Library News
Over 2100 items added to Booth’s collections in March
Posted on April 10th, 2025
Booth Library’s collections are continually growing to meet the research and information needs of the EIU community. Last month, Booth Library acquired and cataloged 379 physical items (books, DVDs, government documents, archival resources, and more) and 1796 electronic resources (including ebooks, ejournals, digital audiobooks, and streaming videos). Individual issues of current periodicals are excluded. All items are discoverable through the library’s online catalog.
New acquisitions include items selected for purchase by Booth’s subject librarians, donations, re-cataloged library items, freely available government publications, and consortium-wide purchases.
Please contact your subject librarian with any questions.
Celebrate National Library Week at Booth!
Posted on April 3rd, 2025
National Library Week is an annual celebration of libraries, librarians, and library workers. From April 6-12, join Booth Library during our events and activities dedicated to National Library Week! We have a week full of opportunities for readers, learners, and all patrons of Booth Library to come together and have fun!
Monday, April 7th
- Right to Read Day: Defend our freedom to read! Learn the ways you can take action to push back against book bans and other attacks on library resources during #RighttoReadDay.
- Button-Making: Visit the Marvin Foyer from 12 p.m.-1:30 p.m. to use our button-maker machine! Celebrate Right to Read Day with our themed button-making materials to pin down your love for reading!
Tuesday, April 8th
- Sewing Machine Workshop: Come to the CSI at 4 p.m.-5:30 p.m. learn how to use a sewing machine and general sewing skills; after this workshop, you can reserve time with the CSI’s sewing machines.
- Authors@EIU: Come to the West Reading Room at 5 p.m.-7 p.m. for the Spring 2025 installment of the Authors@EIU! Join us in celebrating EIU faculty who have recently published books.
Wednesday, April 9th
- Library POP UP @ South Quad Dining: Visit the South Quad Dining Center from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. for our Library POP UP! On your way to lunch, search through our selection of summer-reads and check out a book—no library visit required!
- 3D Printing 101: Come to the CSI at 4 p.m.-5:30 p.m. to learn the basic process of 3D printing objects for educational and personal use; after this workshop, you can reserve time with the CSI’s 3D printers.
- 16th Annual Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Works: Come to the West Reading Room at 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. to celebrate our award recipients!
Thursday, April 10th
- New Works Festival: Come to the West Reading Room at 5 p.m.-6 p.m. to hear playwright Matthew Freeman’s talk entitled “You Are What You Love: Owning Your Influences”: a conversation on influence, writing, and creativity!
Friday, April 11th
- Green Screen 101: Come to the CSI at 1 p.m.-2:30 p.m. to learn the basics using a green screen for photography and videography; after this workshop, you can reserve time with the CSI’s green screens.
- Green Screen Photo Op: Visit the CSI from 3 p.m.-4:30 p.m. for a green-screen photoshoot! Get your picture taken with our provided props and backgrounds showing your library love!
Along with these events and activities, we have our regularly scheduled CSI discovery Hours; visit the CSI on Monday-Thursday from 4 p.m.-5:30 p.m. to explore our collection of technological equipment and services!
Booth Library’s new Open Access agreement with Cambridge University Press
Posted on March 14th, 2025
Thanks to Booth Library’s new Read & Publish agreement with Cambridge University Press, EIU faculty and other campus authors can publish articles Open Access (OA), if accepted, in hundreds of Cambridge’s journals at no charge. Please see more details on our agreement at the Cambridge website and their step-by-step guide for authors, and visit their Eligibility Checker tool to see the list of journals available for free OA publishing. As an added benefit of this agreement, everyone at EIU now has access to the Cambridge University Press 2025 full collection of over 400 journals, including leading titles across the humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine.
Open Access (OA) is a set of principles and practices designed to make scholarly materials freely available. OA publishing allows for greater visibility and accessibility, allowing scholars worldwide to discover relevant articles and read them without paywalls. Academic libraries promote OA to ensure equitable access to scholarly research, breaking down financial and legal barriers that restrict knowledge sharing. For additional OA publishing opportunities for EIU researchers through Booth Library’s agreements, and other information on how Booth is supporting publishers’ OA initiatives, see our LibGuide.
For questions, please contact your subject librarian or Sarah Johnson, Head of Collection Management (sljohnson2@eiu.edu).
Celebrate Women’s History Month: Booth Library Presents Jane Addams & Hull House Exhibit Launch
Posted on March 6th, 2025
Booth Library invites the EIU campus and greater community to celebrate Women’s History Month through the launch of a new exhibit: Jane Addams and Hull House. Join us on Thursday, March 13, 2025, at 5 p.m. in the library’s West Reading Room for light refreshments and discussion by the students who curated the exhibit, followed by a documentary screening.
This exhibit is a collaboration project as part of Killeen Reidy and Lauren Clark’s internship for professional writing at Booth Library. Reidy and Clark will explain their research and design process to curate the Jane Addams and Hull House displays, followed by a documentary screening of Jane Addams: Together We Rise — A Chicago Stories Documentary from a PBS affiliate in Chicago, also in the West Reading Room. Reidy and Clark’s exhibits are featured in the Reference Hallway adjacent to the Marvin Foyer, with a book display of Jane Addams’ written works that are available for checkout.
Reidy and Clark are both English majors: Reidy with an emphasis in Literary Studies and Clark with an emphasis in Professional Writing.
Light refreshments will be served. The exhibit will continue until the end of Women’s History Month (March 31).
Research and Communication Support Services at Booth
Posted on January 29th, 2025
Booth Library, the Writing Center, and the speech program are excited to announce a new partnership offering coordinated research and communication support—both oral presentations and writing—across all disciplines at the university.
In addition to Booth Library’s expert research consultations, we will now offer consultations for presentation and writing assignments on a walk-up basis at Booth Library every Monday and Wednesday from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Simply visit the Research Help desk (on the main floor) for directions. These tutors can assist with assignments from any course, including ENG 1001 and CMN 1310.
As part of this program, speech consultations will be held in the NEW Creative Reality Studio, part of the Center for Student Innovation. The studio offers state-of-the-art resources, including virtual reality equipment, green screens, and on-the-spot technical support, to enhance creative opportunities for students. Find more info here.
This partnership supports student success by helping develop the essential communication skills needed for academic achievement, professional growth, and personal development. Whether you need help articulating your ideas clearly, persuasively, or effectively in written or spoken form, we’re here to help!
Questions? Visit: https://www.eiu.edu/booth/requests/asklibr.html
Upgrade your searching with JSTOR’s interactive research tool
Posted on January 23rd, 2025
Booth Library now has early access to JSTOR’s cutting-edge interactive research tool. This new JSTOR feature uses advanced technologies, including AI, to help you expand your research within JSTOR’s large collection of journal articles and ebooks. It helps you find relevant materials faster by surfacing key points and arguments from the text you want to read, discover new topics and results within JSTOR, engage conversationally by asking questions about the text, and search more effectively using everyday language queries.
The interactive research tool is available on content pages for journal articles, book chapters, and research reports, and as an alternative to JSTOR’s standard keyword search.
Here’s how to get started:
1. Go to jstor.org.
2. Create a JSTOR personal account or sign in to your existing personal account.
3. Ensure you have institutional access through EIU (look for the banner at the top of your JSTOR screen).
4. Run a search and open any journal article, book chapter, or research report to start using the tool.
Get involved! As an early user, you’ll have the opportunity to provide valuable feedback that will help shape the tool’s development. Remember, it’s a work in progress and will evolve. Because the tool is still in rapid development, JSTOR is requesting feedback, either in the tool via prompts to give interactions thumbs-up or thumbs-down ratings, or you can email JSTOR’s beta team. Your insights will play a key role in refining this exciting new feature!
Explore the interactive research tool today and take your research to the next level! Please ask a librarian if you have any questions.
Watch nearly 700 popular movies with Feature Films for Education
Posted on January 17th, 2025
Booth Library’s new subscription to Feature Films for Education, a streaming video collection from Infobase, has almost 700 popular movies available to stream. Included are recent blockbusters, classic cinema, dramas, musicals, science fiction, documentaries, animation studies, Academy Award winners, and more. The films were chosen for their suitability for instructional purposes and can be linked within D2L. And for students, there’s a great selection here if you’re having a movie night in the dorm.
The videos come with public performance rights for campus use, so they can be shown outside the classroom for campus events as long as admission isn’t being charged.
Please contact your subject librarian with any questions.
New library acquisitions for December
Posted on January 14th, 2025
Booth Library’s collections are continually growing to meet the research and information needs of the EIU community. During December 2024, Booth Library acquired and cataloged 235 physical items (books, DVDs, government documents, archival resources, and more) and 30,730 electronic resources (including ebooks, ejournals, digital audiobooks, and streaming videos). Included in the December e-resource list are over 28,000 digital graphic novels, manga, and comics from Booth’s new Comics Plus database. Individual issues of current periodicals are excluded. All items are discoverable through the library’s online catalog.
New acquisitions include items selected for purchase by Booth’s subject librarians, donations, re-cataloged library items, freely available government publications, and consortium-wide purchases.
Please contact your subject librarian with any questions.
EIU Recognizes International Holocaust Remembrance Day with Traveling Exhibit
Posted on January 10th, 2025
Courage to Remember, a traveling exhibit about the Holocaust, will be displayed at Eastern Illinois University in Booth Library from January 27, 2025, to January 31, 2025. January 27 marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The exhibit will open that day at noon with a public reception, including a welcome from Jay Gatrell, EIU President.
Created by the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, the exhibit features large illustrated panels with historical photos, maps, and first-person accounts. It presents a chronological journey through the events of the Holocaust, exploring how prejudice and discrimination escalated into violence and genocide.
“We are very excited that Eastern Illinois University is hosting this exhibit,” said Dr. Brian Kahn, a longtime member and previous chair of the Holocaust Education Center of the Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation, the exhibit’s sponsor. “Holocaust survivor Dr. William Gingold brought this exhibit to our area, and it is an excellent educational tool for teaching about the Holocaust,” he added.
Rebecca Lawson, EIU alumna and local educator, echoed this sentiment: “Getting to a major Holocaust museum is not easy for most people in our area, and this exhibit will give people a similar experience on a smaller scale without having to travel very far.”
International Holocaust Remembrance Day honors the memory of Holocaust victims. EIU’s hosting of Courage to Remember serves as an opportunity to foster historical awareness, promote critical reflection on the consequences of hatred, bigotry, and intolerance, and to reaffirm its commitment to human rights and the university’s mission to prepare students as informed and empathetic global citizens.
Courage to Remember will be displayed in the West Reading Room of Booth Library, 600 Lincoln Ave., Charleston, Illinois. The exhibit is free and open to the public from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Manga, Graphic Novels, and More – Now at Your Fingertips with Comics Plus!
Posted on December 5th, 2024
Booth Library’s collection of graphic novels and comics just got much bigger. Our new subscription to Comics Plus includes nearly 27,000 digital comics, graphic novels and nonfiction, manga, and children’s picture books – all with no checkout limits or simultaneous user restrictions.
To access Comics Plus, first create an account, then use your login and password to browse and read the collection.
Your login credentials for Comics Plus can also be used with the iOS or Android apps. Within the app, choose “Eastern Illinois University IL” as your school.
