Gallaudet Library

We're back with some new books!

2012-01-20T18:21:00.000-05:00

I’m applying the defibrillators to this blog.

It’s been over a month since the last post. There are a few reasons for this, including a two-week vacation, a new semester to prepare for, a dearth of time to read for the vlog, and the sheer number of new books coming in.

So I offer this post up as an apology for my neglectful ways. It’s a return to tradition: New book cart!

Truthfully, they aren’t all that new, and I plan to only cover the three that have stuck in my mind the most. Here we go ...

11/22/63 by Stephen King
Stephen King is one of those writers who’s so much a part of our culture that each new book he produces is an Event-with-a-capital-E, regardless of how good it may or may not be. His output took a wrong turn sometime in the mid-1990s, but has since bounced back with new creepfests like Duma Key. This upturn continues with 11/22/63, which anyone over the age of 45 and history buffs knows is the date of the Kennedy assassination.

Actually, this book is interesting in a number of ways. It’s less horrific than the work he’s known for and seems to encompass a few new themes. A GED teacher finds out that a local friend who owns a diner has discovered a portal to 1958 in his storeroom. Together, they come up with a plan to avert the Kennedy assassination. Since the other side of the portal is anchored five years before then, it’s a long plan indeed. Fascinating idea, and a terrific execution (no pun intended). Bonus points for a significant librarian character!

Erasure by Percival Everett
An under-the-surface evaluation of exploitative publishing, this novel follows the story of a fairly-successful African-American author who’s spent a few years being rejected by publisher after publisher. The dissolution of his success and its fallout, including an elderly mother who needs care that he can no longer afford, is made all the worse by a best-selling novel by an African-American woman who rides the life out of every stereotype in the book.

In response to this injustice -- why is this minstrel show so successful when his own work can’t get published? -- he writes what he thinks is a scathing parody called My Pafology, but which a publisher and, eventually, the world, think is a hugely-popular bestseller. As our main character becomes wealthier and wealthier, he struggles with the ethics involved in exploiting prejudices without seeking to break them down, and the darker side of popular entertainment. This book manages to be wickedly funny, cringe-inducing, and above all, thought-provoking.

Mrs. Nixon: A novelist imagines a life by Ann Beattie
I suppose this book should come with a disclaimer: Don’t read it if you’re a history buff. Beattie writes what amounts to a fictionalized biography, which is to say it’s not actually a biography. It’s a story about Pat Nixon and the life Beattie imagines she may have led as Richard Nixon’s wife through every scandal and misdeed that plagued his administration and marriage.

In general, Beattie doesn’t worry too much about historical accuracy; she based most of the story on already-extant published sources instead of personal papers that would have revealed insights into the First Lady's interior world. She also doesn’t worry about writing a conventional novel; the book reads like a collection of short stories starring the same main character, interspersed with Beattie’s own examination of the craft of writing itself. The result is interesting because you come away with the sense that there are really three main characters in the book: both Nixons and Beattie herself.

That about covers it for the moment! More to come next week.

Vlog review of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

2011-12-15T14:29:00.002-05:00

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu.

Vlog review of He, She and It

2011-12-08T08:42:00.000-05:00

He, She and It by Marge Piercy.

Vlog review of A Lion among Men

2011-12-01T09:38:00.000-05:00

A Lion among Men by Gregory Maguire
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Kindles and Hugo Cabret

2011-11-18T11:12:00.000-05:00

Here I am again!

Many thanks to my colleagues for their contributions. I’m looking forward to seeing what else they write in the future.

Okay, here’s thing number 1: No post next week. Hey, it’s Thanksgiving -- a lot of people prefer to spend the holiday with friends and family and stuffing ourselves until we burst, and I’m no exception!

Thing number 2: We just got this thing.

Yes, it’s a brand-new Kindle (ad-supported, so ignore the goofy turkey). And it’s a harbinger of some changes students, faculty, and staff will see in our e-book offerings by the time Spring 2012 rolls around. We’re using it to test some new features offered by long-time vendors, as well as some things from a new vendor. We also are keeping an eye on the road ahead; often, when people run into technical difficulties on Library-related issues, we’re the ones they come to first for tech support.

Although there are plenty of times when we end up referring the person with the problem to Gallaudet Technology Services, we like to be as knowledgeable as possible about the services we offer in order to save time for the people we serve. That means having the same type of equipment our users have, so we can learn how the process works for them and figure out quick ways to solve common problems.

Anyway, we’ve been talking about e-books for months, if not years, and with good reason; we’re seeing a significant shift towards e-books and are working to find ways to continue increasing the level of service we’ve offered the Gallaudet community for a lot longer than most people reading this have been alive.

Change is good, folks! Especially this kind of change. It’s so thin and light. If I weren’t already in love with my own Kindle (work-related things are not allowed to live on it), I’d seriously consider getting one for myself. Depending, of course, on how the Kindle Fire works out. But that’s another post!

Thing number 3: A book review hasn’t been seen on this blog in many a moon. Neither has a vlog, for which I apologize.

But never fear! December will see a couple of vlogs go up (depending on how busy the last weeks of classes are and how quickly my vacation looms). In the meantime, I thought I’d do a quick review of The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

You may have heard of its author, Brian Selznick, recently. His newest book, Wonderstruck, was released recently and it features a deaf character or two (I’m mostly focused on the librarian character). Evidently, he included Carol Padden and Tom Humphries -- two prominent Deaf scholars -- in the writing process so that he could get the picture right. It’ll certainly end up in our collection!

Anyway, Hugo Cabret is a kid’s book, which I readily admit. Some of the best books in the world were written for kids. Think about that before you cock an eyebrow in my general direction.

It’s about a young boy who lives in the attic of a train station in Paris. He winds all the clocks so they keep accurate time (kind of important in a train station). Ordinarily, they don’t hire little kids to do this job, but his parents are dead and his uncle, who actually holds the job, went missing months before.

This young boy has a secret. It’s a little machine that he’s been fixing steadily for a long time, since his father died, replacing broken parts with pieces of toys that he steals from a toy store in the train station. The story starts when he gets caught, and takes you through a genuine mystery that kept me puzzled until … well.

The thing about this book is that it’s a little unconventional; it’s like a graphic novel and a regular kid’s book mashed together. You have a few pages of text, then page after page of the story told visually. It’s very arresting and keeps the story moving along incredibly well. The book itself looks huge when you first check it out -- I was expecting another Harry Potter -- but you quickly realize that it’s only that way because there’s so much illustration.

It all works together so well I can still remember very strongly specific images from the story along with the narrative details. The drawings themselves are wonderful, very moody and permeated with a strong sense of time and place.

I hate to be so vague. Suffice it to say that the toy shop owner has a very unusual secret himself, and when he catches the boy in the act of stealing the toy, it sets off a series of very surprising events that reveals a connection between both characters and culminates in an honestly pretty lovely ending.

I recommend it because it works on so many levels, is very, very well-done, and, above all, is a quick read. A movie version is coming out next week, actually, and I look forward to seeing what they did with it!

Keeping track of current research

2011-11-11T08:12:00.000-05:00

Patrick Oberholtzer, Instruction & Reference Librarian

When I was growing up, there was a kid down the block who kept a pet black widow spider in an aquarium in his uncle’s garage. Sometimes after school, we’d wander over to visit the incarcerated arachnid. Eventually, one of us would find a long stick and explore the gray area between investigating, studying, and of course, teasing the spider. It’s a wonder one of us didn’t get bit. One morning at school, we learned that the spider had escaped. After that, every time we went into his uncle’s dark garage, we’d look around nervously, expecting the spider to race out of the shadows and suddenly drop on one of us, seeking revenge for time spent in the glass prison.

To the best of my knowledge, we don’t have any black widow spiders around the library. But I do know about another, much friendlier kind of spider that will help you with your research. Put this “search” spider to work for you!

Current awareness tools, such as Google Alerts, help you keep tabs on breaking news stories by sending you an e-mail with content designed around criteria you pick. The criteria you select instructs the spider to race around the Web, restlessly searching “terminator style” for the latest news stories, sports team updates, and must-know celebrity gossip. Check out Google Alerts and see what it can do for you.

The Gallaudet Library offers a second current awareness tool, called RefAware. It employs a more powerful spider (really a tarantula) that never sleeps, and is constantly on the hunt for current research. RefAware is more academic and research-oriented than Google Alerts. Not only does it find references and information sources, but also keeps an eye out for research data and links to full text articles. Like Google Alerts, it spins out e-mail alerts too. RefAware offers a variety of searching options that make this sources especially perfect for scholarly research.

Look for “create alert” or “set up alert” in many of the Library’s databases such as Ebscohost Academic Complete and ProQuest Research Library. The alert you create will only crawl in the database you select and push you e-mail alerts from the information found in that database. Take advantage of them!

HINT: Be as precise in your search terms as possible.

An argument for open access

2011-11-02T17:15:00.000-04:00

Sarah Hamrick, Library Director

Scholarly Communication has been a hot topic in academic libraries for several years. And why do we care? Because in 1985 a subscription to The Journal of Comparative Neurology cost a library $1,950. Does that sound expensive? It was a real bargain! Today a subscription would cost us $30,860. That is not a typo. THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS! That’s more than most librarians spend on a new car. It’s more than some houses cost in Selma, Alabama. And it’s more than a 2012 Nationals season ticket in the President’s Club -- 81 games, right behind home plate.

I confess that Gallaudet University Library does not now, nor have we ever, held a subscription to The Journal of Comparative Neurology. But it’s just many librarians’ favorite example of how crazy academic journal publishing has become. Journal prices have skyrocketed in the last 20 years. According to Ebsco, a library vendor, the average cost of college library journal subscriptions rose 31.7% between 2006 and 2010. That figure is just for journals published in the United States. If you include international publications, the increase was 36.24%.

So libraries, Gallaudet University Library included, are spending more every year on subscriptions. Many started canceling subscriptions in the early ‘90s because budget increases weren’t keeping up with subscription costs. And that was before the economy tanked. Since 2008, college librarians who only had their budgets frozen instead of cut are the envy of their colleagues, most of whom are trying to figure out what subscriptions they can hold onto in spite of their slashed budgets.

We librarians are a creative bunch, and we take a uniquely geeky pride in providing our constituents with the information they want and need. So we’ve banded together in consortia (like the fabulous Washington Research Library Consortium) and created systems (like our Consortium Loan Service) so we can get you the scholarly articles you need even if we can’t subscribe to the journals.

But alas, we’ve been thwarted again by the proliferation of electronic journals. Don’t get me wrong -- we love them, and we know you do too! But electronic journals come with license agreements, and publishers won’t allow us to access their e-journals unless we sign their license agreements. While there’s some room for negotiation, many publishers aren’t willing to grant libraries interlibrary loan rights to electronic journal articles. So we’re stuck once more with another obstacle to get over, around, or under. And you thought librarians just read all day long!

The irony to all of this is that much of the content in academic journals is produced by faculty and researchers at colleges and universities around the country. Faculty write articles documenting their research, work hard to get them published in peer-reviewed journals, and then sign away the rights to their own work.

Let’s say, for example, Gallaudet biology professor Peter Pan writes an article reporting on his research project in which he proved that it is, in fact, possible to never grow up. Professor Pan is thrilled when the editorial board of The Journal of Lost Boys chooses his article for the January 2012 issue. He receives his publication agreement, signs and returns it, and eagerly awaits publication. The next fall his colleague, Professor Wendy Darling, wants the article to be required reading for her class and asks Professor Pan for a copy to scan and post on Blackboard. Both are dismayed to learn that the publication agreement assigns copyright ownership of the article to The Journal of Lost Boys. If Professor Darling wants to post the article on Blackboard a fee will be charged. Those fees vary, but can range from just a few dollars to almost $200 for one semester use. So Gallaudet students don’t have free access to an article published by a Gallaudet faculty member, who received support from Gallaudet to do the research on which the article was based. It may sound outrageous, but it happens all the time!

Most scholars want their research disseminated widely. They want other scholars to have access to their work. They aren’t seeking great wealth for their work. They simply want to contribute to the greater good. But publishers are in business. And of course business involves making a profit. So publishers profit from the work scholars are doing. Does that make sense?

What’s the solution? How can students, faculty, and researchers access the scholarly material they need without breaking the bank? How can scholars publish their research in peer-reviewed sources, share their discoveries and their knowledge, and do so in a way that’s affordable to their audience? Scholars may negotiate to maintain some rights to their work (the right to reproduce on their own campus, for example) as part of their publication agreements. And they may elect to publish in open access journals, which are available to all without charge on the web. They may choose to publish their work with a Creative Commons license, which will allow them to stipulate what others may (and may not) do with their work. Librarians believe open access is the answer.The ever-growing list of open access journals provide scholars with a great platform to publish their work while allowing other scholars free access.

Just this week, we’ve started looking at how we can make open-access databases and other electronic resources available more easily through our catalog and database listing. The Directory of Open Access Journals, for instance, has been available on a journal-by-journal basis through our e-Journal search for some titles, but we’re now adding greater access to the directory itself. We’re also looking at publicly-available out-of-copyright e-books on the Web that we can offer through the catalog, like Project Gutenberg. You should stay tuned; we’re always working on something new!

Why e-books are neat

2011-10-31T12:30:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth Henry, E-Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian

The nice thing about e-books is that you can access them anytime, anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection and a laptop, computer, or iPad. For example, suppose you’re frantically trying to complete an assignment at 3:00 AM that’s due at 9:00 AM and you realize you need just one more source, but alas, the Library’s closed. That’s when the Library’s e-books can come in handy—they’re online, ready to be discovered and used by you for your assignment!

If you’re wondering how many e-books the Library has, my honest answer is: I don’t know. Why? Because there are so many e-books that I lost count and gave up trying to keep track of it. The reason for the incredibly huge amount of e-books is because we both subscribe to, and purchase from four – yes, four – different companies. Each company provides a place online, known as platforms, for us to read the e-books. The platform and how you can interact with the e-book will vary, but they all are essentially the same: books in electronic format and available online via the Library’s catalog. Our e-book platforms are:

They all will have different appearances and features, but there are some common features that all e-book platforms have, which are:

A table of contents (TOC) that you can click on to jump from one chapter to the next
The ability to search within the e-book for specific words
Being able to zoom in or out of the page so you can read the text easily
The option to print a limited number of pages.
Searchability within the full text of an e-book.

Two of the features I mentioned, the table of contents, and the ability to search within the book for specific words, can be handy by helping you save time on looking through a book to determine if it has information you need or not. For example, I want to find more information about John F. Kennedy, and I find a e-book titled Presidential Party Building : Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush, which looks promising but does it have information specifically about John F. Kennedy? By clicking on the link for the e-book and opening it up, I look at the table of contents, and -voila- there’s John F. Kennedy. But wait, what if John F. Kennedy is mentioned more than once outside of the chapter? Then I type into the search box, “John F. Kennedy,” and a list appears, indicating where I can find further information about John F. Kennedy. Nifty, huh?

So you must be thinking, Perfect! Now all I have to do is find the book I want, and then download it onto my Kindle or iPad! Right? Well, I honestly wish I could say, “Yup! Go ahead and download it!” but unfortunately, no, the majority of the e-books we have (as in about 98%) are offered through platforms that aren’t able to make the e-books downloadable. The only exception is EBL, a platform we’re working on getting up and running right now.

However, in some hot-off-the-presses news, we just learned that Ebrary will allow us to be able to download e-books onto Kindles, Nooks, and iPads! So once we figure out how to do that, we’ll have the download option up and running. Stay tuned for updates.

If you have any further questions about e-books here at the Library, please do not hesitate to contact me via e-mail.

Happy reading!

Children's books!

2011-10-21T08:10:00.004-04:00

Hmm. A little more than two weeks since my last post. This ain't good.

Truth is, I've been so busy juggling various duties in addition to the usual behind-the-scenes work that I haven't been able to devote time to the blog or vlogging book reviews.

I had been planning for a while to bring my colleagues in on this -- Patrick and Sarah's ALA reports from July started it -- and figured now was a great time for it.

We're kicking off with a great post about our children's books from Laura Jacobi!

One of the pleasures of being responsible for the Education collection is buying books to support the Children’s Literature curriculum. They’re short, so you can actually read them! And they’re often really cute. Here are three winners:

Being a traditionalist, I was prepared to turn my nose up at Rubia and the Three Osos by Susan Middleton Elya and illustrated by Melissa Sweet. How could anyone improve on Goldilocks and the Three Bears? But this is such a jaunty, lighthearted, little bilingual girl:

Little Miss Rubia, curls made of oro.
“A tiny casita, for me? ¡La adoro!”

And the end has a charming twist in which Rubia departs from the selfish toad character of Goldilocks. You’ll love it!

April and Esme, Tooth Fairies by Bob Graham recounts the adventures of two kid fairies on their first foray through modern England. They fly through the night skies, into Daniel’s house and to his bedroom. Oh, no! Daniel has put his tooth in a glass of water, just as Grandma does with her teeth! Then he wakes up! What to do? Text Mommy Fairy for help! Once the mission’s accomplished, will they avoid the temptation of taking Grandma’s teeth too? Find out!

If you don’t have your own, borrow a first or second grader and read We are in a Book by Mo Willems. Piggie the pig and Gerald the elephant (who contradicts everything you’ve read about pachyderm intelligence) sense someone looking at them and realize, “A reader is reading us!” They then have barrels of laughs making the reader say words -- until the book ends. Totally silly.

You can find these and lots of other picture books in the Library General Stacks in the number 800. Don’t let the Children’s Lit. students have all the fun.

Robbing the bees

2011-10-06T09:43:00.000-04:00

Our September in the Stacks series of events and raffle are over. We’ve already announced the winners with some photos on our Facebook page; there are some big grins there!

Now: No vlog this week. I just finally had my computer upgraded to Windows 7 like the rest of campus -- it’s a long story that can mostly be chalked up to my own sentimentality for XP -- and the software I usually use to edit vlogs still needs to be reinstalled. That’s on my list!

In the meantime, I thought I’d actually write a book review for a change. Here goes. I hope my writin’ muscles haven’t atrophied too much by now.

The book I’m going to review: Robbing the Bees by Holley Bishop.

I’m going to cop to something that a lot of people find weird for some reason: I love bees. They’re really cool animals. Not only do they make honey and sting stuff, but they also are responsible for making sure that a lot of the plants we eat on a daily basis -- from oranges to almonds -- manage to grow and produce the fruits and nuts that we all enjoy so much.

As Bishop notes in the book, I’m not the only one who thinks they’re cool; an old guy called Smiley down in the Florida Panhandle loves them. He loves them enough to have tens of thousands of them working for him, collecting pollen and nectar from various local plants ranging from watermelon to the rare, expensive, and difficult-to-get tupelo.

Although a lot of the book tells Smiley’s story, it’s really about the history of the partnership that’s existed between humans and bees for thousands of years. It offers an overview of different kinds of beekeeping techniques, some of which are still in use today after hundreds of years, and how this partnership’s evolved from chancing across the odd hive with its trove of honey in a cave or hollow tree to a multibillion-dollar industry that hums along behind our supermarket shelves.

Bishop’s style is kind of interesting; when she talks about Smiley, her tone turns kind of wry, as though she’s trying to tell a funny story without laughing. He’s a funny guy, definitely a down-home fella, and he reminds me of a few people I grew up with, a little rough around the edges, but a big old sweetheart who’s somewhat crazy.

But when she turns to the bigger picture of beekeeping history, things get a little academic. I found myself wishing every so often that she’d return to the Panhandle and the travails of harvesting tupelo nectar, which only becomes available for a two-to-three-week period in the spring. Then it turns funny again when she talks about her own experiences as an amateur beekeeper, even when she accidentally kills her first hive after a long winter. It’s a sad moment that kind of drives home the strange contrast between how important bees are to us in general, but relatively expendable as far as a particular individual or hive are concerned.

On the whole, I really dug this book! Although it focuses on our relationship with bees and how their everyday lives have become a major part of ours -- often without our realizing it -- it led me to think a little more about the mutualistic relationships our species enjoys with others, like dogs, horses, or cats.

In an oddly serendipitous incident, right when I was in the middle of this book, a friend invited me to a beekeeping workshop right here in Washington, DC! I know it sounds odd, but there are many small gardens and “farms” all over the place; this one was associated with a library and community center just a few blocks from Gallaudet.

It was pretty fascinating; a group of us stood around the hive and watched as the local beekeeper opened it up and pulled out a frame with its honeycomb and put it in a glass box for us to examine more closely. I remember most strongly seeing a young girl, a local who was involved with the center and the farm, standing right next to the hive. She was at the center of a cloud of bees, a scene that would drive most people I know into a flailing frenzy, but was completely at ease. The next generation!

Of course, the honey with brie on crusty bread that we had afterwards didn’t hurt, either. Good times.

Vlog review of The Difference Engine

2011-09-28T19:22:00.001-04:00

The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.

Faces in the window

2011-09-22T11:28:00.000-04:00

Phew.

That’s all I have to say about this semester so far. Part of it is the September in the Stacks series of events, which has required quite a bit of preparation, part of it is the class I’m teaching, part of it is the usual work, part of it is …

Well, there are a lot of moving parts in general. Including furniture. We’re slowly but surely changing a few things here in the Library, even as we settle into the new routine that comes with each fresh-faced September.

For instance, we’ve added a pair of super-comfortable IKEA rocking chairs to the new seating area by the public computers on the first floor. We’re currently waiting on a loveseat that’ll accompany the rocking chairs, and then ta-da!

We also finished the conversion of our 1404 computer lab into the new Quiet Study Room, which has some similar furniture and is a little more of a comfortable environment for people to work quietly, free of distraction.

While all of this has been going on, the renovation of our two study rooms downstairs got off to a strong start on Monday. The old chalkboards are already gone, soon to be replaced by whiteboards and computers with large monitors, similar to the setup we have in the Deaf Library Study Center. We’re also working on a room-reservation system for those two rooms; we anticipate a higher level of demand because of the new equipment, and want to make sure everyone gets their fair shot at them.

In the meantime, weird things keep cropping up. Last month, when we tore down the old counter that enclosed the new seating area, we found 40-year-old Pepsi bottles and Schlitz cans (empty, alas). Yesterday, a window appeared behind a chalkboard in one of the study rooms that are undergoing renovation downstairs.

My post today is going to be about that window.

One of the fellas working on the room came upstairs yesterday afternoon when they found the window, asking to be allowed into an adjacent room around the corner to the right, thinking that accessing the window from the other side might make things go a little easier.

So I left the meeting I had been in and went downstairs with him, and discovered that he meant the Genealogy Room, which belongs to the Archives. Once we got in, we discovered a distinct lack of windows. Or, not of windows -- one corner of the room is glassed in, opening onto the General Stacks -- but of windows resembling the newly-discovered one.

Hmm.

We checked the room around the corner to the right of that one, the other study room which was undergoing renovation. It turned out to be windowless. So we made another right turn and tried another room, where the Archives stores many of its photographs. There were windows! But not the window. The contractor started grumbling, and I privately wondered why anyone would treat buildings like honeycombs made by avant-garde bees (I’m reading a book about bees this week, and the comparison is apt, as many of the rooms in this cluster are hexagonal).

Puzzled, we found an emergency map in the corridor that connects the central hallway going past the auditorium towards the Archives to the General Stacks in the 900s, and examined it closely to try to get some idea of where the window actually was. Then we moved further along the corridor (are you confused yet? I’m not quite all there myself) and around the corner to the right to B112, a smaller auditorium-style classroom. Windows! But …

Well, you guessed it.

So we tried next door, which turned out to be a strange little hallway with a ramp going down, then stairs going up, and which represented the sixth right turn that brought us full circle around the southwest quadrant of downstairs rooms from where we’d started.

We found another door into B112, the rear door of the photograph room we tried earlier, and another door, which I’d never noticed before, not in the just-about-three years I’d worked here. We tried that one, and discovered something creepy.

A dark staircase. Well, it wasn’t much of a staircase -- there were a couple of stairs leading up to a landing, and then around a corner, they continued into a small room. It led into utter darkness. I saw a light switch on the wall to my right, and flicked it, but it only turned on a set of uplights set in the wall near the floor that did nothing to help and, if anything, only aggravated the mounting sense of weirdness.

Luckily, we weren’t in there for long because as it turned out, we’d found the window we were looking for. At long last. We lifted the white shade and peeked through only to see the other contractor hard at work on the other side of the room, his back to us.

The guy I was with knocked on the window, and we saw his colleague give a start, turn around slowly, and see what I can only imagine were a pair of sinister orange faces, lit from below and wreathed in darkness, staring at him through what had up until now been a sheet of blank white glass.

His reaction was something to behold.

As I went back to my meeting, I realized that more than anything else, all the big projects that the Library’s undertaken since January -- from weeding to renovations -- have shown me that regardless of how long you’ve worked or studied here, this place still has plenty of surprises.

Vlog review of The Long Goodbye

2011-09-15T07:57:00.001-04:00

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler.

Vlog review of Embassytown

2011-08-31T20:34:00.001-04:00

Embassytown by China Mieville.

We're underway!

2011-08-30T15:39:00.000-04:00

We survived without a scratch!

The campus, actually, is pristine, an accomplishment made all the more impressive by the sight of downed trees and damaged homes in the surrounding neighborhoods. We also have quite a few faculty and staff members who have to cope with what the hurricane wrought upon their own houses, what with the loss of power, strong winds, and a whole lot of rain.

Nevertheless, the semester started yesterday without a hitch for Gallaudet students, as evidenced by the large number of people we had coming and going all day. It’s nice to work at the Service Desk and get none of your own work done because you’re busy helping students, staff, and faculty members.

I just wanted to drop this quick note to update everyone that we’re okay and prove this to be true by informing the world that as of yesterday, we have a shiny new microform scanner! You can use it to scan our microfilm documents (e.g., deaf-related theses and dissertations, back issues of our periodicals, the Little Paper Family, and other deaf-related historical material) to PDF or print it out from a computer. We’d like to convert all the microform stuff we have to digital formats, but copyright restrictions make that difficult, if not impossible, for some titles. We’re working on the rest of the collection as quickly as we can -- since microform was the best technology available for preservation for a pretty long time, there’s a lot of it to get through!

Bonus: It’s fast. And has this cool green-colored light that glows under the scanning plate. The future is now, people!

And the future can get a little complicated. Most of the stuff you’ll be using it for is pretty self-explanatory, but there are a few bells and whistles we’re still familiarizing ourselves with. Once we’ve got the whole thing down, we’ll post some basic instructions you can use to get started. Or just give it a shot yourself; learn by doing!

In the meantime, we just have the one, so I’d like to emphasize again that, like the regular scanner workstation and the ZoomText workstations for our users with visual disabilities, people who need the computer for its specific purpose take priority.

We actually added another computer with the microfilm scanner, so the overall number of available computers shouldn’t be affected and, when nobody’s scanning microfilm, has actually increased. It’s a win-win!

I’ll do a vlog tomorrow. It’s actually on a really cool book; I just have to figure out how to explain it ...

Welcome back!

2011-08-26T13:34:00.002-04:00

So we’ve got a hurricane bearing down on us this weekend.

I have a tendency to downplay them; I grew up in Florida, where we get hit by these things pretty often. All a hurricane is is a lot of rain and wind, and it’s usually no big deal. You get some flooding, some deck chairs flying around, power lines falling, tree branches taking out roofs and car windshields, telephone poles getting knocked over …

Well, okay, it’s kind of a big deal. But the point is we have a hurricane coming!

All I can really say about that is: What can be prevented will be; what can’t be will be dealt with.

In the meantime, the new semester opens on Monday, come hell or high water (whichever happens first), and we will be ready. All the computers are in place with the latest images from Gallaudet Technology Services, the printers are humming along, the copy machines are ready and waiting, our database and e-books are fizzing and sparking away, and the books are as patient as ever.

Not a huge amount of stuff has changed policywise since the Spring semester; loan periods are still 4-6 weeks depending on your status and where in the collection (Deaf or General Stacks) you borrow from. Except for faculty, of course, who get the usual September-January-May due dates for loans from the General Stacks. Films are still 3 days, up to 3 per person borrowed at a time.

We’ve also changed how databases are accessed, hopefully in a clearer way. Check it out for yourself; head to our homepage at library.gallaudet.edu, find the “Find article databases” link in the “Research Help” box, and click on it. Any feedback? E-mail us at library.help@gallaudet.edu or me at james.mccarthy@gallaudet.edu.

We’re also closed this weekend and will be for most of Labor Day weekend next week so you can enjoy a couple of days off from academic obligations before the semester really gets going! Our Thanksgiving hours have also changed, since, for the first time, there won’t be any classes Thanksgiving week. Check out our schedule for more information. If it resembles a Metrobus timetable fed through a shredder, my apologies; holidays can get funky.

Now, I’m going to wrap this up by burying the lede so far down it’d take a dedicated gravedigger to find it: We’re hosting a series of events in September in order to spread more awareness about the Library and the kind of things we offer the population of Gallaudet University, as well as tying in to this year’s Common Theme about freedom of expression. The kicker is that we’re using this as an opportunity to raffle off an iPad 2 and $100 gift certificates to Amazon.com!

Tickets will be available to Gallaudet students only. Sorry, faculty and staff! Nevertheless, here’s our main event page; check it out!

Vlog review of The Magicians

2011-08-24T08:06:00.003-04:00

We had an earthquake yesterday! Things are fine here at the Library, although a roll of packing tape fell off a table in my office.

Anyway, this week's vlog, as promised:

The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

Summer isn't over yet!

2011-08-19T14:28:00.002-04:00

Mea culpa.

It’s been a long, busy week for everyone here at the Gallaudet University Library. The renovation of the former photocopy area proceeds apace; we finally finished it this morning! You can visit our Facebook page to see photos of the progress. All we need now is the new furniture.

Classes are starting just a week from Monday! We’re all suitably terrified but our game faces are on; not only are we doing the usual Library things -- setting up accounts for new students and returning students who’ve lost their ID cards over the summer, making sure all the books are in order, double-checking that our electronic resources haven’t dropped an IP address or two, tweaking our new public computers to make sure all the basics are available for students to use, planning our upcoming events, updating our class presentations, and putting together lesson plans, among many, many other things.

Lesson plans? Yup. I’m teaching a GSR 101 course for brand-new students. They’re so new I don’t think the packaging’s been taken off yet! I did the same thing last Fall, and am looking forward to doing it again -- hopefully with a little more experience and seasoning behind me this time!

Elizabeth Henry, on the other hand, is about to undertake her own big adventure! She’ll be teaching GSR 150: City as Text with Kathleen Wood, a professor from the English department (whom you can see in our Web story -- she appears right around 3:58). We’re all looking forward to seeing the fruits of their collaboration!

In the meantime, things have entered the calm-before-the-storm stage. Arrival Day and orientations for both undergraduate and graduate students are next week, and classes begin the following week. But right now, it’s Friday afternoon, the sun’s out, and there’s a mild breeze.

Next week, you’ll get a vlog and another update on what to expect if you’re walking through our doors for the first time since last May or, well, ever. We’ll have things like an event schedule, an exciting contest, fresh floor plans, and plenty more!

Vlog review of Nine Kinds of Naked

2011-08-12T11:09:00.001-04:00

Nine Kinds of Naked by Tony Vigorito.

Quick updates

2011-08-03T14:18:00.001-04:00

A thing or three for today …

First, no vlog this week. There’s just too much to do. August slipped in through the door when I wasn’t looking, and now we’re suddenly three weeks away from the beginning of the Fall semester. However, as a substitute, I offer Thing Number Two:

It’s a nifty little video about the Library! The TV department downstairs (part of Gallaudet Technology Services) worked with us through the nimble hands of Lizzie Sorkin to create this video as a way to sum up what we have to offer the Gallaudet community. Of course, as I mention at the end of the video, there’s lots more we haven’t mentioned!

We try, of course, through this blog, but it’s easy to overlook things you work with every day! Plus, of course, all the stuff we keep adding, changing, updating, expanding, and moving.

Yeah, it’s been a busy summer.

Speaking of which, Thing Number Three is an important thing to know if you’re a regular user of the Library these days: The printers, print-release station, and scanner have all relocated.

Both printers and the print-release station are now all in one place, on a table in the photocopy area, and the scanner’s moved to where Printer 2 used to be. Basically, all the computers usable for normal work in the first-floor public-computer area, as well as all the printing equipment, are together in their own areas.

We’ve done this in order to clear out the low counter that the scanner, one of the printers, and the print-release station used to sit on; that counter’s not long for this world! Per my previous post, we’re having it removed sometime this month. That’ll open everything up and make it all much easier to get to. In the meantime, it’s a New Thing to know about!

That’s all for this week. There are plenty more updates to come later this month; keep an eye out!

We've been busy!

2011-07-29T14:19:00.000-04:00

It’s been a while since I posted an update!

The collection shift is over. Since then, we’ve been working on other things while the Archives expansion continues.

1) New computers. Most of our public computers in the open area on the first floor have been replaced with brand-new computers and super-delish widescreen monitors. They’re pretty, but are considerably larger than our old computers, so we’ve been …

2) Clearing space. We’ve relocated the microform readers from their old space between the public computers and DVD area to the seating area by the emergency exit immediately across the atrium from the Service Desk. It makes more sense when you see it, instead of going by how I’m trying to describe it. The upshot is that we’ve opened up that space between the public computers and DVDs and added …

3) New lights. One oddity we’ve fully recognized for years is that one of the most heavily-trafficked areas in the Library is pretty poorly-lit! It’s like entering a cave once you pass the public computers on your way to the DVDs. One major reason for the gloom is that the leaks we’ve historically had in that area have made it difficult to add any electrical equipment; another one is all the exposed ductwork, which makes positioning pretty awkward. In recent years, though, things have been relatively dry, and moving the microform readers gave us more options for light placement, which we immediately exploited. It’s nice and bright there now, which is good, because we’re getting ready for …

4) New furniture. Because the new computers are so large, and because we’re working on a reconfiguration of that part of the first floor in general, we’ve decided to add more working space there. There will soon be new tables in that area which will let us spread the public computers out a little more and add more elbow room for you to work, whether alone with a lot of stuff, or in groups sharing a single computer. If you think that sounds cramped, think again because we’re actually undertaking a …

5) Small renovation. One space constraint we have in the open public-computer area on the first floor is a low counter that encloses the photocopy area. We’ve used it for years as sort of a throwaway space for equipment that doesn’t quite fit with the rest of our public computers -- like the scanner and printer workstations that are there now -- so it’s fairly convenient, but it definitely limits everyone’s options on how to use the space. So we’re getting rid of it and opening up the whole area! This will allow us to add a …

6) Seating area and printing center. We’ve ordered new couches and chairs for the photocopy area; the copiers will be moved to the railing on the other side of the public-computer area, overlooking the General Stacks in the basement. That way, there’s a nice space for people to relax, drink some coffee, put their feet up, do some work, or socialize right next to our most popular computers. We’re also going to set up both of our printers and the job-release station there, so there’s no need to try to figure out which printer is which and where your paper will come up -- it’ll all be in the same place! In the meantime, the scanner will join the public computers on the newly-added computer tables. That’s not all, because we’re also ordering couches for a new …

7) Quiet study room. The 1404 computer lab will become something more accommodating to students who want to study quietly on an individual basis, but need access to a computer, which isn’t available (yet!) in the study rooms downstairs (it’s on our list). We’re adding more comfortable seating and table space to the room, and plan to figure out ways to keep the area free from both visual and aural noise so you can focus on your work in peace. There’ll be plants and stuff.

That’s it for the more noticeable changes, I think. We’ve gotten rid of the videophone in the Deaf Library Study Center (the computer lab with DVD players and the giant TV), mostly because nobody seemed to use it, and we thought we could use the space to add another computer.

Sorenson also renovated their public videophone booths by the men’s restroom on the first floor; they’re now in spiffy permanent enclosures which are a big improvement over the temporary partitions that had been there for years.

And of course, we can’t help but mention, once again, the collection shift. Not only did the General Stacks move around (with the very nice side effect of making the children’s books, graphic novels, and literature much easier to find! See me for more information), but we also relocated the General Periodicals (both popular magazines and academic publications), Reference (encyclopedias and the like), and the Deaf VHS collection (just a few stacks over).

We’ll have a few opportunities in September for first-timers and lifers alike to get to know the Library a little better. In the meantime, if you’re returning this fall, whether student or faculty, and are a little mixed up, please don’t be shy about asking any of the librarians you see! We’re always happy to help point people in the right direction. Same goes for anyone who’s new to Gallaudet this fall.

Or even if you’ve just dropped by to be nosy. Really.

Vlog review of Dead until Dark

2011-07-28T15:24:00.001-04:00

Dead until Dark by Charlaine Harris.

Vlog review of Gay Power

2011-07-20T16:01:00.002-04:00

Gay Power: An American Revolution by David Eisenbach.

Error of note: Rock Hudson's AIDS treatment didn't commence until 1985, not 1983 as mentioned in this video.

Patrick's conference report!

2011-07-15T13:19:00.006-04:00

It's time for another Friday treat: A conference report from one of my fellow librarians, Patrick Oberholtzer!

Patrick joined our director, Sarah Hamrick (see her report here), in New Orleans a few weeks ago to attend the American Library Association's massive annual conference, learn new things, and just have fun.

As you'll see, he managed to accomplish all three!

Once a year, librarians from across the country gather together for the American Library Association’s Annual Conference. This year, fellow Gallaudet librarian Sarah Hamrick and I travelled to a city known as “the Big Easy” -- New Orleans.

The conference of some 20,000 librarians offers something for just about every interest, from technology to library architecture. With so many librarians attending, you need a pretty big place for the conference, and that’s why I found myself in the massive Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. The building seems to go forever (from the front door to one of their rooms was over a mile!). There are programs with expert speakers on just about every facet of librarianship; committees that discuss everything from emerging technologies to social media and public services. There is also a very large exhibit hall where you can give the latest gadgets a whirl, talk to authors and publishers, test out the latest library furniture, and enter drawings for iPads that are won by a lucky few. I spoke with the very interesting author of a book about Nazis in Hollywood in the 1930s, Hollywood Agent Provocateur. I didn’t know about that!

As you make your way around the very crowded conference center, with rivers of people going every which way, it is very easy to get lost or at least feel like you are up a creek without a paddle. After carefully studying conference center maps and signs, I made my way to one room and mercifully ran into two old friends. I asked them what programs they were attending. In fact, I ask everyone that question, because I always seem to learn about a good event that I missed. The sheer size and scope of the three-day convention produces a lot of energy, enthusiasm and, of course, new ideas.

At Gallaudet University, the librarians do a variety of work and wear many hats. One of those hats is instruction and thus, we are teachers, too. One thing I have noticed over many years is that teachers love to give out handouts, lots of them. Let’s face it: handouts can be as dull as dishwater and often are not read. At one of the instruction programs I attended, librarians were demonstrating and discussing a much more visual way to do handouts, using Comic Life2. Comic Life permits you to create a graphic story – like a comic book -- using pictures, drawings, cam shots, and photos. You can add captions or speech balloons as needed. The result is a beautiful handout that is more visually driven than plain text.

We hear a lot about Web 2.0 and libraries are using many of these technologies to market our services. The Gallaudet Library already makes good use of everything from video logs and blogs to instant messaging and e-mail. Still, we feel there is more we can do and that is why “the marketing unprogram” got my attention. In that presentation, I heard about one public library director who told his staff to increase library card registration 50% in one year “or else.” One solution the staff came up with was to ride the city buses all day distributing handouts. Sure enough, registration and library use statistics jumped immediately. I sure wouldn’t have thought of that!

Libraries have traditionally used e-mail to advertise various library functions. The rub is: how do you know if anyone reads those e-mails? Well, a public library in Connecticut came up with a solution: a software program called Constant Contact. You collect e-mail addresses, write the copy for your event or program, and send it to Constant Contact which, as if by magic, creates a nifty professional notice and emails it to everyone on your list. Here’s the crackerjack part: You can find out how many of the e-mails were opened!

New Orleans is a fun city and a pretty good place for a conference. The French Quarter is a lively place of shops, bars, restaurants and lots and lots of music. It is chock full of history, complete with haunted houses and hotels. If you find yourself in the French Quarter, take a hike and check it out. It really does look like parts of Paris.
Patrick

Vlog review of Kill the Dead

2011-07-13T13:32:00.003-04:00

Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey.

Previous review: Sandman Slim

Director's conference report!

2011-07-08T12:32:00.004-04:00

June is always exciting for librarians. The reason is simple: The American Library Association's Annual Conference! It's giant. Think San Diego's Comic-Con with fewer comic books and more library furniture.

I didn't go to this year's conference for two simple reasons:

I went to the Midwinter Meeting in January, and one of these things per year is tiring enough. This year's Midwinter was hosted in San Diego, in fact, in the same convention center used for the Comic-Con. If you're familiar with what a huge event it is, you can get an idea of how busy Midwinter was!
It was in New Orleans. In June. I grew up on the Gulf of Mexico, and there's a reason why I left. The humidity is quite satisfactory here in Washington, DC; why be a glutton for punishment?

Still, two of us were brave enough to go a couple of weeks ago: Sarah Hamrick, our Director of Library Public Services (and my boss!), and Patrick Oberholtzer, my fellow Instruction & Reference Librarian.

Because they don't have enough to do (ha), I asked them to write up a report of their experiences for you guys. Today, you get to read Sarah's! Patrick's will come next week.

So: Sarah's conference experience. Here we go!

I was one of 20,000 participants in the American Library Association’s annual conference, held in New Orleans the last weekend of June. ALA has more than 60,000 members who work in all types of libraries, and the annual conference is our opportunity to learn about new trends in libraries, network with colleagues, and meet with vendors to learn about the latest products and services. It’s also our opportunity to slip out of our sensible shoes, unpin our hair buns, and go crazy.

The conference takes place over a weekend -- there are preconferences and a few early meetings on Thursday and Friday, followed by the big kick-off Friday night. Saturday and Sunday are jam-packed with programs and meetings, and by Monday afternoon most of the sessions are over. The exhibit hall includes about 350,000 square feet of space full of vendors selling/promoting everything you can possibly imagine -- furniture (LOVE the child-sized desks and chairs in bright colors), equipment (I’ve got my eye on a scanner you can use to convert our old microfilm to PDF), clothes (librarians love t-shirts with cute book quotes), software, services, and books. Lots of books. There are always long lines of people waiting for author signings, and the free books many vendors hand out are always hot items!

ALA is spread out across the host city. Many sessions take place in a massive convention center (which in New Orleans is right on the Mississippi River, so it is very LONG), and there are meetings and programs in at least 10 hotels across town. There are always long lines at Starbucks, and at the end of each day there are many weary librarians with bags full of vendor freebies loading up on the buses that shuttle us around to our meetings and hotels. Since we were in New Orleans this time, all of those weary librarians were also kind of sweaty and a little wilted. Fortunately New Orleans offers many kinds of refreshment to perk up the heat- and humidity-bedraggled librarian!

I always learn a lot at ALA conferences and have met many colleagues there who help me do my job better. Of the sessions I attended this year two were particularly good.

The first was entitled “Libraries of the Future: Designing from the User Perspective.” The speaker was a librarian who retired after many working for many years in a college library (I hope that’s me some day!) and has started a new career (I hope that’s not me--I want to spend my retirement years at the ballpark and the dog park!) advising libraries that are designing new buildings. He talked about the importance of planning based on not only how students use the library building now but also how we WANT students to use it and how we THINK students will use it in the future. He spoke of two issues I thought were particularly interesting. Consider the exterior design, particularly at the main building entrance, and try to make it usable space. (A few comfy reading benches and some picnic tables would be nice!) And the first ten feet to the right of the building entrance is the busiest area of the building, so it is important to place the most heavily used materials/services there. (Coffee bar, anyone?)

The best session I attended was called “It’s All About Them: Developing Information Services with User Experience Design.” User experience (UX) is a relatively new field in the library profession, and it’s becoming a very sought-after specialization. UX librarians look at what students want and how they want to get it. It’s a customer service thing. Most UX librarians still do a lot of work in the technology area, but the field has expanded to include all types of library UX. The speakers at this program gave lots of tips about improving the quality of service to library users. One library schedules staff to walk through the building regularly, trying to see it through the eyes of the library user. Another library connects their library web site log-in with Blackboard so students who log into the library’s site get a specialized page based on their specific course needs. One of the program’s speakers works for a major U.S. retailer, doing the indexing for their web site. She talked about the importance of setting up our systems so that users are able to find what they need using the keywords and concepts they know and understand. While that has always been the general idea of library catalog systems, it was interesting to hear her thoughts on the issue from the retail perspective.The best part of the presentation was when a participant asked the speakers if their libraries had a UX brand or motto. The retail indexer said theirs is “Crush Amazon.” Sounds like a worthy goal to me!

That’s what I learned at ALA. I also enjoyed some delicious seafood, window shopped in the French Quarter, gazed at the mighty Mississippi, gawked at the sights on Bourbon Street, and caught a New Orleans Zephyrs ballgame. My favorite evening was spent at a very nice restaurant (delicious oysters) with friends who work in correctional (i.e., prison) libraries in Colorado. It was a very productive trip!

Vlog review of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

2011-07-06T14:43:00.001-04:00

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.

Vlog review of Danse Macabre

2011-06-28T12:44:00.001-04:00

Danse Macabre by Gerald Elias.

NEW resource: Films on Demand!

2011-06-24T14:48:00.000-04:00

A couple of things to close out the week, just to offer you a nicely-quivering little gobbet of deliciousness to tide you over through the weekend.

First thing: The collection shift I wrote about in this post started just this past Monday, June 20. I've documented part of the process and posted the results on our Facebook page. Check them out!

I will say it is very, very interesting to see the Library change in this manner. Most of the long-timers -- we've got people who've been here for over 30 years -- don't think too much of it because they've seen a lot more than this, but I'm a relative newbie. Even this little bit -- only two or three ranges' worth of shelving and a bunch of microform cabinets so far -- is pretty weird!

I also thought I'd take the opportunity this week to introduce people to a new online resource that we've just set up: Films on Demand.

First, a caveat: It's not that easy to get to. It's pretty different from most of our other online resources (you'll see why in a minute), so we're working on figuring out a way to categorize it that makes some kind of sense. Until then, you'll have to search for it (just enter "films" in the search form that pops up after clicking on the "Find article databases" link on our home page). But don't worry; we're also seeing if we can figure out a way to get all the information about, and links to, the available films into ALADIN Discovery and the Classic Catalog. That way, you could just do a search in either catalog and watch a film straight from there if it's relevant to your needs without all that mucking about with "article databases."

Anyway, this thing is awesome.

It's a big database of online streaming educational videos on pretty much every disciplinary topic under the sun, with offerings appropriate for most age and skill levels (hence the difficulty with categorizing it). It's set up so that instructors can either show the entire video or just the segments they want that are relevant to their courses; if there's a video about mammalian biology, for instance, and you want to focus on thermoregulation and homeostasis (e.g., warm-blooded animals), you can head straight to that segment and show it to your class without playing around with glands and slider bars and the like.

We'd been sniffing after it for the past couple of years, but had always balked at one issue: captioning. Films on Demand offers captioned videos, but not all of their videos are captioned. We went back and forth for a while about whether it was cost-effective to purchase access anyway, even if it meant spending a lot of money on videos that nearly all of our students and faculty wouldn't be able to watch.

Last year, we got fairly close to the brink and set up a trial, but found that not only were our faculty frustrated by the lack of captioning on many videos, but there were also some issues when it came to limiting search results to captioned videos only. It was possible, but not as easy as it could have been, and this combination made us decide to hold off for a while.

Fast forward to ...

Aw, heck. I had the entire background story typed up: two years, one trial, three faculty requests, two representatives, six months of back-and-forth, two WRLC task forces, and one offhand remark. But you aren't interested in all that!

The upshot is that Films on Demand has made it possible for us to subscribe to only their captioned videos, with pricing that's commensurate to the relative size of the collection. This is most excellent of them.

So you can use Films on Demand all you like; all you'll ever see are captioned films (ideally, that is -- we've found one or two so far that may have either slipped into the collection or accidentally mislaid their captions somewhere else). No muss, no fuss. We've set Flash as the default format; the other options were Windows Media Player and Quicktime, which is annoying. Quicktime only really works on Apple computers, while Windows Media Player only really works on no computers.

One thing to note, though, is that at the moment, it's not too obvious how to turn on the captioning. Look for a button with a speech balloon on it along the bottom of the video. After you've hit "Play," click on that button; two white lines should appear inside the speech balloon, indicating that the captions are on. You'll have to click it again if you skip ahead in the video, though, I'm afraid; seems to be unavoidable, although I am trying to talk them into getting rid of the speech balloon in favor of something more obvious. A big "CC," for instance. We'll see how that turns out!

Ah, I see. You're all hung up on that phrase a paragraph or two ago: "the relative size of the collection." How big is it, you ask?

Well, as of April 27, there were 2,935 captioned films, encompassed by broader disciplines like:

Humanities & Social Science
Business & Economics
Health & Medicine
Science & Mathematics
Careers & Job Search
Family & Consumer Sciences
Guidance & Counseling
Technical Education

The largest subject area is Humanities & Social Sciences, followed by Science & Mathematics. These are the most recent numbers, by the way; they've said they intend to keep adding to the collection as more captioned films become available. It's been a couple months since then, and the collection has mostly grown, so we are certainly past the 3,000 mark by now. Something to think about.

We're super-excited about this! It's only one change in a frankly surprising number of them that are taking place this summer, though; I just hope I can keep pace with this blog. It's good for all of you to know what's going on with us and what you can expect in the coming months and years. We -- or at least I -- also like to have a document of all the things we've done and are doing, because it's always interesting to look back and see where we were compared to where we are now. Things have changed, are changing, will always change.

Enjoy your weekend!

Vlog review of The Informationist

2011-06-22T15:52:00.001-04:00

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens.

Summer update!

2011-06-06T14:53:00.001-04:00

No vlogs this week!

I know, even I can hear the groans. Truth is, we're just busy.

With what? Fair question.

At this point, I suppose I should share the things on my mind (and desk) these days; it'll also reveal a little something about what's going on in the Library this summer.

The biggest thing on the collective plate right now is the collection shift.

You heard right. We're shifting the collection. I was joking around with someone not too long ago, actually; I told him we were moving the collection, and he asked where we were moving it to. I thought about it for a moment and said, "About five feet to the left."

Funny as it sounds, it's more or less an accurate description. And it's not at all minor; close to a quarter of a million books takes a lot of moving, whether it's five feet or five miles. This is happening largely because the Archives is expanding this summer. The current reading room will just about double in size, which will take up the space occupied by the 900s and some of the 800s downstairs.

Because this is a once-in-30-years kind of occurrence, we're seizing the opportunity to do a number of other things, too:

1) Clearing out space for ourselves. Right now, there's zero space for the collection to move into. This is mostly because the very beginning of the General Stacks is hemmed in by a set of microform cabinets. Those cabinets contain our historical records of The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, and ERIC, the government's repository of education research. However, it's kind of silly -- we've got electronic subscriptions to the same stuff, this collection is duplicated across the Consortium, and it sees very little use for such a large collection. We're not the only ones facing this kind of issue, either; the other Consortium schools who have the same collection have been talking about moving one school's collection to the WRLC storage center and getting rid of the rest. We plan to follow through on our end and clear out space for more shelves at the beginning of the collection. However, even that won't be enough, because ...

2) We're moving Hearing, Speech, and Language Sciences materials to the General Stacks from the Deaf Collection. The Library and Archives have been in a yearslong process of evaluating the Deaf Collection and its institutional role in general, especially within a larger cultural context. One of the results of this is that there's been increasing consensus -- within the Library and Archives, elsewhere on campus, and out in the rest of the world -- that deafness as a cultural phenomenon is markedly distinct from deafness as a physiological phenomenon (as in deafhood versus deafness). So all the items in the Deaf Collection -- from books to periodicals to films -- that focus on deafness in scientific and medical terms (audiology, genetics, speech pathology, etc.) will be moved to the corresponding sections in the General Stacks.

If this sounds complicated, by the way, it is. Patrick Oberholtzer, the librarian who's taken over the subject area in the past year or so, has been spending almost every working hour for the past few months figuring out the logistics of the move. Kudos to him!

However, given that our space is shrinking, even with the removal of the microfiche cabinets, and the collection is getting larger, this means we're doing yet a third thing:

3) Weeding. Weeding. Weeding. And more weeding. I've lost count of how many books I've cleaned out of the General Stacks in the 800s alone. If you end up in the Library this summer, you'll notice some odd patches where shelves are nearly empty, kind of like the "after" photo in this post. That's because we've been at work. So far these past few months, I've focused on getting rid of large, old sets of books between 801 and 840, clearing space in the language-related areas (e.g., linguistics, language education, foreign languages), and slashing and burning my way through 801-810, which are mostly focused on both theoretical and practical aspects of literature, ranging from discussions of Aristotle's thoughts on rhetoric to how to write a term paper.

Don't worry. I'm leaving the best stuff. It's astonishing how many books we have about computers and composition ... from the 1980s! These books are great if you want to learn word-processing, except I think they stopped making word processors a few years ago. It was very forward-thinking of my predecessors, but these books are museum relics! Once I've hit -- and cleaned out -- 810, I'll backslide to the 700s, most of which relate to the fine arts. Why am I not tackling the 810s just yet -- American literature?

The truth is, I'm a little scared. We have such a diverse collection of fiction that I keep thinking that someone will show up in the Fall and feel that we've completely neglected readers of his or her proclivities and might, in fact, be hostile to lovers of books about, I don't know, coincidental apples or something.

Not that there's anything wrong with those. Anyway, we are focused on shrinking the collection, which is complicated by ...

4) Ordering. Yup. Even while we're streamlining the collection, we're adding more to it. At this point, though, we're getting close to the end of our major annual purchasing period and the money's starting to dry up. We're also doing it in conjunction with the weeding -- don't view both activities in isolation! For instance, we do have a lot of relatively redundant books from varying periods that cover more or less the same topic. In my particular case, weeding often informs my ordering -- if I end up getting rid of 20 books on how to speak effectively in public, published between 1898-1988, I'll generally plan to replace them with three or four comprehensive overviews from different angles -- rhetoric, overcoming anxiety, organization and structure, stuff like that.

Of course, all of this gets more interesting when you consider that we're ...

5) Cleaning out the reference collection. We've got a huge number of dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, and other reference works that need to go. Most of that is because almost everything is either outdated or available online through our electronic resources or for free on the open Internet, and part of that is because we're moving the General Periodicals up to the first floor. This particular shift is relatively easy; as we've increased our electronic subscriptions, we've cut way back on our print material, which doesn't see anywhere near as much use as the digital stuff and isn't searchable besides.

Now, the reference collection is pretty sizable and is being cleaned out at the same time as the rest of the collection, so that's a lot of work! If you stopped by the Library last week, or plan to this week, there are a lot of carts full of books congregating on the first floor over by the Deaf School Yearbooks, which is not-at-all-coincidentally right by my office.

That's right, I'm fulfilling the "other duties as required" clause of my job description and removing a lot of the material from our system, along with our director, Sarah Hamrick. Because of that, I probably should warn you that this blog will go quiet for a week or two. We'll still get a post up later this week -- and this will be a fun one! -- and most likely a vlog if we're lucky, but then I go on ...

... wait for it ...

... VACATION! For a week. Sorry, guys. Even librarians need a little R&R from time to time. But after June 20, things should be a lot more active on the blog front!

Anyway, that's the big what's-the-Library-doing-this-summer update. You'll hear more as the summer wears on, though -- the list above is far from the only thing happening around here. Keep an eye out!

Guest post: Setting minds at easel

2011-05-25T14:49:00.001-04:00

To make up for such an execrably long period of silence, as mentioned in yesterday's vlog, I'm offering something new today: a guest post! Elizabeth Henry, our Electronic Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian, had the brainwave a few weeks ago of putting up easels with large blank pads of paper and inviting people to write on them with comments about the Library. They were placed at various locations around the building, and we got quite the response!

She's written up a summary of what people had to say, as well as our responses to it all. It's very interesting reading!

Hi everyone! Remember those easels that we set up with those big pads so you could write comments about the Library? The easels had three questions total, which were:

I visit the Library because…
I like the Library because…
I wish the Library had…

We were thrilled to see the large number of responses! We felt it was only appropriate to give you a summary of what everyone had to say; after all, you took the time to write your thoughts!

We were glad to hear that people like to visit the Library because it’s a quiet place to study and work on assignments. There’s plenty of space here! Of course, a nice bonus is being able to bring in food and drinks to enjoy while studying -- totally understandable! I enjoy drinking and eating while reading too.

We were also pleased to see that our support for Gallaudet’s students, faculty and staff is appreciated as well! We are always more than happy to help where we can. All you have to do is come in, e-mail us, or use the chat widget on our home page -- we’re here for you!

Now, down to the nitty-gritty: How can the Library improve?

First, some people wanted longer checkout periods, maybe up to a full semester. That’s understandable. But did you know you can already have a book for an entire semester? How you ask? All you have to do is renew your books! You can do it up to three times. Our shortest borrowing period for books is up to four weeks, and if you renew it 3 times, then you can have a book for another 12 weeks for a total of 16 weeks. That’s an entire semester right there!

We set it up that way because we’re a Library -- people like to check out books from us! So we like to try to make sure that the books are available to everyone within a reasonable time. Yes, I know, it can be a pain in the neck to have to renew a book over and over, but if someone else had a book you wanted, then you’d want a fair chance at it, wouldn’t you? By the same token, if you find a book you need for class, but it's checked out to someone else and doesn't look likely to come back soon, you can ask us to place a hold on it. When that happens, the other person with the book will bring it back instead of renewing it, so you'll have a chance to use the book, too. For more information on this, just ask at the Service Desk any time!

Other people asked for more computers, and we are working on it! We are aware that there are a few issues involved with the computers, such as the long log-in times you’ll sometimes experience on our computers, plus there can be such high demand that there’s nary an available computer to be found when you visit the Library. But the good news is that we’ll be replacing many of our public computers this summer! Also, we’re looking into improving our wireless Internet signal in the basement so students with their own laptops can be more flexible in where they work.

Many people mentioned how gloomy the Library can be! Yes, we know -- the basement can get dark! Every summer, we check all the study desks in the basement to make sure the bulbs are working, and do our best to replace any burned-out bulbs both there and in the rest of the Library. Still, bulbs don’t die on schedule! If you see one and it’s causing a problem with visibility, just let someone at the Service Desk know which light needs to be replaced and we’ll happily report the problem to be taken care of as soon as possible.

Another thing we noticed is that there seems to be a lot of people who love coffee! We got a lot of requests for free coffee to be provided all semester long, or at the very least a café in the Library building.

To be frank -- I need my caffeine fix myself too! I love to get my caffeine fix by drinking mochas. Mmm! -- the truth is, I can’t figure out where we can put a café in this building, as much as I’d love one! As for providing free coffee all semester, that does sound like a pretty nice idea, but that can take a lot of money. So what we do instead is that we target the most important parts of the semester -- midterms and the last week of classes! We know our statistics really shoot up during those times of the semester, and we know students’ stress levels do too, so we try to make the coffee available when it’ll do the most good. Some people have also asked for alternatives, like tea and hot chocolate, which we think is a great idea. We’ll let you know if that suggestion will become a reality!

As for the leaks, yeah. We know about the leaks. We’ve been working on them since the day the Library opened; although they’re a fact of life, we won’t stop until they’ve been eradicated. Lots of people also had suggestions about how to improve the general feel of the building -- the color scheme, the smell, and the furniture. We’re taking all those suggestions very seriously and are already kicking around a few ideas that might see some new things in the Library this Fall!

We also noticed an odd issue with this building … vampires? Ghosts? Really? Well, I’m not so sure about the vampires, but ghosts … well, now that’s definitely a possibility. If you see any, please let me know. I’m curious about which areas they usually haunt…!

Again, we really appreciate all of the responses we got. One person actually filled two or three big pages with all of her reasons for coming in to the Library, while others had a little fun. Did you know that the word "Library" spelled backwards, is y-r-a-r-b-i-l? Some of our librarians had a hard time figuring that out! There also plenty of useful comments, concerns, ideas and suggestions on top of it all.

So we want to thank everyone who participated and had their say. You’ve been heard and listened to.

Have a great summer!

Vlog review of Infinite Jest

2011-05-24T14:54:00.002-04:00

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.

Vlog review of The End of Overeating

2011-05-11T16:10:00.002-04:00

The End of Overeating by David Kessler, M.D.

Amazons shifting into OverDrive

2011-05-03T15:18:00.003-04:00

This might be a little bit overdue, but lots of other things have been happening, so please bear with me.

For a little background, read this article that I ganked off our Facebook page.

As news go, this is pretty far-out. In summary, Amazon's agreed to make it possible for people to borrow e-books from their local library on their Kindles. They've partnered with OverDrive, a major vendor for lendable e-books to accomplish this.

For a variety of reasons, most of which are known only to them, Amazon has historically been resistant to the idea of e-book lending. That's why, for instance, when I talked about EBL last month, I had to note that it didn't work on the Kindle. Ditto OverDrive, which I wrote about the month before that (I seem to be turning into quite the e-book blogger).

Up until this deal came along, it was a truism that if a library made e-books available for lending, those books would not be Kindle books. It's sort of a format-war thing -- VHS and Betamax, DVD and LaserDisc, HD DVD and Blu-Ray, Microsoft and Apple, Kindle and ePub.

ePub is the other format that's most widely used to disseminate e-books. It's readable on a large variety of devices and can be distributed with digital rights management (DRM) software baked into the e-book so that it either can't be copied, or can remove itself from the user's device after the borrowing period expires.

There are just two problems with ePub, a general one and a specific one.

First, the general one. The ePub format is an open standard, so it suffers from what I call the "Android Syndrome."

If you're not familiar with this, some background: Android -- the smartphone operating system created and distributed by Google -- is an open standard, meaning it's free for anyone to modify to their heart's content. Predictably, this has led to a huge variety of personalized versions of Android, depending on what phone company you use, what kind of smartphone you have, which third-party software developer you particularly like, or your own personal taste.

This means that when Google releases newer, faster, and better basic versions of Android, millions of people miss out because:

The particular type of Android they have on their phones doesn't play nice with the new stuff.
Their phone company is too slow to release a new version of their personalized Android that works with the new stuff.
The smartphone they happen to have just doesn't have the hardware necessary to run the new stuff.

It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, because when people run into any of the three problems listed above, their only option to upgrade their phone is generally to break their phone company's hold on it and find a third-party developer who's created a better version of Android that's suited to their equipment and needs. And we wind up with an Android that's been fragmented into a million pieces.

In ePub's case (back to the point!), as an open standard, it doesn't require or enforce a specific digital-rights mechanism, which means it may become difficult for a given device or app to support all the possible forms of DRM applied to different e-books, leading to a fragmentation of usability. This is still a relatively small concern -- ePub isn't all that old as standards go -- but then it was also a small concern in the early days of Android. Still, most public libraries use large e-book vendors, like OverDrive, that require that users download a specific app or use a specific format in order to read their e-books, which makes the DRM consideration a pretty small one!

So that's the general problem with ePub, which really isn't much of one these days, despite the lengthy exposition!

The specific problem with ePub is just that they're unreadable on the Kindle. Sigh ... and the war goes on.

In general, the Amazon-OverDrive deal seems to be a good thing for libraries. A lot of kinks still need to be ironed out -- how much control will libraries have over their Kindle e-books? Will they have to pay again for a Kindle copy, even if they already have an ePub version from the same vendor? -- but there's cautious optimism about the implications for libraries that are facing the growth of e-books.

It's certainly made us sit up and take notice here at the Gallaudet University Library, but we have to admit to being uncertain that there actually are all that many people on campus -- or off, in the case of our online students -- who would use a mobile device to read one of our e-books. Working with EBL will help us learn a little more about whether or not that feature gets used, but we also don't know how many people own Kindles, for instance, as opposed to Nooks or Sony Readers.

Or would more people use their devices for this purpose after the e-books became available?

It's kind of a funny little dilemma. Either way, we're still buying e-books and they are still being used, even in the current, relatively-limited format that's available.

One way we could get around this is to get feedback. If you're reading this and you use a device of some kindto read e-books, let me know! Just e-mail me at james.mccarthy@gallaudet.edu and let me know what device you use to read e-books and your thoughts on whether or not the Library should start thinking about stuff like OverDrive and its Kindle e-books.

We may also do a survey about it over the summer, depending on how quiet it is here. Nevertheless, you can still expect to hear more about it in the coming months ...

Vlog review of Swamplandia!

2011-04-26T11:39:00.000-04:00

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell.

A peek behind the scenes

2011-04-21T15:38:00.013-04:00

This week, I thought I'd do something a little different: bore you out of your minds!

I'm just kidding. Or am I? It depends on whether or not you think librarian work is interesting in any way whatsoever.

I've been working on a number of things this week, but this morning was fairly quiet, so I took the opportunity to do some weeding. We need to clear out some space in the collection in general, and it's a great opportunity to trim the fat of old, unnecessary or unused books in order to make way for new and more useful ones! But this time, I brought along a camera.

You get to come along and see a little bit of what we do! Revealing photos and all. I just wish National Geographic saw us for the feral entities we are; taking pictures and weeding, like walking and chewing gum, are not two activities that go together well. Still, the truth must be told!

Here's the basic equipment I use (click to enlarge):

Book cart, laptop with our circulation system up and running, barcode scanner. Obscured in this photo: The most recent issue of American Libraries I'm using to cushion the laptop on the metal cart!

A lot of times, when you're combing the collection, you'll usually find an oddity or two:

Not a bad idea, right? But there are a number of issues with this book. First, it's fairly out of context with the section it's in; we're looking at the study of linguistics, after all. However, it's multilingual and kind of weird, so it ended up in 413, which is for specialized and/or polyglot dictionaries -- of which we don't actually have many. Most of our foreign-language dictionaries are for specific languages and are fairly pedestrian, so end up higher in the 400s. Another issue is just that it's old. There are no drawings of computers, for instance, but there are plenty for things that simply don't exist anymore.

Plus the fact that the spine has been taped up -- can't miss the tape, it takes up a good portion of the cover -- indicates that it's not in the greatest of conditions. Still another problem is that it's relatively limited in terms of actual translation ability. If you're relying on the pictures, for instance, how do you convey that you're looking for a library if there's no textual translation of a "LIBRARY" sign on a drawing of a building? How do you get around that without making someone think you're looking for a decent bookcase? Or a policeman, who may be wearing a different uniform from the one depicted? And what really bothers me is the picture in the lower right-hand corner. What is that?

Let's look inside.

Hmm. This is interesting and might actually be pretty useful. Then you hit the watering-can thing in the bottom-middle row on the right-hand page. Why does one need to water one's flowers when one is traveling in a foreign country? Or is it a coffee pot of some kind? What's that thing floating in midair next to it? Or the upper right-hand corner -- is it true that American tourists were once in the habit of accosting strangers for their keys? Or the drawing of the parking lot just below that one; the symbol "P" doesn't necessarily denote "parking" in every language.

This leads to another limitation: more than the fact that only four European languages are represented here, a good deal of these drawings display a Western bias. I have to wonder if, say, a rural Cambodian knows what a garage is.

Either way, it's taking up space in the collection. Don't worry, we didn't spend a lot of money on it:

It's a donation. Historically, the Gallaudet University Library has been lucky enough to benefit from the largess of University students, staff, faculty, and alumni, as well as local community figures, and continues to do so; because of this, a pretty significant portion of the collection has come from private libraries over the decades. Although this particular case does not mean, in any way, that we're less attached to donated books than ones we purchase, it does mean that our collection is full of truly random things that may not have been added to the collection with strict utility in mind.

But all of this is really just my own evaluation of the book as a librarian. Let's see if it's backed up by our circulation records:
Lasers from space! And on the laptop, we see ...
This is the dirt: the history of the item since the record was entered into our system, which was August 2, 1997. No last transaction listed, which means this book was last checked out at some point before 1997. Actually probably long before 1997; when we switched over to electronic, every effort was made to enter information about the book's history before then, so if there was a card in the back of the book with stamps indicating that it had been checked out, that information would probably have made it into this window (and no, we don't keep any more information than that; we don't keep data on who borrowed what, just on whether or not the book was borrowed at all). There's been zero activity on this book in at least 14 years. Toss!

It's not easy to find books like the picture dictionary, though, that are so clearly out of step with the collection and which haven't been used at all since we began keeping electronic records. Some books that we weed have been used, but not enough to justify their place within the collection, and especially considering how misleading they can be sometimes. For instance, take a look at this one:

Current approaches! Pretty nice; it's always useful to get up-to-date information on the state of the field. But then you look at the call number label:

Sure was nice of a former staffer to point out the important information. This book is three decades out of date! I can see why it's still here in the collection, though; it probably provides a useful look at the state of phonological theory as of 1979, which might be good for historical research. However, one important aspect of weeding is knowledge and understanding of the academic departments involved and the ability to keep their needs in mind. And not a whole lot of research into the history of linguistics itself goes on here; we do have much more recent historical overviews that include this date, as well as the perspective that comes with hindsight. Toss!

I'm not going to take pictures of each and every book I took, so we'll skip right to the end:

I have to admit to feeling a certain kind of thrill when I see a large set of books that are clearly outdated, irrelevant, and unused, like -- and I'm male, so forgive my color sense -- the mauve-ish set of books in the middle of the second shelf from the top. Toss!

In any case, the process you've seen here gets repeated anywhere from 75 to 150 times per cart, depending on the size of each book. With that in mind, it may not surprise you that some books have been on our shelves for a very long time -- some for a century or so -- and with a collection as large as ours, it can take a long time to get through with weeding.

Long enough, in fact, that by the time we've finished weeding, we've added enough new books in the meantime to require that we start over again as soon as we're done!

It's moments like this that I realize that our collection -- library collections in general, all over the world -- are dynamic, living things. They grow, shrink, and change according to the nature of the times and the people who manage them. In times like these, I wish we had a book: The Care and Feeding of Library Collections.

Vlog review of Everything Matters!

2011-04-20T20:08:00.000-04:00

Everything Matters! by Ron Currie.

Tips on using the Library

2011-04-15T14:00:00.000-04:00

The semester's beginning to wind down, which means the Library's really beginning to gear up!

We see our heaviest activity at six times in the academic year, three in each semester: the beginning, midterms, and the end. Students start off being very serious about knuckling down to do their work, then that seriousness sort of peters out after the first couple of weeks. When midterms roll around, though, you can bet all the local grindstones are full to their utmost surface nasal capacity. Once that's over, relief lets them focus on other things ... until finals come along, then it's a flurry of activity, and all of our computers and study tables are occupied. It's a nicely predictable pattern and it lets us plan our bigger projects around peak times.

What that means right now is that we're preparing for the onrush, with finals only three weeks away. Although we're certainly still working on big things -- the weeding of the collection continues apace, as do our plans for reconfiguring some of the Library space, as well as planning for next Fall -- at this time of the semester, helping students keeps us on our feet all the time.

We're already seeing the demand beginning to pile up. Our computers are consistently maxing out their capacity, the printers are always going, and study tables are occupied most of the time. With that in mind, I thought I'd offer a few tips on using the Library!

Why? It's important. More than anything else, the Library is a shared resource, and although we certainly have a lot here, it's also finite. Following these tips will help make sure everyone gets a chance to use what we offer with a minimum of stress and annoyance.

Here goes ...

1) Lockers, we have them.
Sometimes people are surprised to find out that the lockers by both restrooms on the first floor are available for use. They are! You can check out a key from the Service Desk and use it all day to stash your things. It cuts down on backaches as you traipse around the Library and campus.

2) You can bring your own computers.
We offer free wireless Internet access to all Gallaudet students, staff, and faculty members. This means waiting around for a public computer to open up can be a thing of the past! Just bring in your laptops and plug them in. Which leads us to ...

3) Power outlets. Lots of them.
We have power strips underneath all our round study tables. They're always on and are available to take your laptop cords and smartphone chargers! Many of our smaller study tables have power outlets of their own, too! This, in turn leads us to ...

4) Let there be light.
Many people don't know that our smaller study tables -- like the ones that line the big windows around our first floor -- come with their own lights! You can flip them on and focus on your work without straining your eyes every time a cloud passes over the sun.

5) Nooks and crannies.
Our most heavily-used study space is also our most visible and easy to find. However, some students don't like the feeling of exposure and the distractions that come with being out in the open where you can see everything that's going on. That's okay -- just head downstairs! We have lots of quiet study space in the basement that's tucked away in little corners throughout the stacks. My personal favorite is the alcove in the 800s; big windows, nice views, comfortable chairs, and hidden by a wall of good books!

6) We understand stress.
We get it, really we do. One way you can unwind after a few hours of studying or writing is to head up to the Deaf Library Study Center. You can either check out a fun flick and watch it there, or take advantage of our cable subscription for a little while! Or maybe you just want to grab a few winks. Run up to the first floor, drop your things off at your locker, then find a couch somewhere and snooze ...

7) At least, until you're hungry.
Our vending machines offer a lot of sugary things to help give you that midafternoon jolt you need to get back to work. What? Most of you are college students. You're too young to need tofu and prune juice.

8) Make friends with the natives.
When you're going to spend a lot of time in the Library, it pays to get social with the librarians. I know -- we are a proud race and intimidating with our big brains. But consider this: if you've been in here a lot and have checked out books or asked for help, we probably already know your name and remember what you're working on based on our previous interactions. Talking with us a little bit will most likely yield some surprising dividends: avenues of investigation you haven't thought of, books you didn't know we had, or insider information on what's on the next new-book cart. We've also discovered that people feel more comfortable with asking us to buy new materials if they know us a little bit. Take advantage and help tailor the collection to your discipline a little more!

Now the last one, which I've reserved because it really unlocks a lot of the Library: The early bird gets the worm. In other words, coming in during off-peak hours will make it easier to get a computer, use the scanner, collect books and DVDs you need, and find a quiet spot to work in. It also means that the librarian on the Service Desk has more time to focus on what you need help with, which is a win all around.

Okay. Now it's time for the biggest secret. Our peak hours are:

9:30 a.m. - 12 p.m.
1 p.m. - 5 p.m.

Do with this information what you will. And enjoy the rest of the semester!

Vlog review of The Late American Novel

2011-04-06T15:52:00.002-04:00

The Late American Novel, edited by C. Max Magee and Jeff Martin.

Vlog review of The Word

2011-04-01T12:27:00.002-04:00

The Word, edited by Marita Golden.

Find out about our Library Undergraduate Research Paper Award here!

New books!

2011-03-31T14:28:00.001-04:00

This winter has worn out its welcome, like a houseguest or fresh fish after three days. Still, it lingers. Luckily, there are a couple of things that can help distract us from the cold.

For starters, another reminder: The Library is still accepting submissions for the Undergraduate Research Paper Award. If you've written a good paper in the last couple of semesters that used Library resources, send it on in; you might win a $200 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble.

We aren't all former English majors, either; past winners have included "Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome," "In Search of Identity: ASL Acquisition of Deaf Adults," "Acrylamides Found in Diet: Foods as Carcinogens?" and "Finding Spirituality in Nature." The upshot is that we don't discriminate based on topic; send in what looks good!

You can find more details about submission here.

And on to Thing Number Two: New books. We're sort of in conference season here -- and will be until June -- so things have been fairly quiet as far as librarian activity goes. There's that background hum that means work is happening, but the big stuff is in temporary remission while we all recover from the Big Deal the express computer workstation turned out to be.

Anyway, some of these fellas are on my to-read list for this blog, although I still have yet to work my way through the books listed in the last few new-book posts. I'll get there eventually. In any case, here goes!

The irresistible Henry House
Raised by a large group of women as part of a home-ec experiment, Henry House is the perfect man -- but because of his upbringing, can't reciprocate the affection he gets from his admirers. Lest this sound outlandish, one should bear in mind that there actually were programs that did this sort of thing in the early 20th Century; they'd get orphans or abandoned infants and use them as "practice babies."

To the end of the land
An Israeli woman looks forward to the return of her son from Army service, only to be forestalled by his sudden decision to volunteer for a West Bank excursion. A planned hike with him becomes instead one with his father, a recluse who is still recovering from his treatment as a prisoner during the Yom Kippur War.

Hiroshima: The autobiography of Barefoot Gen
This is a deep look into the life of Nakazawa Keiji, who was six years old when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II. An event which has ever since colored his outlook on Japan, the United States, and the foreign policies of both, the dropping of the bomb also served as the inspiration for Barefoot Gen, the classic graphic novel about Nakazawa's experiences as a survivor of Hiroshima. This book includes excerpts from that graphic novel, as well as other interviews and stories selected from his life.

Triumph of the city: How our greatest invention makes us richer, smarter, greener, healthier, and happier
The lengthy subtitle should give you some idea of what the book's about. Lest you scoff and look at the soybean fields around you, remember that over two-thirds of the American population lives in cities, which occupy just 3% of the United States' land area. The author brings together a variety of styles ranging from personal storytelling to empirical research to drive home his point: Cities are good for you.

Longitude
Dava Sobel's made quite the name for herself in the popularization of the history of science. In this book, she discusses the history of longitude and how it came to be measured in a way that would prevent the world's great oceangoing empires from losing huge fortunes at sea. The ability to locate oneself on the globe is essential to navigation, especially when you're in the middle of the Pacific without a jot of dry land for thousands of miles. Interestingly, the solution to this problem evaded both Newton and Galileo, but turned out to require only a well-made clock.

The oracle of Stamboul
In this tale of a city, a young Turkish girl in the late 19th Century -- who happens to be a bit of a prodigy -- stows away on her father's boat as he sails to Stamboul (now known as Istanbul) on business. Because of this little piece of impertinence, she learns a great deal about the city, the people in it, and herself.

Through the language glass
The author explores various languages and how culture can influence -- and be influenced by -- the language you speak. Everything from the perception of color to the gender of water can vary from language to language, and this book goes in-depth on a topic that has been fairly controversial in linguistics and cognitive psychology. Also, if you've heard of the concept of linguistic relativity, you'll appreciate more than a few puns in this book.

I think we've got a pretty nice variety going on here. More are coming in every week; come on by and check one out today!

Some cool news

2011-03-25T15:24:00.001-04:00

Spring's arrived, but it's already gone on vacation for a few days. It's cold here!

In order to keep warm without having to burn all the, er, flammable material in the building, we've been keeping busy. There are three major things I'd like to announce this week.

First, it's that time of year again, when we give away a $200 gift card to Barnes & Noble! See the details here.

Second, in response to the survey we distributed a few weeks ago, we are currently piloting an express workstation in the public-computer area on the first floor. It's one of the stand-up computers, directly in front of the Service Desk, and has been marked out with a very attractive sign, if I may say so myself.

This computer will not require a login for use, which was one of the issues we brought up in the survey. Some of our computers are a little older than others, and have had a difficult time coping with the high volume of use, so it can take a while to log in, find a book's call number in the catalog, and log out on their way to class. We've since had Technology Services come in and clean up a little bit, so response times have improved, but things can still get backed up. This way, you can just come in, find what you need, and take off without having to wait for that little spinny hoop to stop twirling.

Since it's intended to speed up some tasks for everyone, we've placed a 15-minute limit on use of the machine. It's not intended for a two-hour marathon paper-writing session; since there should be fewer people monopolizing computers just so they can find a single book, there should be more public computers available for that purpose. We've also decided to disallow printing -- that's something that can take up more time.

As I've said, this is a pilot. Some things may be tweaked and others set in stone. We'll be watching the express station and getting an idea of what real utility a service like this would offer, so if it sounds good to you, I heartily encourage you to use it. If it turns out to be a boon to everyone, we've got further plans in the works.

The third thing I'd like to announce is that we're kicking around the possibility of adding a new e-book vendor to our repertoire. Call this a sneak peek!

It's a bigger deal to us than to you -- you'd see some more e-books in the catalog and they'd look a little different. We're excited, though, because this new vendor, Ebook Library (EBL), doesn't quite stop there in a couple of ways.

First, and most relevant to you, the e-books are downloadable. You can save them on your computer, laptop, or mobile device as Adobe Digital Edition PDFs for a limited period. It's sort of a "Your mission, should you choose to accept it ... " kind of thing, only the explosions are a little quieter. This, I think, is what I'm most excited about. It doesn't work on the Kindle, unfortunately, but I'm inclined to think that the joy of a Kindle is best left unmarred by academic considerations. It does work on the iPad and iPhone, though.

The second thing is more relevant to us than to you: its pricing structure. It works in a way that's new to us and may end up offering a balance between cost and usage that we just haven't seen before. Sorry to be so vague, but the full explanation requires some fairly recondite Librarianese. The upshot is that it's looking pretty good from our end, too.

We're still in the trial phase, so it's not quite available just yet, but the skies are clearing up!

Vlog review of Tristram Shandy

2011-03-21T14:40:00.002-04:00

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne.

Students, computers, and surveys, oh my

2011-03-04T14:34:00.000-05:00

First, a little plug: the Academic Bowl is this weekend! It's the first time in the competition's 15-year history that all the magic will happen here on campus, and matches are open to fans! I'm working on it myself, and am looking forward to it.

Now ...

As I've mentioned a few times over the past few weeks, we're looking at different things we may be able to do with the public computer area on the first floor, next to the Service Desk.

To that end, we set up a survey specifically for people who used that area and collected them over the course of 2 weeks. We got close to a hundred responses, which, given various factors, is a pretty good number!

In general, we asked people questions on a couple of different topics:

1) How they used the area, either individually or with others.
2) If crowding was a problem, whether in terms of inadequate computer supply or sheer space for one's bags and stuff, and if an "express station" might help.

We also offered an area where people could add other issues that they'd been having with that area in particular. What we discovered both surprised us and didn't, and it'll inform many of the decisions we make over the next few months. More to come on that front!

In the meantime, I'd like to congratulate the winners of our drawing: Emma Pruitt, Shane Dundas, and Fallon Haney! They each get a nifty little giftcard to enjoy their weekend with, and everyone gets the benefit of their input, along with that of all the terrific students, staff, and faculty who filled out our survey. Our thanks go out to them.

That's it for the time being. Next week promises to be difficult schedule-wise, to say the least, so this blog will go quiet for the next week and a half. Never fear; we shall return!

Vlog review of Pillars of the Earth

2011-03-04T11:08:00.000-05:00

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett.

Coffee and e-books

2011-02-28T14:13:00.001-05:00

I promised not too long ago in a vlog far, far away, that I'd write about life with a Kindle.

Before we start, though, a couple of announcements: First, we've got coffee every night this week for midterms! If all the cramming and writing you're doing is getting you down by the time the post-dinner coma hits, come to the Library after 8 p.m. through Thursday night for free coffee! We've got all the amenities: Creamer, sugar, artificial sweetener and, my favorite, stirrers!

Second, our first-floor computer area survey is done. Expect a post later this week about the results -- and the winners of our prize drawing, of course!

Now for the main attraction ...

I bought a Kindle a couple of weeks ago, as I mentioned, after posting this. And I love it.

It's so convenient. It slips right into my coat pocket in case of lousy weather (plenty of which we've had in the last few weeks). The screen is amazing, as is to be expected when you've grown used to cell phones and iPads that are all but unusable outdoors -- it's crisp and readable in nearly all conditions and looks just like a book page. The thing itself manages to pull off the difficult task of being both very book-like and very unlike a book as might be expected. More than anything else, I've had two habits to get over: touching the screen, thanks to the capacitive handhelds I've had over the years; and turning pages. You can actually read one-handed, which is useful in more situations than you'd think, including driving.

Did I say that? Haha! No, I didn't.

By far the most useful aspect of the Kindle, though, is the accessibility I now have to a huge number of public-domain works. This includes a plethora of classics I've never read -- specifically because they were in the public domain. Why pay for a free book? And it's no fun reading those books on a computer screen; your eyes get tired. And as far as checking them out from a library -- even the Gallaudet University Library -- there are so many other options that I grow neglectful of the canon.

Using the Kindle chiefly -- if not exclusively -- for public-domain works also gets around a problem that's endemic to e-reading devices like the Kindle and e-books in general: DRM. Digital rights management enables publishers to maintain control over a copy that you've purchased yourself, simply by including in the terms and conditions that such purchases are understood only as "licensing." In other words, even though money has changed hands, you're still really only renting the object of the transaction.

Libraries all over the country ran headlong into this wall just last week when OverDrive -- a major e-book lender for libraries, mentioned in the post linked above -- announced that an unnamed publisher had altered the licensing terms of books purchased by libraries through OverDrive: there would now be an upper limit on the number of times an e-book from that publisher could be checked out. When a given e-book exceeded the limit (set at 26), that e-book would no longer be available through that library without re-purchasing the license.

More information has since filtered in; HarperCollins acknowledged that it was the publisher in question and explained their reasoning, and also that these terms applied to all e-book lenders carrying HarperCollins titles.

HarperCollins is huge. They're one of the six largest publishers in the US, if not the world. Their books are everywhere; they published, for instance, Sarah Palin's Going Rogue last fall. Can you imagine the effect a 26-loan limit on that book alone would have on a library?

I was talking with Elizabeth Henry, our E-Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian, last week just after the news came out. I was, predictably, a little steamed -- how dare they? Would they presume to dictate to libraries a limit on how often a physical book can be checked out? Of course not; the first-sale doctrine prevents that.

The first-sale doctrine states that once a legitimate copy of a work has been legally purchased, the seller transfers all rights of ownership of that copy to the buyer. The buyer can then transfer the ownership of that book any way she likes -- sell it, lend it, give it away, whatever. The original seller is not entitled to any further control over, or revenue from, that copy. If, for instance, you found an incredibly rare copy of Kenneth Grahame's Dream Days, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, at a garage sale and bought it for 50 cents, then turned around and sold it for $2,000, the person who sold the book to you isn't entitled to a cut of the money (although if you were a nice person, you might consider a thank-you of some kind to the hapless garage owner).

What? I'm not kidding -- there's a signed first-edition limited run of the book on the market for $1,750. Don't think I haven't thought about it ...

Anyway, the first-sale doctrine is part of the legal underpinning of what libraries do; we let people take books without paying and do God only knows what with them in the privacy of their own homes. Provided we get it back, and there's no physical damage to the book itself as a result of whatever you did with it, there really isn't anything else we can or should do about how the book is used.

Publishers dislike that; they see libraries as enabling people to read, and maybe even copy and distribute, the publishers' product without paying a single red cent for the privilege. And now they've found their way in, as the case of HarperCollins and OverDrive illustrates so well.

Elizabeth agreed with me for the most part, but reminded me that e-books, though not all that new, are only now beginning to become a major part of the publishing industry at large. As such, publishers, vendors, libraries, and individuals are still feeling their way along a very bumpy road.

That made me feel better, a little bit. Some perspective on the issue always helps. What also helps is the knowledge that this particular problem with HarperCollins doesn't apply to us; our collection of e-books doesn't work on the same principle as, say, OverDrive's. So come what may, our collection -- full of fascinating reading like Accidental billionaires or Changing anarchism -- won't be affected by publisher decisions affecting e-book lending.

If you're interested in reading more about what other librarians have to say, I'd suggest starting with the Librarian in Black's e-Book Bill of Rights.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying my Kindle, even with Amazon's Big Brother lurking over my shoulder. Expect some "classic" book-review vlogs in the future as I work my way through the free copies of the Library's holdings, starting with Tristram Shandy. Don't worry -- I'll still read new(er) books, like Pillars of the Earth. Expect a vlog about that later this week!

Vlog review of Full Dark, No Stars

2011-02-24T12:06:00.002-05:00

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King.

Library computer area survey

2011-02-18T13:09:00.002-05:00

As promised a couple of weeks back, we've got a survey for you to fill out!

... If you've ever used our first-floor computer area, near the Service Desk, that is. Time's up -- survey's over!

We're considering making some major changes to that part of the first floor, and we'd really like to know what we should focus on to improve it.

As a sign of our eternal gratitude, we're also offering the chance to enter a drawing! You could win a movie night for two at Regal Cinemas (like the one in Gallery Place/Chinatown, which shows captioned movies) or a $5 gift card to Starbucks. If you like movies and/or coffee, this is something you can do that won't require any effort but might net you some goodness!

To say nothing, of course, of the positive changes in the Library that might come about as a result of your feedback.

We've also got paper surveys available to fill out in the Library itself -- they can be located on the computer tables near the Service Desk, and can be dropped off in the bright yellow box on the Desk next to where the librarian usually sits. Don't worry, none of us are liable to bite (although the younger ones may nip at you). Come on in (or go online) and fill one out today!

And while I'm soliciting your opinions, I'll take this opportunity to remind you that we always welcome your comments. If you have a suggestion for the Library (a book or video for the collection, an idea about the building, a thought about how to improve services), please let us know. We're always looking for ways to make sure your Library experience is the best it can be!

Vlog review of Globish

2011-02-17T08:07:00.001-05:00

Globish: How the English language became the world's language by Robert McCrum.

Thoughts on e-books

2011-02-10T15:37:00.000-05:00

No vlog this week -- it has been pretty busy! I'm also in the middle of a great book, and I'd like to finish it before I post anything more about it.

In the meantime, I thought I'd pull something similar to what I did a couple of weeks ago in my TED post, where I talk about something that's not necessarily related to the Library itself, but to librarianship in general.

It's not that there's nothing going on in the Library. Quite the opposite, actually -- big things are happening, as my last post soliciting feedback on the computer area kind of hints. The trouble is, those big things are not yet definite enough to unveil to the general public. Give it another few weeks.

Now, back to this week. I've been thinking a lot about e-books lately, mostly because I'm looking at the newest Kindle and thinking very hard.

Funnily enough, people tend to assume that I'm virulently opposed to e-books, either because I'm a librarian, a hard-core reader, or both. It's as though the concept of a print book and an electronic book are mutually repellent and work like a pair of magnets with their positive poles facing each other.

In practice, things don't work out that way. We have around 220,000 print books in the collection, and another 20 or 30,000 electronic books. Miraculously, the dissolution of the building has maintained the same steady pace it has for the past three decades, rather than flying apart in the force of the reaction resulting from the enlargement of our e-book collection.

Librarians in general tend to be realists. We see the writing on the wall very clearly and are working to anticipate emergent trends in how our collection is used. This does not necessarily mean that we will eventually be buying nothing but electronic books; the general consensus in Library World is that print books will likely not be disappearing any time soon, if ever. Why? Check out my ALA report post from last July; a good summary of current thinking can be found in the Strategic future of print collections section.

So print books aren't going away. Why am I looking at Kindles?

The truth is, I'm a large-volume reader, which is kind of a pun, because a) I read a large volume of books, often simultaneously, and b) a lot of the books I like to read are, in fact, large volumes. As in, they're big. I picked up our copy of Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett last week because a friend of mine enthusiastically recommended it, and got into it right away. However, I found myself frustrated by a couple of things. First, the book was falling apart, for two obvious reasons: Use and size. Larger books have shorter usable lives and when they're used quite a bit, as Pillars has been -- it's been checked out 53 times since we got it, a pretty high number for the subject matter -- they fall apart faster. The bookbinding technique most commonly employed these days relies a lot on glue, and it simply isn't strong enough to support books larger than, say, 500 pages after a certain period of time. Pillars is 973 pages long.

The second thing that frustrated me about Pillars is that nearly all of my daily reading takes place outside my home, whether on the Metro or in the local coffee franchise, and Pillars is far from portable. The experience suffered so much that I gave up less than 10 pages in. This I find tragic.

Then I thought a little bit more. Getting an e-book reader negates nearly everything negative about my encounter with Pillars of the Earth, and also displays a net positive: No trees have to die for another 973-page copy to be printed, fall apart in 10 years, and discarded. The same is true with all of the other larger books I've read since I started working at the Gallaudet University Library, up to and including Stephen King's Under the Dome.

"But what about the Library?" you ask. "If Gallaudet's copy is falling apart, are you going to get another one? Will it be print or electronic?"

The answer's easy: Yes, and it will be print. The book's simply been used too much; it would be penalizing success if we were to remove it from the collection altogether, and it's a good book besides. And although we can't do anything about the size of the book -- it's just the way things are -- the environmental argument is answered quite handily by the book's circulation numbers; that's 53 copies that weren't bought, worn out, and discarded because ours took that bullet.

It won't be electronic, though; although that would be nice, our e-books aren't very ideal for leisure reading. They're adequate for research purposes (albeit limited and a tad annoying to use -- see e-Books: How do they work?), but nobody wants to stare at their computer screen for an intensive reading session that's supposed to be fun.

There are other options for libraries, of course; OverDrive is a popular platform that lets libraries "lend" e-book copies that can be read on readers like the Nook and Sony's line of eReaders, for instance. It sounds fantastic, but although they support a huge range of e-reading products up to and including MP3 players (for audiobooks), they don't support the Amazon Kindle. This is simply incredible, given that the Kindle is one of the most popular e-book readers out there, bar none. I know more Kindle users on campus than I do for the iPad. There are a number of reasons why something like this happens, up to and including Amazon's habit of digitally-protecting their content so it can't be read on anything other than something that runs Kindle software (again, refer to e-book post linked above), but it does illustrate a basic problem: platform support.

Although eBrary (and our other e-book providers) isn't perfect, it works on all Internet-connected desktop and laptop computers, and those, at least, are ubiquitous.

There's also an upside for Library users, if I get a Kindle: I may use it to read my own copies of new Library books, freeing those new books up for you to check out! Something to think about ...

Until next week, anyway, when I'll be back with a vlog. This one'll be good!

Feedback and Facebook

2011-02-06T19:14:00.000-05:00

This will be a quick post, I promise -- just two things.

First, if you've ever used our first floor on a regular basis -- specifically, the public computers by the Service Desk -- and hate it, now's a great time to tell us why, and how you'd like to see it changed! We're in the process of figuring out how that area could be improved, and will have a survey available in a week or two, but you can always start thinking about it (and speaking up) now!

Second, did you know that the Library has a Facebook page? We're a bit of a dark horse compared to some other Gallaudet departments, of course, but it's there and we do update it! We got off to a slow start a few months ago, but we've been picking up speed in terms of what we add to it; heck, I'm going to spend the week posting random things to the page. You should take a look! And maybe, uh, like us? Please?

Okay, that's it for now. I'll post again later this week, either a blog or a vlog. Which one? Stay tuned and find out!

Vlog review: Doubleheader!

2011-02-04T11:52:00.003-05:00

Note: Due to technical difficulties, this video cuts off rather abruptly. Many apologies for that, but nothing interesting is missing.

The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman, and The Gunslinger by Stephen King.

Meet TED

2011-01-28T10:11:00.003-05:00

Well.

One could say, I suppose, that this winter is in severe danger of resembling last year. We got whacked with several inches of snow within a few hours on Wednesday night in a thunderous storm that was preceded by heavy rain, then sleet, then heavy wet snow that hit precisely at rush hour. Predictably, this made everyone's lives miserable; there were reports of 13-hour commutes over at the Capital Weather Gang's blog at the Post.

That didn't happen to any of us at the Library, though; those of us who drove were able to leave early enough to miss most of the traffic, and the rest relied on the Metro, which was still running. Our terrific student assistants helped make sure the Library stayed open through the storm until our regular closing time at midnight. And although Gallaudet opened two hours late yesterday morning, the assistants also helped make sure we were open on time!

Now that I'm here and working away, I've realized exactly how much I have to do -- more information will be forthcoming in a future blog post -- and have decided that, as a little mental break from the Library, I'm going to wander a little off-topic in today's post.

Have you ever heard of TED?

Not the person. I don't think I know a Ted, actually. I mean the annual conferences known as TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

TED is a little hard to define, although you can certainly start with the three words that make up the acronym. Essentially, TED's focus is on the sharing of new and interesting ideas. Most of these ideas are about different ways of doing or thinking about things, some of which can be called revolutionary and others of which are just fascinating on general principle. All of the talks are given by various people who may be well-known in their areas or remain unrecognized but significant.

All are recorded on video and nearly all videos have subtitles available in multiple languages, including English, thanks to their Open Translation Project. Actually, TED makes a point of ensuring that all videos are subtitled in English, so the accessibility is great!

One of my favorite examples of TED's ideals is Temple Grandin's talk, "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds." Identified as a person with autism at a young age, she's become one of the most widely-recognized experts on animal behavior and humane processing-facility design. Although this means she makes slaughterhouses less upsetting for cows and pigs, it's indicative of how differently she perceives the world, and she goes into detail about that in this talk, which is essentially an argument for neurodiversity. There are many different kinds of minds, she says, and weaknesses in areas that are perceived to be important may actually lead to surprising strengths in other areas that are no less significant for their obscurity.

Grandin's speech is just one example of many absolutely fascinating talks that I've spent hours watching. They cover every topic from women who are reshaping the world to food-related matters to the science of longevity. Really. It's better than TV.

On a note that may be somewhat closer to home, TED also supports smaller, independent TED conferences around the world that focus on local issues, known as TEDx events. Sometimes they're about issues affecting a country like TEDxAddis out of Ethiopia (for which I am anxiously awaiting videos), a city like TEDxPusan out of South Korea, or a specific group of people, like TEDxIslay.

Yes, there was a TEDx event for deaf people, in Austin, Texas, last May, and the talks are fascinating. Linda Bove on artistic expression, Wayne Betts on seeing the world as a filmmaker, Danny Lacey on sharing ideas ... the list goes on. Gallaudet had a strong representation at the conference, too; talks were presented by Alim Chandani, Michelle McAuliffe, Robert Sirvage, and Josh Swiller, all of whom work in various departments here.

So that's all way cool. Why am I posting about it?

Because although my focus is on the Gallaudet Library and the resources we provide, I do keep an eye out for resources in the wider world that are both available and accessible -- and interesting. The creation of new ideas is a value that's held in common by all libraries in one way or another, and TED, including TEDx, addresses this aspect of human nature on a grander scale. My decision to write about this was bolstered by TEDxIslay, as well; deaf people can play, too!

No vlog this week -- lots to do. Next week, though, will net you a doubleheader!

Vlog review of Zookeeper's Wife

2011-01-20T14:53:00.001-05:00

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

Some Web site changes

2011-01-19T13:04:00.000-05:00

The Spring semester has begun!

Of course, on the very first school day of 2011, we had a big ice storm move through the area, and Gallaudet opened 2 hours later than normal. However, we were able to open on schedule because we had a pair of librarians here! Some students were quite relieved to discover this. Others wondered whether or not the storm was a sign of things to come; many who were here around this time last year remember the large snowstorms that hit us during the first and second weeks of February and shut campus down for a solid week. Coincidence or omen?

You decide. But read The Drunkard's Walk first (if you like coincidences, note the date on that blog post!).

In the meantime, the Library is ready for Spring 2011! We've spent the break mostly working on our internal processes and figuring out ways to make some things easier. You may have noticed that our home page, library.gallaudet.edu, looks a little bit different, for example (example? It's the topic of this post!). We've cleaned it up, gotten rid of redundant links, and tossed the "Library News" section altogether. It wasn't getting updated, and most news were being posted in this blog and in the "Announcements" box anyway, so it was just clutter. Instead, we've relocated our site-wide search box into that space.

On a somewhat deeper level, we've gotten rid of all the links that led to more or less the same place: ALADIN. We realized that people were getting confused between ALADIN Discovery (which is our catalog), ALADIN (which is the portal page that leads to all of our electronic resources), and the electronic databases linked to through ALADIN.

Instead, we've gotten rid of links to ALADIN entirely and made the article databases more accessible directly from the drop-down list on library.gallaudet.edu (first thing in the "Research Help" box on the left-hand side). Part of that included just making the list more readable -- no more "Multi-Subject: Articles." The only question that remains is whether or not the removal of the ALADIN link will actually alleviate confusion or exacerbate it. We'll be keeping a close eye on how you all respond to this change over the next couple of weeks.

We've also brought the Classic Catalog forward through a link from the main page. We've all found that, because of some oddities, there are some items from certain other WRLC universities that don't play well with the consortial loan system, so can't be requested through ALADIN Discovery -- but work just fine through Classic. Until that's been smoothed out, Classic's a good alternative when requesting books or articles from other schools in WRLC.

Right now, there's just a link to Classic -- it's not searchable from library.gallaudet.edu. You'll have to click on the link and then search when the new window pops up. I'm working on a solution to this, but it may take a teeny while.

Finally, we've also hopefully solved one of the biggest wellsprings of confusion for students: opening hours. You'll see right in the middle of the page that we have our hours for each day listed. Those hours are updated automatically, which makes our lives (and hopefully yours, too) easier; our thanks go to WRLC and their Library Systems department for that!

Let's see ... what else?

I think that more or less covers it for the time being. Work is continuing in increments; nothing huge has changed. Hopefully it's less annoying to use the home page, but as always, that depends on your feedback! Tell us what you think.

You're getting a vlog later this week; this I vow.

More new books!

2011-01-14T14:11:00.001-05:00

I'm back from San Diego, slightly jet-lagged and thunderstruck, but otherwise okay! Since it's such a short week and there's a lot to do, I won't be posting a vlog until next week. Instead, we just got a cart groaning with new books, so I'll do another new-book post for this week.

It'll also serve a dual purpose: many of these books are going straight onto my reading list for future vlogs, and posting this will help me remember them -- my memory short-circuits with each wave of new items.

China and English
This is a collection of essays about the role that English is increasingly taking on in China because of a number of factors, including close financial ties with the U.S. and English's rise as a global language, and its impact on Chinese national and cultural identity.

Globish: How the English language became the world's language
The term lingua franca refers to a language used to communicate between people who don't share a mother tongue. Originally used to refer to French -- once the language of trade, politics, and culture -- the term now applies to English, which has started to work as a common global language. This book traces how English came to be and the various factors behind its spread.

One word: Contemporary writers on the words they love and loathe
Is there a word that irritates you every time you see or hear it? Or a word you love? If so, you're not alone in your exacting tastes; a number of authors come together in this collection of essays on words they either wish were used more or were abolished from the language entirely.

Voice of America: Stories
A collection of short stories, this book covers different events taking place in either Nigeria or the U.S. among Nigerian immigrants. I'm pretty excited about this one -- I've heard many fantastic reviews.

Terror and wonder: Architecture in a tumultuous age
The attack on the World Trade Center in 2001 serves as a demarcation in the history of modern architecture, both as an instigator of security measures that reshape the buildings of Washington, DC, and as an instance of destruction just before a decade-long period of creation, in which the world saw an unparalleled building boom.

Makeshift metropolis: Ideas about cities
In the tradition of Jane Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities (mentioned in a brief review here), this book considers the history of urban development, the current state of planning and design trends, and the possible future of the American city.

The 100 best African-American poems (*but I cheated)
A collection of (slightly more than) 100 poems written by African Americans that are generally recognized as the best at characterizing the African-American experience in the U.S., in many different ways.

German: Biography of a language
Did you know that English is actually Germanic in origin? Or that the German state didn't fully unify into a single country until 1871? The history of the German language is closely intertwined with that of our own -- as the history of German culture is with ours.

Triumvirate: McKim, Mead, & White: Art, architecture, scandal, and class in America's Gilded Age
A bit of a lengthy title, but then the subject is rather involved. One of America's leading architectural firms in 1920s New York was led by a group of three men who led wildly different lives but together updated the American aesthetic with buildings like the second Madison Square Garden and the original Pennsylvania Station. The differences between the three men makes it clear that they're worth a book of their own: a pragmatist, a tragic figure, and a murdered sybarite.

Okay, wish list filed with the appropriate authorities. Next week, we'll take a look at what's going on in the Library and, as promised, there'll be a vlog. See you then!

New books!

2011-01-06T14:01:00.000-05:00

It's everyone's first week back from the winter break and it kind of shows. The shell-shock hasn't worn off of some staff members as they realize that yes, they need to be here, and yes, they have to do things that don't involve watching movies, reading a book, or hanging out with their friends.

Or maybe I'm the only one. It feels like I was just at the airport, waiting for my flight to Florida, and now I'm getting ready for another flight, this one to San Diego. Yup, I'm leaving tomorrow for the American Library Association's MidWinter Meeting, which ought to be both fun and interesting. It's a little different from the Annual Conference, which happens in June; that one has more programs and workshops, while this one has meetings and discussion groups. I'm looking forward to learning more about how ALA works and from other librarians about how they're doing things differently from -- and maybe better than -- how we do things.

Of course, the fact that it's in Southern California doesn't hurt. Nor does the fact that there will also be an exhibition hall, at which free books will be given out. I'm planning to pack light -- need some room for those books!

In the meantime, I thought I'd hold you all over until late next week with a listing of new books. We've begun ordering, and because of various reasons, have streamlined the process so things move a little more quickly, which means books are arriving on the shelves already!

American insurgents by T.H. Breen
Fascinating analysis of the American Revolution in terms of a grassroots revolution: it was quite literally an insurgency against the British Crown. This helps paint the Revolution in a different light, and makes it considerably more a product of daily life in the colonies -- and how that daily life was overturned by violence.

Dew breaker by Edwidge Danticat
The famed Haitian author comes back with the powerful story of a Haitian immigrant whose past is not what he told his daughter it was -- and how it comes back, little by little, in glances of recognition on the streets of a city far away and in stories told to children. As a hint, the term "dew breaker" refers to an agent of the government who comes early in the morning to arrest someone or burn down a house -- breaking the dew on the grass.

The half-made world by Felix Gilman
From the author of Gears of the City -- which I keep promising to review but keep failing, if only because it's so odd -- comes this new book. Gilman is sort of a steampunk/fantasy author who likes to build universes predicated on different principles than our own. In Gears, his world was based on a large machine that was found in the center of an ancient city; in this one, it's based on two peoples -- one whose power is supernatural, the other mechanical -- who have always been at war, and how that war finally comes to an end.

Lost to the West: The forgotten Byzantine Empire that rescued Western civilization by Lars Brownworth
It can be easy to think that the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance was a veritable eon of darkness for the planet. However, it's a big planet, and even Europe's neighborhood is pretty big. The Byzantine Empire was originally part of the Roman Empire, but persisted after the fall of the West. This book does a fantastic job of portraying the Byzantine Empire's gradual metamorphosis from a Christian dominion to a Muslim sultanate, and exactly how much the history of the West owes to this part of the world.

How to read a word by Elizabeth Knowles
Written by a lexicographer at the Oxford English Dictionary, this book is mostly about how to use a dictionary and understand what it tells you. It sounds boring, but if you're interested in language and how definitions work, this is a great read. It includes a number of fascinating stories on the origins of some words.

Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky
First sentence of this book: "Sometimes, Marie got a little drunk at work." Given that she works as a live-in nanny, the title is probably true to the character. Marie's an ex-con, having served six years for harboring a fugitive ex-boyfriend, and has just gotten out of prison. She's caring for her best friend's daughter while she lives with the family -- but being Bad Marie, of course, things go relatively bad relatively quickly. Fueled by a steady diet of improbable coincidences, this is a pretty fun read.

That covers it for now. We've all ordered quite a few more already, and they should start arriving within the next few weeks, so keep an eye out!

I'll be back next week, most likely with lots of stuff to report.

Vlog review of Crazy Like Us

2011-01-04T15:10:00.002-05:00

NOTE: Zimbabwe is referred to repeatedly. This is incorrect. The section on schizophrenia discusses Zanzibar. Zambia was not present, while Zaire vanished sometime in 1997 and has not been seen since.

Crazy like us: The globalization of the American psyche by Ethan Watters.

Holiday vlog: Mystery Meat

2010-12-16T11:20:00.001-05:00

Search for Sandman graphic novels in ALADIN Discovery.

Holiday vlog: Cloud Atlas

2010-12-15T17:48:00.001-05:00

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

Quick holiday update

2010-12-13T15:21:00.000-05:00

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

2010-12-09T11:58:00.001-05:00

ALADIN Discovery Carl Hiaasen search results

Holiday vlog: Discworld

2010-12-02T16:04:00.001-05:00

ALADIN Discovery Discworld search results

Vlog review of Army of the Republic

2010-11-19T12:45:00.002-05:00

The Army of the Republic by Stuart Archer Cohen.

ALADIN Mobile

2010-11-16T15:38:00.001-05:00

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:

Search the catalog

Including the holdings of all Consortium universities or just Gallaudet
Request items through CLS on the go
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)
E-mail it to yourself as a reminder later

Use myALADIN

Check what books you have borrowed
Check fines incurred
Unfortunately you cannot renew items through the mobile app -- that's still largely the province of myALADIN on your home computer.

Find locations and hours. This sounds simple, but ...

Finding the location for a specific library will automatically take you to Google Maps, which will display that location
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

2010-11-11T14:02:00.001-05:00

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

2010-11-09T13:09:00.002-05:00

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

2010-11-05T06:53:00.001-04:00

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

2010-10-29T12:33:00.001-04:00

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!

¹Although 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

2010-10-25T14:55:00.000-04:00

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty.

Halloween Vlog: A Madness of Angels

2010-10-18T15:39:00.001-04:00

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

Free coffee for midterms

2010-10-12T14:45:00.000-04:00

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

2010-10-11T15:52:00.001-04:00

23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale by David Wellington.

Library Bookmobile

2010-10-05T14:02:00.001-04:00

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

2010-10-04T12:56:00.002-04:00

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

Vlog review of King of the Screwups

2010-10-01T11:02:00.001-04:00

King of the Screwups by K.L. Going.

Banned Books Week

2010-09-30T11:26:00.002-04:00

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

2010-09-24T11:21:00.000-04:00

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

Vlog interview: Diana Gates

2010-09-17T14:20:00.001-04:00

Book review: Under the Dome

2010-09-17T14:17:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-14T15:16:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-10T11:35:00.002-04:00

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.

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

Library status report

2010-09-03T14:03:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-01T15:34:00.002-04:00

The Günter Grass Reader

Vlog review of Little Red ...

2010-08-27T13:27:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-24T15:22:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-20T12:04:00.002-04:00

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:

Do everything as you would normally:

Click "Print."
Select Printer 1 or Printer 2.
Click "OK."

Then go to our printer workstation. It's on the counter by the copiers.
Log in.
Find your job on the list.
Click "Print." This will release the job to whichever printer you picked.
Then click "Done."
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

2010-08-20T11:59:00.001-04:00

Lion Mountain by Mustapha Tlili. Enjoy!

Review: The Genius of America

2010-08-17T10:16:00.002-04:00

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)

2010-08-13T13:53:00.001-04:00

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!

2010-08-11T15:22:00.004-04:00

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!

2010-08-06T13:04:00.002-04:00

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

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

2010-07-30T15:20:00.002-04:00

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!

New site and Jane Rutherford's retirement

2010-07-22T15:53:00.001-04:00

Thursday post! Yay, jury duty.

Well, I made it back from vacation, and the building's still standing, the collection hasn't been pillaged, and the campus is still here! That's a good thing.

First, one (relatively) minor announcement: With the exception of a page or two, the redesign of library.gallaudet.edu has been completed! I'm feeling pretty good about it at the moment, but -- and this is a big but -- please do feel free to contact me with any feedback, whether through the comments here (which will be moderated, so watch your language if the new design really ticks you off) or through e-mail at james.mccarthy@gallaudet.edu or library.help@gallaudet.edu. The whole idea here is to make things a little more compact and easier to navigate, so it's really important that I hear from anyone who uses the site.

Now, for the books. I read a lot while I was gone, but you're only getting two books out of me -- one for each week. I need to have some stocked up, after all.

First, I read The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. Hmm. I sort of have mixed feelings about this one. A friend recommended it and I was curious about the story, which involves a young woman who's born illegitimately to a Turkish woman in Istanbul in the 1980s. It sounds fairly simple, but there's a lot wrapped up in it. When it was published, for instance, it led to a pretty serious controversy in Turkey because the author -- who is herself a Turk -- makes the Turkish genocide of Armenians in the early 20th Century a significant factor in the plot. At its heart, it's a family story, revolving around two siblings, a brother and sister, and the children they raise in the U.S. and in Turkey, respectively, who meet for the first time in their twenties in Istanbul. It's a story of reconciliation -- the American cousin is half-Armenian -- and of closure, when a big family secret is discovered and resolved in fairly short order.

I have mixed feelings about it mostly because it wasn't really my kind of book. I really enjoyed the fantastically engrossing depictions of life in Turkey, especially when contrasted with life in America, but the plot itself, especially the big secret around which it revolves, left me a little cold. That's not to say it's not a good book -- it is, very well-written and enjoyable -- but it's just not my type.

Why write about it in this blog, then? Because I think of my weekly book reviews as just those: reviews. They aren't necessarily intended to be taken as recommendations; they're just a quick peek into what's available through the Gallaudet University Library. If I'm effusive in my praise, though, that's probably a good sign that you should consider picking it up!

The second book I read was The Infinities by John Banville. The story centers on Adam Godley, a brilliant astrophysicist who's discovered a set of equations that have completely changed science and the world's understanding of time. He's dying. His family has installed him in an upper room of the homestead and called everyone back to wait for the end with him. His son, also named Adam, is visiting with his beautiful-but-hollow actress wife Helen, and Petra, sister to the younger Adam and daughter to the elder, who suffers from a severe -- but unnamed -- psychological disorder. Petra in turn brings in Roddy, a young man who claims to be interested in her, but is actually after her father, trying to write his biography. They all stay in the house along with Ursula, the elder Adam's wife, who drinks her way through her grief.

Overseeing all of this -- and this is what makes this novel so much more interesting -- are the Greek gods. The book is narrated by Hermes, the messenger, as he watches over the family and muses about their various idiosyncrasies, while being dragooned into helping his father, Zeus, get into bed with Helen, with whom he has fallen in love. There's even one fascinating episode early in the book when Zeus visits Helen and orders Hermes to hold back the dawn for an hour, which he does, of course, choking roosters and smashing the goddess of the dawn in the face.

Hermes's perspective adds a lot of humor and wry irony to the proceedings, especially when another god shows up in mortal form: Pan, the god of the woods, wildness, and alcohol. Together, the three gods create plenty of mischief over the course of the last day of Adam Godley's life.

In general, it's beautifully-written and very absorbing.

Now, on with the show. Jane Rutherford, one of our Instruction & Reference Librarians, is retiring at the end of August. I feel like I should put a little sad-face emoticon right about here: :( We're all very curious about what she plans to do and what's going through her head at this point, so I talked with her a little bit about her new adventure.

1) Every time I ask someone who's retiring what they plan to do with their time, they tend to say things like, "Well, I'm going to get up at the same time every day and make my coffee just like I always do, except instead of going off to work, I'm going off to get the newspaper, and then I'm going to sit on the back porch. That's my retirement." But you're Jane! I bet you've got a plan. Is that so? Do you mind sharing what it is?
Well, my plan isn't set yet. I've been too busy working to think about it much. BUT ... a big part of my plan is to not have a big plan for a while. I'm going to give myself 4-6 months to do just what I want, when I want. I also want to get my house in order, literally (cleaning, painting, organizing). During that time, I want to research some of the things I am interested in doing, such as volunteering, traveling, etc. I'm actually afraid I may over-commit myself so when I DO have a plan, it will have to include some downtime to really relax.

2) Will you be sticking around the Washington area, or do you plan to move somewhere exotic, like Raleigh or Macon?
Or Wisconsin? Actually, I plan to stay exactly where I am. I live in Alexandria, just south of Old Town. I have a nice condo that is very accessible, both in location and in the amenities it has for people with limited mobility (which I don't need ... yet) and quite beautiful. Plus, I just don't want to move ever again! I hate moving (well, really I hate packing).

3) Lots of retirees have told me that when they left their jobs, they had one big, outlandish thing in mind that they'd always wanted to do, but never had the time for, totally separate from their general post-retirement plans. I've heard all sorts of things -- skydiving, shark-baiting, building their own house by hand, arranging their bookcases by color, going on a European tour -- so I'm curious: Do you have something like that on your to-do list?
I don't think all of these are "big" or "outlandish," and I don't have just one, but here are a few things I am considering and will research in the next few months:

taking tap dance and/or drum lessons (I love the thought of all the noise these two activities make!)
holding babies. I did not have children of my own and just love cuddling babies. I am going to look around for opportunities to do that, locally and maybe even internationally!
going to Africa. I'd like to try working with the orphanage in Zambia which my church supports and where a friend might be going for a year or so. Even though my time there would be limited, probably no more than a month, I admit this still makes me a little nervous -- so far, so exotic, so hard -- but I am truly considering it, maybe as soon as next summer.

4) Now we're going to shift to more Library-like things. You've been pretty busy this summer, getting a lot of things out of the way before you take off. Would you share some details about what you've been doing?
Well, one thing I just started recently was taking personal things home. My goodness, one accumulates a lot of stuff after 29+ years! I'm also getting things together to pass on to my library colleagues -- you know, work stuff.

I've been the library selector for education for many years now and I decided I wanted to clean out those books. I've withdrawn a very large number of books, a decent amount of which were well over 30 years old. That means that those left will be more useful, if only because they will be easier to find on the tidy shelves!

Finally (or maybe not if someone comes up with other projects), I've done a thorough inventory of the general periodical (journals, magazines, and newspapers) collection. With the expansion and popularity of electronic periodical access, the librarians have been steadily increasing our holdings of those products for quite a few years now. That means some of the paper and microfilm products have to go so we can reallocate more of our money to electronic. I've determined exactly what we have on the shelves (titles and years/volumes), collected data about those titles (how much they are used, if they are available electronically, past decisions made, which librarian should monitor them, etc.), and put all this in a spreadsheet so it will be easier to make decisions about periodicals in the future.

5) You've had a long, rich career at Gallaudet, spanning almost thirty years. Looking back, what's the one thing that sticks out in your mind the most?
Change.

How the University has changed -- Deaf President Now, communication methods, FYS/GSR, the buildings (new ones, long-gone old ones), etc.
How the Library has changed, not the building but the things we do here and the way we do them.
How I have changed: When I started I was the Library Systems Analyst and I worked with mainframe computers, then minicomputers, then PCs. About 15 years ago, I switched from computers to people and became a reference and instruction librarian. That change recharged my energy and made it easier to work here happily for almost 30 years.

6) What's something you might miss the most about working at the Gallaudet University Library?
There are a couple of things. First, the interaction with people, students and staff both. I tend to be an introvert, but when I start working with students, individually or in a classroom, my energy soars. Next, I will miss learning things. That is the best thing about being a librarian. New topics come up all the time, and I get to research them and learn things I would never have thought about. It's not that I won't learn new things, but it won't be as serendipitous as it is here at work.

7) And finally, you knew this question was inevitable: What brand of sensible shoes do you recommend?
I believe we all need to be stylish, so I vote for Jimmy Choo! Just kidding ... those might kill or maim me. Really though, I've yet to find shoes that are always sensible (for me that means comfortable), but as my body approaches middle- to late-middle age (this is not a typo), flats are always better and thick soles help cushion these bony feet! Not Birkenstocks!

All joking aside, we're all sad to see Jane go. She's done a lot for the Library and for Gallaudet in general, and it'll be very tough to replace her. By the same token, though, she's certainly earned her time off!

If you've worked with Jane before, please feel free to stop by the Library any time over the next month or so to wish her well!

No question of the week this week; I think this post is quite long enough -- don't you?

What have I been up to?

2010-07-09T14:46:00.001-04:00

"I'm a Florida boy."

I have to keep repeating that to myself. "I'm a Florida boy." Sometimes we all need reminders that things could be worse, although after the sweltering weather of this past week, I'm not sure how. We broke triple digits a few times in the last few days, and just when I start to think it's not so bad, the humidity hits. Climate change or good old-fashioned heat wave? Who can say?

In an effort to clear this question -- among many others related to the weather (chief among which is "WHY?") -- from my mind, I read Generation A by Douglas Coupland.

I've heard a lot of stuff about Coupland. Most of the hoity-toity literary blogs I follow have mentioned him from time to time and it's usually in a very positive light, so I figured he must be pretty close to unreadable.

Except it turns out that Coupland is actually really readable. Generation A is the story of five individuals distributed across the world -- New Zealand, India, France, the U.S., and Canada -- who get stung by bees.

Given that the novel is set in a near-future where bees have been extinct for several years, rendering almonds, apples, and other fruits of assisted pollination (pun intended), very, very expensive, this is a global event. Coupland does a terrific job sketching in a future that looks eerily consistent with our present; the first person to get stung is an Iowan corn farmer who has a live Web stream of himself in his combine as he destroys a cornfield full of an "undesirable gene variant." The second is an Indian call-center operator for Abercrombie & Fitch, the third a New Zealander who's using her cell phone to make an "Earth sandwich" with a woman in Madrid, and so on.

So these five people are stung by bees, and this quite literally throws the entire planet into a tizzy. They become instant celebrities, their lives dissected by millions of people who are curious about what it is that attracted the bees to these people. The stung people disappear into quarantine for a few months while -- cue sinister music -- tests are run on them, and then reunite after being set free. However, they discover that there's a lot more to the story, involving a mysterious pharmaceutical called Solon, a native village on a remote Canadian island, and Belgium.

Truthfully, if the world the novel was set in were less realistic, the plot would probably exist on an astral plane with the works of people like Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins, and Dan Brown. But it's weirdly believable, very funny, and completely worth your time.

Also worth my time: The things I've finished so far this summer.

First on the list: Weeding. I've mentioned this a few times over the last couple of months. It's time-consuming and less than wildly enjoyable, but it's necessary and healthy. I set my goal as a specific percentage of the books under my control, and I'm pleased to report that I met -- and exceeded -- that goal. I've focused mostly on older books in the linguistics area of the General Stacks downstairs (call numbers 420-428). Truthfully, a sizable proportion of those books were histories of the English language -- published before 1938! This was before World War II, the 1950s, Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, Nixon, NASA, greed being good, the Internet, and the entirety of the George W. Bush administration, which gave our language a good workout on a daily basis. Those older books were only good for historical curiosity, but served no real academic purpose, which is our main focus.

Actually, they're perfect examples of books that have fallen through the cracks over the years. We're a busy nest of librarians, and weeding is an activity that we tend to perceive as something that goes on in the background all the time. It happens while we're doing other things, incrementally, and -- in my case, especially -- in one big whoop per year. That doesn't mean it isn't important to us, though. I've gone into detail before about why we weed, so, just as a refresher, let me sum it up: sometimes books are moldering on the shelf, dangerously outdated, never used, and are taking up space for books that have more to offer our students these days, so we get rid of them. It's easy to get into the habit of thinking that books are sacrosanct, especially where librarians are concerned (apparently we worship them; ridiculous! Ignore that altar in my bedroom closet, though); however, we have a specific mission to serve the students, faculty, and staff of Gallaudet University, and it is poorly-served by the neglect of our collection. So we prune the collection in order to encourage healthy growth.

Then the Deaf Research Help pages on our Web site. Those have needed to be updated for some time; we refreshed a few of them last year, but were barely able to make a dent. This year, we're making a big push to transfer all of that information to LibGuides. I worked on the FAQs about deaf statistics and ASL, which were pretty heavy by themselves. They're both information-heavy. The deaf statistics pages focus mainly on offering starting points for estimates of deafness within a population; the United States in general, then each state, then each country. It took me nearly a week to hunt down and tabulate the statistics for the U.S. alone; the Census Bureau and other data-collecting entities don't do things in as clear-cut a manner as they used to, so some figuring was necessary. The rest of the world took another couple of weeks -- it's not easy trying to find official statistics on the prevalence of deafness in Ethiopia, for instance, or the number of sign-language users in Brazil. Although I managed to put together a decent update, this will have to be an ongoing product as more information becomes available.

Sign language, on the other hand, was a little easier; some quick run-throughs of our catalog and major vendors, along with the advent of YouTube and Vimeo, among others, made life much simpler. All told, maybe a month's worth of work was spent on those two LibGuides, and I'm partly glad it's over and partly glad I was able to learn so much. For example, did you know that 95% of the Japanese deaf population is at age-level literacy? That's something the U.S. can't accomplish even with hearing people. Fascinating!

We've also set up a new chat system for our Meebo widget on library.gallaudet.edu. You'd be bored with the details, but it'll make our lives much easier; the main thing I'm excited about is that now, when we get a question over IM about something specific to someone's subject area, we don't have to run to their office and call them in to the Service Desk so they can answer it -- we can just transfer the IM directly to their office! The new system should also reduce the delays that sometimes occur when the person answering IMs at the Service Desk is busy helping other people and can't respond to an IM right away; someone else, in their office, will also get the same IM and answer it themselves if necessary. Overall, this should help ensure faster and more accurate responses.

I've also been working on a new program we bought earlier this year that'll let us create video tutorials (with captioning, of course) for various aspects of our online resources. I'm starting out with LibGuides, explaining how they work, what each important element is, and how to use them to your advantage. It should be appearing somewhere on the Web site within the next few weeks; I'm just about done, but what with one thing or another, it may take a little while to get up and running.

The ALA Conference was another big thing on my to-do list. It sounds funny, but a few days away from work was definitely included on my list of important things to work on this summer. You saw my post last week; most of those events were selected specifically for key aspects of my work here at the Gallaudet University Library, and I came away super-enriched with more information and ideas!

And then, last but definitely not least, I'm redesigning our home page. Yes, again -- I can hear the groans from the peanut gallery. Although our current design is much nicer-looking than the one we had before, one of the most common questions we've been getting for the past year is, "How do I search the catalog?" It only beats "How do I find e-Journals or databases?" by a very, very slim margin. The answers to both questions are right on the home page, but people are having a hard time finding it. So I'm shuffling things around a little bit, reducing the current number of boxes by a third and reorganizing information so things are a little more unified, grouping like with like. Above it all, I'm sticking a honkin' big search box for our catalog, so you can guess what our emphasis is. The result of all this is that the layout is more compact, logically compartmentalized, and much easier to take in within one or two spins of the scroll wheel on your mouse. Here's a tiny, not-at-all-clear preview of what's to come:

All of the above is what I've been working on for the past month and a half or so, ever since we finished ordering new items and put a nice little bow on the Spring semester. The sad thing is that although I've gotten a large amount of stuff out of the way, I'm still not done. The projects you've been reading about are the ones explicitly related to the Library. Now that they're just about over with, I'm going on vacation next week, and then when I return, it's time to focus on projects that don't involve changing out anything in the Library itself: preparation for the First Year Experience course I'll be teaching in the Fall (if you're an incoming freshman and you're reading this, I may be teaching you starting this August!), gearing up for the Common Reading, which will be The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, by preparing LibGuides and planning campus-wide events, and getting started on writing questions for the 2011 Academic Bowl competition. It'll be a busy late July and August!

I'm sure you didn't miss the bit where I said I'm going on vacation next week. There won't be a blog post then. But when I come back, there'll be a Thursday post on the 22nd (unless I don't get called in to jury duty) about Jane Rutherford in anticipation of her retirement, then Friday, July 30, will see more about the Common Reading and what we're doing for it. Following that, the month of August, as it was last year, will be devoted to the incoming class!

Enjoy your weekend!

Question of the Week
I'm here at Gallaudet for a summer program, and I have Library borrowing privileges. But I read the sign you have up on the Service Desk, and it doesn't say anything about me or how long I'm allowed to borrow Library things for. I just checked out a book, and the librarian told me I can only have it for a week. What's up with that?
That sign only addresses regular borrowers: students, staff, faculty, alumni, and members of other Consortium universities. When you're on campus for a summer program and have obtained an ID that allows you to use the Library, your borrowing period is determined by your expiration date if it's less than four weeks away. The main program going on right now wraps up on July 17, which is a week from tomorrow, so that's when your ID -- and, by extension, your ability to borrow Library items -- expires. It makes sense: when your program is done, you're likely not sticking around; why risk incurring fines if you'll be in another state long before The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is due?

Reporting in from ALA

2010-07-02T15:27:00.004-04:00

I'm back!

On this unnaturally cool week, we've got a doubleheader for you: The Parable of the Sower and The Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler.

They're two books that were going to be a trilogy, except Butler died before she had time to focus on the third book. Both Parables follow one Lauren Olamina, a Californian woman who lives near Los Angeles in a society that resembles both a postapocalypse and a dystopia. The United States has collapsed, existing in name only, jobs have evaporated, and runaway inflation has put most needs out of reach for a significant percentage of the American population. Lauren and her family cling to survival in a walled enclave built out of a suburban cul-de-sac, subsisting on food grown in backyards and traded among neighbors and practicing their shooting -- just in case. The outside world is filled with the poor, the violent, and the addicted. There's a new drug, known as pyro, that's spreading throughout the country and creates in its users the desire to light things on fire. Millions of Southern Californian refugees, victims of a nonexistent economy, police forces that charge exorbitant fees for their services, and violence from the poor, are streaming their way up I-5, on their way to Oregon, Washington, Canada, or a newly-seceded Alaska.

In the midst of all this chaos, Lauren is busily planting the seeds of a new religion, called Earthseed, which says that the only thing worth venerating is change and that it's the destiny of the human race to colonize other worlds; this is her attempt to reunify the human race in pursuit of a single goal. She's interrupted at the age of eighteen when her walled neighborhood is finally overrun, her family is killed, and she's sent walking up the interstate with two of her neighbors. As they fight their way up the Pacific coast, they accumulate followers, people who join up for protection, fellowship, and, eventually, the tenets of Earthseed. At the end of the first book, they've settled on a few dozen acres of isolated woodland north of San Francisco, owned by one of her followers, and begin the process of building a community, named Acorn. The Earthseed religion strongly emphasizes learning over education with special attention paid to reading, math, and the sciences. It's a communal way of living; people look after each others' kids and share their food.

In the second book, Lauren's daughter takes over the narrative and pieces together the story of the rest of her mother's life after settling down in Acorn. A new president is elected, a Christian fundamentalist who -- wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- loudly decries the actions of vigilante bands of Christians who have been attacking poorer communities and killing or enslaving anyone who doesn't subscribe to their creed. The country appears to be devolving into a theocracy, and Acorn is one of the last holdouts. Unfortunately, they are finally invaded and Acorn's residents -- including Lauren -- are enslaved, their children taken away and adopted into good Christian homes, away from their "heretic" parents. Lauren's daughter is one of those kids, as she tells us years later while sharing her mother's story. A fortunate landslide leads to an uprising, the extermination of the slavers, and the scattering of the people of Acorn. Lauren, during her flight, begins to think that she needs to grow her system another way; instead of centralizing it into a single community that can be attacked, she should teach people, who can then go out and teach others. The story then skips forward a few years, when we find out that not all of Lauren's family was killed in the initial invasion of her enclave-neighborhood; her younger brother has survived and is now a minister in the church supported by the new president. He manages to hunt down Lauren's daughter in her good Christian home -- where she has been abused and neglected for being black and unlike her adoptive parents' real daughter -- and take her home with him.

We jump forward a few years again, and we see that Earthseed has spread far and wide; there are communities everywhere, and the religion, centralized under Lauren's authority, has become wealthy enough to build schools everywhere and invest in industries that promote spaceflight; the goal here is still to find other worlds to live on. Lauren's daughter finally meets her, 20 years after her birth and subsequent seizure by the fanatics, and discovers that although her mother loves her, she loves Earthseed more: her first child. The book ends there; the series will never be finished.

I find myself disappointed by that. It's pretty different from Butler's other books, which are much more overtly science-fictional -- people with super-powers and all that -- but it's still typical of her writing, which I love. She had a singular talent for uniting a whole slew of issues -- from gender to race to politics to religion -- into a single story. Her protagonists tend to be African-American women, which is a welcome change from most of the science fiction of her era, which was -- and still is -- overwhelmingly white-male-dominated. I have no desire to read only books that are narrated by characters just like me, and Butler's work is a perfect example of the difference I seek.

Then there's the epic nature of the Parables' plot (epic in scale, not as in "epic win"); this one woman in a collapsing society creates a whole new belief system that, after years of struggle, hard work, and horrifying violence, sweeps the world and begins to change it. It's good stuff! I strongly recommend both books, as well as the rest of her work that we hold: Bloodchild and Other Stories, Dawn, Wild Seed, Kindred, and Fledgling. Out of these five, plus the Parable books, I guarantee there's something for everyone. Vampires, aliens, immortals, time-travelers, or budding High Priestesses, it's all good.

Now, I skipped a whole week. What's going on with that?

Well, I attended ALA, or the American Library Association's annual conference. We call it "ALA" because it's so big, it doesn't need much more of a name. 20,000 librarians descended on Washington, DC between last Thursday and this Tuesday to attend workshops, seminars, discussion groups, and the exhibit hall. I -- as well as most of my colleagues here in the Library -- was among that 20,000.

First, the exhibit hall. It's like most conference exhibit halls; big fancy booths rented by the major movers in the industry and small cookie-cutter booths rented by the smaller, independent companies. Nearly all the database vendors we know of were there -- ProQuest, Ebsco, SAGE, and so on. Also like most exhibit halls, it was full of giveaways; little branded trinkets that open beer bottles, illuminate a small section of wall, or offer an outlet for stress. And books. Lots of free books. Besides the vendors, the rest of the exhibit hall was occupied by publishers like Scholastic, Random House, Hyperion-Disney, Dark Horse (they do comics like Hellboy and Scott Pilgrim vs. the Rest of the World), and Wizards of the Coast (Dungeons & Dragons). I came away from this weekend with more than 40 new books, most of which will end up in the Library. Many of those books are uncorrected printer's proofs or advance reading copies, which means that most of them have not been released on the market yet and won't be for a few months; the rest is just the publisher's attempt to unload surplus inventory that can't be sold. So that was nice. I loved the exhibit hall.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the more important stuff. ALA is very, very large; the conference occupied all of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center here in town, and took over several nearby hotels as well. Dozens of workshops, seminars, lectures, discussion groups and panels are available for registered participants. To make things a little easier on me, here's a list of the stuff I went to, along with summaries of each and what I learned.

H.W. Wilson Breakfast
H.W. Wilson is a database vendor; we subscribe to their Biography Reference Bank. I thought it might be a good idea to attend this breakfast and see what they've been up to, which turned out to be a lot. Bearing in mind that the disciplines I work with consists of the fine arts, literature, and language, I got excited by their new A Social History of the 20th Century, which is a database of art defined within the context of the 20th Century; what social changes do they express? What questions did they bring up for the people of their time? It's a good resource for fine arts, history, and sociology. They're also offering the Art Museum Image Gallery, which is a collection of several thousand scanned images available on the Web from museums all over the world, collected in a single place.

Beyond Library Guides
This was a workshop about LibGuides, which we started using last year and which has been growing steadily in use. This particular talk focused on using LibGuides as a project for students in a first-year course on the history of New York; new features that have been added by the company that owns LibGuides are now enabling more collaboration from people who don't have their own accounts, and turning the guides into a wiki-like project. I'm teaching an FYS class in the fall, and am thinking more about how this could apply; this might also be good for the Library. Allowing people to contribute content would be good for LibGuides like the one that covers free things to do in Washington, DC, or the LibGuide for GSR 150: City as Text. I'll be talking with some faculty as we get closer to the fall for some ideas about what we could do with this.

Ebsco lunch
Yes, database vendors offer a lot of free meals in exchange for permission to spend an hour or more talking to us about how great their company is. Usually, this is justifiable: For example, Ebsco talked about its new Discovery tool, which would allow libraries to include results from their Ebsco databases in with their catalog records; this means that if you're looking for books on a specific topic, you'd also be able to see journal articles that are relevant to your topic. This would save a lot of time and make research a lot easier. Something like this might be in the Library's future, in fact; more on that later!

The Open Access Debate
A panel of advocates for open access, along with a librarian from the National Library of Medicine and a representative from Elsevier, another database vendor, discussed what's been going on lately with the movement toward open access. I've talked about it on this blog before; most of the things I mention in that previous post were kicked around in this meeting, and it was very informative. In general, publishers and database vendors are struggling to figure out how to make open access a viable business model; how do you make information available for free and still earn a profit without going down the credibility-destroying path of advertising? It was a heated debate, actually, mostly centering around the Elsevier representative, and it ended with a huge surprise from a Springer (yet another database vendor) representative, who announced Springer's own open-access initiative. More details about that will be forthcoming within the next few months.

Science Fiction and Fantasy: Informing the Present by Imagining the Future
Actually, this one was just for fun. After a long Saturday, you just want something light to finish off the day. The highlight involved Cory Doctorow, an author I've spoken about on this blog a few times before, and a name my coworkers have grown tired of hearing. What can I say? I love the guy and his work. He's always been a huge advocate for libraries, although he's more known for ranting against copyright, his work for BoingBoing, and as a fan-favorite character on xkcd.com (read all the way to the end; the whole strip is worth it!). Also, they gave out more free books at this talk. I'd say I came out ahead.

Strategic Future of Print Collections in Research Libraries
This one was very interesting. The basic question centered around things like Google Books. Do print books have a future in a society where everything's migrating online? Most of the panelists said yes; one speaker from the University of Michigan has been working with Google to scan the university's collection of rare books, and she said something very interesting: "Don't forget microfilm." See, when microfilm was becoming popular at libraries everywhere, the thinking was that microfilm was not a perishable storage medium. Because of this, thousands of books and journals were converted to microfilm and destroyed, whether in the conversion process (pages had to be taken apart to be scanned individually) or afterward (because they were no longer necessary). Unfortunately, a few years later, it turned out that microfilm actually decays; the vast majority of the stuff that was produced between the 1930s and 1980s were produced from cellulose acetate, an organic material that decomposes quite readily in fairly common conditions. Worse still, because they're made from acetate, they give off a vinegary stink and generally make life difficult for everyone. This problem was compounded by microfilm's rapid obsolescence as digital analogues arose during the 1970s, rendering all that expense useless and the destruction of the original texts pointless. There's a lesson to be learned from this. Another speaker echoed the U Michigan librarian; he said the future was more likely to see both print and digital texts supplementing each other, rather than being all one or the other.

Question, Find, Evaluate, Apply
A sort of seminar about ways to assess information literacy. It all sounds like impenetrable Librarianese, I'm sure, but basically, one of our missions here at the Gallaudet University Library involves teaching students and faculty how to navigate information systems to find what they need to do their work. It involves knowing how to use Google and what its limits are, how to perform searches in databases in order to find articles that are relevant to your topic, and when to ask for help. In order to find out whether or not we're successful at this, we have to ask students to fill out papers testing what they just learned, so if you've ever had to do that after a Library presentation, you now know why. It's not to test you; it's to test us. And this seminar offered a bunch of really useful ideas about how we can do this better.

Recruiting Undergraduates to the Library Profession: A Mellon Success Story
Yes, I admit it. I'm actively trying to get students to consider librarianship as a possible future career. This panel consisted of current or former library-school students who had been recruited by the Mellon Foundation into a program that let them go on library-related internships as undergraduates and earn scholarships for grad school. It was actually a pretty enjoyable talk; the proto-librarians were all very interesting -- and funny -- people. One of them said that the thought of being a librarian never entered her mind until one day when she was coming out of the bathroom and spied a poster on the wall opposite her that said, "Ever thought about being a librarian?" And she was hooked. In general, being a librarian requires a few specific traits that aren't easy to find all together, so if I say, "Hey! You should think about becoming a librarian," you should start looking for library schools like now.

Privacy, Libraries, and the Law
This was a fairly sober discussion. Whether we like it or not, the surveillance of our daily activities -- whether by the government or the corporations whose products we consume -- is increasing quickly. As Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, famously said, privacy is no longer the social norm. So what does this mean for libraries? We're still figuring that one out, even as we recover from the storm that the USAPATRIOT Act kicked up around us after 9/11.

For the Love of Reference
This one was kind of fun. Another panel -- there are lots of those at ALA -- discussed reference as an important part of being a librarian. "Reference" is Librarianese for "answering people's questions." Whether it means sitting at the Service Desk for a few hours a week or answering IMs coming in late at night, reference tends to get overlooked in favor of other aspects of working in a library -- electronic resources, cataloging, or larger issues like, as listed above, privacy and assessment. Nancy Pearl, who is probably the first and only librarian ever to have her own action figure, was on the panel, and it was a treat to listen to her discuss how aspects of reference are both changing and staying the same as new technologies and methodologies emerge.

Closing Session: Amy Sedaris
I learned nothing from this, other than the fact that Amy Sedaris is a drunk and possibly slightly insane. Also hilarious. This was the wrap-up session for the ALA Conference itself, a sort of official period at the end of a long sentence about workshops, free books, and new vendors to think about. And yes, it was book-related -- Sedaris wrote I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence.

And that was my weekend. I'm tired. Luckily, this is a three-day weekend!

Next week is the deadline I've set for myself for most of my summer projects. I'll let you know more about those next Friday. Enjoy your 4th!

Question of the Week
How come the books on the display tables at either entrance to the Library haven't changed in a while?
Because it's summertime, mostly. There are fewer people here to look at them and maybe think about checking them out. That doesn't mean they aren't getting looked at, though -- I catch two or three people reading the dust-jacket blurbs every day. They're also being checked out, somehow; they seem to disappear when I'm not looking! You'll see some fresh stuff on there in mid-to-late July, though, for Jump Start, CPSO summer programs, and brand-new and returning students. I guarantee they'll be interesting.

What's hiding in our collection?

2010-06-18T10:23:00.002-04:00

This past week, I committed a grave sin. I've done it before, but often for reasons having to do figuring out how to best expand the collection. This time, though, I just wanted to read it and we didn't have the book, so I ...

Well, I ... I ordered it from another university.

Okay, I'm kidding. Truth is, the availability of so many books from so many good universities is one of the Gallaudet University Library's many benefits, and I feel no real shame in taking full advantage of it. In this case, it was Perfectly Reasonable Deviations, a collection of Richard Feynman's personal letters, edited by his daughter.

If you don't know who Richard Feynman (pronounced FINE-man) is, shame on you. He was one of the most significant and well-respected physicists of his time, which actually comprised the majority of the 20th Century -- he was born in 1918 and died in 1988. He started out fairly young, earning his doctorate at Princeton and working at Los Alamos in his 20s, helping the military figure out how to build an atomic bomb during World War II, then moved on to figuring out the fundamentals of several very important aspects of quantum physics. He went on to become one of Caltech's most popular teachers, won a Nobel Prize for some of his work in 1965, and was one of the investigators of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986.

It all sounds relatively pedestrian until you dig into the details of his life, which Perfectly Reasonable Deviations lets you do. For instance, he was also a widely-known bongo player. Mad about bongos, actually. He played them all over the world and once joked that people knew him better for his drumming than his physics. He had two great loves of his life; his first wife died in the 1940s of tuberculosis while he was working at Los Alamos, and he met (and married) his second wife on the spur of the moment in the 1960s and she was with him when he died in 1988, just shy of 70 years old. In the twenty years that separated both wives, though, it is said that he was very popular with the young ladies.

This might sound odd to you, but he was also one of the first scientist-celebrities. Albert Einstein made headlines, but this guy made movies. His Lectures on Physics sold millions of copies on tape and in print, and he had his own television miniseries, where he just stood there and talked about physics. People ate it up; he was a brilliant and engaging teacher who was able to explain some of the most exotic concepts known to modern science (at that time, anyway) to complete laymen. He was the first Carl Sagan, Michio Kaku, and Neil deGrasse Tyson in terms of his recognizability, though much closer to Stephen Hawking in his contributions to quantum physics.

He also had a bit of a Mr. Wizard sensibility; he demonstrated to a Congressional hearing that the Challenger disaster was due in large part to frozen O-rings failing to protect the Shuttle from the superheated gases propelling it upward. How? By dropping a piece of O-ring material in a Styrofoam cup of ice water, then showing how the cold temperature made the O-ring return to its proper shape much more slowly than it should have, a vital characteristic when you don't want multibillion-dollar spacecraft exploding and people dying.

Perfectly Reasonable Deviations emphasizes his popular appeal quite a bit; it includes dozens of fan letters from a wide range of people, from car mechanics to British housewives, all thanking him for making it all perfectly clear to them and asking him questions one wouldn't expect to hear outside of a graduate-level physics course.

Of course, the larger message of Perfectly Reasonable Deviations is subtle: Although Feynman became busier and busier and more and more famous over the fifty-year period covered in the book, he answered almost every single letter personally, albeit occasionally with apologies for taking so much time to respond. His responses nevertheless show that he took the time to read them, think about them, and do his best to answer any questions that came up. And they certainly came up; he responded to questions about anything from the quirks of particle behavior to a father's worries about his science-loving son. The overall impression is one of a very smart, very funny guy who treated complete strangers with the utmost grace.

It's highly recommended if you're curious about the life and mind of one of modern science's seminal figures. No lab-coat-bedecked geek here!

And now, as another brilliant 20th-Century mind once said, on with the opera.

Did you know that Gallaudet University has had a library since 1864? We'll be celebrating our 150th birthday in 2014. One of the biggest advantages of our longevity is that we've had time to collect some truly interesting items, including the occasional 19th-Century specimen.

Those older books can be pretty fragile, though; we do have plenty of cool stuff dating from 1950 up to now. Let's take a look, starting with the magical stuff (literally) and moving to the just plain interesting:

A History of Magic and Experimental Science
This one kind of breaks the rule -- the first volume was published in 1923, but the last was published in 1958. The title constitutes an interesting juxtaposition, doesn't it? In general, this series of historical investigations covers the transition from superstition and magical thinking to the scientific method, starting with the Roman Empire (Volume 1, The first thirteen centuries of our era) and ending with the dawning of the Age of Enlightenment (Volume 8, The seventeenth century). It's a fascinating look at the history of our civilization and the foundations of the rationalism so venerated in some circles today.

The Magician, the Witch, and the Law
Another historical tome, this one focuses more specifically on medieval witchcraft and the effect it had on society and the legal code -- such as it was in a feudal age. It examines how magic in general influenced public thinking, analyzing public discourse and how leaders took advantage of the superstitious to achieve their own ends -- and how the witches and magicians of the time took advantage of this same credulity to achieve their own. It also goes into some detail about how medieval witchery clashed with the Inquisition and the tragic results.

Magic: A Reference Guide
Because I am hilarious like that, we'll wrap up the conjuration with a book on prestidigitation: stage magic. This book is a terrific look into how something that may appear on stage to be utterly unexplainable is actually totally rational; it's all a matter of manipulating objects, the audience, and the situation. It's a fascinating read!

How to Enjoy Ballet
I have no real interest in ballet or learning how to enjoy it, but isn't the title great? In all seriousness, ballet is one of the most difficult forms of dancing; it's highly reliant on a combination of technically-adept execution and aesthetic appeal. Not only are there specific moves, foot placements, and arm positions, but a dancer needs to be able to follow the music and transition from one position to another as smoothly and elegantly as possible. Like figure-skating, it's a much-misunderstood but extremely complex form of expression, and some people need help understanding it. This book is a great place to start!

Contemporary Hermeneutics
It's not the most welcoming of titles, I agree; "hermeneutics" is generally defined as the science of exegesis, particularly of spiritual writings. In this book, though, it's placed in an architectural context on a continuum from Pre-Classicism all the way up to Ecoism. It discusses how buildings are interpreted, often in terms of the prevailing beliefs of the time. For example, Thomas Jefferson's mansion in Virginia, Monticello, was designed in the Palladian tradition, which was heavily reliant on geometry, symmetry, and the designs of ancient Greek temples. That one of our founding fathers chose to build a house that resembled, in some ways, a three-thousand-year-old temple suggests that he saw some essential similarities between ancient Greek society and the civilization he was trying to build. It's a very fascinating book, especially when you get up into the incredible mishmash of architectural philosophies represented by early-20th-Century New York.

Soviet Economic Progress: Because of, or in Spite of, the Government
Part of the reason I find this book interesting is the perception I have of US-USSR relations around 1957, when this book was published. It just feels as though both countries were completely closed off to one another, their motives inscrutable to us, ours untrustworthy to them. Intellectually, though -- and partly because of this book -- I understand that that simply wasn't true. In fact, in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations, reviewed above, there are several letters between Dr. Feynman and the Soviets as he repeatedly declines their invitations to participate in a symposium in Leningrad. There was plenty of information exchange between both countries, regardless of how hostile both governments were toward one another.

After Hamelin
This one's a lot newer; published in 2000, it's a novel about an old woman who tells a story about the Pied Piper of Hamelin. If you're not familiar with the story, the town of Hamelin had a serious rat problem, and they hired the Pied Piper to use his magical pipe to lure all the rats away. However, when he was done, the town refused to pay him, so in revenge, he pulled out his pipe and took all the children away, and they were never seen again. That's the basic story as most people know it; in After Hamelin, the old woman reveals a new fact: one child stayed behind. The Pied Piper couldn't lure her away because she was deaf! Terrific book.

Face Reading
This is a cool book! It relies on the art of physiognomy: determining aspects of personality based on one's facial shape and features. It's an ancient Chinese art (one of many, it sometimes seems) known as siang mien. Your ears can predict your future (how does that work for deaf people, I wonder ... ), and various facial features can impute information about one's sexuality, success in relationships, and the outcome of each year of a person's life. There's some bona-fide medical stuff in there too: some diseases are indicated, first and foremost, by changes in facial characteristics, like the loss of eyebrow hair, changes in the shape of the nose, lip coloration, and the structure of the eye.

I think we'll stop here -- it's an interesting mishmash of stuff I've dug up. There are many more books like these throughout the collection; an hour's worth of browsing can yield some serious serendipity if you're after the weird and offbeat.

As a reminder: Next week, no post. I'll be at the big, giant ALA conference. The following week, you'll get an on-the-ground report from your friendly neighborhood librarian!

Question of the Week
The Library printer I was using jammed! What do I do?
The first thing you should do is tell the person who's working at the Service Desk so he or she can fix it. If you're really pressed for time, you can also switch to the other printer. That's why we have two; sometimes things don't work quite right with one, so we have the other one as a backup.