The Main Building, including the PSC Library, will be closed from Friday, December 13 through Monday, January 13. You may contact us at library@prairiestate.edu.
The PSC Library will be closed from Friday, December 13th, through January 3rd for winter break. However, the library’s website never closes and has lots of resources for research and fun over the break.
Game Night
Bring your game system or favorite board game to a library-sponsored game night. Unwind and play with the library on Tuesday, December 3rd from 5:30 to 7:30 pm in the library classroom. This event is free and open to students. Pizza will be served.
Finals Fest
Finals Fest returns to the library during final exams (12/9 - 12/12) to support and celebrate our students! From Monday, December 9th through the end of the semester, we'll have snacks and beverages to keep you going. This event is free and the coffee will flow until we close on Thursday the 12th.
The library has a collection of ebooks and audiobooks through a company called Libby. With the Libby app on your phone or tablet, you can read or stream these books on the go. You can also download titles and enjoy when WIFI isn’t available. The best part is that you can connect the app to multiple libraries at the same time. For example, you can connect your public library and PSC account to the Libby app. Take a look at this research guide for instructions on how to download the app and connect it to your PSC login.
We have a new database: Humanities Source Ultimate. This database is “a rich collection of 1,787 active full-text humanities journals, surpassing any other database of its kind in terms of peer-reviewed content.” Humanities Source Ultimate has easy searching via keywords, Boolean operators, and filters. (If you need a review on keyword searching, Booleans, and filters, take a look at this research guide.) See what publications they offer, it is an embarrassment of riches. You might save money on a subscription you already have. For example, they have the Strad Magazine, saving me $74.95 annually.
by Valerie Moore, Outreach and Engagement Librarian and Associate Professor
The PSC Library has 133 databases for anyone with an active login. These databases include scholarly articles, ebooks, movies, magazines, educational videos, and newspapers to serve your research needs. This is all free with your login while you are at PSC. There’s a wealth of information at our disposal, but it doesn’t last. The minute students graduate or you leave for a different job, access is lost since this benefit is paid for indirectly with tuition. While public libraries offer many of the same things we do, our collections serve a different purpose, and therefore they won’t have access to the same materials. Also, not everyone has access to a public library.
This all amounts to information privilege since information access, like everything else, is monetized. Information privilege asks:
In an ideal situation, libraries pay for information on behalf of their patrons in a collection that fits their needs. Patrons save money by paying for library services via tuition or property taxes. However, not everyone has a library, and not all libraries have robust collections. Internally, the PSC Library can also lose access to individual titles, or even whole databases due to the whims of the publishing industry, which is dominated by a few massive companies.
Libraries are often caught between budget constraints and wanting our patrons to have access to everything they need. Since there is little competition in publishing, they can charge libraries whatever they want. Our budgets are often cut annually. This means we are on a treadmill of always doing more with less.
So what’s a library to do? What we do best–share resources. You may already be aware
of interlibrary loan, in which you borrow books from another library, but libraries also share databases through consortiums like the Consortium of Academic
and Research Libraries (CARLI). Consortiums are cooperative groups of libraries that
share resources. CARLI is a membership organization that PSC joined over the summer.
We also have databases brought to you by the Illinois Secretary of State and the Illinois
State Library. The institutional buying power of the state is greater than ours, so
everyone benefits down the line. By pooling resources, we can better share what we
have, save money, stick it to the publishers, and serve our patrons.
Resource sharing has its limits though. Sharing resources doesn’t matter if you lose access when you leave PSC. To help with this issue, the PSC Library will soon be unveiling community library cards for those who live in communities without a public library. If you do have a public library in your community, make sure you have a card whether you leave PSC or not. While their collection will be different from ours, have fun exploring their collection and you might be surprised to see what they have. For example, take a look at the Flossmoor Public Library’s Library of Things. They can also get you items via interlibrary loan if they don’t have the items you need.
As mentioned above, the library will close early this semester for winter break. As such, we wanted to share something portable for the whole month. December’s display will be movies from our streaming collection, Kanopy. Kanopy has arthouse movies, documentaries, television (including many shows from the BBC), international movies, classics, and so much more. The library staff loves these movies so much that I can’t feature everything they requested for the display, but I’ve highlighted a preview. Happy streaming.
 African American History |
 Boyhood |
 Ex Machina |
 The Garden of Words |
 Hunt for the Wilderpeople |
 Rare Exports |
 Train to Busan |
 The Wicker Man |
Lastly, the library is here for you; reach out with any questions at Ask a Librarian!
