12:00pm-1:00pm

Endnote & RefWorks: Citing Made Easy! – Online Sessions
After registering in myUCF, you will receive an email with a link to participate in the online session.
⋅ Mon., 9/23/19 10:00am-11:00am
⋅ Tues., 10/22/19 6:00pm-7:00pm
⋅ Wed., 10/30/19 12:00pm-1:00pm

Introduction to Data Documentation
Join us for an introduction to data documentation and metadata. Learn basics about research data, datasets and data documentation for data sharing, re-use and long-term preservation. This session introduces best practices and recommendations for documenting research data, including types of documentation needed, appropriate data formats, kinds of materials to be collected in the research lifecycle, and especially data documentation at study level and data level. The session also includes real-world examples and a discussion of data tools for data documentation, such as NVivo for qualitative data and SPSS for quantitative data.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Wed., 10/9/19 12:00pm-1:00pm

Hidden Artists is a group of UCF employees from across departments and campuses who create art outside of their daily jobs. Founded by Judy Bragg Pardo, Hidden Artists have exhibited together since 2008. From painting, drawing, photography, jewelry, and mixed media, the works of these artistic employees are on display at the exhibit wall of the John C. Hitt Library. The exhibit features works from UCF Libraries’ staff Jacqui Johnson, Jess Langone, and Chris Saclolo.

The exhibit runs from August to the end of September:

Hidden Artists Reception
Thursday September 12, 2019 @ 4 – 6 p.m.
UCF John C. Hitt Library. Room 223
Refreshments | Live Music by Zachary Harriott, Carlos Perez, and Jacob Moquin
Open to the public

“Something that is loved is never lost.” 
-Toni Morrison, Beloved

Toni Morrison passed on August 5 at the age of 88. She was an accomplished author, editor and professor as well as the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. She wrote 11 novels, many essays, and several children’s books.

Morrison illuminated a path for black writers across the nation and her works were important to those of us looking for writing about our histories and ourselves.  Much of her stories, though tragic and brutal, were honest, grounded, and filled with love from beginning to end. Her commitment to craft and vision is what made her a force in the American literary tradition and she opened the door for a generation of Black American writers that were at the fringes of American literature. Her rhythms and many layered plots are what made her voice so incredibly distinct and powerful. She never failed to remind readers that history still has a tight grip on lives of Black Americans. Her characters like Pecola Breedlove in The Bluest Eye and Sethe in Beloved were narrative tools that helped bridged the understanding of the intersections of racism, sexism and classism. All of which she handled with grace contended with through her warm, rhythmic prose. Morrison seemed to always be trying something new and refining her rare talents and it goes without saying that without her work, there would be fewer portals to understanding black life as it stands in America.

If you would like to read Toni Morrison’s works or learn about her life and writing, please visit our guide: guides.ucf.edu/reading-lists/tonimorrison