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Alcorn Writing Center Adds Titles to Research Library
 

The Alcorn State University Writing Center, Bowles Hall 209, recently added more than 50 titles to its growing collection of books, interactive CDs and CD-ROMs, said the Center director.

The library offers a range of writing and research resources for faculty, students and staff from across the curriculum, said Dr. Murray B. Shugars, Writing Center director.

“A key budget-line in our yearly funding has allowed us to purchase instructional materials, and we have gradually added to our holdings over the past five years,” said Shugars.

The collection covers numerous research and writing categories, including composition, revision and proofreading; English as a second language and French and Spanish studies; teaching writing; literature, criticism and cultural studies; history, folklore; education and psychology; journalism; college guides; job application, business and technical writing; tutoring theory and practice; writing center and writing program administration; biology and anthropology; art and music; and numerous English language dictionaries.

“The materials compliment those in the J.D. Boyd Library, and the great thing is that all these writing and research resources are right there together in one place,” said Dr. Robert M. Butler, director of ASU Writing Programs.

Of special note among the titles are the style manuals: The Modern Language Association Handbook for Writers, The Chicago Manual of Style, American Psychological Association Publication Manual and the APA Dictionary of Psychology. These titles are essential guides to writers who wish to publish their research in professional journals

Also noteworthy is the most recent edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, an unrivaled guide to the meaning, history and pronunciation of more than half a million words across the English speaking world, past and present. Additionally, the Writing Center library includes a copy of the OED in CD-ROM format, said Shugars.

“The shortcoming of the CD-ROM is that only one reader can use it at a time; however, it allows us to subscribe to and download ongoing updates from the publisher’s Web site,” said Shugars

“Having the OED available in the same building where students are reading older literature is just a godsend,” said Butler, who teaches Introduction to Linguistics, History of the English Language, Shakespeare and a survey of early British literature.

The library’s cultural studies resources provide other titles of current interest, such as the Encyclopedia of Black Studies, the Cambridge Companion to Modern Latin American Culture and the four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World.

Another service is what Shugars calls the Writing Center’s “caretaker library,” a handful of holdings donated or loaned by faculty and staff.

“I keep both my world and American history textbooks on closed reserve at the Writing Center, and my students have definitely benefited, especially those who, for one reason or another, don’t have books on the first day of class,” said Dr. Jan R. McTavish, history teacher and author of Pain and Profits: The History of the Headache and Its Remedies in America (Rutgers University Press).

“It’s very helpful that tutors are available for my students while they read their assignments. As a teacher of consistently large survey courses, I rely on the tutors to help, especially with the writing assignments but also with reading comprehension,” said McTavish.

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NAACP African American Observance Month

The Alcorn State University Chapter of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is using the Month of February as an African American Observance Month. There will be a different person featured every day this month on the website in the cafeteria.

 

February
Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
				1  Prince Hall	2  Crispus Attuck	3  Fredrick Douglass
4 Martin Luther King Jr.	5 Lewis Howard Latimer	6 * Hiram Revels	7 Booker T. Washington	8  W.E.B. DuBois	9  Duke Ellington	10  Langston Hughes
11 Thurgood Marshall	12 *Medgar Evers	13  Daniel Hale Williams	14 Harriet Tubman	15 Sojouner Truth	16 Rosa Parks	17 Mary Church Terrell
18 Madam C. J. Walker	19 Fannie Lou Haymer	20 Mary McLeod Bethune	21 Billie Holiday	22 Mae Jemison	23 Maggie Lena Walker	24 Coretta Scott King
25 Shirley Chilsom	26 Zora Neal Hurston	27 Maya Angelou	28 *Alex Haley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Famous Alcornites 

How do you know where you are going if you don’t know where you have been?