Librarians: Available (and helpful) for answering your questions

Have a question that you can't answer? Or, do you need assistance finding where to start researching?

Ask A Librarian is a free resource to help, regardless of how unusual or specific the request. 

Florida residents can chat or text with a trained professional librarian anytime from 10am - midnight Sunday to Thursday and 10am to 5pm on Friday and Saturday. Librarians from institutions all over the state and across all fields are waiting for you to ask something. If you want to refer back to the resources the librarian provides to help answer your question, you can email the chat to yourself or print it.

To get a better idea of how it works, you can view a demo video on the Ask A Librarian website.

LIRN Upgrades Aug. 24-26

The Library and Information Resources Network (LIRN) will be installing some new network equipment and servers in the datacenter this weekend.

 LIRN services will be unavailable at times during a window from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. Friday, Aug. 24, and Saturday, Aug.25.

 The upgrades will improve reliability, redundancy, and speed for LIRN services. They will post status updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Calculate (and plan!) the time left to finish your assignment

It can be easy to let deadlines sneak up on you - especially during the summer term, when there are so many things you want to enjoy before fall starts. The reality is, the day that seemed like it would never arrive when you were in week 1 will be coming eventually. We think it's fair that you're prepared for it!

If a planner doesn't motivate you or help you figure out a timeline, a great tool to use may be the Assignment Calculator by the University of Minnesota.

It does more than just tell you the days left. It breaks down what you have to do by day and by task. From the beginning ("suggestions for understanding your assignment" and "refine your topic") to the middle ("search your library catalog") all the way to the end ("citing sources" and "the elements of style").

If you click on one of the templates on that main page, you can find detailed steps for assignments like a lab report, research project, video project, and others you may have coming up in the next few weeks.

These tutorials will take you through the steps. The image on the left shows a few of the steps for doing a research project.

You can personalize these steps with SWFC resources, such as our library catalog, LIRN, or ebrary.

Try using it for your upcoming assignment. Why not be prepared?

How do you know if you're using something copyrighted?

Imagine that you started your own website or blog. You're not selling anything; you just occasionally post what you think about a certain news event or what you did that day. Maybe you went to dinner and had some pasta, then came home to write about it and post a picture to tie the whole post together. You find an image of Italian food that looked good by doing a search online. You're not doing anything wrong, right?

Unfortunately, that image you found (while it was publicly accessible and didn't have anything saying it was copyrighted near it) could have been copyrighted. These small mistakes can cause big - and expensive - legal problems later.

Copyright law is very complicated and the web makes it almost too easy to make a mistake. Librarian Michael Brewer and the American Library Association (ALA) worked to create the interactive site Copyright Genie to help.

It will ask you a series of questions to help you determine how the material you want to use can be reproduced, if it is protected by copyright law, and will provide a PDF of its conclusion for your records or to confirm with a copyright specialist.

Brewer and ALA also created a Fair Use Evaluator, which will help you determine the purpose and nature of how you're using an item. For example, it may be fair use if you're using an item for scholastic purposes, but it may not be if you're profiting from the use. If these sources aren't enough, you may also want to look for your specific situation in the online Copyright Advisory Office from Columbia University.

Remember that these resources are tools to help, and don't be afraid to ask questions when in doubt!