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!