By Katie King, Library Director and Guest Writer
The SNU Library is and continues to be the center for resourcing academic life and other activities on campus.
Its mission is to transform lives through higher education in Christ-centered community by providing the resources and support necessary for SNU faculty, staff, and students to wrestle with what it means to work toward creating God’s kingdom here on earth.
This may look like working with students and faculty to critically think about what information they need, providing the campus with authoritative sources for a paper, article, thesis, or dissertation, or delivering access to online films and documentaries that may challenge our closely-held assumptions about the way the world works.
To that end, we have a number of resources that you might not know about, and we’d like to briefly introduce those to you.
LearningExpress Library is a database you can consult when you need extra test preparation, when you need to improve your job-hunting abilities, and when you need to strengthen other life skills.
First, you can get a little extra test practice for GRE, CLEP, LSAT, MCAT, TOEFL, GMAT, and TOEIC tests (Google those if you need to. No shame.). It offers you practice tests that you can take over and over until you feel more confident about your mastery of the material.
LearningExpress also offers test practice for various occupational licensing, certification, and aptitude tests in areas like nursing, teaching, or real estate.
Next, improve your career skills in areas like networking, crafting cover letters and resumes, and interviewing strategies and tips – go get that job! Finally, this resource helps you improve your life in areas like personal finance, public speaking, or writing.
Next, the SNU Library has listened to you, our community, and we have now purchased ThinkPad chargers for your use. They supplement our current selection of Dell and Apple laptops and chargers, as well as Kindle Fires (preloaded with several classic e-book titles) and chargers.
The library will continue to change out chargers as the Laptop Center offers you new laptop options – we want to make sure your batteries are ready to meet the adventures that await!
The SNU Library also provides online access to video resources. Films on Demand provides curious individuals with educational films in many areas, some of which are biology, communication, environmental science, history, mathematics, and sociology.
For example, clips from “The Boxing Girls of Kabul” depict a group of young female Afghans trying to become world-class boxers under an oppressive Taliban regime, and clips from “Global Weirding” feature hurricane chasers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discussing whether or not the world’s weather is growing more extreme.
Finally, the SNU Library will be contracting with at least one e-book vendor this spring! What does this mean for you? This means that, in the fall 2013 semester, you should be able to go to Encore, the library catalog, on library.snu.edu, search for a book, and receive e-book results that you can immediately view alongside print books in our catalog!
In the meantime, you can be sure the library staff will be working hard to make sure that everything works correctly so that it’s easy to use and problem-free for you when you come back to SNU this fall.