Friday, June 26, 2009

Databases, part 1: How to get in from off-campus

I recently got a question about access to our databases, especially off-campus, so let's talk about that a little bit today.

See, every once in a while (but especially during summer and semester breaks), a student or faculty/staff member will be off campus and decide that they need an article from, let's say, the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. They go to our Web site, library.gallaudet.edu, and click on the "ALADIN" link in the heading of the "Shortcuts to ALADIN" box.

Suddenly, they see something unexpected:
They're taken by surprise because they haven't seen this screen before, so they hit the Meebo Library chat widget on our home page, asking if they've done something wrong or if we've changed anything. The answer to both questions is "No." Generally speaking, the reason for this reaction is just that they've only ever used the Library's online resources while on campus. Off campus, though, is a different story.

There are a lot of reasons for this, which I'll explain in later posts (sorry, I'm feeling too Fridayish to get technical), but the main one is just that our contracts with the people who own our research databases require that we limit those databases to Gallaudet people only. When you're on campus, the system automatically knows you're okay because you're using a Gallaudet connection, so it lets you in seamlessly. When you're off-campus, though, the system has no idea who you are, so you have to tell it.

And that's why we have the login screen. Just enter your last name, your ID number or your Library barcode, and pick "Gallaudet" from the Institution: drop-down menu. If you don't know your ID number and don't have a Library barcode (shame on you -- get over here and ask for one), you can log on to Bison, go into "Self Service" in the sidebar on the left-hand side, click on "Personal Information," then "Personal Information Summary." You'll see your ID number on the very first line under the big blue "Personal Information" header.

Anyway, once you've logged in, you're basically as good as gold. It all proceeds just like it would if you were on campus.

Short post today, and it's basically one big Question of the Week, so we'll skip that. Also, since we're closed next Friday for Independence Day weekend, next week's post will be up on Thursday. Have a good weekend!

Friday, June 19, 2009

Meet Patrick Oberholtzer

This week, you're going to get to meet Patrick Oberholtzer. Patrick handles one of the largest -- and most varied -- groups of subject areas here in the Library, and he pulls it off extremely well. He doesn't mention it here, but he's also a big fan of American history and is definitely an outdoorsy type. He's also fairly laconic, so consider this a rare opportunity to get to know Patrick!

1) Where are you from, anyway?
I was born in Tucson, Arizona, but grew up in Whittier, California (that’s a suburb of L.A.) and Richmond, Indiana.

2) How did you get here?
Believe it or not, the first place I heard about Gallaudet was in a film I saw at Disneyland! I was working up in Ithaca, New York when I saw the advertisement in American Libraries for my job, and thought that Gallaudet would be an interesting place to work. I had already learned a little sign from a deaf person when I worked in Georgia.

3) How long have you worked here, and can you give me an idea of some of the more interesting things you've seen in your tenure at Gallaudet?
I’ve worked here for almost exactly 19 years. I think the single most interesting thing has been having the ability to make information instantaneously available! It has changed libraries and really our society—how we live. For example, we have the world’s largest collection of materials on deafness, but to see much of that material you once had to travel to the Gallaudet Library in person. Some of that information is now online and more is being added every day!

4) I don't think a lot of people know that the librarians here at Gallaudet tend to specialize in specific subjects. What are your specialties?
In a way, that is a hard question to answer because everything in the library world is constantly changing. I select books and DVDs in a variety of subjects such as Government & History, PE and Recreation, Business and Economics, Biology, and Foreign Languages. Last year I selected over 500 individual titles for the Gallaudet Library.

I guess one of my specialties is knowing what materials our library has in as many areas as possible. Why? Because the better I know the collection, the better I can help students with their research! Knowing what we have physically in the building is only part of the story. A lot of the library world is electronic – it’s online, and I have a lot of knowledge about which ALADIN databases are good for a particular subject and how to search them. I also am constantly keeping up to date with our databases and the kinds of information found in them.

In addition, I (actually all of our staff) know a lot about the history of deaf people, deaf culture and the history of Gallaudet University. I, well, again, really, we, keep educating ourselves about these topics, as students ask about them a lot.

5) What can you do for students or faculty in these fields?
Students can make an appointment with me if they need help with research. When I meet with a student, we sometimes discuss the topic, or if the instructor has provided a choice of topics, I can assist the student in choosing one—particularly if there is a deadline coming up fast and the student needs to get going.

Librarians can save students a lot of time. Sometimes a student will be really frustrated with a topic and come to see me. I’ll see the topic is a good one, but the student just needs to refine the search strategy a bit -- find the appropriate words, terms or phrases. Some databases use special vocabulary, and sometimes you have to know the right words.

An example: say you want to find cook books. You search in the ALADIN Catalog for "cook books" and you get a whole bunch of hits and a lot of them are not what you want. The word you should use is "cookery." Each of the databases are a little bit different, and knowing a bit about how they are put together and can be searched can be a big help.

At present, our Library has over 50 databases and subscribes to over 10,000 electronic journals, and that can be overwhelming and intimidating for students. I can help students navigate this and make it seem much less like a minefield.

I can help faculty by making sure the Library has materials that will support the curriculum. Sometimes faculty will send me potential research topics for a class they are going to be teaching and I’ll try to purchase books that will enhance what they are trying to accomplish. Also, I’ll consult our databases and figure out which ones are best suited for the topics covered in the class. For example, this past year I worked with a faculty member involved with the Costa Rica program. She requested some books and DVDs, and I also recommended some items, and we added all of that to the collection. We have been building the collection in African studies in a similar manner. Collaborating with faculty is a great way to help our students succeed!

6) Can you list some of the resources that you use the most in working with students and faculty? Why are they good resources to use?
I like to work with the database America: History and Life because it is really the source for finding journal articles on U.S. history topics.

I tend to use ProQuest Biology Journals for biology, JSTOR and America: History and Life for history, and LexisNexis for business stuff. They index full text, high quality journals that are great sources of information. Google, and specifically Google Scholar, are useful tools that I consult if I am having trouble identifying something or am trying to track something down.

For topics related to deafness, the Gallaudet University Library has produced two must-have databases that are found nowhere else on Earth: Index to Deaf Periodicals and Guide to Deaf Biographies. They are invaluable! I can’t imagine a student leaving Gallaudet without knowing about them. A lot of information about deaf people and the deaf community, written by deaf people, was not indexed anywhere. The Gallaudet Library stepped in years ago.

Finally, the ALADIN Catalog is such an invaluable tool! It not only tells what we have in our collection, but also the collections of the Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) libraries. That’s millions of books on just about every topic. You can research and find information on just about anything.

7) What do you like the most about working here?
Every day is different!

8) There's been some talk about a new library building in the works over the next few years. What's the one thing you'd most like to see included in the new facility?
Better lighting!

9) Last question, I promise: What's your favorite color?
Grey, no, blue!

... and that's Mr. Patrick Oberholtzer. One thing I found interesting about Patrick's response to the last question -- and this is why I ask -- is that blue and grey were the colors of the uniforms on both sides of the American Civil War. It's just one of those interesting connections I find between unrelated things, and is certainly fitting for such a history buff!

Okay, that about wraps it up for this week. Enjoy your (hopefully dry) weekend!

Question of the Week
My friend and I were talking about the Library's new books the other day and we realized that we didn't know what happens to old books when new ones arrive. Is there really space in the Library for all these new books?
At the moment, yes. That will change as time goes on, however. This is true for all libraries -- sometimes you just run out of space. There are a number of ways to address this, but a good temporary measure is to do what we call "weeding." This is Librarianese for "getting rid of old and/or useless books."

Every once in a while, a librarian will look at his or her part of the collection and decide it's time to do a little cleaning up. Books that are falling apart and don't contribute anything to the collection -- either because they're outdated or because there are other books on the same subject -- tend to go first, and then after that point, it can turn into a complex decision for each book, depending on its utility, general condition, and whether or not students have been using it often or recently.

We also weed according to the curriculum. For example, we don't have any graduate programs in hard sciences like chemistry, biology, or physics, which can often require that we maintain a large body of historical knowledge about the field. As such, many older books espousing outdated scientific theories or principles end up being weeded. Or whole programs disappear as the winds of change blow through Gallaudet, as in the case of the Library Science program (believe it or not!), which closed at least 20 years ago. Most of the materials related to library science have left the collection; they serve no appreciable purpose for students anymore and simply aren't checked out.

The same is true for other programs that are still around, though. For instance, I came across a book full of "duplicator masters" for teaching reading in specific subject areas. What in the world was a "duplicator"? I had no idea, but wondered why I didn't get to have one ... until I opened the book and saw what was in it: white sheets printed with thick purple stuff on the back of each sheet, alternating with brown paper. Each sheet of brown paper bore the dark-purple imprint of the white sheet in front of it, and I realized that this was for making ditto papers! I haven't seen a ditto paper in almost exactly 15 years. There were a lot of other workbooks on the shelf covering the same topic, and nobody had checked this one out since 1998. You can guess what I decided to do with that book.

On the other hand, I also found a little educational primer from 1897, full of neat lessons on American literature up until that time. 112 years out of date, yes, but now its value has become historical -- it could be useful for education, history, or English majors, and I saw it had been checked out a couple of years ago. It was also very small and thin, so it had very little impact on shelf space, so there was no reason I could find to throw it out. One of the biggest rewards of a library like Gallaudet's: the unique and occasionally very surprising things you come across deep in the stacks.

So once the decision has been made to remove a book from the collection, what happens next? The book passes out of my hands and goes to Technical Services, who have their own decisions to make about what to do with it. Once it's out of my collection, I can go back to finding new things for Gallaudet students and faculty to use, and the cycle continues.

Friday, June 12, 2009

searching for residential-school memories

My office sits right next to the shelves that hold our circulating collection of deaf school yearbooks. It always amazes me how regularly -- every day, at least -- I walk past, look at the round table between my office and the shelves, and see a pile or two of yearbooks.

This, I think, is one of the most popular parts of our collection (aside from the movies), so we'll talk about them a little bit today, as well as our deaf-related microforms.

First: Yes, we do collect yearbooks from residential schools all over the country. As part of the Deaf Collection, these yearbooks play an important role in preserving the continuity of deaf culture, so we try to get our hands on as many of them as possible.

Second: Yes, if you go to the shelves, you will likely find the year you're looking for at the school you're looking for. However, the collection isn't 100% complete for various reasons; still, if you check ALADIN for "deaf school yearbooks," you'll get lucky more often than not. If you can't find what you're looking for, there may be a copy available in our Deaf Copy 1 room -- just ask a librarian for help.

Third: Yes, this is where we keep Gallaudet's Tower Clock. The linked ALADIN Catalog page shows all the copies of all the years we own.

Fourth: No, the yearbooks are not arranged alphabetically by state. The call numbers all look like 370.97xx -- 370 for deaf schools, then .97 means "in the United States." The last two digits get even more specific, down to the region of the country and then the state. For a rough idea of how to find the state you're looking for, here's how it goes:
  • 370.974x: Northeast United States, south to New Jersey and west to Pennsylvania
  • 370.975x: Southeast United States, Delaware on down to Florida, and west to Alabama
  • 370.976x: South Central United States, Kentucky south to Alabama and west to Texas and Oklahoma
  • 370.977x: North Central United States, otherwise known as the "Great Lake States" -- Ohio west to Missouri and north through Michigan and Wisconsin
  • 370.978x: Western United States, from Kansas to New Mexico and north to Montana
  • 370.979x: The Pacific States, from Arizona in the south to Alaska in the north, and off to Hawaii in the west
The deaf school yearbooks aren't the only residential-school memorabilia in the Library, though. A significant percentage of our deaf-related microforms in the Deaf Periodicals is made up of residential school newsletters, most of which you can find by searching for "little paper family" (why this phrase? Check out our FAQ page about it). You can find these in the bright orange cabinets behind the maps, next to the Deaf Periodicals (where we also keep more recent print copies of some residential school newsletters). These microforms are excellent for research into deaf residential life and history, especially the older newsletters from before ASL and bilingualism became as accepted in deaf education as they are today.

They are all arranged alphabetically by name in the microfilm cabinets. It's easy to pull a drawer out and scan the labels of the boxes containing each reel.

We also keep copies of deaf-related dissertations published all over the country. Many are available in print and spread out among the books in the Deaf Stacks, but nearly all are also available in microfilm near the deaf school newsletters. All of this can be found in the ALADIN Catalog -- just look for a note saying "microfilm cabinet" or something similar. Many of these dissertations are also available electronically through the ALADIN database Dissertations and Theses.

As I've mentioned before, all microforms require a special reading machine to operate, three of which live on the first floor of the Library. If you're not sure how to set up a reel of microfilm, feel free to ask a librarian for help -- we're old hands!

Question of the Week
I was sitting at one of the computers on the first floor and looking up at the glass roof. It's really nice, but I was wondering why you have those cloths over them like a tent.
We're big fans of Arabian Nights. No, just kidding. Actually, there's a great reason for the sails (that's what I call them, everyone has different names for them) under the glass: shade. One of the biggest advantages of having such a nice glass roof is all the sunlight. One of the biggest disadvantages of having such a nice glass roof ... is all the sunlight. On a gorgeous day (like today! finally), it's hard to see much in all that light. I also personally suspect a bit of a greenhouse effect in operation -- all that solar radiation gets trapped in here and makes the air conditioning work harder to keep the building cool. The sails serve a very useful function and they let us enjoy some natural light here in the middle of the first floor.

Friday, June 5, 2009

New Book Cart Day!

We got some new books this week!

I'm thrilled -- it's been a couple months. Like pretty much everywhere else, Gallaudet's been affected by the economy, so we librarians had to hold off on our usual spending sprees for a month or two. It's not easy. Have you ever tried to quit smoking? I have. Take my word for it -- same feeling.

By chance or design, the first cartload this week contained mostly books that I'd ordered, with a few sprinkled in for the Deaf Collection and a few for one or two other librarians. In case you didn't know, I buy stuff for English and Popular Materials -- which usually translates to "literature" and "fun stuff," two categories that can be hard for me to differentiate for a couple of reasons: 1) I think all of it's fun, and 2) sometimes the term "literature" gets slung around pretty loosely, depending on who the author is, whether the book in question won any awards, or where the book's good reviews came from (the New York Times' Sunday Book Review, for instance, versus Cosmo, which I don't read, I swear). I also buy stuff for Fine Arts, although that was relatively thinly represented in this week's New Book Cart.

So what's in your future?

Brothers by Yu Hua
A young Chinese man, who was born on the same day his father died from a fall sustained while ogling women in the public bathroom, and his mother meet a new man and his son, and their lives, marked by their neighbors' taunting, begin to change. I was only able to skim part of the book, but I really, really liked what I saw. The book was apparently very popular in China when it was first published, in spite of its attitudes toward the Cultural Revolution and the country's slide towards capitalism.

Fledgling/Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler
Two books by the first African-American woman to write science fiction, Fledgling and Bloodchild and Other Stories both evince the themes that Octavia Butler has become known for: race, gender, identity, and love. Fledgling tells the story of a 50-year-old vampire who looks like a 12-year-old child and her struggle to find love in a narrative that completely changes the common vampire mythos. Bloodchild is a collection of short stories that include the tales of a man who falls in love with an alien -- and is impregnated (of course); a virus that renders people unable to communicate; and the strange byproducts of hopelessness.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
The title is pretty self-explanatory -- in this book, the dead begin to walk and subsequently start a decade-long war with the living. This is the account of the entire war, as told by its survivors in interviews, tape recordings, and telephone conversations. The book doesn't play around with the concept of reanimated corpses; the walking dead are just that, shambling zombies with a taste for human flesh. It's a fascinating read, and you will never forget the Battle of Yonkers.

Confrontational Ceramics by Judith Schwartz
This beautifully-illustrated book examines the role of the artist as a social critic and the use of the medium to express subversive ideas that seek to change the passive viewer's relationship with the constructs of larger society. This is industry jargon for: "This is a book full of really interesting statues that will both entertain you and make you slightly uncomfortable, which is what the artists really wanted to do."

Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
A family of private eyes have wacky misadventures. The parents go on vacations, the lawyer son tries to stay out of other people's business, the older daughter suspects her landscaping next-door neighbor of dastardly deeds (complete with digital recorders and restraining orders), and the 15-year-old daughter tries to set her older sister up with a cop. This is pretty fluffy fare, good for a sunny afternoon.

The Alexander Cipher by Will Adams
An archeologist, whom everyone hates, sets out on a journey to uncover the stolen body of Alexander the Great with his plucky Australian friend. It's actually a fairly good mystery and well-written, even though this is Will Adams's first novel.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Only serious readers need apply -- this book is BIG. David Foster Wallace is one of those authors who like to play around with the conventions of novel-writing, and it shows in Infinite Jest, which tells the story of a man's family in near-future North America, which has turned into a massive corporate state subsidized by advertising. The man in question is a popular leader who dies after watching a mysterious movie, which is apparently so entertaining it causes people's brains to melt.

An Accidental Light by Elizabeth Diamond
After a twelve-year-old girl is killed in a traffic accident, things begin to change in unexpected ways for both her mother and her killer.

Angels of Destruction by Keith Donohue
Kind of a strange story about an old woman. Her daughter ran away in the 1960s to join a revolutionary group, and she spends the rest of her life alone -- until a mysterious young girl shows up on her doorstep. They both agree that the young girl will pose as the old woman's granddaughter and go to school, and everything works out ... until the old woman's sister shows up and must be persuaded that the girl is really the missing woman's daughter.

Figures in Silk by Vanora Bennett
A historical fiction novel about two daughters of a fifteenth-century silk merchant. One takes over the family business and becomes a successful silk merchant in her own right; the other becomes the mistress of the King. When the King's brother makes a grab for the throne, both sisters must make some hard choices to ensure their survival.

Why We Suck by Denis Leary
A satirical collection of cultural observations in the vein of I am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler, this book takes the prototypically Learyish direct approach to examining why American society takes itself so seriously when there's so much to laugh at.

So Many Ways to Sleep Badly by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
Consisting of a sexually ambiguous narrator's adventures in San Francisco, including his/her roach/rodent problem, yen for bikram yoga, and tendency to turn tricks through classified ads in the paper, this novel explores the modern life of American subcultures and examines the tendency toward body consciousness in the gay community.

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
This novel covers three decades of life in a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, starting with the first white family to move in and their trials after the mother abandons the family. The only child, Dylan, becomes friends with another motherless boy, Mingus, but their paths diverge as they grow older; Dylan becomes a music journalist, while Mingus ends up in jail, in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- everything.

So. It is a good crop this week. Next week, you'll be hearing from another librarian!

Question of the Week
I have a laptop, and I like to bring it to the Library and use the wi-fi to get my homework done with my friends. The only problem is that the big round tables on the first floor aren't anywhere near a power outlet! We have to drag the table over to a wall or a pillar so we can plug in our computers, which is hard (the tables are heavy). But we have to move it every time because the librarians keep moving them back. Can you do something about that?
Yes, indeed. Most of those tables are right next to my office, and I've walked right into a table more than once because I wasn't paying attention and assumed the table was where it's supposed to be.

The problem with moving the tables is that sometimes they end up blocking escape routes, which is not good. It also makes the building less accessible to people with mobility impairments, because there's less room for wheelchairs and crutches to navigate. Those are reasons why we keep moving the tables back to their original positions after you're done with them. We're also not crazy about plugging stuff into the walls or pillars, because it's just not safe; the power cords snake every which way, making them easy to trip over or -- if the cord is strong enough -- pulling your computer right off the table and onto the floor. Also, I've seen a student or two almost lose their pager to the bottom of someone else's foot because they tried to charge it from a wall outlet.

But fear not! Next time you're at one of those round tables on the first floor or in the basement, look under it. In most cases, you should see a power strip sticking out of the floor. That's for you. Almost all of our tables are equipped with power strips, each of which is connected to a (secure) floor outlet by a cord that's long enough to make sure that everyone at a given table is able to plug in their equipment.