LRC Website Survey

The LRC got some wonderful responses to our survey in the fall, and now we want to know more! We've set up a survey to find out what our students, faculty and staff think about our website. If you like it, if you don't like it, if you have suggestions for how to make it better, please let us know! You can take the survey here. If you have any questions, stop by your local LRC or call (918) 595-7705.

Thank you!

Poem in Your Pocket Day, Thursday, April 14

Poem in Your Pocket Day, April 14

Make a copy of your favorite poem

download a poem from the National Poem in Your Pocket website

pick up a poem at any LRC Reference Desk

or

download poetry to your iPhone (free app--PoemFlow at iTunes Store)

On April 14, carry your favorite poem with you and share it .

Come to the live open poetry reading

April 14, noon, at the Student Commons,

Metro Campus Student Union

National Library Week April 10-16

Public, school, academic and special libraries help millions of Americans begin the next chapter in their lives every day. National Library Week is April 10-16. Celebrate today by visiting your library - in person or online and create your own story @ your library.

Visit the TCC LRCs online

"Kim Monday" Monday, April 11

Send an instant message with a research or library-related question to LRC Virtual Librarian Kim Monday via our webpage or contact her on Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter.

Newspapers Update

As of March 28, 2011, the New York Times introduced a new access model for their website. Users who wish to view more than 20 articles a month will be asked to subscribe to one of a variety of plans. And, the Tulsa World began a similar plan today, with a limit of 10 articles per user per month without a subscription. They join an increasing number of newspapers turning to digital subscriptions to keep their revenue up.

But do not lose hope! The LRC has subscriptions to both papers through our article databases. Find the New York Times (and the Wall Street Journal, which has always required subscriptions) in ProQuest Newspapers, and the Tulsa World in Newsbank and in EbscoHost. The LRCs at all four campuses subscribe to the print edition of the Tulsa World, and the Metro Campus LRC and the Southeast Campus LRC subscribe to the New York Times as well.

To find more local, national and international newspapers, check out this list on our website.

iPad Apps for School and Work

Are you the proud owner of a shiny new iPad? Need some useful apps for school or work? Here are some of my favorites:

For keeping up with the blogs I read, I've been using Flipboard and Pulse News, which download blog content and display it so it's easier to read on the iPad. For my personal blogging, I use the Wordpress app to blog on the go. It doesn't have as many functions as their web-based version, and I've noticed a few bugs, but altogether, it's quite easy to use and works well for my purposes.

For reading ebooks, I like iBooks alright; its support for PDFs is fantastic, but it can't read ebooks that I check out from the public library. To read those, I use Bluefire Reader and Overdrive for iPad. Both of those work well, and you can download books straight from TCCL using Overdrive. I also have used Kindle for iPad and Google Books for iPad, which let me read books I've bought from the Amazon or Google book stores, respectively.

For writing notes during meetings and for accessing important files away from my computer, I use Dropbox and PlainText. Dropbox is an online file-storage service (up to 2gigs of storage space is free), and they have an app that lets you view all your saved documents. PlainText syncs with Dropbox and lets you type basic documents on your iPad. It has an attractive interface, and I use it all the time, even though it doesn't have any of the formatting that you'd be used to with MS Word or other word processing software (bold or italic text, columns, bullets, different fonts or font sizes, etc.). I have downloaded Pages, but I wasn't a huge fan; it seemed slow to load to me, and I didn't like the interface.

I think my favorite app of all time has got to be Wunderlist, a free, super easy-to-use to do list app. You can create different categories of lists (home, school, work, etc.) and access and edit your lists from the app on your iPad or iPhone, through a program on your home PC or Mac, or from a web-browser on any other computer. You can mark important items, set deadlines and notifications, add text notes, and share lists with other people. From the web-based version, you can print or email a list. It also keeps all the items you've checked off your list, in case you need to go back and congratulate yourself on what you've accomplished. On top of its functions, the interface is beautiful.

A couple of other apps I use less frequently, but still quite like, are Wolfram Alpha and IMDb (reference on the go), PCalc Lite (a basic calculator), PS Express and Adobe Ideas by Adobe (simple photo-editing and drawing apps), and Scrabble for iPad (to play with Facebook friends during my lunchbreak).

Finally, although it isn't an app, one of the things I've found most useful is having a wireless keyboard. The on-screen keyboard isn't terrible for writing quick notes, but for extended typing, an external keyboard is great. Together, the iPad and keyboard are still lighter than most laptops, and I can bring them to meetings and take my notes easily.

Have a great app that helps you stay productive? Please share!