Odum Library Blog

We’ve recently added several electronic books on designing and programming video games. You can read them online through our catalog. Take a look at The Indie Game Development Survival Guide, Beginning Illustration and Storyboarding for Games, Beginning Game Graphics, Game Scripting Mastery, Game Character Design Complete, or The Dark Side of Game Texturing. In ebook and hard copy versions we have Ed Byrne’s Game Level Design. We also have ebooks specifically about working in Quake, 3DS Max 8, Maya, or ActionScript. If you’re interested in these or similar titles, just Ask a Librarian.

If you’re setting a game during the Cuban Missile Crisis, look through a library. Find out what people were wearing, what other issues were in the news, how houses were furnished, what cars were being driven. Especially include things which now seem foreign. –Graham Nelson

Tags: Big Read, Database Update, Media Center, Neat Stuff by Cliff Landis
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Odum Library’s GIL Catalog will be temporarily unavailable on Friday, December 28th due to a software upgrade as scheduled during the holiday break to cause the least inconvenience.

Tags: Odum Library by Cliff Landis
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Perhaps you’re thinking of having some work done. Look into The Face-Lift Sourcebook or Understanding Cosmetic Laser Surgery for the lowdown on facelift procedures and recovery, skin treatments, tattoo removal, or Botox. If you’re curious about plastic surgery as a cultural phenomenon, we can recommend Flesh Wounds: the Culture of Cosmetic Surgery, Cosmetic Surgery: the Cutting Edge of Commercial Medicine in America, or Cleavage: Technology, Controversy, and the Ironies of the Man-Made Breast.

Hollywood always wanted me to be pretty, but I fought for realism. –Bette Davis

Tags: Neat Stuff by Cliff Landis
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You’ve probably been asked not to do all your research on the Internet. To help explain why not, your Neat Stuff editor recommends Fool’s Gold: Why the Internet is No Substitute for a Library, or Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet. Although written for teachers, Critical Thinking and the Web: Teaching Users to Evaluate Internet Resources offers useful information anyone can use to determine a Web site’s authority, evaluate information on controversial topics, or figure out if an online article is “scholarly.” It’s our job to help you understand this stuff- for more information don’t hesitate to Ask a Librarian.

It’s a weird sensation to be mad and learning at the same time. –Jeff Foxworthy

Tags: Neat Stuff by Cliff Landis
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Please note on the following two closures on the Library’s hours web page:

Library Closed at 11 pm on Wednesday, Dec. 12th and reopen at 7 am on Thursday, Dec. 13th due to electrical work.

The Library will close a 10 pm on Tuesday, Dec. 18th and reopen at 8 am on Wednesday, Jan. 2nd for seasonal holidays.

Tags: Odum Library by Cliff Landis
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In Save Me from Myself: How I Found God, Quit Korn, Kicked Drugs, and Lived to Tell My Story Korn’s former lead guitarist Brian “Head” Welch gives a controversial, raw account of his life before and after he became a born-again Christian. Many, many other singers and musicians talk about their careers (including Andre 3000, Serj Tankian, Nelly Furtado, Tom Morello, Alicia Keys, Missy Elliott, Perry Farrell, and Britney Spears) in On the Record: Over 150 of the Most Talented People in Music Share the Secrets of Their Success. For help finding more biographies of rock stars or rock bands, Ask a Librarian.

People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they’re going deaf, it has to be played louder still. –Milan Kundera

Tags: Neat Stuff by Cliff Landis
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Did you know VSU has a collection of 5000 year old Babylonian clay tablets? They are on display in the Archives, open from 9-5 weekdays, and are also available as a digital display. These tablets give details of animal sacrifices at temples and information about diet and the economy almost 5000 years ago.

Tags: Archives & Special Collections by Cliff Landis
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The ebrary book Goth’s Dark Empire includes an essay on Brandon Teena and the films based on Teena’s life: Boy’s Don’t Cry (available to check out from Odum Library on DVD) and The Brandon Teena Story. If you want to read about “passing” (identifying and living as a member of a social group other than the one you’re born into) we recommend the essay collection Passing: Identity and Interpretation in Sexuality, Race, and Religion, Brooke Kroeger’s Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are, or Shirlee Taylor Haizlip’s memoir of her multiracial family, The Sweeter the Juice.

“Problems of human behaviour continue to baffle us, but at least in the library we have them properly filed.” – Anita Brookner

Tags: Neat Stuff by Cliff Landis
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