La Trobe University Library news and information!

If you have been thinking about completing part of your studies overseas, you should plan to attend the Student Exchange Fair next week.

You will be able to get information on grants and funding opportunities, meet LTU international advisors, and speak to students who have been on exchange and who are currently on exchange.

Melbourne campus
Date: 30 April
Time: 10am-3pm
Venue: The Odeon (Union Building)

Bendigo campus
Date: 1 May
Time: 11.30am-2.30pm
Venue: Student Union

If you require more information, please visit latrobe.edu.au/international/edabroad

A political tsunami appears to be hitting the Australian Labor Party as it wrestles with the challenges of leadership and collapse in almost every state.

What has led to this situation and what may happen next will be discussed at a special forum on Wednesday 2 May as part of the Ideas & Society Program.

Speakers will include Barry Jones, former President of the ALP and former Hawke Government Minister;  Antony Green, ABC election analyst; and Robert Manne, Professor of Politics at La Trobe University. The forum will be chaired by Marilyn Lake, Professor of History at La Trobe University.

Time and location

2 May 12:30 – 2:00pm

John Scott Meeting House, Melbourne campus

This event will be broadcast live via the Ideas & Society webcast on Ustream

Blog content from UniNews

The Wheeler Centre is hosting a new weekly series featuring contemporary writers speaking on seminal Australian texts. This week Romana Koval and Kerryn Goldsworthy will share their opinions on the status of Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip, as a classic of Australian literature.

When: Thursday 26 April, 5.30-6.30pm

Venue: The Wheeler Centre

This is a free event, but bookings are recommended. To book, or to find out more information about this and other events, visit The Wheeler Centre website.

Noel Gough is a staff member in the Faculty of Education and is this week’s featured survey respondent.

What are you reading at the moment?

The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund De Waal, Bodily natures: science, environment and the material self, by Stacy Alaimo, and Hello avatar: rise of the networked generation, by Beth Coleman.

What is the most overrated book you have read?

Hotel du Lac, by Anita Brookner, it won the Booker Prize in 1984 against three vastly superior works: JG Ballard’s Empire of the sun, David Lodge’s Small world: an academic romance, and Julian Barnes’ Flaubert’s parrot.

Is there a book that has been influential or inspirational in your life? Why?

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. This novel stands for the many geat works of SF (speculative fiction, science fiction, speculative fabulation, etc.) that have been influential for me. It has special significance because Shelley was a young woman of 19 when she conceived one of the first great and enduring myths of the industrial age and only 21 when she published one of the first SF novels of the modern era. A great testimony to the imaginative powers of young people unhindered by standardised schooling.

Read Noel’s full survey here.

La Trobe campus libraries will observe the following opening hours on Anzac Day, 25 April:

Melbourne
9:30am* – 5pm (no extended hours)

Note: extended hours operate from the day before right through the night of the 24th until 9:30am on the 25th. Normal extended hours resumes on Thursday 26th April.

All other campuses
Closed

Faculty of Health Sciences staff together with the library and the Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Centre (CTLC) have collaborated on some innovative technologies to enhance learning. The seminars in the Health Sciences Innovation & Technology Series were first presented at the 2011 Colloquium and are being showcased again to provide the opportunity for staff to find out more and be inspired…

Seminar 1- Peeling Back the Layers: Anatomy TV at La Trobe University
Tanya Cates and Dr Sherrie Wentworth (Health Sciences); Jenny Corbin and Katie Wiese (Library)

Tanya Cates and Jenny Corbin will present this session

Date: Wednesday 2 May
Time: 12.30 – 1.30pm (BYO lunch- tea and coffee available)
Venue: Melbourne Library seminar room
(videoconference available: Albury/Wodonga Library conference room; Shepparton conference room 218; Bendigo Health meeting room 208a)
RSVP: FHSStaffdev@latrobe.edu.au by Monday 30 April

This session will showcase and demonstrate the multiple teaching applications of Anatomy TV – an interactive, rotational, 3D anatomy teaching tool. The modernisation of anatomy teaching methods and the redesign of campus learning environments reflect both increasing student numbers and curriculum shifts to enquiry-based team learning in the health sciences.

In 2011, Anatomy TV was trialled twice, on and off campus, resulting in significant enthusiasm for the resource to become a major purchase for the library and Health Sciences faculty. Feedback on a preview of Anatomy TV indicated positive interest from other areas within the University, such as Biomedicine and Biomedical Engineering.

We now have trial access to Worldscope Fundamentals via ThomsonONE until 18 May.

Worldscope’s data on the world’s leading public and private companies represents over 96% of global market value. Widely respected for content quality, depth of detail, extensive company coverage and content presentation, Worldscope provides annual and interim/quarterly data, detailed historical financial statement content, per share data, calculated ratios, pricing and textual information. Standardized formats make for easy analysis of 57,000 companies (37,000 active and more than 27,000 inactive companies) in more than 70 countries, including full standardised coverage of over 30 developed and emerging markets with up to 20 years of historical data available.

The ThomsonONE home page is set at Worldscope and all you need to do type in the ticker or company name on the top left box and choose ‘go’.

Leave comments about this trial on the feedback page.

We have trial access to Anthropology Online from Alexander Street Press until 13 May.

Anthropology Online brings together a wide range of written ethnographies, field notes, seminal texts, memoirs, and contemporary studies, covering human behaviour the world over. When complete, this collection will contain more than 100,000 pages of material, including tens of thousands of pages of previously unpublished material from major archives. It has launched with 140 sources spanning 41,509 pages.

Key names represented in the collection include Franz Boas (The Mind of Primitive Man), Ruth Benedict (Tales of the Cochiti Indians), Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa), Claude Levi-Strauss (Structural Anthropology), Clifford Geertz (The Interpretation of Cultures), A R Radcliffe-Brown (Structure and Function in Primitive Society), David MacDougall (Transcultural Cinema), Paul Rabinow (Essays on the Anthropology of Reason), E. E. Evans-Pritchard (Nuer Religion) and Bronislaw Malinowski (Argonauts of the Western Pacific). Works from major publisher catalogues include Oxford University Press, Waveland Press, Westview Press, Princeton University Press, and others.

All aspects of human behavior are thoroughly covered in the collection, including kinship, family, race, material culture, marriage, gender, prehistory, evolution, kinesthetics, food and foraging, cooking, economic systems, social stratification and status, male and female roles, political organization, conflict and conflict resolution, religion and magic, music and the arts, and much more. The majority of the content is in English, with some French and German material also targeted. Geographical coverage is global, with special focus given outside the developed world. Ranging from 19th century to the present day, Anthropology Online documents the history and development of the discipline itself, while also providing the most comprehensive tool for current trends and contemporary study.

You may leave comments about this trial on the feedback page.

Our second guest speaker for the 2012 Library Lunchtime Seminar series is Lynne Kelly, PhD candidate in the English program and author of many books, including ‘Spiders learning to love them’.

Recently Ms Kelly has turned her attention to researching small-scale oral cultures and, in the process, discovering radical new explanations for the purpose behind many enigmatic physical structures, including Stonehenge and the Durrington Walls complex.

Plan to attend and be part of a fascinating presentation.

When: 1-3pm, Tuesday 24 April

Where: seminar room, Melbourne campus library

RSVP: l.donnelly@latrobe.edu.au for catering purposes. Coffee, tea and light refreshments provided.

We have trial access to the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) until 27 April.

Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a peer reviewed, PubMed indexed journal devoted to the publication of biological, medical, chemical and physical research in a video format. It was established as a new tool in life science publication and communication, with participation of scientists from leading research institutions.

JoVE takes advantage of video technology to capture and transmit the multiple facets and intricacies of life science research. Visualisation greatly facilitates the understanding and efficient reproduction of both basic and complex experimental techniques, thereby addressing two of the biggest challenges faced by today’s life science research community: i) low transparency and poor reproducibility of biological experiments; and ii) time and labor-intensive nature of learning new experimental techniques.

You can leave comments about this trial on the feedback page.