Finding "What is Ideology" by Jacques Derrida

A student came to the reference desk with a link from her professor to find an article titled, "What is Ideology" by Jacques Derrida. The professor provided an incorrect link. If anyone else is asking, the article can be found at:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/index.htm
From the list on the left side of the screen, select Derrida, Spectres of Marx. That link has the correct article.

Find your legislator assignment

I get this assignment at the reference desk every semester, and have already had one ambitious student asking how to find the information. Perhaps a throwback assignment to when it was necessary to use reference books for this, but the assignment is simply for the student to find the state senators and assemblymen and federal senators and representatives for their hometown. Although this information is easily found online (easily, maybe only for librarians??), students seem to have a lot of questions about how to find it!!

I've put together this webpage with links to get them started on their search. Although the right Google search will take them directly to the information they need, I've included links to the homepages so that they have to do a teeny bit of searching and website evaluation to get the answers. Feel free to give the tiny URL out to students if they will find it useful.

https://sites.google.com/site/dempseyrvcc/all-assignments/find-your-senator--congressmen

http://tinyurl.com/njlegislator

Lion's Mail (i.e. RVCC Gmail)

Information about how to set up an account and FAQ's regarding the new Lion's Mail system are available at the links below:

http://www2.raritanval.edu/How_to_logon_to_RVCC_Lion_Mail.pdf

http://www2.raritanval.edu/RVCC_Lion_Mail_Email_System_FAQs.pdf

Faculty and staff will still use Outlook as their primary RVCC email account, but will also have Lion's Mail accounts if you wish to set one up.

Students will only be using Lion's Mail, which will probably generate lots of reference questions at the beginning of the spring semester! As more information comes out that might be pertinent to our work there, I will post it here on the blog.

OpenOffice and other free software

I can never remember the free software that replicates a lot of Microsoft Office tools, but found it again today in a Lifehacker blogpost, so I'm reposting it here to never lose it again! OpenOffice.org describes itself as, "the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose."

This software is one of Lifehacker's "61 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For", which is a good read in itself.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Journals

From an email from Julie on Nov. 20, 2009:

Students enrolled in a math course have been instructed to come to the Library and look for articles in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics journals. Those journals are:

• Teaching Children Mathematics (available in Proquest 1997-2003)
• Mathematics Teacher (available in Proquest 1992-2003)
• Journal for Research in Mathematics Education (available in Proquest and JSTOR 1970-2003)
• On Math (not available)
• Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School (Available in print at the Circulation Desk)