Food for Fines April 12-18

The College of Charleston’s Marlene and Nathan Addlestone Library will celebrate National Library Week by accepting canned food items to reduce library fines. From April 12 through 18, each can will remove one dollar in library fines. All cans collected will be given to the Lowcountry Food Bank to help with their relief efforts.

“This is our way of helping the campus and the community during tough economic times,” said James Williams, head of circulation services. “Our hope is that we’ll encourage patrons with fines to return overdue books to the library while keeping cash in their pocket. With the current state of our economy, the Food for Fines campaign allows our patrons to pay outstanding fines with donations of canned food rather than with cash.  One dollar will be waived for each can of food donated.”  During this week-long campaign, students and Friends of the Library who do not have outstanding fines are also encouraged to donate canned food.  Large collection boxes will be placed in the Circulation Department to receive canned food.  At the end of each shift, the boxes will be emptied and the canned food will be stored in a secure location.

The Library cannot accept cans that are damaged, dented or beyond their expiration date.  The cost of the food item is not considered. Fines for lost or damaged library items not included. Up to $25 may be paid with canned items.

For more information, contact James Williams at 843.953.8004.

Visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6LH9Uwp7bQ to watch the Food for Fines promotional video!

15 Minutes a Day: How to Photosynth

Tracy, Jared, Jerry and I have been exploring Photosynth technology, which creates 3-D environments from overlapping photographs.  With a little screen capturing, some Public Domain music from Internet Archive and a bit of video editing we turned it into a little tour for the library.  If your curious how we did it we will be going over the process in an upcoming Thursday@3@Addlestone session.

Curious how we did it? Watch the YouTube video below, read about and download Photosynth for yourself, or watch some other videos:

Handy Reference: Cleaning up Word Files and Adding Images to Your Blog

Cleaning Up Word Files

  • The character codes used in your word documents are not necessarily the same as those used on the web. If you want to use the contents of a word document use the Paste from Word button rather than cutting and pasting directly

Kitchen Sink Toolbar

  • To the left of the Flash icon (white circle with the letter “F” on it) in the post toolbar is a button that looks like paint sample cards (similar to the type you would get from a hardware store) turned sideways.  This button is called “the kitchen sink”
  • When you hover over the “kitchen sink button” you will see the message “Open Kitchen Sink.” Click the button until you see a second row on your formatting toolbar.
  • Click the button of a clipboard with a Word icon superimposed on it (from the second row).  It is called the “Paste from Word” button.  Click the “Paste from Word” button to paste your content in from your Word document.
  • This method should clean up any gobbly gook or weird formatting you may have.

Uploading Office Documents, Images, Audio Files

  • 10mb storage space

Linking to Shared Media Websites

If you want to Embed the Image

  • select html tab
  • type <img src=”paste your image link here” alt=”image description here”>
  • What it looks like after you do this

Ghastly Beast Drawings

If you want to Embed Audio or Video Files (link to an mp3, mov, Google, YouTube”)

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/TPAO-lZ4_hU" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

  • MP3’s (streamed audio files from the web – The College of Charleston’s Language Resource Center is using stream.cofc.edu to host course audio files for enrolled students.

Listen to Introduction to Con Fantasia

Download Title NerdTV MP3 Podcast

Thurs@3: Blogs and Blogging

All Faculty and Staff are invited to the next Thurs@3@Addlestone session.  We’ve enjoyed your presence at our first sessions, and would love to see more of you there at these twice-monthly sessions.

From collaborators Jared Seay, Jerry Spiller, The Center for Faculty Development and Jolanda-Pieta van Arnhem comes this description of our next informational session on blogs and blogging:

A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent “post” (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.

(from What is a blog? )

Since this definition tells you absolutely nothing useful about blogs, you should register for the next Addlestone Thursday @3 session and find out the answers to these tantalizing questions:

  • What is a blog? (this very page is one)
  • How can I get one?
  • How can I make one (with the new CofC blog thing)?
  • Why would I want to?
  • How can it help me teach, learn and communicate?
  • How come everybody at the College has a blog (on the CofC blog thing) except me?

Register by sending an email to thurs3@gmail.com.  Don’t forget to register, especially for this one – so we can request that the webmaster have your blog account ready beforehand!)

Information about the Addlestone Thursday @ 3 sessions including resources, sites, and a calendar can be found at: http://library.cofc.edu/thurs3/

Addlestone Thursday @ 3 Session: Blog, blog, blog, blog!
Thursday, October 9 at 3pm – 4:30pm
Addlestone 120

We’d love to see you there!

Stop by the Library to Register to Vote by October 4th

Voter Registration forms are available at the Research Information Desk on the first floor of the Addlestone library.  Students, faculty and staff can fill out the form and leave it at the Research Information Desk where it will be picked up and mailed.

Remember that October 4th is the last day for voter registration.  Please allow enough time for your forms to to be mailed and arrive on time.

You can also use the information at http://www.scvotes.org/how_to_register_absentee_voting to get the addresses of your voter registration board if you want to mail your registrations yourself.

More voter information is also available on our updated Election Information subject guide.

Feel free to come by and register!  We hope to see you soon at the library.

New College of Charleston Blogging Server

CofC now has our own blogging server.  Take a moment to look around at: https://blogs.cofc.edu/

The web team is willing to set a redirect from your existing web account if you would prefer to use the blog server for your website. Some advantages to this are that the admin panel is web-based, which means you can access and update your site from any wired/wireless location.  The fact that WordPress allows for static pages provides greater flexibility with your content. Another benefit of WordPress is that it can be used as a kind of content management system.  It separates the layout & design of your page from the content without any need for programs like DreamWeaver, NVU or SeaMonkey, allowing you to create, edit, or update as much content as you want – when you want.

Blogging projects also encourage student collaboration and and participation in the creation, evaluation, discovery, and selection of information.  By participating in a classroom blog, students are able to experience the process of research by posting some of their findings and views on what they are reading and doing. They can also present mini-presentations and comment on classmates works. The blog format can aid in the organization and archival of their work. It can also be used for peer collaboration and feedback from one class member to another, as students learn what their peers are doing as they themselves are doing it. As a result of this interaction, new ideas and opportunities may arise and class projects may morph into new directions.

If you are interested in getting an account please contact the webmaster at  webmaster at cofc.edu and specifying “Blog Request” in the subject line of the e-mail.  By default your blog’s address will be blogs.cofc.edu.

I have a posted a printable handout to get you started.  Happy Blogging!