Finals Time! Library Study Hours Announced

April 13th & 14th: 24 Hours (Tentative)
April 15th: 8-5
April 16th 1-6
April 17th (starting at 2 pm)-April 21st:24 Hours
Library CLOSED for Easter holiday: April 22-April 24
April 25th-27th: 24 Hours


Check back with us for further updates!

Getting Ready for Grad School Part Two – The Application Process

Special Guest Blog by Kirsten Rodning

In this chapter of my “Getting Ready for Grad School” blog series, I am going to discuss the steps that each student should take before and during the process of applying to graduate schools. At this point, you have already figured out what to do when the time comes to take the GRE, but what are the next steps?

Before you do anything else, you should make a list of all of the universities you are interested in. Go to their websites and determine what the application due date is for each school. Every school will have a different due date, and it is imperative that you keep track of when materials are due for each school.

Next, narrow down which schools you will actually apply to. Do this by researching your program of interest within each university. Make sure you look at the faculty and what their individual specialties are, the courses available in the school’s academic catalog, and the location and physical appearance of the campus itself. Since application fees are often very high, narrowing down your school choices to three or four options is a good idea.

Once you’ve chosen a few schools, your next step is to look at the application itself and find out exactly what you are required to submit. Usually the requirements will be different for each department, so make sure you look at the department requirements and not just the overall school requirements. For instance, when I applied for Georgia State University, each applicant was required to look at a specific page for their department, and applications were sent directly to a specific school, or college, within the university. As an English major, I looked at the English department’s page for application requirements, and I submitted my application directly to the College of Arts and Sciences through an online form (See an example of a degree requirements page here and an example of an application checklist here.

After you have all of that straightened out, it’s time to write a statement of purpose and an academic resume, along with pulling together a writing sample or portfolio. Some schools don’t require all of these items, but chances are good that you will have to submit each of them for at least one school. I can’t tell you exactly how to write each of these, but we do have several good books and resources here in the library to assist with this process. Just ask a librarian at the reference desk for help, and he or she can lead you to the books that discuss graduate school applications (Some examples of book titles that are held behind the circulation desk include Kaplan’s Get Into Graduate School, Graduate School: Winning Strategies for Getting in With or Without Excellent Grades, Graduate School Companion, and Graduate Admissions Essays). You can also visit the Center for Student Success for more help with your application process.

Two other things that you need to keep in mind during this process are your letters of recommendation and your college transcripts. Make sure you request your letters of recommendation from teachers or employers several weeks before the application deadlines, so you can give your letter writers plenty of time to write the letters and mail them to the schools. The resources we have in the library will also assist you with picking letter writers and asking them for letters. Having your transcripts mailed to your prospective schools is a much easier task. All you have to do is visit the Registrar’s office and fill out a short form and pay a small fee, and they will mail a copy of your transcript to your school of choice. If you have attended any other school before Reinhardt, you will also have to request transcripts from each school you attended.

This concludes part two of the “Getting Ready for Grad School” blog series. Good luck with your applications!

Meet Charlie!

Meet Charlie the Robot, our newest art installation here at the library. Charlie was created by Jamie Thomas and Bo Higgins.

Subject: Getting Ready for Grad School Part One -- Preparing for and Taking the GRE

The following is a guest blog by Reinhardt alumna and Hill Freeman Library & Spruill Learning Center employee Kirsten Rodning



Hello, Kirsten here. I am one of the newest members of the Hill Freeman Library and Spruill Learning Center team, having started work here after graduating from Reinhardt last spring. After graduation, I had to think through a lot of different options for my future, and while I was fortunate to get a job here at the library, I also decided to start planning for a future in Graduate School.

One of my first steps in preparing for Grad School was to take the GRE (the Graduate Record Exam). After doing a bit of google research and asking the friendly Reinhardt library staff for help, I discovered that I could easily sign up for a test date at a local test center on the Educational Testing Service’s website (http://www.ets.org/gre/). I signed up for a date that was a couple of months away, so I would have time to study before taking the test. The website also gave me many useful pieces of information regarding the GRE. The most important piece of information that I needed to know before signing up, however, was that there was a $160 fee that I was required to pay at the time of sign-up. This means that if you choose to take the GRE, you should make sure you have saved some money for the process.

After I had signed up for a test date, my next step was to visit Amazon.com and purchase study books to help with preparation for the test. I read reviews of various different study books, and finally chose the Princeton Review’s Cracking the GRE, along with a book of advanced study of the verbal section from Kaplan (this was especially important for me as an English major, since English programs look almost exclusively at the verbal section of the test). I also used the books and resources that we have available here in the Reinhardt library. These books included sample questions, practice tests, and other hints and tips for test day. Prospective GRE testees may wish to note that after taking the exam I donated all of my GRE test books to the library, so they will be available to other Reinhardt students as needed.

Finally, two months later, my test date arrived. While I cannot tell you what was on the test (I was sworn to secrecy!), I can tell what you should expect from the testing center and the conditions in which you will take the test. The first thing I am going to tell you is of vital importance: do NOT stress out too much over the test. Working yourself into a panic will only cause you to leave the test with worse scores than you were expecting. As long as you have given yourself plenty of time to study (several months – preferably more than two, as I felt rushed with that amount of study time), there is nothing else you can do. Just relax. It is also important to visit the testing center prior to your test date. This way you won’t get lost on the way and you’ll have a better feel for what the place is like.

The following is a list of things that you might want to bring with you when you go to take your exam: food/ drink (these will be left in a locker, but you will have a break in which you can grab a quick snack), Jacket (though if you choose to wear it, you must keep it on the whole time. If you take it off during the test, someone will interrupt you to take your jacket away – yes, I speak from experience), Earplugs (the testing center may have some they can give you, but you probably want to have these, as you will be in a room where other people are typing, sneezing, and tapping their pencils), your up-to-date Driver’s License or state issued ID (It can not be expired, and you will not be allowed to take the test without this), and a printout of your confirmation for your test date.

I also have a list of things that you might think are necessary, but should be left at home, in your car, or in the provided locker: study books (these are no longer needed!), a watch (you will not be allowed to have this in the test room), and your cell phone (also contraband).

Once I finished the test, my scores on the verbal and quantitative sections were shown to me (the writing score came in the mail a few weeks later). After I signed out of the testing center, I was free and clear! My scores were mailed to the Universities of my choice, and my next step was to begin filling out grad school applications (which will be covered in the next exciting blog entry!).

The Irish in Southern Cultures

Check out the current issue of Southern Cultures from the University of North Carolina Press. It focuses on the Irish in the American South and the "outsized imprint" they left on southern culture in history, literature and music. I'm excited about it personally as a southerner and an Irish-American, but in light of next year's "Year Of" focus on the Irish diaspora, I think many of you would like to read up and get a head start. From Irish soldiers in the Confederacy to African-Americans and Irish-Americans making music together, from U2 and BB King to Gone With the Wind, there's some fascinating material in this issue.

We just got the print copy on our shelves, but we also have access to this publication on many of our databases. Check out the E-Journal link on our library home page.

Happy Freedom of Information Day!

Freedom of Information Day is held annually on or near March 16. Why March 16? Because this is the birthday of our fourth President and political philosopher James Madison, widely known as the Father of our Constitution and held as the foremost advocate for openness in government.

"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both."
James Madison

Enacted in 1966, and taking effect on July 5, 1967, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) protects the rights of American citizens to obtain access to federal agency records. A FOIA request can be made for any agency record. For more information about the Freedom of Information Act and your rights under it, see the official government site at FOIA.gov.

The New York Public Library, in its blog for The Huffington Post, asked Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter David Barstow of the New York Times some questions about FOIA, freedom of information and freedom of the press. (Both the current and previous presidential administrations have been the subject of controversy about how much access they've allowed the public to have). Join in the conversation here.

Women's History Month

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of women whose commitment to nature and the planet have proved invaluable to society.

Before the 1970s, the topic of women’s history was largely missing from general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a “Women’s History Week” celebration in 1978 and chose the week of March 8 to coincide with International Women’s Day.

In 1987, the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress to expand the celebration to the entire month of March. Since then, the National Women’s History Month Resolution has been approved every year with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.

Source: National Women’s History Project

About This Year's Theme: Our History is Our Strength
“Our shared history unites families, communities, and nations. Although women’s history is intertwined with the history shared with men, several factors - social, religious, economic, and biological - have worked to create a unique sphere of women's history.”

Source: National Women’s History Project

Women’s History Month @ Your Library
Hill Freeman Library & Spruill Learning Center is celebrating all women of the world this month. From the female convicts who were forced into Australia by the British government in the Nineteenth Century to the American feminists of the 1960s, the library has books and other sources of information about the illustrious history of women.

There is a display of recommended titles and other media on the second floor of the library which reflect women’s history in America as well as around the world throughout time.

Books include:
Convict Maids: The Forced Migration of Women to Australia, by Deborah Oxley (This is a Year of Oceania book!)
Madame Curie: A Biography, by Eve Curie.
Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change, by Tamara Jacka
Who Cooked the Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World, by Rosalind Miles
A German Women’s Movement: Class and Gender in Hanover, 1860-1933, by Nancy R. Reagin
Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, by Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson

…and many more!

The library also has access to databases such as Women and Social Movements and North American Women’s Drama, both available through the library’s website.

Additional Resources Online

Women’s History Month at the National Women’s History Project


Women’s History Month at the Library of Congress


Women’s History Month Activities, History, Timelines, Ideas, Facts and Quizzes


Free Resources for Women’s History Month