New Student orientation will take place at the Claire T. Carney Library over a few days in January. Please note that this will limit access to our public computers on the following days:
Wednesday, January 15 – Transfer Orientation
Thursday, January 16 – New Student and Family Orientation
Friday, January 17 – Back up day in case of snow
New students will have priority access to the library’s 1st floor and 2nd floor computers as part of their training on UMass Dartmouth systems. If you plan to visit the library during orientation, you are welcome to bring your own laptop or mobile device. UMass Dartmouth students, faculty, and staff may also borrow laptops at the first floor circulation desk.
EBSCO will be upgrading their database user interfaces in 2025! The rollout of this new interface at UMass Dartmouth has been pushed back to July 31, 2025.
EBSCOhost has been redesigned based on user testing and feedback to improve usability and accessibility. The new interface will be less “busy,” with filters located in pop-up menus instead of automatically visible side panes, and it will include new features such as dashboards for saved articles and searches and added options for citing and sharing sources. EBSCO hopes to provide a productive and intuitive research experience with this new design.
Feeling that end-of-semester stress? Chris Peter and Gracie will be in the Library’s Living Room on Monday, December 9 from 10-11AM, so if you would like to spend time with a lovely therapy dog, please stop by!
*12/2024Edit: the new launch date for the updated EBSCOhost interface at UMass Dartmouth is July 31, 2025.
EBSCO will be upgrading their database user interfaces on January 7, 2025. EBSCOhost has been redesigned based on user testing and feedback to improve usability and accessibility. The new interface will be less “busy,” with filters located in pop-up menus instead of automatically visible side panes, and it will include new features such as dashboards for saved articles and searches and added options for citing and sharing sources. EBSCO hopes to provide a productive and intuitive research experience with this new design.
10 years ago Hilary Kraus, Kari Mofford, and Alexis Teagarden started the Dystopian Book Club. Hilary and Kari went on to a new theme in 2016, the Science Fiction Book Club, and Olivia Piepmeier joined us to help organize and publicize the meetings. During COVID, we tried to make things a bit more flexible with readers choosing their own titles with a common theme. Now the group chooses the theme periodically, and we all vote to rank title suggestions and work through the list until we decide we need a new theme.
We will be choosing a new theme for Spring 2025 and we love to welcome new members, so please contact Kari Mofford if you would like to join us!
Here is the entire list of titles (and themes) throughout the years. We have read A LOT of books… which ones were your favorites? Let us know by leaving a comment below!
Dystopian: 2014-2015
2014
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
2015
Spring
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Summer – Women Sleuths Theme
Nancy Drew (Original Series) – Reader’s pick
Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers
Fall Titles
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Science Fiction: 2016-2019
2016
Spring
Watchmen by author Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Magical Summer Theme
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Peter & the Starcatchers by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson
So You Want to be a Wizard? by Diane Duane
Fall
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin
2017
Spring
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Summer: Fantasy on Film
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Fall
Lumberjanes Volume 1: Beware the Kitten Holy by ND Stevenson, Grace Ellis, Shannon Watters, and Gus A. Allen
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
The Martian by Andy Weir
2018
Spring
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff
Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
Summer: A Cinderella Summer
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Ash by Malinda Lo, and the Original Grimm’s Fairy Tale
Fall
Timeline by Michael Crichton
Blackout by Connie Willis
Trillium by Jeff Lemire
2019
Spring
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
Summer: A Summer of Comics
Here by Richard McGuire
Woman World by Aminder Dhaliwal
On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden
Fall: Space Exploration/Adventure
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
Climate and Travel: 2020-2021
Spring 2020: Climate Change
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter (Cancelled)
A Friend of the Earth by T. Coraghessan Boyle (Virtual)
Summer 2020: Choose your own title
Fall 2020 – Spring 2021: Travel: Choose a book with geographical theme
October = Antarctica
November = South America
December = Asia
January = North America
February = Africa
March = Australia
April = Europe
Adventures, Quests, and Treasure Hunts: 2021
Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
The Secret Treasure of Oak Island: The Amazing True Story of a Centuries-Old Treasure Hunt by D’Arcy O’Connor
International Open Access Week (October 21-27, 2024) is a time to recognize Open Access (OA), and to inspire scholars to engage in this publishing model in scholarship and research. OA means information that is available digitally without cost or access barriers. Today on the blog, we highlight two OA journals with UMass Dartmouth roots:
The Journal of Feminist Scholarship (JFS) is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes twice a year on topics that encourage a discussion of feminist thought for the twenty-first century. In addition to its regular issues, it publishes an interview series with important national and international feminist artists, practitioners, and scholars of color who have reshaped their fields. JFS has become highly regarded with frequent submissions, downloads, and citations in national and international fora. The journal is a great resource for researching feminist scholarship across the disciplines, and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which means that researchers are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles.
Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies
Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies (PLCS) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed hybrid (online and print) journal that publishes original research about the literatures and cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world from a broad range of academic, critical and theoretical approaches. Mario Pereira and Anna M. Klobucka currently serve as co-editors. PLCS is published semi-annually by Tagus Press in the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Tagus Press is the publishing division of the UMassD Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture, an outreach unit committed to the study of the language, literatures and cultures of the Portuguese-speaking world. With the help of the Claire T. Carney Library, the journal is available publicly through Open Journal Systems (OJS), which aims to facilitate open access, peer-reviewed publishing.
International Open Access Week (October 21-27, 2024) is a time to recognize free and accessible research and scholarship and to inspire scholars to engage in the advantageous OA model in publishing. The term Open Access refers to scholarly material that is available digitally free of charge and without other access barriers. Today we will highlight a UMass Dartmouth faculty member who has published along with a UMass Dartmouth student under a Creative Commons license in an Open Access journal.
Nicholas Zambrotta is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Psychology department whose research interests include morality, political polarization, and social support and health related behaviors. In early 2024 Zambrotta published an article called “Attitude Changes Among College Students Post-Pandemic” with Alex Goncalo who was working on his BS in Finance. Goncalo has since earned his MS, and has gone on to pursue his PhD in Finance at the University of South Florida. Their study “measured happiness, optimism, and psychological well-being in a sample of 182 college students via an electronic Qualtrics questionnaire to identify predictors of state optimism and examine potential differences in these variables between class rankings.” The results of their survey and analysis can be read and shared (with attribution) by any researcher thanks to the OA model of their selected publication, Modern Psychological Studies.
The journalis managed by undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, and not only is it student-led, but Modern Psychological Studies focuses on publishing quality articles by undergraduate students. Regarding the review process, Goncalo says, “Their rigorous review process was enlightening, which contributed greatly to this undeniably invaluable experience.” Authors who choose to publish with MPS actually retain their copyright under a Non-Exclusive Distribution License. This arrangement protects freedoms of the authors, while the Creative Commons licenses applied to each article ensure that all researchers can benefit from the work.
Open Access (OA) is a publishing model that values access over commercialization and makes scholarly material like research articles and books available to the public at no cost. International Open Access Week (October 21 – 27, 2024) is a time to recognize the importance of OA and to raise awareness. When information is readily available to all researchers, it can be more widely read, cited, and expanded. Are you interested in learning more about Open Access and breaking down paywalls? Consider attending these OA Week webinars hosted in Massachusetts:
This workshop is tailored for faculty members who are new to Open Educational Resources (OER) and are curious about how these free and openly licensed materials can enhance their teaching.
This 30-minute webinar will explain why ‘Open’ is crucial to the definition of ‘Open Educational Resources’ (OER), permitting OER’s use for truly innovative pedagogy.
Our librarians were hard at work this summer expanding the library’s collection. Check out these new resources now available through the Claire T. Carney Library:
The Oxford English Dictionary Online. An authoritative guide to the meaning, history, and usage of 500,000 words and phrases, past and present, from across the English-speaking world.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Browse full text issues of the following newspapers, including news articles, photos, advertisements, classified ads, obituaries, cartoons, and more:
The Boston Globe(coverage: 1872-2007). One of the most successful metro newspapers in the United States, providing a window through which to study New England and American history.
ProQuest History Vault. A digitized collection of unique manuscript and archival materials. The following modules are available:
American Indians and the American West, 1809-1971. A variety of collections from the U.S. National Archives, a series of collections from the Chicago History Museum, and selected first-hand accounts on Indian Wars and westward migration.
Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Law and Order in 19th Century America. Documents the international and domestic traffic in slaves in Britain’s New World colonies and the United States, providing important primary source material on the business aspect of the slave trade.
Springer Lecture Notes. The series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), including its subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI), has established itself as a medium for the publication of new developments in computer science and information technology research, teaching, and education. We have access to the ebooks from 2024.
The Claire T. Carney Library Associates proudly announces its annual authors’ brunch fundraiser for the benefit of the UMass Dartmouth Claire T. Carney Library. This annual event funds materials, programs, and projects for the library. The Library Associates previously raised money to establish a Veterans’ Reading Room and sponsor scholarships.
Alan William Powers is the former English Department chair at Bristol Community College, who has authored eight books and numerous articles on Shakespeare and translations. He received his PhD at the University of Minnesota and has ten post-doctoral grants at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, Brown, and Bread Loaf. Multi-talented, he has appeared in two poetry films, Keats and His Nightingale and A Loaded Gun. As a jazz trombonist, he has written jazz tunes based on British and American birdsong. He has written verse monologues based on scandalous overheard conversations and a biography of Giordano Bruno, who was sent to the Inquisition because of one bad student evaluation.
Stephen Puleo is an author, historian, teacher, public speaker, and communications professional. He holds a master’s degree in history from UMass Boston and was a Graduate Convocation keynote speaker. His master’s thesis, From Italy to Boston’s North End: Italian Immigration and Settlement, 1890-1910, has been downloaded more than 25,000 times by scholars and readers worldwide. He was a former award-winning newspaper reporter and contributor to articles and book reviews for publication organizations, including American History Magazine, Politico, the Boston Globe, and the Bill of Rights Institute. His books include Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, Due to Enemy Action: The True World War II Story of the USS Eagle 56, The Boston Italians: A Story of Pride, Perseverance and Paesani, from the Years of the Great Immigration to the Present Day, A City So Grand: The Rise of an American Metropolis,Boston, The Caning: The Assault That Drove America to Civil War,American Treasures: The Secret Efforts to Save the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Gettysburg Address, Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine and the Remarkable Story of America’s First Humanitarian Mission and, his latest publication, The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union.
Jane Yolen is a novelist, poet, fantasist, journalist, songwriter, storyteller, folklorist, and children’s book author who has written more than 400 books translated into almost two dozen languages. A graduate of Smith College with a master’s degree in education from UMass Amherst, she has received six honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Her accolades include the Daedelus Award, the Catholic Library Association’s Regina Medal, two Caldecott Medals, two Nebula Awards from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, the Kerian Award, and two Christopher Awards. She is the former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She has served on the board of directors for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators for over 25 years. She was born in New York City and grew up in Hollywood, New York City, and Newport News, Virginia. She is the mother of three and grandmother of six, dividing her time between homes in Hatfield, Massachusetts, and Scotland. Her works include a poetry collection, Radiation Sonnets: Love in Sickness and in Health, picture books Owl Moon and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight, the novella The Devil’s Arithmetic, and numerous nonfiction books.
