Leadership Federal Government provides access to a directory of contact information for federal agencies, employees, and decision makers, including phone and fax numbers, addresses, emails, and biographical information. It allows searching the online federal government contact directory by organization type, acronym or person and discover the depth of our federal government contact directory.

New materials lists for items cataloged in November 2011, have been posted.

Interlibrary Loan will now send courtesy notices via email when you have a returnable item become due in one week. Some items can be renewed. You will also receive two more notices once an items becomes overdue.

We have acquired 16 ebook series in agriculture, biological science, immunology, microbiology, and neuroscience on the ScienceDirect from SciVerse Hub platform. These series typically publish new volumes every year; for some titles content goes back to the 1950s.

New materials lists for items cataloged in October 2011, have been posted.

Five new WilsonWeb hosted databases will provide expanded indexing of early twentieth century literature. (WilsonWeb databases will be transferring to the EBSCOhost platform in the future, which will allow cross-searching with the content on that platform.)

• Applied Science & Business Periodicals Retrospective from EBSCOhost (1913-1983)
• Biography Index Retrospective 1946-1983 from EBSCOhost (1946-1983)
• Essay and General Literature Retrospective from EBSCOhost (1900-1984)
• Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective from EBSCOhost (1908-1981)
• Library Literature & Information Science Full Text and Retrospective from EBSCOhost (1905-present)

We now have the option to receive Addison courtesy notices via text message on your phone. The following text message notices will be included in the program: courtesy notices for items that are coming due, overdue items, and hold/pick up items.

New materials lists for items cataloged in September 2011, have been posted.

We're offering two new services in the second floor lobby of Newman Library: a message board for use by our patrons and a display of Blacksburg Transit bus schedules.

  Methods in Enzymology from SciVerse is a series of ebooks available in PDF and HTML focused primarily on research methods in biochemistry and biotechnology. 2000-present are available online. Older volumes available in print.

We now offer a self-guided audio tour option with a graded quiz that can be used to show attendance for classes that require participation or give extra credit. The tour consists of 16 different information stops/points, accessible by using a device to scan a QR code. Once scanned using the camera in your mobile device and its built-in reader or a separate app, your device will play an audio track (with some photos/videos) explaining the different services that are offered in Newman Library and how our collections are organized.

Special Collections at Virginia Tech is home to a growing collection of books, publications, pamphlets, and manuscript materials relating to culinary history. In order to provide an online peek into this exciting group of materials, including handwritten manuscript receipt (recipe) books, early 20th century Jell-O pamphlets, local and community cookbooks from Virginia, and historic American recipe books, we are launching a new blog, What's Cookin' @ Special Collections. Once a week, we will feature an item that, for one reason or another, catches our attention. It may be colorful illustrations, especially rare content, a favorite standard, or questionably edible recipes, but hopefully, each item will offer a little entertainment and a little history.

The English department's Writing Center provides assistance with writing and reading assignments for Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff in Newman Library through their Night OWL satellite program. No appointments are necessary. Simply stop by their table on the second floor near the reference desk Sundays through Tuesday from 8:00pm - 10:00pm.

CommLab, located in room 101A, provides assistance with oral presentations for individuals or groups. Appointments (through Scholar) are available Mondays and Wednesdays from 12:00noon - 6:00pm and Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00am - 6:00pm.

New materials lists for items cataloged in August 2011, have been posted.

The University Libraries would like to welcome new students to Virginia Tech: freshmen, transfer students, and new graduate students. We have a lot of services and resources to offer you during your career here at Virginia Tech. Here are some tips and frequently asked questions (and answers!) for new students.

Summon both indexes full-text books, articles, and more from many providers and knows what sources we have online in full text.

Summon makes performing scholarly research easier. Because Summon search results are a mix of content from many providers, including records from Addison, the library catalog, major journal publishers, and several scholarly databases, one search can reveal many kinds of resources, whereas prior to our acquiring Summon, many separate searches in the catalog and databases would have been required.

Tours of Newman Library are offered six times a week, Tuesdays through Thursdays, at 11:30am and 5:00pm, from August 30 to December 1, except during Thanksgiving Break. No pre-registration is required. Meet a tour guide at the main entrance near the benches.

Summon is a new kind of database or library search engine that includes records for books, articles, conference proceedings, theses and dissertations, videos, music, images, manuscripts, standards, maps, and more. We have added all the records from Addison, the library's catalog, to Summon. It indexes citations from over 80% of the journals to which we subscribe. It also has records from other publishers, government agencies, database providers, and the numerous other libraries that participate in Summon. A single search in Summon can return records from all of these sources. It can be related to Google Scholar, though Summon has many advantages over Google Scholar. 

A lot has happened with the University Libraries since spring semester ended. Here's a quick round up of announcements over the summer:

The wireless network in Newman Library has been upgraded to the latest technology. This service is courtesy of University Libraries and Network Infrastructure and Services.

New materials lists for items cataloged in July 2011, have been posted.

The Virginia Tech Libraries owns about 50,000 ebooks that had been hosted on the netLibrary platform. netLibrary has been purchased by EBSCO and these ebooks are now available on the EBSCOhost platform.

Databases hosted on the Web of Knowledge from ISI platform, including Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Biological Abstracts, Science Citation Index, and Social Sciences Citation Index, are now available with an updated interface.

The university required that PID password be changed by July 1, 2011, and will require annual changes in the future. A password not changed by that deadline will expire, and expired passwords will not allow logging into Off Campus Sign In (or webmail, Scholar, CAS, etc.). If you attempt to login with an expired password, you will receive an error message. Passwords that have been changed between July 1, 2010 and July 1, 2011 will be valid for 12 months from the date of the change.

LexisNexis Academic Mobile is now available for smart phone and other mobile device users. Our Mobile Research Tools page lists databases that offer mobile interfaces with links.

New materials lists for items cataloged in June 2011, have been posted.

University Libraries have extended the loan periods of books for faculty, staff, and graduate students. Faculty and staff will now be able checked out books for a one year period with up to three renewals. Graduate students will now have a six month loan period on books with up to three renewals.  Prior loan rules may be viewed here.

2010 data has now been loaded into JCR - Journal Citation Reports. Journal Citation Reports allows you to evaluate and compare journals using citation data drawn from over 9,100 scholarly and technical journals from more than 2,200 publishers. It can show you the most frequently cited journals in a field, highest impact journals in a field, and largest journals in a field. Search or browse in JCR Science Edition or JCR Social Sciences Edition.

New materials lists for items cataloged in May 2011, have been posted.

The OCLC reciprocal borrowing program allows faculty from Virginia Tech who plan to visit an institution participating in the reciprocal borrowing program privileges to borrow materials and for on-site usage at these institutions.

Congratulations to all of our graduates. We frequently get questions about what happens to library access after graduation.

Virginia Tech has required that theses and dissertations be submitted in an electronic format since 1997. We have also been scanning print copies to put online. These efforts have greatly increased usage of our graduates works, both locally and around the world. Here are the top 10 downloaded ETDs this academic year.

Here are the top 10 most frequently checked out books from Newman Library for the academic year 2010-2011.

Here are the top 25 most frequently checked out DVDs from Newman Library for the academic year 2010-2011.

Here are the top 10 most frequently checked out books from Newman Library for the academic year 2010-2011.

We track common searches in Addison to improve your search experience. (We gather aggregate data; we can't track individual searches or associate searches with patrons.) Here are the top 20 searches for the 2010-2011 academic year.

The Virginia Tech Libraries provide access to over 750 databases that index articles, books, conference papers, dissertations and theses, standards, and much more. Here are the top ten used databases for this academic year.

African American Studies Center from Oxford database is now available. It provides full-text articles from encyclopedias and other references sources, plus primary sources with commentary, maps, charts, and biographies on African and African-American history, culture, literature, education, and the arts.

Remember to turn in any items checked on on your account (library or Interlibrary Loan books, DVDs, videos or CDs) before you leave town for the summer. Often students forget to turn in items, and then accumulate fines for overdue fees or for recalled books. Check your library account online to see if there are any library items checked out to you. Check your Interlibrary Loan account for ILL items as well.

International Studies Encyclopedia from Wiley is now available. Published in association with the International Studies Association (ISA), the encyclopedia is a comprehensive reference work for the fields of international studies and international relations. It brings together specially commissioned, peer reviewed essays, written and edited by an international team of the world's best scholars and teachers.

  Gale Biography in Context provides nearly a million biographical entries spanning history and geography. The database is a curriculum-aligned resource that offers media-rich content in context that's updated daily to meet the needs of today’s user.

New materials lists for items cataloged in April 2011, have been posted.

New materials lists for items cataloged in March 2011, have been posted.

The Virginia Tech Libraries have subscribed to the ebrary medical collection of ebooks, which provides over 2400 medical titles. All are now searchable in Addison, the library catalog. Books included in the collection are from a wide range of commercial publishers as well as from sources such as the National Academies Press and the World Health Organization. Some areas of emphasis include communicable diseases, emergency medicine, epidemiology, ethics, history of medicine, informatics, mental health, public health, and toxicology.

Greenberry’s Coffee Co. is proud to announce the grand opening of the Study Café in the lobby of Newman Library on the Virginia Tech campus. The new café provides Hokies with artisan coffees, espresso drinks, loose leaf teas and healthy food options.

Several new reference works from Gale Virtual Reference Library are now available. Each work can be searched or browsed for content, and the entire collection can also be searched as a whole. Most works are encyclopedic in nature, presenting brief articles on a topic that will provide an overview and terminology used in the field, plus a list of references used to compile the entry. These works can be used while you explore a topic and gather background information to refine your research topic.

New materials lists for items cataloged in February 2011, have been posted.

A dozen new Rosetta Stone languages and three additional workstations  have been added to the Language Resource Center in 2010 Newman Library.

Chicago Defender (1910-1975) from ProQuest Historical Newspapers

A nationally influential Black newspaper, the Chicago Defender has featured coverage of "The Great Migration," desegregation of the armed forces, and unrest during the Civil Rights Era. Columnists at the Defender included Walter White and Langston Hughes.

Construction has begun to install the Café on the first floor of Newman Library. Heavy demolition will take place Monday through Wednesday of this week. There will be much noise. A barrier has been installed to try and keep dust contained.

The update is available to EndNote X4 for Windows users and includes a number of improvements. Note: You must have a licensed copy of EndNote X4.0 or EndNote X4.0.1 for Windows installed to run the X4.0.2 update. You can download the EndNote X4 installer from software distribution.

New materials lists for items cataloged in January 2011, have been posted.

The Virginia Tech Libraries have now subscribed to two Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO).

Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys from NetAdvantage track more than 50 North American industries and 10 global industries. Each report is authored by a Standard & Poor's industry research analyst and includes the following sections: Current Environment, Industry Trends, How the Industry Operates, Key Industry Ratios and Statistics, How to Analyze a Company, Glossary of Industry Terms, Additional Industry Information References and Comparative Company Financial Analysis.

Eileen Hitchingham, Dean of Libraries, is retiring after 16 years at Virginia Tech. This is her  message  to the University Community.

Tours are offered six times a week, Tuesdays through Thursdays, at 11:30am and 5:00pm, from January 25 to April 28, except during Spring Break. No pre-registration is required. Meet a tour guide at the main entrance near the benches.

The Chicago Manual of Style Online , 15th and 16th editions, are now available online in addition to the print copies available in each branch library. The style guide provides a description of the publishing process; grammar, punctuation, spelling, and other usage guidance for writing many kinds of papers and publications; and examples of citations to different kinds of source documents in both the notes and bibliography as well as the author-date formats.

Science.gov now quickly finds science images, including animal and plant, weather and space, and earth and sun images and more. Initially, three databases are being searched from one search box: The National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Library of Images from the Environment (LIFE), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Image eXchange (NIX), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Photo Library.

New materials lists for items cataloged in December 2010, have been posted.