News & Blog

Can you design a book cover?

All Libraries, Events Posted: June 12th, 2020

UCF Libraries wants to see your design skills! Will you accept our design challenge?

Select one of the titles below and illustrate the cover for that book. The submission deadline is Sunday, July 26, 2020 at 11:59PM.

Knightro and the Strange, Scary Pandemic Semester
Knugget Takes a Vacation
The Golden Vulture Strikes Again

For full contest rules and to submit your illustration, check out the contest page.

Contests for UCF students only.
One entry per student.
If more than one entry is submitted by a student, all the entries by that person will be disqualified from the contest.
Judges reserve the right to not select a winner due to limited submissions, or lack of exceptional submissions.
Entries with explicit sexual content will not be considered for this contest.

The winner will be announced on Monday, August 3, 2020. Prizes include a #UCFLibraries water bottle and a limited edition Quiet Space Rubber Duckie.

Faculty Support: We Have You Covered Text on Image of Open Book with Pen

Faculty Support: Ask Us Virtual Reference Service

All Libraries, Digital Support, Research and Information Services Posted: June 8th, 2020

Do you wish there was a way you and your students could chat with, text, or email your research questions to a librarian? Well, look no further. Your friendly UCF Librarians and reference staff are here to help through our Ask Us service.

Ask Us staff are experienced in handling all sorts of questions, like how to start researching a topic, finding peer-reviewed articles, finding the full text of an article, and much more. If a student needs more in depth help with a research paper, then our Ask Us staff will refer them to their Subject Librarian. The current hours for our live chat, text, and email service are Monday through Thursday from 9am to 9pm, Friday from 9am to 5pm, and Saturday from 1pm to 5pm; you can text your questions to 407-378-3767.

Need help after hours? No problem. When our UCF chat is closed, you can chat with a librarian until midnight Sunday through Thursday using Florida’s Ask a Librarian Service. So be sure to take advantage of this quick and easy service and recommend it to your students!

Featured Bookshelf: LGBTQIA+ Pride

All Libraries, Diversity & Inclusion, Featured Bookshelf Posted: June 1st, 2020

Ready to fly your flag?

Pride Month has arrived! While every day is a time to be proud of your identity and orientation, June is that extra special time for boldly celebrating with and for the LGBTQIA community (yes, there are more than lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender in the queer community). June was chosen to honor the Stonewall Riots which happened in 1969. Like other celebratory months, LGBT Pride Month started as a weeklong series of events and expanded into a full month of festivities.

In honor of Pride Month, UCF Library faculty and staff suggested books from the UCF collection that represent a wide array of queer authors and characters. Click on the link below to see the full list, descriptions, and catalog links.

Featured Bookshelf: LGBTQIA+ Pride

With the Libraries’ on remote resource access, the usual extended physical display isn’t available so we have created a list of ebooks and streaming videos that you can access from the comfort of your home.

Faculty Support: Information Literacy Modules

All Libraries, Digital Support, Student Learning & Engagement Posted: June 1st, 2020

Want to build library instruction into your online course? The UCF Libraries have you covered! One of the easiest ways to help your students build skills related to citing sources, avoiding plagiarism, or researching topics with library resources is to integrate the library’s Obojobo Info Lit tutorials into your canvas course.

Each tutorial takes approximately 20-30 minutes to complete and allows instructors to import assessment scores directly into their Canvas gradebook. There are twelve different modules to choose from that cover everything from the mechanics of integrating secondary sources into academic writing to evaluating sources. For information on how to integrate the modules into your course check out our Quick Start Guide.

If you have question or there are topics you would like covered that are not currently available, email Christina Wray at christina.wray@ucf.edu

The STARS of Thesis & Dissertations

All Libraries, Digital Initiatives, STARS Digital Repository Posted: May 29th, 2020

Students at UCF work on all kinds of interesting creative projects and research. UCF Libraries has the privilege of being able to house physical and digital copies of decades of research done by students and faculty.

STARS is UCF’s Showcase of Text, Archives, Research & Scholarship, and is home to scholarship and creative works done by students and faculty across disciplines. STARS provides an option for contributors to share their work while retaining their copyright. Most items in STARS are freely available to users around the world. Materials can be browsed College, Department, or individual collection: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/communities.html.

Users can browse all Theses and Dissertations completed at UCF, including everything from a political science paper about the 2020 Presidential primaries and the Democratic Party’s influence to a Communication paper on the effects of social media on mental health. College and Department level collections are also available, as well as a browsable collection of Advisors and Chairs.

We’ve also curated a list of some of the many interesting works by students in the History Department, Creative Writing program, College of Sciences, and College of Nursing below:

As we continue to share UCF Library’s online resources, we hope that you find new ways to engage with your fellow Knights across disciplines and genres.