Library News
Celebrate National Library Week at Booth Library April 20-23
Posted on April 17th, 2026
National Library Week is an annual celebration of the contributions libraries provide for scholarship and community connection. From April 20th-23rd, find your library joy during Booth Library’s fun-filled events and activities! Join us as we celebrate intellectual freedom and uplift our community of library patrons and workers.
Monday, April 20th
- Right to Read Day: Defend our right to read! Use today to take action to protect the freedom to read and fight back against censorship. Learn more about Right to Read Day online.
- Button-Making with the LAB: Stop by the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union from 11 AM-1 PM to make your own button and visit with the LAB members!
- University Archives Open House: Check out our Mary J. Booth display and our collection of EIU artifacts in the south entry of Booth Library from 1-3 PM.
- Exhibit Opening/Artists’ Talk: Celebrate the artistic talents of EIU students and engage in discussion with the 75th Anniversary Student Art Contest finalists in the West Reading Room at 5 PM.
Tuesday, April 21st
- National Library Workers Day: Libraries work because we do! Now is the time to celebrate the hard work put in by our library workers. We encourage EIU faculty and staff to send a shout out to a library worker online.
- 17th Annual Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Works: Join us in the West Reading Room from 4 PM-5:30 PM to celebrate our award recipients.
Wednesday, April 22nd
- EIU Giving Day: Step up for Booth Library and uphold the future of EIU!
Thursday, April 23rd
- Take Actions for Libraries Day: Advocate for libraries across the country! Look to ALA for ways to campaign against book bans and voice your support for libraries.
- Documentary Watch Party: Discover how librarians fight against book banning in the United States during our screening of the documentary film The Librarians (2025) in the West Reading Room from 6-8 PM.
All events are free and open to the public. For the latest information, follow Booth Library on Facebook and Instagram.
2026 Periodical and Standing Order Review
Posted on April 15th, 2026
Booth Library’s annual Periodical and Standing Order Review is underway. The initial lists of periodicals and standing orders selected for cancellation have been posted. This annual exercise is designed to allocate the library’s materials budget so that library collections best meet the needs of library users. Titles are added or canceled with input from the relevant academic departments. The review will conclude on April 29th.
Questions about the review can be addressed by individual subject librarians.
Over 2600 items added to Booth’s collections in March
Posted on April 3rd, 2026
During March 2026, Booth Library acquired and cataloged 312 physical items (books, DVDs, government documents, archival resources, and more) and 2346 electronic resources (including ebooks, ejournals, digital audiobooks, EIU student theses, and streaming videos) in February 2026. Please find the lists of new items at the links below. 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.
Enhancing Creativity with Technology: CSI Workshops April 2026
Posted on March 31st, 2026
The Center for Student Innovation at Booth Library will be hosting four beginner-friendly workshops this April dedicated to helping the EIU community develop technical skills. Here are the upcoming workshops happening this month:
- Learn how to create professional flyers, social media posts, and more during the Adobe Express for Creative Works Learning Lab hosted on Wednesday, April 1st from 4 to 4:45 p.m.
- Add unique backgrounds to your photographs and videos during the Green Screen 101 workshop hosted on Wednesday, April 8th from 4 to 5 p.m.
- Turn a 3D model from a digital file into a printed 3D object during the 3D Printing 101 workshop hosted on Monday, April 13th from 6 to 7 p.m.
- Learn how to independently use the equipment in the CSI’s Podcasting Studio during the Podcasting 101 workshop hosted on Wednesday, April 15th from 5 to 6 p.m.
All events take place at the 1000 level of Booth Library in the Center for Student Innovation. Register to attend CSI workshops and learning labs through LibCal. For more information, please contact the CSI at csi@eiu.edu.
2025 Periodical and Standing Order Review
Posted on April 16th, 2025
Booth Library’s annual Periodical and Standing Order Review has been completed. The lists of periodicals and standing orders selected for cancellation have been posted. This annual exercise is designed to allocate the library’s materials budget so that library collections best meet the needs of library users. Titles are added or canceled with input from the relevant academic departments.
Questions about the review can be addressed by individual subject librarians.
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.
