New Communication Books in the BC Libraries

New books on many aspects of communication studies continue to be added to the BC Libraries’ collections all the time. There are a couple of ways to see what has arrived in recent weeks.

An RSS feed on the Libraries website -- http://bc.edu/libraries/materials/rssfeeds/communication.html -- shows recent additions with the newest ones always at the top. Click on any title to go to the full record in Quest, the BC Libraries catalog, for more information.

You can visit this page at any time or, if you use an RSS feed reader like Google Reader, Bloglines, or My Yahoo, you can click on the orange RSS icon to add it to your own page.

For a more categorized list of new communication books, go to http://www2.bc.edu/~lissk/newbooks/. Here you’ll see links to sets of the most recent additions and to books on particular aspects of communication (i.e. Television and Radio, Interpersonal Communication, Rhetoric, Gender and Communication, and more.)

If you want to recommend a communication-related book for the collection, send the info to me in an e-mail or sign in to your account in Quest – there’s a link at the top of the page – and click on Recommend Library Materials. Just be sure to select Communication from the subject list on the recommendation form so that your recommendation gets to me and not to another librarian.

One last note: If you come to O’Neill Library for a new book and don’t find it on the shelf, check out the New Books display area in the lobby. It may be there.

The Newspaper of the Future, circa 1981

San Francisco KRON report from 1981

TV Series in the Media Center

The O'Neill Library Media Center's collection of TV series, old and new, on DVD and video continues to grow. New additions in the past few months include:

• The Office, Season 4
• Lost, Season 4
• Psych, Season 1
• Get Smart, Season 1
• Big Love, Season 2

See Selected TV Series Available in the O'Neill Library Media Center for a fuller list.

E-Journals: New Issues This Week

New issues of the following journals are available online this week:

• Discourse & Society
  
• Human Relations
• International Journal of Cultural Studies
  
• Journal of Nonverbal Behavior
  
• Journalism & Communication Monographs
• Management Communication Quarterly
  

Click on a title to access the issue. (Login with your BC username and password is required for off-campus access.)

Student Question Word Cloud

After reading how Obama’s health care policy team created a word cloud indicating the most frequently used words and phrases in comments they received about health care, I decided to do the same with the questions I received from students via e-mail and Meebo chat this semester. The results can be seen at http://www2.bc.edu/~lissk/wordcloudf08.html . It’s more an impressionistic view of my electronic interactions with comm majors than it is anything useful, but I thought it would be fun to share.

Among my favorite bits: One of the largest words in the cloud – along with find, research, paper, topic, articles, and class – is “wondering.” I hadn’t realized how often students say “I was wondering…”

Then there’s this inadvertent but oh so logical progression from good to bad among the alphabetical list of words and phrases:

good .good articles. .good sources. .good thanksgiving. great .great depression. .hard time. .hard time finding.

Crunch Time: Research Help with Your Papers

The end of the semester, with paper and project deadlines approaching, is among the busiest time for students – and for me. I’m here to help with your research. Here are tips on different ways to get help.

1. Set up a time to get together. In person consultations are not always necessary, but 10 or 15 minutes together are often all it takes to jump start your research or get you past a stumbling block. (We can take more time if it’s needed.) E-mail me or contact me via the live help boxes on many of my pages and we’ll find a time that works for both of us. You can also drop in, but I may be out or with another student.
2. Ask a question online. Many questions can be answered without meeting in person. Send me an e-mail or use the live help boxes on my home page, course pages, and research guides. If I’m online, the live help box lets us chat without IM; if I’m not online, you can leave a message. (Just be sure to tell me who you are and how to get back to you.)
3. Check out sources and tips on the pages I created for specific courses or for broad communication subject areas. There are links to all of them, and to key databases, on the Communication Research Help by Subject page on the library’s website.
   

Remember that I have many students coming for help at this time, so be patient if I’m not available at exactly the time that’s best for you. But do let me know if you need help, and I will work with you in whatever way I can.

Taking Work Home for Thanksgiving?

Are you planning to work on that term paper or project between bites of turkey? Whether you're traveling near or far – or not at all – you can access most Boston College databases and e-journals from off campus. You'll have to sign in with your username and password (unlike on campus), but otherwise they will work exactly the same as when you are here.