The Library MakerSpace is open to the R-MC community!
In addition to 3D design and printing, we have added the HTC VIVE Virtual Reality system, as well as tools and resources for prototyping and making projects. In this space, students can explore technologies for creative projects and class assignments. Faculty can collaborate with the Instructional Designer and Instruction Librarian on incorporating emerging technologies into teaching and scholarship.
Since 3D printing became available in the Library last summer, we have seen a variety of creative uses of 3D design and printing. Here are some examples:
- Students created and had printed homunculus figures for the J-term course “Artificial Body/Germ Lit & Film”, taught by Professor Lauren Mossett.
- Jake Hickman (Engineering Physics and Math double-major) designed a 3D part for his capstone project.
- A 3D workshop offered by the library piqued Anna Crabill’s interests; she designed an “Easter Chick”.
Jacob Hickman (Engineering Physics and Math double-major) designed and printed a part on the Library’s 3D printer for his capstone project.
3D print for stereographic projection; printed per Professor Edward Burkard for teaching. More information at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:202774
Anna Crabill attended a 3D workshop offered by the Library; she designed and had printed her 3D design “Easter Chick”.
As we continue to facilitate creative use of 3D technology, we are studying ways Virtual Reality enhances teaching and learning. By presenting real-world scenarios, VR holds great potentials for enhancing learning experiences. Students learn and use knowledge to interact with real-world applications. We would love to hear from faculty and students on what VR resources to get for our curriculum, and how to use VR in classroom teaching.
For now, please stop by and check out the MakerSpace resources in the library!
I am pleased to introduce the new McGraw-Page Library logo. This logo represents several months of collaboration with the 
Throughout her prodigious life, activist and lawyer Pauli Murray systematically fought against all arbitrary distinctions in society, channeling her outrage at the discrimination she faced to make America a more democratic country. In this definitive biography, Rosalind Rosenberg offers a poignant portrait of a figure who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women’s movements. Murray accomplished all this while struggling with issues of identity. She believed from childhood she was male and tried unsuccessfully to persuade doctors to give her testosterone. While she would today be identified as transgender, during her lifetime no social movement existed to support this identity. She ultimately used her private feelings of being “in-between” to publicly contend that identities are not fixed, an idea that has powered campaigns for equal rights in the United States for the past half-century. Summary provided by publisher
In this raw, searing new narrative account, Howard Jones reopens the case of My Lai by examining individual accounts of both victims and soldiers through extensive archival and original research. Jones evokes the horror of the event itself, the attempt to suppress it, as well as the response to Calley’s sentence and the seemingly unanswerable question of whether he had merely been following orders. My Lai also surveys how news of the slaughter intensified opposition to the Vietnam War by undermining any pretense of American moral superiority. Compelling, comprehensive, and sobering, Howard Jones’ My Lai chronicles how the strategic failures and competing objectives of American leaders resulted in one of the most devastating tragedies of the Vietnam War.
Part detective story, part political history, Timothy Tyson’s The Blood of Emmett Till revises the history of the Till case, not only changing the specifics that we thought we knew, but showing how the murder ignited the modern civil rights movement. Tyson uses a wide range of new sources, including the only interview ever given by Carolyn Bryant; the transcript of the murder trial, missing since 1955 and only recovered in 2005; and a recent FBI report on the case.
A yellow jacket sticker on the spines of books in the library indicates that the work was written by a member of the Randolph-Macon College community. The McGraw-Page Library has nearly 1000 works written by current and former R-MC students, faculty, and staff. Books by Randolph-Macon College writers are found in the College Archives and the Juvenile and Popular Reading collections, as well as in the circulating collection on the second floor.
Web 2.0 and the Political Mobilization of College Students investigates how college students’ online activities, when politically oriented, can affect their political participatory patterns offline. Kenneth W. Moffett and Laurie L. Rice find that online forms of political participation–like friending or following candidates and groups as well as blogging or tweeting about politics–draw in a broader swathe of young adults than might ordinarily participate. Political scientists have traditionally determined that participatory patterns among the general public hold less sway in shaping civic activity among college students. This book, however, recognizes that young adults’ political participation requires looking at their online activities and the ways in which these help mobilize young adults to participate via other forms. Moffett and Rice discover that engaging in one online participatory form usually begets other forms of civic activity, either online or offline.
Over the last 20 years, political campaigns and the media that cover them have been fundamentally altered by a mix of technology and money. This timely work surveys the legal, financial, and technological changes that have swept through the political process, putting those changes in context to help readers appreciate how they affect what the public learns, and doesn’t learn, about the candidates and lawmakers at the local, state, and federal levels. The encyclopedia offers a critical examination of a broad range of topics organized in a narrative, A-to-Z format. Written by journalists and political experts, the two volumes cover the major issues, organizations, and trends affecting both politics and the coverage of political campaigns. Some 200 entries treat everything from news organizations, think tanks, and significant individuals to questions concerning money, advertising, and campaign tactics. Objective, unbiased, and comprehensive, the encyclopedia is an unequaled resource for anyone seeking to understand American political journalism and news coverage in the 21st century