McQuade Messenger: Summer 2019

Your library staff have been busy this spring, take a look here to see some highlights! As the college shifts gears to summer, remember the staff and resources of McQuade are available to support your research with document delivery, enrich your course prep with supplemental materials, or enable your relaxation with downloadable audiobooks and bestsellers for the beach. 

We are expanding our streaming options over the summer with continued access to the following with some link changes:

Use these links for the frequently-used titles below. 
These titles are in AVON and will no longer be available in Films on Demand after May 30:

The Bible's Buried Secrets: Beyond Fact or Fiction (BBC/PBS)
Bible’s Buried Secrets (BBC/PBS 2004) in 3 segments
 Did King David's Empire Exist?
 Real Garden of Eden
 Did God Have a Wife?
Jerusalem and Sacred Journeys series
Makers: Women Who Make America Vols 1 and 2, 3 episodes each(PBS)
    Awakening, volume 1, episode 1
    Makers: Women in Comedy, volume 2,
Anita: Speaking Truth to Power (First Run Features)
Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (California Newsreel)
Wild Women Don’t have the Blues (California Newsreel)
 

Reference/Access Services Associate Gabby Womack gave a presentation on racial passing and the United States Census for Black History Month on Tuesday, February 26th. If you missed her presentation, feel free to watch it here!

In the Spring Semester of 2019, Dan Ryan a graduate student in the Health Sciences completed a study about taking an exercise study break in the library for his capstone project.  Dan collected data on students before and after riding the bikes located in the lower level of McQuade Library.

You'll find Erin Kaminski from the Office of Wellness Education and recent alum from the School of Health Sciences graduate program in Community Health Education, Robyn Lebowitz also a recent alum of the Masters in Health and Wellness Management program, and Librarian Catherine Wong at the Massachusetts Library Association meeting on May 21st presenting on Mindful McQuade: Sustainability and Mindfulness in the Heart of a Small College Campus. Librarians at McQuade collaborated with campus organizations including the Office of Wellness Education to create a wellness initiative to help students and staff be more healthy and mindful in their daily lives.  This included adding bicycles, a meditation space, creating mindful kits, handing out plants for residence halls and offices, hosting a community supported agriculture pickup, and programming. In spring semester 2019, Robyn Lebowitz helped assess the program as her capstone project.  

Librarians Catherine Wong, Katherine LaFlamme, and Michaela Keating recently published a chapter on the Mindful McQuade initiative in Recipes for Mindfulness in Your Library: Supporting Resilience and Community Engagement.    

Librarian Lyena Chavez worked with Abbott Lawrence Academy students in Professor Lovett's POL1100 "Introduction to U.S. Politics" course.  Librarians have been actively involved in Merrimack's successful Early College Program, offering orientations and course-specific workshops to these cohorts of students.  

Health Sciences Faculty Dr. Traci Alberti and Librarian Catherine Wong were funded by the National Network Libraries of Medicine New England Region for their Health Literacy and Health Information Resource Education in the Lawrence Community project. This funding will allow them to continue teaching Health Literacy classes with Health Sciences students at the Notre Dame Education Center using the HEAL Program from Literacy for Life. 

Associate Professor of Civil Engineering Dr. Cynthia Carlson and Librarian Catherine Wong presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries 2019 New England Chapter Annual Conference held in Portland, Maine in May.  The theme of the conference was Opening Doors for Each Other.  Carlson and Wong's poster was entitled When Is a Game Not "Just" a Game?: Introducing Climate Change and Information Fluency in a First-Year Engineering Course and describes their collaboration while playing a Reacting To The Past: STEM Game about climate change in Dr. Carlson's introductory engineering class.

Recent additions to the Education Resources Collection in the McQuade Library include the robots Dash, Mbot, Root, and BlueBot. These bots can be paired with the ERC Ipads that have pre-loaded designated apps for each bot.  Also new is a 25 x 25 foot Giant Mars map from the Buzz Aldrin’s ShareSpace Foundation. Many thanks to Professor Anne Gatling for securing the funds for these great new resources.

These items and many more ERC resources are available for check-out to the Merrimack Community and local educators. More information about availability and check-out contact erc@merrimack.edu. or explore the library website https://www.merrimack.edu/erc.

This year Melissa Lawson served as McQuade's first Research Center Assistant.   Melissa provided excellent research assistance to Merrimack Community members throughout the year and became a terrific student ambassador for the Research Center in this new student worker position.  She did many special projects with librarians including creating a NAXOS Music Library cheatsheet, creating a multicultural literature guide, and updating numerous other online guides.  Melissa is an English and Philosophy major who is interested in pursuing librarianship. 

Melissa gained a lot of experience working at McQuade, and we truly look forward to having Melissa back in the Fall!

Looking for a good audiobook to listen to on a summer road trip? You've come to the right place!