Holiday vlog: Mystery Meat

Search for Sandman graphic novels in ALADIN Discovery.

Holiday vlog: Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

Quick holiday update

And lo, it was December and hark how the mercury plunged.

It's been cold. And busy. We're already about to start finals week -- today is Study Day, a nice perk for students who need an extra day off to either cut loose or prepare before they plunge into exams -- and the end of the semester is looming.

I'm looking forward to it, to be honest with you. This has probably been my most action-packed semester so far (which isn't saying much, since it's only my second full Fall semester), and although I've enjoyed it every step of the way, I'm also ready for the Library to quieten before turning to some new projects.

But this post isn't going to be about that (cleaning up periodicals, more work on library.gallaudet.edu, getting ready for a conference in early January, ordering, ordering, and more ordering -- just had to slip that in there).

This will be a short one, intended to draw your attention to our hours for the next few weeks. This particular semester break being what it is -- it's the only one all year that has a couple of major holidays in it -- our business hours are going to be a little funky. Check the page out to see what I mean.

But before you ask -- yes, we will be open between Fall and Spring semesters. Just not during the time between Christmas and New Year's. We'll shut down at the end of the day on Thursday, December 23, and reopen first thing in the morning on Monday, January 3.

And if you're a student who happens to live nearby and will be home for most of the break, you will be able to use the Library. All students will see their Library privileges "expire" this Friday, Dec. 17 (everything currently checked out is due then, except for items with borrowing periods shorter than 5 days, like DVDs), but if you're going to be around, come in on the following Monday (or the next time you need something from the stacks), and we'll reinstate you provisionally until the start of the next semester.

No more blog posts for this year; you should have a couple more vlogs coming your way, then when we get back, we'll talk a little bit about new things on our Web site and new things on our shelves. It'll be neat!

Holiday vlog: Carl Hiaasen

ALADIN Discovery Carl Hiaasen search results

Holiday vlog: Discworld

ALADIN Discovery Discworld search results

Vlog review of Army of the Republic

The Army of the Republic by Stuart Archer Cohen.

ALADIN Mobile

I was browsing through the latest WRLC monthly newsletter -- it's sent out to all librarians in the Consortium and updates us all on what the high mucky-mucks in Upper Marlboro are up to as a result of our collaboration -- and thought I'd take another look at last month's newsletter.

It just happened to mention ALADIN Mobile and how well it's been doing over the past six months.

Hmm, I thought to myself. Have I done a blog post about that? It's the kind of thing people ought to know, especially with the increasing prevalence of Web-heavy but Flash-light (no groans from the peanut gallery, please) devices like iPhones and iPads, which can't handle the full power of our catalog directly from our home page.

So I did a search from our home page for anything in this blog that might have mentioned it, and came up with this. It's in the Question of the Week, way down at the bottom, and is a little thin on details.

Well, details are what librarians do best, so here goes!

First, ALADIN Mobile is, obviously, a response to the aforementioned increase in portable Web devices. It's a mobile Web site at m.wrlc.org that's been optimized for browsers on Apple and Android devices (as well as those who qualify as "other"). It's been slickly designed to resemble an actual app and has three significant functions:

1. Search the catalog
   
1. Including the holdings of all Consortium universities or just Gallaudet
   
2. Request items through CLS on the go
   
3. Text the record of the item you're looking at (so you can get the number right away when you arrive at the library on your way somewhere else)
   
4. E-mail it to yourself as a reminder later
2. Use myALADIN
   
1. Check what books you have borrowed
2. Check fines incurred
   
3. Unfortunately you cannot renew items through the mobile app -- that's still largely the province of myALADIN on your home computer.
3. Find locations and hours. This sounds simple, but ...
   
1. Finding the location for a specific library will automatically take you to Google Maps, which will display that location
2. Today's hours are automatically displayed in the listing for each library, and for each library, the full hours are displayed. It saves you a lot of time and irritation!

In general, it's a pretty great thing for us to have -- I know it is for me. It's saved me a ton of money when I find myself trapped in a bookstore with no way out except past the cash register; I just look it up on my phone and if we have it, I don't get it. And increasingly, it's available here or at a Consortium library!

It's also useful for doing quick research when you're not at a computer or when it's not convenient to use one -- say, on the Metro on your way in to campus, eating lunch in the cafeteria, or walking out of your book group (because if you're not first to make the CLS request, someone else in your book group will beat you to it, and then where will you be? Not that I've ever been in that position ... ).

It's also great for navigating the stacks downstairs if you need a few books but can only find one on the shelf; often there will be related books in the general vicinity, but different aspects of the same topic (such as psychological assessments of Napoleon versus prevalent medical conditions of the time that might explain his behavior) may be shelved in completely different parts of the Library. ALADIN Mobile can save you the trip upstairs and back. A small improvement but measurable.

I know, all of this sounds kind of commercial -- of course I'm pushing a service that the Consortium provides. But even if I weren't a Library shill, I'd still use ALADIN Mobile pretty heavily. I might be an outlier -- what normal person considers buying a book every time he walks by the Hudson News by the Amtrak gates in Union Station? -- but it has real utility and performs it in a very appealing and accessible manner.

Okay, that's about it for today. You'll get yourselves a vlog before the end of the week -- the first one since the last week of October!

Two new events

Things are going on!

First, we've got another Bookmobile tomorrow, Nov. 12, from 11:30-1:30 p.m. in the JSAC MarketPlace. As usual, DVDs and books will be available for checkout. We got a good response last time, so we've been encouraged. Stop by and check us (and one or two of our items) out!

Second, we're hosting a Common Reading discussion panel next Tuesday, Nov. 16, from 12:30-2 p.m. in room B111 here in the Library.

We're excited about this! The Library sponsored a discussion panel with the FYS department a couple of weeks ago -- about the Common Reading -- and were stunned at the turnout. Over 40 people showed up -- and this was during Homecoming Week and during Common Time, so we were competing with not only school spirit, but also other worthy events happening around campus.

Afterward, the panelists, the moderator (okay, I admit it. I was the moderator), and sponsors were asked to host another one. So we are!

If you missed the first one, here's what it's all about: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

We gathered together a group of faculty from various departments and plunked them down together with some leading questions and audience participation to see what would happen. The participants were:

Kirk VanGilder -- Philosophy/Religion
Elizabeth Gibbons -- Psychology
Jane Dillehay -- GSR/Biology
Carie Palmer -- English
Jerri Lyn Dorminy -- FYE/Common Reading Committee representative

We got off to a good start with some comments from each participant about the book and how it related to their fields, and then things got interesting. Dr. Dillehay and VanGilder quickly got into a fascinating discussion of what it meant to be human -- he from the ethical perspective, she from the perspective of an applied scientist. The truth is, the book itself brings up an ethical quagmire that we're still sorting out today, relating to patient confidentiality and informed consent about procedures done on your body, to say nothing of the basic ownership of your own biological material once it's been separated from you.

Without going into too much detail -- we could go for hours on this, and very nearly did in the last discussion panel -- it was a fascinating discussion.

This time around, we'll have a different mix of people:

Edgar Palmer -- Orientation
Derek Braun -- Biology
Jeffrey Brune -- History/Government
Arlene Kelly -- ASL/Deaf Studies
Thomas Horejes -- Sociology

Jerri Lyn Dorminy will change seats, going from the one she sat in as a panelist to the one I sat in as the moderator. An interesting discussion is guaranteed -- feel free to come, watch, comment, and learn!

Three book reviews

It's book review time! Now, I've been reading so much -- and writing so little -- recently that I thought it might be interesting to see if I could fit not one, not two, but three book reviews into this post. Don't worry; they won't be all that long. I hope. You never know with these things.

Anyway, a word of warning: Because of my own natural inclinations, all three have a decidedly sci-fi bent. However, there is much more to these fellas than meets the eye.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
This is a pretty complicated narrative, set in Bangkok, Thailand after the world has warmed and the seas have risen. It's a time of global upheaval as huge numbers of species, both plant and animal, have gone extinct and plague and famine are widespread. Civilization is hanging on by its fingernails only because of the rise of massive multinational conglomerates that specialize in genetic engineering; many extinct species are extinct only in their pure form, having been spliced with other species to create hardier hybrids. Those hybrids are then priced upwards by the corporations holding the patent on their genes, making them available only to the wealthy or larcenous. Energy is also scarce and is often obtained by the use of "kink-springs" -- a new technique of constructing wind-up metal springs that require tons of elbow grease to collect and store energy, which is then discharged to run everything from televisions to cross-country trains. Because of the kink-spring technology, the most precious form of energy is now kilocalories, stored in human bodies and discharged through physical work.

In the middle of all this is a "calorieman" -- an agent of one of those giant bioengineering corporations -- who's in Thailand illegally in order to sniff out any extinct plant or animal species that may have been resurrected in its pure form by famed Thai bioengineers. For example, plants in the nightshade family -- including chili peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes -- grow wild everywhere in Thailand, but are extinct everywhere else, and fetch a high price on the global market. Thailand's laws strictly forbid the import or export of biological specimens of any kind, so he manages to get wrapped up in a nest of intrigue when he falls into a failed venture attempting to develop a new kind of kink-spring, and ends up making a significant difference in the future of the Thai government, which just happens to benefit his employers.

Wandering throughout this story is a genetically-engineered Japanese geisha -- the windup girl of the title -- who holds a few secrets of her own, including what may be the eventual future of the human race.

As I said, complicated! But recommended.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Another bioengineering-gone-wild tale, this book is brought to you by the author of A Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, which is sort of the sequel to Year of the Flood. In this book, the apocalypse has already happened; in a society where biological engineering is rampant and easy enough to accomplish in a 15-minute bathroom session, a plague breaks loose and wipes almost everyone out. Those who are left have to figure out how to cope in a world which not only suffers from a scarcity of food, but also from an abundance of dangerous animals that have been much-changed from the ones we know now.

The story itself follows several survivors who are refugees from God's Gardeners, a sort of tree-hugging cult that consisted of both hippie rooftop gardeners and anticonsumerist shoe-bombers. They believe in the sanctity of all animal life and eat nothing but plants, but see nothing wrong with accomplishing their ideal world by the judicious application of a few pieces of C4.

It's a fairly slow-paced book, alternating between the flashbacks of two characters, Ren and Toby, and their present lives; things don't really start to get exciting until you're close to the end of the book. Still, it's a fascinating exercise in world-building, reading about the society Atwood imagines springing out of our penchant for plastic surgery and fiddling with our cell phones, and how quickly it can all go incredibly wrong.

Even more interesting is its relationship with Oryx and Crake. I said it's sort of a prequel, but the way both books are written, it really doesn't matter which you read first. The three central characters in Oryx don't show up often in Year of the Flood, but when they do, it's telegraphed clearly enough that you know that this is a missing part of the history of Crake and the end of the human race. And it's all written in Atwood's style, which is both stark and reflective; she really has a unique turn of phrase all her own.

Recommended for people with patience and a willingness to spend more time wandering through events instead of plunging through them; I loved it, but it's not for everyone.

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem
This is actually a re-read. It was one of my favorite books when I was younger, and it really was the last book I was expecting to find anywhere, much less right here where I work! No bioengineering here; it's a classic collection of short stories by a famous Czech science fiction writer who also wrote Solaris, which was adapted to film for the third time a few years ago, starring George Clooney. The fact that we have this book, plus many others by Lem, only proves what I've been saying all along; one of my predecessors must have been a huge sci-fi buff.

Anyway, the stories in The Cyberiad are not so much short stories as they are fables. Fables about robots that can construct almost anything demanded of them, and of the strange -- and invariably funny -- consequences that result from their actions. This book is, above all, funny, whether you're reading about the Femfatalatron built to deinfatuate a robot prince in love with a rival kingdom's princess or, my favorite, the machine that could make anything beginning with the letter n, including Nothing.

Actually, this book's author may have been insane. It reads like a combination of Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and Dr. Seuss. It's funny and breaks whatever expectations you might have in the process of telling its stories, which invariably have some kind of lesson at the end.

A fabulous read overall; if you're looking for something light, funny, and fascinating, it's hard to go wrong with this one.

That covers it for now. I'm off on Friday, so I may not have time to put up another post before then, but I will if I can. Next week, the vlogs return!

Home page shortcuts

Finally, a real blog post!

I have to admit it's nice to be able to dust off the old posting engine and get to writing again. Of course, I may have picked a lousy time to do it -- the semester hasn't calmed down as I thought it might post-October. But that's okay. I soldiered through it last year and can do it again!

Anyway, this post is going to be for the power users, people who use our more specialized resources with a narrower focus; there are ways to get at our electronic resources from our home page at library.gallaudet.edu without going through the ALADIN portal page, which usually adds a step or two to the process. Then why do we have it in the first place? I'll explain further down; first things first.

Our most heavily-used resources available on the ALADIN page are technically five-fold, but really three:

1/2) ProQuest Research Library/Ebscohost Academic Search Complete
3/4) Databases by Subject/Databases by Title
5) Gallaudet e-Journals

I grouped ProQuest and Ebscohost together because they're very similar in terms of their utility for our students; both are large aggregators that collect licenses which allow them to provide access to thousands of academic journals in hundreds of disciplines. They are, in general, terrific places to start and will, for the majority of class assignments, be all that's needed. They're relatively convenient and are therefore the most heavily-used, particularly by undergraduates. The setup is simple enough for most -- click on "ALADIN" on library.gallaudet.edu, then click on the link to either ProQuest or Ebscohost, then start searching -- so we don't worry as much about adding shortcuts.

On the other hand, our more specialized offerings are a little harder to get to. We have a lot -- around fifty specialized databases and, whether directly or indirectly, access to thousands of electronic journals -- so there's no real way to just provide a one-click discovery process.

Still, we've tried. Take the databases, for instance. Fifty's a fairly manageable number, and we've categorized them according to discipline and function -- such as "Medical sciences" and "Education" for the former and "Multi-Subject" (meaning multidisciplinary databases like ProQuest and others) and "Reference" (like Credo and the Encyclopedia Britannica) for the latter.

That's the basis for the Databases by Subject link on ALADIN, but -- and this is less well-known -- also for the Database QuickAccess drop-down menu in the "Research Help" box on library.gallaudet.edu. All of our categories are listed in that menu; pick one that fits your topic, click "Go," and you'll see a list of all of our databases that will contain relevant information.

So to review:

Going through ALADIN to a specialized database = library.gallaudet.edu + "ALADIN" link + "Databases by Subject" link + category link + database link

Using Database QuickAccess = library.gallaudet.edu + category link + database link

So obviously not perfect, but a distinct improvement.

Another imperfect-but-better shortcut is for our electronic journal search page. The database categories help in a very general way, but for a specific resource, the rest of the journey to your journal goes through this search page.

The process is similar to what you do for databases when you go through ALADIN, although since there are no categories to go through, it's a little shorter. We've made it even shorter by including a link to "GA's e-Journals" on library.gallaudet.edu in the "Research Help" box (why GA? It saves space and is our WRLC abbreviation); just click on it and start searching.

Again, this is mostly for the power user: researchers who know exactly what journals they want. If you don't know this, you're better off with ProQuest, Ebscohost, and the database categories. Or you can always go to the chat widget on our Web site and ask us for help. We can help you decide which database is best for your assignment.

The other three shortcuts I have in mind are fairly straightforward, although they may not seem so at first glance.

The first is, of course, LibGuides. As with Database QuickAccess and e-Journals, the shortcut is in the "Research Help" box. Most students encounter LibGuides with a direct link to the one made specifically for their course or general subject, but don't know that they can see the overall listing of LibGuides and browse through them. It's all right there!

The second is RefWorks. It's actually listed in the "Reference" database category that you can get to through QuickAccess, but for the most part, it's not strictly necessary to do that; you can head straight there through the link from the "Research Help" box.

The last one is our search box -- not the one for the catalog. That one's pretty clear (or at least I hope so). No, I'm talking about the one down on the bottom of the page. It'll let you search for anything on all of our Web pages and this blog. This is actually a pretty huge shortcut that covers anything from "Songs in ASL" to book titles that may have been reviewed in this blog. It's pretty neat and is powered by Google, so you know it's good.

Yes, I realize the irony of a librarian saying that something from Google is "good." Chortle and let's move on with our lives, okay?

That's it for this week. Thanks for tuning in; no vlog next week, either, because I have a short and very busy week in store for myself. But I'll post something, never fear!

Quick announcements

Here we are again!

Halloween is this weekend, and Homecoming is in full swing. Alumni are visible all around campus, and students have been getting down with their school-spirited selves all week.

And what's the Library been up to?

I'll admit that the blogging has slackened as of late. Making vlogs can be time-consuming, and doing them on a regular schedule puts me in "Whew, done with that for the week" mode, which is good because I'm a busy fella, but bad because then you aren't updated on the Library!

Now that Halloween is nearly here and the October book reviews are over, it's time to shift our focus once again. No vlogs for a week or two, just to get me back into the writing groove.

First and foremost, I feel it's important to let you all know: The Library will have another Bookmobile on Tuesday, Nov. 2, in the Student Academic Center's MarketPlace from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. Books and movies will be available for checkout to all current Gallaudet students, staff, and faculty members.

In general, though, it's been a busy week for everyone! Come on by if you need any of the following:

quiet study space
group study space
fun videos
serious videos
serious books
fun books
tons of e-resources
help from knowledgeable staff
libguides to lead you through finding info on specific subjects

And this week ... candy. We'll be giving out the sweet stuff today for trick-or-treaters on campus; if you've got a little monster (preferably your own), bring him or her on by and stoke the flames of sugar addiction! Just remember: None of us are¹ very good at babysitting, so keep a close eye on the little ones!

Next week will represent a return to our long-interrupted programming: I'll show you all the little shortcuts to our electronic resources that you can find on our home page. It'll be a good read!

---

¹ Although the word "none" is itself singular, the plural sense (e.g., "none of these persons or things") accepts "are"; "is" is generally used in the singular sense (e.g., "of all my books, not one has a single dog-ear"). This has been true since the 9th Century. So there, would-be grammar sticklers. Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/none

Halloween Vlog: The Exorcist

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.

Halloween Vlog: A Madness of Angels

A Madness of Angels, or, The Resurrection of Matthew Swift by Kate Griffin.

Free coffee for midterms

It's Week 7.

Possibly the third-most-dreaded week of the semester, behind finals week and, of course, Week 1.

Why? Midterms.

It's also one of our busiest weeks; students often have to contend with major exams, slightly-less-major tests, slipping grades, tearful breakups (they always seem to happen around this time), an upcoming Homecoming, projects, papers, and plain old run-of-the-mill homework. It's no wonder the Library's usually littered with bodies coping with every issue that exists on the known academic spectrum at all hours that we're open, especially when you get up past primetime.

Fortunately, we're here to help in the only way that matters: free coffee.

Well -- I mean, sure, we do lots of other things to help students, but I think we all know what really matters when the clock hits 10 p.m., you're still only halfway done with highlighting every other word in the part of the textbook your class has covered so far, and the table is looking mighty soft and comfortable.

So come up or drop by the first floor of the Library, around 8 p.m. tonight through Thursday night, for some free coffee. We also offer creamer, sugar, and artificial sweetener (I think Splenda's big this year) if you're not into basic black. It's available until closing or until we run out, whichever happens first.

It's sort of a perk (pun intended) that we offer for students, as well as any staff or faculty working late, around midterms and finals. If you missed out on the free stuff, it'll be back eventually.

You'll get something more substantive about what's been going on at the Library next week; it's been a busy semester!

Vlog revew of 23 Hours

23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale by David Wellington.

Library Bookmobile

If you live in the dorms and don't venture out among the academic buildings for any other reason than classes and creepy scavenger hunts during Pledge Week, have we got news for you.

On the next two Fridays -- October 8 and 15 -- the Library will establish a new branch in the Plaza Dining Hall!

We'll haul along a nice big load of books and movies for people to check out, right where you live, eat, and play.

We're setting up shop in the lounge area across from the cashier from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., so you can grab some flicks on your way out or a book to read or work with for the weekend. I can't say what topics will be covered by the books available just yet, but I do know that for my part, there'll be lots of pleasure reading! If you're there, you'll most likely be eating, so will probably have your ID, but just to be sure: bring it.

The best part, of course, is that this Friday, I will be there. I know, I'm a total celebrity, right?

Halloween Vlog: World War Z

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks.

Vlog review of King of the Screwups

King of the Screwups by K.L. Going.

Banned Books Week

Some of you may not know this, but Sept. 25-Oct. 2 is Banned Books Week here in the United States!

No, it's not a national holiday. It's actually sort of an awareness campaign that the American Library Association sponsors every year.

Awareness of what, you ask? Of things like the following list of titles:

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
2. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
3. The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
4. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
6. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
7. My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
9. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
10. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier

And so things become a bit clearer: These books are, in fact, the top ten most-challenged books of 2009.

It sounds kind of funny: what does "challenging" mean, anyway? What does this have to do with banned books?

A lot, in fact. "Challenge" is a word used to describe the process of requesting that a library remove a book from its shelves for various reasons unrelated to the book's physical condition or currency (how up-to-date it is). In other words, these are books that people want banned -- and these books got the most requests for removal out of all challenged books in the United States last year.

Still sounds kind of vague, huh? After all, look at the list again. And Tango Makes Three? That's a children's book about penguins! The Perks of Being a Wallflower? It's practically a Bible for adolescents and college students who don't quite fit in. To Kill a Mockingbird -- that's a classic! Ditto Catcher in the Rye. My Sister's Keeper kind of makes sense; I've heard that it makes people cry. But The Color Purple? That's another significant classic in 20th-Century American literature.

That's just from the 2009 list. Check out this list of classics that have been banned or challenged at one time or another; there are some real eye-poppers in there, like Winnie-the-Pooh.

Why are they challenged? Luckily, ALA keeps track of the reasons, as reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom. Here's the same list again, this time with the reasons for each challenge:

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: drugs, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
2. And Tango Makes Three, by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
Reasons: homosexuality
3. The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: anti-family, drugs, homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited to age group
4. To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Reasons: offensive language, racism, unsuited to age group
5. Twilight (series) by Stephenie Meyer
Reasons: religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
6. Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
7. My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
Reasons: homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence
8. The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
9. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
10. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
Reasons: nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group

So someone doesn't like And Tango Makes Three because it's about a pair of male penguins who raise a child, which might touch on a topic he or she feels is not appropriate for the children who would read it. What happens?

Usually, they go to their library and ask that the library stop making that book available, through means that vary from library to library -- some have forms you can fill out, while others just write down the book title and take it to the person or committee who's responsible for making decisions about challenged books. Then that decision-making entity figures out how to respond to the complaint: Should the book be moved to a more appropriate section? Should we remove it entirely? Or should we do nothing?

Although I don't have statistics immediately to hand, I assume that in the majority of cases, the decision is to do nothing. If you've read even two or three of the books in that list above, you understand why. Yes, all of these complaints are true, but are they reasons to censor these books?

You may have hesitated before answering that last question for yourself. That hesitation is what makes life interesting for some librarians; there's no universal rule that says "This book MUST be removed from shelves if ... " Some libraries toss those complaints right into the trash; it's not their job to control what people can or can't read, regardless of age -- they just make the books available, and the rest is up to the readers. Other libraries rely on their own rules, like "gratuitousness" -- is this violence, language, or sexuality excessive? "Excessive" in whose opinion? Is it one of those things that you'll know when you see it, or is excessive violence quantifiable? How do you justify those kinds of decisions? Still others do pay attention to age-appropriateness; The Chocolate War sounds like a kids' book and might be in the library's catalog as such, but it is most definitely better-suited to teenagers. The gray areas go on and on ...

We don't do this because we think we know better than the people making the requests to remove books; all of this matters, because books that have been banned on moral, philosophical, religious, or political grounds are books that have been censored. Censorship is a bad thing; the First Amendment guarantees the right to express your opinion, and librarians play one of the most important supporting roles for this basic human right in our society. The flipside of the freedom of speech is the freedom to read, something that ALA strongly supports; not only do you have the right to express your opinion, you have the right to gain access to the printed opinions of others. This is called intellectual freedom, the freedom to ask questions and gain answers, and it's one of the most fundamental concepts underlying the establishment of a university. Universities don't just teach high-school kids how to do linear algebra or balance a checkbook until they're legally adults; those are important, yes, but we at the Library also offer a place where people are free to investigate any line of questioning they wish.

That's why Banned Books Week is relevant to the Gallaudet University Library, even though very few, if any, of our books are actually challenged; this is true for most other academic libraries. To learn more about Banned Books Week at the Gallaudet University Library, come in and look at the display table in front of the first-floor entrance by Peet Hall, where Elizabeth Henry's set up a fantastic display of banned books.

Heck, take one home with you if you like.

Vlog review of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie.

Vlog interview: Diana Gates

Book review: Under the Dome

Yay, book review! I have to admit that, in this new age of vlogging, I miss being able to write my reviews. You'll have to indulge my (hopefully) charmingly quaint sensibilities today.

I read -- and brace yourselves -- Under the Dome by Stephen King.

What can I say? Although I will admit that I've since moved on from the stage of my life where I thought Stephen King was the Great American Novelist (mostly based on his earlier work and the Dark Tower books), I still can't resist looking through his newest stuff. I read Duma Key last year and actually quite liked it; all his usual motifs were firmly in place, but with the addition of some refreshingly creepy elements that made it a terrific read. I still flash back to his description of seashells grinding under the main character's stilt house on the beach and shudder.

So, of course, with that expectation in mind, I went under the dome.

The basic premise is that a tiny, tiny little town way up in the middle of nowhere, in one of those little states up in the corner of the country, Maine or New Hampshire or somewhere, suddenly finds itself surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable barrier. This is discovered in a spectacularly grisly day, in true King fashion, as people on the road and unaware slam into the barrier at a few dozen miles per hour. The barrier extends up nearly forty thousand feet and closes over the town completely; planes start crashing into it on their descents into Logan Airport in Boston or to the airport in Bangor.

Since the town is so small, everyone knows each other. Also because of the tininess of the community, people's peccadilloes -- and, eventually, dangerous instabilities -- are multiplied enormously, and this is only exacerbated by the sudden erection of this barrier. The military becomes aware of the situation and undertakes several means of punching through it, but fail. The world watches, stunned, as the town discovers itself completely and utterly trapped.

As the days go by, we follow an unusually -- for Stephen King, anyway -- large ensemble of characters as they cope with the difficulties associated with being cut off from the outside world in every way except visibility: They can see what's over there just fine, but there's no way to get there. The ancillary consequences of being parked under a barrier continue to mount as people burn wood to keep warm when they run out of propane and continue to drive cars and trucks around town.

There are two main groups being pitted against one another here: a loose confederation of people -- including a former soldier who finds himself back in service -- who just want to get that barrier down and get out, versus a town selectman with a decidedly fascistic bent and his creepy cadre of local criminal teens, who are deputized and put to work subduing the populace. As the novel goes on, it becomes something far stranger, as the local meth-lab chef gets involved in a surprising way, and people begin to die.

There's plenty of homicide involved -- mostly committed by people you wouldn't expect -- but also suicides as people slowly begin to despair of ever leaving, as well as plain old medical emergencies from the steadily-worsening air and greenhouse-effect heat under the dome. It's all done in King's style, though -- there's plenty of funny stuff stemming from the absurdities brought about by the situation, people fall in love, and young kids have their hands in saving the town ... sort of.

Truth be told, the ending isn't very happy. It's also incredibly violent, sparked by a nuclear blast set off by the military just outside the dome to no avail.

In general, it's a pretty interesting study of one man's consideration of what happens to people when they find themselves backed into a corner by something they can't come close to comprehending; some people turn to help others, while others turn to help themselves. When the latter also hold positions of power, things can get very ugly indeed, and they do so in this novel in scarily believable ways. The slope is slippery, King seems to be saying, so watch your footing. It's surprisingly free of most of his usual tropes (except things like psychic kids, one flat-out loony, and endearingly rural surnames), so it's a pretty refreshing thing to get from him.

It's not an intellectual book in any way. It's Stephen King. However, this same fact also means it's a tremendously entertaining book.

Constitution Day, new resources, staplers

A few quick announcements ...

Constitution Day resources are now available
If you haven't seen the news in the Announcements section of our home page, we've posted a Web page with information about this year's Constitution Day, on Friday, Sept. 17. This year, we're celebrating the Second Amendment, otherwise known as the "You'll have to pry my sawed-off shotgun from my cold, dead hands" Amendment. There's actually a lot more to the Amendment than what you hear from the NRA and from the left; the Founding Fathers had very real concerns that underpinned the choice to include this amendment in the Bill of Rights. You can learn more about that by going here.

A bunch of other new resources are now available
We've added a few new things to our ever-expanding list of offerings! A new page will appear on our Web site by the end of the week with more comprehensive explanations, but in a nutshell, here's what's new:

• Art Full Text
• JSTOR Arts & Sciences I (basically, we expanded our JSTOR subscriptions; you won't see it as a discrete collection because it's simply been added to the pool of articles already available)
• Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, an electronic encyclopedia available through ALADIN Discovery
• Several books donated by the Nippon Foundation about Japanese art, history, and culture. If you're interested in Japan in general, keep an eye out!

Staplers
They're on our minds. More details later.

I'm still working on the Deaf Copy 1 tour. Also, book review this Friday! And it's not gonna be a vlog neither ...

Vlog review of Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.

Also, check out my review of the first book, The Hunger Games!

Library status report

Because it's been such a hectic week, I'm going to use this post to take stock. Call it a status report; you're welcome to come along for the ride!

We had a few bumps in the road while getting the new printing system to work. Apparently, on Monday -- the very first day of school -- demand on AT's printing system was so heavy that nearly all the printers using it, both here in the Library and all of AT's other labs throughout campus, got pretty badly backed up. To relieve the load, they bypassed the usual controls so people could print directly, with the predictable effect of multiple jobs clogging the queue on every printer in use. Fortunately, it's all been worked out and life has resumed what here on campus passes for normalcy.

Elizabeth Henry, our newest librarian, shouldered the start of her first semester quite ably. We're glad to have her here, and are still getting positive feedback on the vlog interview I did with her a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad people are connecting with her so well; she's fitting right in!

She's also beginning work on managing our electronic resources. We The Librarians met yesterday, and have begun to discuss how we want access to those resources to change. Most of us aren't wild about the current system, with most of our electronic journals in a separate search from the catalog, because that makes it harder for you to find them, so we've started looking at ways to bring the catalog and our electronic resources closer together. It's similar in a way to what WRLC in general is looking at right now, but because we subscribe to upwards of several million journals either directly or through databases and electronic lending libraries like EBSCO and Ingenta, it's tricky. Fortunately, she's on the job!

Our e-Reserves are also very healthy this year! A fairly good-sized backlog has materialized out of thin air just this week, which, though annoying in some ways, is a great sign. All four librarians and David Bills, the technician working on e-Reserves, are working hard to get things posted! It's sort of like the Three Stooges: When all three try to go through the same door at the same time, nobody gets through. So to our faculty I waft a gentle note on the breeze: If you get your readings to us at least two weeks before the semester starts, we'll have them ready by the first day of classes.

We've also been planning different ways to get out there on campus, sort of bringing the mountain to Mohammed. For instance, we're planning on a sort of bookmobile this semester, where a librarian will haul some popular books and movies, a laptop, and a barcode scanner to different locations on campus. That way, if you're in, say, the Marketplace at the right time on the right day (don't worry, we'll announce it!) and have been thinking about checking out a book or a few movies for the weekend, but don't have time to get to the Library, you'll be able to find and check out something suitable right there!

We also did a laundry list of events for GSO (Graduate Student Orientation) and NSO (New Student Orientation) last week, and just yesterday hosted a lunch to welcome new Honors students. The event went so well, we'll be hosting it again, opening it up to more students next time.

I also started teaching a First Year Seminar course this week. Yeah, a librarian teaching a class. It's sort of like watching a dog playing poker, I know. But it's a good class, and if any of my students are reading this, enjoy the metaphysical extra credit I'm sending you right now.

Another bright spot this week is that it seems we are experiencing fewer issues with new students coming to the Desk to check out materials and finding out they're not in the system yet. Our director's been working hard on getting information from the Registrar's Office and feeding it into our circulation system every day, and the numbers keep getting smaller, so the road's getting smoother!

A not-so-bright spot was the effect of the Higher Education Copyright Act of 2008, which became law this summer. It requires us to inform ALL students about the penalties of copyright infringement, so we sent out an e-mail to the student population and included faculty and staff for good measure. Because this is a new requirement, a lot of folks who got the e-mail thought it was because of something they did, freaked out, and ran over to the Library, presumably to catch us before we called the Intellectual Property Gestapo on them. But that wasn't going to happen; it was only a notice, mandated by law. For some of the work that gets done on campus, reproduction of copyrighted material usually falls under fair use for educational purposes. But that's not true for everything, so check out Sarah Hamrick's Copyright Basics LibGuide for much more information. It's also always a good idea to check in with the Library to make sure; just don't let your blood pressure get too high until you know one way or another.

Other than that, we're getting back into the routine. Summer was one long period of crazy projects and interrupted habits, and it just snapped right past, so we're more than ready to return to the usual swing of things. Which now, apparently, includes brawls at Nationals games, thanks to Nyjer Morgan. Look up to him, kids; that's probably the opposite of what you want to be if you become a ballplayer.

Next week will see an inversion of the new order: a written book review and a vlog post about the Library. I'm going to take you down into the Deaf Copy 1 room and the Archives' vaults, so you can see how much Deaf history lives underneath our feet. Most of it is going to look boring, but trust me -- there's plenty of interesting things to unearth!

Vlog review of The Gunter Grass Reader

The Günter Grass Reader

Vlog review of Little Red ...

Sorry -- the ceiling's still visible. But hopefully more of me is, too!



Little Red Riding Hood in the Red Light District by Manlio Argueta.

What you need to know: Part 3

Great googly moogly, school starts next week! How'd that happen?

Upping the googly and amplifying the moogly, of course, is this week's coterie of workshops, activities, and meetings, on top of the usual workload. Fair warning: By Friday's vlog, I may somewhat resemble Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.

What can I say? It runs in the family.

Drop by tomorrow for free lemonade and stuff! We'll be handing it out for Arrival Day, and the forecast is that it'll be hot. We're here to help you cool off!

Today, we get to the fun stuff! What changed between May and August?

A lot.

New computer stuff
Really, only one thing is new, and the other thing is new ... ish. I told you about the printing system change last week -- that's the new thing, along with our brand-spanking printers, the Brothers. That's what I call them, mostly because that's what brand they are. I am, probably, more excited about the fact that we've gotten new printers than anything else. We've been using a different brand for a while, and they seem to have a tendency to jam up, especially when a given printer receives a large (2 or more, that is) number of jobs. This leads to frustration for the people who just want their paper printed out so they can go to class and tore-up hands for the librarians who have to figure out how to liberate a stubborn piece of standard letter-size. The Brothers come with a long list of positive reviews, especially handling large volumes of printing, and that, coupled with the more orderly job-release system we've implemented, should lead to a lot of easier lives and lower blood pressure all around. This is a Good Thing.

The second new thing -- ish -- is Windows 7. At long last, our public computers have been updated to Microsoft's newest operating system, just in time for the Fall semester! Granted, this probably sounds pretty cosmetic, but you'll appreciate it more if you've ever used one of our computers and had to wait five minutes or more for it to be ready to use. Windows XP appears to have been the wrench in the works in that case; when a student logs on with their username and password, the system automatically creates a profile on that computer. This profile doesn't actually hold any information, but it still exists in its own block of memory, and when profiles accumulate, the computer's memory becomes occupied, and things slow right down. We've had to have ITS technicians come in every few months and delete the accumulated profiles off of each computer, which is a significant inconvenience for the Library, ITS, and our users. Windows 7 should fix that and speed things up a little, so we're looking forward to it!

New Web site design
We redesigned our Web site -- library.gallaudet.edu -- this summer. Finding important information on the old site wasn't too easy because the layout was fairly spread out, leading to lots of scrolling and hunting. This time, everything that belongs together is now together, and it's all been compressed, so there should be less effort to find what you need. Also, we placed greater emphasis on searching our catalog so people who are just looking for a book or film can get right to it. We also gave news greater priority -- it now occupies the entire middle column, starting with short announcements at the top, recent blog posts in the middle, and longer news at the bottom, which will be updated less frequently. In general, we're just trying to make it easier for folks to find out what's changed or been added since the last time they were here.

More space
We've given our DVDs more breathing room, for a start. The Deaf DVDs are growing very quickly, partly because our terrific Deaf Collection Librarian, Diana Gates, is doing a good job sniffing out hard-to-find films that incorporate deaf characters, deaf themes, or education about deaf-related topics. The other part is, of course, the conversion of our VHS collection to DVD -- many older deaf films that have either passed out of copyright or were produced at Gallaudet are being transferred to DVD for purposes of preservation and clarity. In addition to that, VHS tape degrades shockingly quickly, especially considering how much use they get here, so where possible, damaged copies are being replaced with DVD versions. DVDs also take up less space than VHS, so that's one major consideration.

Our General DVD collection is also growing, albeit more slowly (we are an academic library, after all, so the main growth is occurring in documentaries closely tied to the curriculum), so that, coupled with the Deaf DVD collection, means we decided to split them up. They used to share a single shelf unit, Deaf on one side and General on the other. Now they each occupy their own, which gives us room to grow!

Also, Jane Rutherford's been slaving over our periodical collection all summer. She took on a herculean task, sorting through a few hundred subscriptions, figuring out which records needed to be updated, which had ancient issues that needed to be discarded, which subscriptions needed to be canceled, and coming to each of the other librarians in turn to get our decisions on titles in our fields. Poor Jane -- I think most of us started dreading the sight of her coming our way! In general, she chose to devote her time to accelerating a project that's always going on, but which she decided she'd like to see finished before her retirement. This leads us to ...

Jane Rutherford's retirement
We did a whole blog post about that one. I'm still sad. We've got Elizabeth Henry now, so we're doing fine, but as wonderful as Elizabeth is, Jane isn't replaceable. Her last day at work will be this Friday; time's running out to drop by, shake her hand, and wish her well!

LibGuides tutorial
We also made a video tutorial on the basics of using and navigating a LibGuide; it's available on libguides.gallaudet.edu. Granted, the quality isn't great -- that's partly because the only way we could get it onto the page was through YouTube, which compresses it considerably. Still, you will be able to see the basic information (especially if you view it in fullscreen mode), and the captions are pretty clear! We're working on a better solution, though, so hang in there.

The blog
Well ... you've seen it. It's all part of our drive toward better communication with the community we serve, which involves making blog posts more focused and readable, adding vlogs so you get to see the people here (but mostly me, because it turns out I secretly dig being in front of a camera -- who knew?), and making announcements easier to get to.

New catalog ... which is actually pending
Sort of. The Consortium has been looking for new solutions for our patrons, which have thus far tended to involve combining books and articles into a single search. This means you'll be able to find both in our catalog, so if you're looking for something that would appear in Ebsco or ProQuest or other databases, but are not sure where to look, you might be able to use our catalog to get there. It'll make everyone's lives much easier. In the meantime, we're still looking and figuring out how to put the pieces together. You'll get more information on that in a couple months.

That wraps up our What You Need to Know series for this year. We'll end the week on Friday with another book review vlog, and next week will see a few announcements. In the meantime, orientation week is happening all around us, and classes begin next week! If you're starting out at Gallaudet, welcome! If you're returning after last year, welcome back!

What you need to know: Part 2

Before we start, an announcement (I know this breaks the rule of only one big thing per post, but hey, I'm flexible): The Library has changed its printing system.

For various reasons, we decided to adopt the printing policy in effect at other computer labs on campus both to save paper and reduce printing jams that can occur when a large number of people try to use the same printer at once, saving everyone time and money! This means that if you use our public computers to print something, you'll have to abide by the same rules that you do elsewhere: 5,000 pages for printing per semester. Anything you print out at another lab using this policy -- like the Harkin Digital Lab in the Student Academic Center -- will count toward this total. Here's what you do if you want to print something out:

1. Do everything as you would normally:
   
1. Click "Print."
2. Select Printer 1 or Printer 2.
3. Click "OK."
2. Then go to our printer workstation. It's on the counter by the copiers.
3. Log in.
4. Find your job on the list.
5. Click "Print." This will release the job to whichever printer you picked.
6. Then click "Done."
   
7. Pick up the product.

The default is still duplex -- two-sided -- printing, both to save you money and to Save The Trees. You can change this if you need to; if you find yourself struggling to find that setting, ask at the Service Desk and the person working there will gladly help you!

Now, on with the main thing: This past year's Questions of the Week. Without further ado, here are all the questions that have been asked since last September, organized by category.

Collection
What do we do with donations?
How to use an e-book
What's the Deaf Copy 1 room for?
What happens to damaged films?
When do we get new books?

Equipment
What happened to the stapler?
What's up with the printers?
Does the library have videophones?
What do I do if the printer jams?

Catalog
In the catalog, what does 'electronic resource' mean?
What is ALADIN Mobile?

Policy and Services
Why would I be asked for my ID if I were just using a computer?
Faculty member wants to know about testing in the Library
Can I use the Gallaudet University Library if I'm not affiliated?
Why is there a time limit on reserves?
What do I do if I lose a DVD case but not the disc?
Can the library help me show films in public without violating copyright?
Why would my loan period only be 1 week?
What are my summer program borrowing privileges?

Building
Thanksgiving holiday hours
Is the Library open during the holiday break and why did my account expire?
How do I get a job at the Library?
Can you install better lighting?
Why are you open over Spring Break?
Are you open during the summer?

Because I'm weird
Why do you capitalize book titles the way you do?
How long does it take to change a book display?

As a great American luminary once said, Th-th-th-that's all, folks!

Vlog review of Lion Mountain

Lion Mountain by Mustapha Tlili. Enjoy!

Review: The Genius of America

Book review time!

No, I don't plan to do every book review as a vlog. A little vlog goes a long way in my opinion, exactly as gasoline doesn't.

Anyway, I read The Genius of America: How the Constitution Saved America -- and Why it Can Again by Eric Lane and Michael Oreskes.

The uber-long title kind of explains it all. The first half of the book goes into the first 11 years of the United States, the period between 1776 and 1787 when we were governed by the Articles of Confederation, the struggles of the Constitution drafters, and how the Constitution has worked, been amended, and undermined over the last couple of centuries.

The U.S. had declared independence from Britain in 1776 and was humming its way through the war until it ended in 1783 with the Treaty of Paris. Everyone thought things were peachy. Unfortunately, they weren't. It didn't take long until the Articles of Confederation -- based on the idea of each state as a sovereign power, loosely federated with the others under an incredibly weak national government -- began to show some serious problems. The problem, as the framers saw it, was that the Articles were written based on an assumption of "public virtue." This was the idea that people would, on their own, look out for the good of society as a whole over their own self-interest.

The states, being human constructs made up of human beings -- which are self-interested creatures on general principle -- immediately fell to squabbling and jockeying for power, wealth and territory among themselves. The federal government, limited as it was by the Articles of Confederation, couldn't do much, and so it began to look as though the new United States was about to fall apart only a decade after its founding. A Constitutional Convention was called, and the writers of the Declaration of Independence and delegates from the states attended, one hot summer in Philadelphia.

Long story short, it took the entire summer for the Convention attendees to agree on the basic points of federal governance in relation to the states. James Madison, commonly considered the father of the Constitution, proposed what became known as the Virginia Plan (he was a Virginia delegate) -- a three-part government, with a very powerful executive who would have actually been a monarch. It sounds funny today, but some of those delegates were seriously considering the possibility that the best thing to do would be to return to governance by royalty. With some obvious adjustments to weaken the executive and turn the legislative branch into a two-house Congress defined by differing metrics, that plan became the Constitution and is the government we know today.

The interesting thing is that the system those attendees set up and enshrined in our founding document is completely different from the Articles of Confederation. The Articles assumed that people would do what was good for society; the Constitution assumed the exact opposite and created a whole new governmental system based on people's self-interest. In this system, nobody would get their way; they'd be forced to go through a strenuous legislation process in order to buy time to deliberate, argue, and compromise. In fact, compromise -- what often seems to be the "C" word these days in our polarized politics -- is the foundation of the system. Even if both houses of Congress pass a piece of legislation, it still has to avoid a presidential veto. If it manages to squeak through that, it could still be challenged -- and struck down -- by the Supreme Court.

In other words, the system created ample opportunity to tweak. And that's why the system's survived so well for so long. It survived the Civil War, which is the closest our country has ever come to fracturing completely and permanently; it survived the Great Depression, which could have killed the country altogether, regardless of any unifying sensibility, if it hadn't been for an executive who was willing to do what it took to get the country back on its feet; it survived Richard Nixon, who claimed the Supreme Court couldn't subpoena his documents because it had no authority over the President, but eventually capitulated and resigned.

It's flexible because of that exact thing everyone hates: Congress. Passing things through Congress and forcing consensus through compromise is what makes the government work.

Unfortunately, our Congresscritters refuse to compromise these days, so things are locked up, the deficit and debt are ballooning, important programs are being cut, and people are beginning to say that maybe it's time to throw the Constitution out with the bathwater.

One manifestation of this inclination in recent years is the initiative-and-referendum process, which was discussed in a part of the book I reached the day Proposition 8 was declared unconstitutional -- a miracle of good timing, as it turned out. The process was introduced into the California Constitution in the 1920s, then forgotten until the 1970s when, angered by the fact that they had to pay taxes, the Californian people revived it. Essentially, what this process does is allow initiatives to be introduced on the state ballot if those initiatives gather enough signatures in support. Then, on Election Day, the initiative is subjected to a referendum, and if the majority of people who vote that day vote "Yes" on it, it becomes law. The state constitution can be amended this way -- by the direct voice of the people. It's called direct democracy, and it's something the founding fathers wanted to avoid.

This is how Proposition 8, a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, was passed in 2008. This is a classic illustration of why the founding fathers built the system the way they did: they wanted to avoid tyranny, whether by the majority or a vocal minority. The system is designed to prevent a group's rights from being taken away by another group. If same-sex marriage must be banned, it should be done through the usual legislative process so that a consensus can be achieved through compromise. At this point, as far as Proposition 8 is concerned, it's now up to the courts.

In general, the authors are saying that people are growing frustrated with the government pretty much because they've started expecting way too much from it. Every time something bad happens, they expect the government to intervene, regardless of whether or not it actually has a Constitutional mandate to do so. Part of this stems from the social programs that were established in the New Deal, like Social Security; people just sort of got used to the idea that the government should take care of them. The rest stems from the fact that the part of the system that can meet specific needs is nearly unable to do so because of the lack of compromise in Congress.

In general, according to the authors, the government has never been, and never will be, able to meet every single demand. As I've said elsewhere, it was in fact designed to do the opposite: to frustrate those demands and force people to give up some of them in exchange for the rest. The authors state a few times that the two branches of government elected by the people -- the executive and legislative branches -- tend to reflect society as a whole. When a refusal to compromise occurs on all sides, things stop working, and it takes some willingness to sacrifice to get things going again.

I think it's a fantastic book and should be required reading for everyone, especially if you didn't pay attention in your Civics or American Government classes in high school. It lends a new perspective on our political system regardless of your actual party affiliation, and you start to see the hallmarks of the Constitution everywhere, in a gridlocked Congress and in court decisions, in federal silence and presidential statements on controversial mosques. You learn to be amazed by our system, and that's as it should be. Highly, highly recommended.

What you need to know: Part 1 (Fall 2010)

See, I told you. There'll still be text posts. Welcome to the first of this year's posts about important information about the Library you'll need to know!

First, I want to refer you to last year's posts, some of which are outdated, and some of which are very outdated. However, there's still plenty of useful information in them that will serve as an introduction to our Library. Here they are:

• What you need to know: Part 1
• Includes a FAQ post link, links to individual librarian profiles (although Jane Rutherford will be retiring right at the beginning of the Fall semester, she's still worth learning more about!), and a few sample review posts of various books and films we have here. As I said, outdated, but it should give you an idea of the kinds of items we do have. In addition, there's a link to a comprehensive overview of the equipment we have available for you, which is worth checking out.
• What you need to know: Part 2
• This post includes links to a comprehensive discussion about the nuts and bolts of (a) finding journal articles; and (b) what our electronic article databases are all about. After that is a long, comprehensive listing of the previous year's Questions of the Week (which we'll do next week).
• What you need to know: Part 3
• Essentially a more focused update on exactly what changed from May to September 2009. The 2010 version will be the week after next.
  
• What you need to know: Part 4
• This was a long discussion of our new ALADIN Discovery catalog. We're not changing that this year -- not much, anyway -- so if you're new and need to know how to use our catalog, read this.

Now, let's take a look at the research-related posts of the past year or so, organized by category.

General Research
Research Paper Award, Dutch painters, baseball, and free stuff
If nothing else, this particular post explains why we're using a new format. Anyway, down at the bottom, I discuss some resources you can use freely for your research without having to pay for access. It's great as a supplement to what we have for you here, as well as a main source if you're not affiliated with Gallaudet and can't get into our databases.

Why does research take time?
What essentially passes for a "philosophical" meditation from me. It's really just me explaining to a proverbial Student that research isn't always as easy as it may seem sometimes and some of the reasons why.

Using databases for personal research
We really do encourage students, staff, and faculty to take advantage of our resources to the fullest; that includes not just schoolwork, but also important information that may affect other areas of your life. Our Library is an informational gold mine in comparison to the average schmo's experience; why use it so narrowly?

It's all about RefWorks
RefWorks is one of the most useful resources we have. It doesn't offer any information in and of itself, but it does offer a great way to manage all the information you dig up while you're researching. In this Q&A post, I go over the basics of RefWorks and explain why it's so good.

A word about searching
Basically, I sit you, Dear Reader, down, and outline the steps you need to take in order to research more efficiently and effectively. You'd be surprised how many people take a scattershot approach and just put in whatever search term sounds good, then say that there's no information available on the subject!

Specific aspects of our collection
Some words on the Little Paper Family
A recent uptick in research on the Little Paper Family (LPF) resulted in this post; what is it? Why does it exist? And how can you look at it? It's all explained in this post.

E-books: How do they work?
Any resemblance to recent works by the Insane Clown Posse are completely coincidental. However, I do explain our e-book collection and how you can use them. This is increasingly becoming a must; although our print collections are holding steady, we are expanding our electronic holdings.

Introduction to our e-books
As in: Dear Reader, meet e-book. E-book, meet Dear Reader. I sift through the catalog and dig up a few real gems in a variety of topics.

Exploring our e-journals
It can be easy to fall into the habit of thinking that our e-journals are mostly dry piles of academia in your field, but when you wander outside of the discipline you're focusing on, you can find much that's weird and wonderful!

What's hiding in our collection?
I wander the stacks and dig up a few fascinating and unusual books as an example of the sheer serendipity you can encounter while you're among the shelves.

Meet Credo, your new best friend
IN WHICH introductions are made between readers and Credo Reference. All joking aside, Credo really is a fantastic resource and should be relied upon for important historical context and a terrific method of sussing out interrelationships between people, ideas, and events. It's a database of hundreds of reference books in dozens of specialties and links them all together in a very useful way. I also offer some examples of when Credo is the perfect database to use and when it isn't.

A good way to make searching our catalog easier
In the adjustment period we underwent after switching to ALADIN Discovery, I wrote this post in order to help people use the built-in search-narrowing features. This is really one of Discovery's biggest advantages over our old catalog; it lets you limit your search to, for example, only items published in the last 10 years, or just films, or books written on specific topics by specific authors. Among other things.

That about covers it all for now. Next week, you can expect a couple of book-review vlogs (to make up for the lack) and a guide to the questions of the week that have been posted since last August. Since those are usually questions that come up at the Service Desk, keep a close eye; you might satisfy your burning curiosity about the Library!

Vlog interview with our newest librarian!

One thing I neglected to mention in my post last week was that while posts from here on out would be shorter, they'd also be more frequent. We're not sticking to a schedule, though -- some weeks will have more than others!

Here goes ...

New vlog!

And now a sample book review of The November Criminals by Sam Munson!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Today's post will be relatively short, because we're combining the review, the main body of the post, and the question of the week into a single monstrous Frankensteinian hybrid post this week!

Before we begin: This blog will be undergoing a few changes over the next few weeks, so keep a close eye on library.gallaudet.edu for any updates that will clear things up. I can't say much more about it right now, but when you hit a weird post, that's why.

Today, it's all about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

It was selected as the Common Reading for campus this year, so I read the book a couple of months ago. It sticks out in my mind mostly because of the story, which is fairly unbelievable.

For the past sixty years or so, there's been a single cell culture underpinning virtually every major advance in medical technology, from the improvement of lab equipment to the polio vaccine. This cell culture is known as HeLa, and it is immortal. Given enough nutrients, it will double its population of cells every 24 hours, forever.

Or at least it has for the past sixty years, with no signs of stopping any time soon. It's been estimated that close to 50 million metric tons of HeLa cells have grown over the past six decades, enough for 100 Empire State Buildings. This cell line is descended from a single sample of cervical cancer cells taken from an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks at Johns Hopkins University in 1951.

Unfortunately, almost nobody knew her name. Nobody knew who she was. Nobody knew she had a family, complete with a set of five children, some with hearing losses or outright deafness. The doctor who originally sampled her cells discovered their unique properties not long after she died, and gave them away. Some people took those cells, used them to learn how to mass-manufacture cell cultures, and sold more of those cells and made millions. Industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to cosmetic surgery grew from those cells, and they made first millions, then billions, for the people who started out by using those cells. Jonas Salk grew the polio vaccine in his own copies of those cells and saved millions of lives because of Henrietta Lacks, but nobody knew her name, and her family saw none of this money.

Her family didn't even know what their mother -- though long-dead -- was doing to the world until 20 years after she'd been buried, and even then, the truth only came out because they were unknowingly being used for medical research, a common theme in African-American history during the 20th Century.

Skloot weaves together a few strands in her exploration of the story of Henrietta Lacks, propelled in some ways by Henrietta's daughter, Deborah. She digs deep into the history of Henrietta's family, both ancestors and descendants; follows the path of the cells from Henrietta's womb to its first laboratory to its distribution around the country to the world we live in today; traces, in some ways, the history of the African-American community in the early part of the 20th Century; and explores many questions of medical ethics.

For example, Henrietta's cells were taken from her without her permission. They were distributed, used, manufactured, and sold without her family's knowledge or consent. Her name -- and thereby that of her family -- was revealed, again without any agreement on their part. Her descendants were sampled and experimented upon while being told a different story. The list of sins is lengthy.

In the face of all this, the reader has to ask the question: is all of this morally-questionable behavior justifiable in the light of all the good things that have resulted from Henrietta and her cells? As we move deeper into the 21st Century, the question of privacy becomes important, not just electronic but genetic. For example, if your appendix goes bad and you have it taken out, what happens to the appendix? Does it get thrown out, or is it kept because it's useful biological material? Is your name attached to it? Does that mean the DNA in your former appendix can be analyzed, your entire genome decoded, laid bare, and stored in a database so that complete strangers can know everything about you and your body?

The list of ethics questions that arise after you read this book is also lengthy, and it's chilling. Do you have the right to your own body parts after they've been detached from you?

In general, the book addresses a huge variety of issues, from race to God and back again. This is why the book was selected as the Common Reading; that Henrietta's descendants are also deaf brings a new dimension to our discussion and makes the book especially relevant for us here at Gallaudet University.

As the Common Reading this year, all First Year Experience students will be reading it, but several other departments are leaping into the fray as well, because The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks transgresses a large number of disciplinary boundaries in its quest for the truth. Because of the involvement of so many departments, it'll be a big fall semester!

A number of events are being planned, both for the Gallaudet campus community and for the outside community as well. I'll keep you posted on those as the schedules appear, but I hear there are fascinating activities on the docket, so keep an eye out. The Library will also make a LibGuide available about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the various topics it touches upon; when it's completed, I'll let you all know!

Also, please bear in mind that this book is popular; the Library has two copies right now -- which is unusual for a non-deaf-related book -- and they've quite literally been checked out nonstop since the spring. Hopefully, we'll be able to catch one of our copies as it comes back in and place it on reserve so it's available for everyone to look at. If you're not familiar with where to find the reserve materials, ask at the Service Desk -- they're on the shelves behind it! Just remember: an item on reserve can only be checked out for 2 hours at a time, maximum, although it can be renewed if nobody else is asking for it. You also must stay in the Library while using it; we can't allow it to leave the building. This is how we guarantee it's available for everyone.

Truthfully, I'm excited; it's been a while since a book that wasn't Twilight was this popular, and this fall sounds awesome. I'm teaching an FYE class, and am looking forward to exploring all of its implications with my students and with other courses.

In the meantime, come back next week for another round of posts about what students and faculty -- both new and returning -- need to know!