Shelf Life

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Today is International Animation Day - commemorating the first public performance of Charles-Emile Reynaud's Theatre Optique at the Musee Grevin in Paris, 1892.

 Theatre Optique or Optical Theater was a machine that used a projector and mirrors to create images on a screen. The images were painted on a ribbon wound into a spool. Another spool unwound the ribbon as the images were projected on the screen.

Since 1892, animated movies, cartoon, and television shows have amazed us and brightened entertainment.  Where would we be without Mickey Mouse (born 1928), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (born 1984), and Bluey (born 2018) ? 

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, made in 1906, is generally regarded by film historians as the first animated film recorded on standard picture film.  It is on deposit and preserved by the Library of Congress.  

Our November collection ranges from history to holidays to novels set during Thanksgiving. Enjoy!

Dear Students and Faculty,

We want to inform you about upcoming changes to the authentication process for accessing our library databases. These updates aim to enhance security and improve your user experience. The process started on October 5 and will take a few days to complete as our library staff implement the changes database by database.

What changes will you see?

• You might not notice much difference except for slight changes to the login page. You will still select UHV or VC and log in as usual. While the login protocol is changing, your username and password will remain the same.
• Login will be required for all users, both on campus and off.
• Hyperlinks to our databases will be different. If you have saved a bookmark from our A-Z Databases page, that bookmark will no longer work.
• It is a good idea to clear your browser cache if you are having difficulties logging in.

***Note…we are also seeing problems with users logging into MYEbsco personal accounts after they enter a database.  We do not believe that the two issues are related, but we have entered a support ticket with EBSCO for resolution.

If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to reach out to the library staff.

Thank you for your understanding!

September 22-28 is Banned Books Week to raise awareness. The library will have several book displays. You can find out more information on our BBWLibguide. We have many of these in other formats not listed here. 

As always, ask a librarian if you have any questions!

These are a few of the items we have to help you on your wellness journey. Print items are on display at the library and link are provided to electronic items. Ask the librarian for more!

Check out a few of our books, ebooks and videos for your Fourth of July weekend. Check with the librarian for more!

Celebrate Pride Month with videos, books and audiobooks. Ask the librarian for more!

Check out a few of the items in our collection to celebrate National Outdoor Month. 

I ran across Perplexity AI today.  Very interesting thing to try out.  Perplexity AI is an AI-chatbot-powered "research and conversational search engine" (Source: Wikipedia)

Unlike other search engines, like Google and Duck-Duck-Go, Perplexity draws on multiple large language models to produce its responses. Perplexity currently uses OpenAi's GPT-3 Turbo, Anthropic's Claude 3, and others.  Unlike a standard search engine, which give users a list of links to follow themselves, Perplexity delivers a natural language response like one would expect from a chatbot.

Some key features are:

• Natural Language Interface
• Web Indexing - they claim to index the web daily to provide up-to-date information.  Chatbots run at least a year out of date.
• Cited Sources (!!!) with in-text citations
• Follow-up questions - Perplexity can pose follow up questions to clarify or narrow a search.

The search box provides a "focus" filter.  You can select "all" (the entire internet) for your search or the following limits:

• Wolfram/Alpha - the computational knowledge engine
• Academic - search in published academic papers
• You Tube - discover and watch videos
• Writing - general text of chat without searching the web
• Reddit - Search for discussions and opinions

You can also upload pdfs, CSV files, images, and text documents for analysis.

Perplexity has three subscription options:  

• Free 
• Pro - $20 per month
• Enterprise Pro, pricing based on team size.

The free version does not require an account and support basic searches, including citations and follow-up queries.  

Are there any disadvantages?  Sure.  All AI tools return questionable information and can be repetitive.  Perplexity is an AI and vulnerable to hallucinations and other issues that affect LLMs.  And the big one in academic research - NO JOURNAL ARTICLES.  While the sources cited are worthy, especially when filtered by "academic" none of the sources cited were from recent (or even old) journal articles.

Still, Perplexity is fun to play with.  Give it a try.

Perplexity AI