Myron Uhlberg and Gallaudet's Common Reading

*cracks open one eye*

Is it Friday yet?

Needless to say, it's been a tremendously busy week; I thought last week was hectic enough, but this one's been nuts. I started working here right at the tail end of Fall 2008, and things seemed manageable. Still, the other librarians did a good job of warning me -- I thought Spring semester was wild enough, but Fall has turned out to be everything my colleagues have said and more. I'm ready for my three-day weekend now!

Now, let's prioritize -- first things first! I finished Everything Bad is Good for You this week. This was mostly thanks to Patrick Oberholtzer's recommendation after he found out I'd read The Dumbest Generation (reviewed here) and that I wasn't too crazy about the overwhelmingly negative things it said about my age group. Patrick's studied a lot of history, and he said The Dumbest Generation seems fairly typical of an older generation struggling to come to terms with a world that usually changes a lot in the interval between childhood and middle age, and suggested Everything Bad as an antidote.

It worked, big time. Everything Bad takes a look at the newer media that have emerged in the past 50 years or so (mostly so the author can include television) and concludes that it isn't making us dumber -- in fact, it's been making us smarter. For instance, take an episode of, say, Hill Street Blues (considered one of the most cerebral shows of its time) and compare it to an episode of Lost or The Sopranos. You'll see pretty quickly that the newer show is much, much more narratively complex (5-10 separate plotlines in a single episode) than the older one (one main plot and one throwaway subplot), and he says this sort of thing has become typical of most entertainment media today. Same with video games from Tetris (which has recently been shown to improve certain types of cognition) to Grand Theft Auto, which requires complex problem-solving skills for success. He calls all of this the "Sleeper Curve" -- a steady upward trend in human intelligence that's been hidden from statistical analysis for some time, mostly because of the annual renormalization of most intelligence assessments, like the IQ test, which periodically resets the "average" at 100 and thus shows no improvement. The truth is, several analyses (including a famous one by a fellow named James Flynn) have indicated that the actual level of intelligence generally considered to be "average" has actually risen by about three points per decade. The interesting part is that most of this increase has come from the lower end of the scale, suggesting that as a society, we're catching up to the smart kids.

The author admits that this doesn't apply to all forms of intelligence; in terms of, for example, knowing historical dates or understanding the process of catalysis, we aren't much better off than before. Still, we are a problem-solving species, and that's exactly the fundamental type of cognition we're showing a great deal of improvement in. It's a great feel-good read, both well-argued and deeply satisfying on a personal level.

Now, let's talk about another book.

Most of the folks reading this blog may know that Gallaudet has a Common Reading program that's part of the First Year Experience -- all new students get to read the same book and discuss it in their FYS classes. There are also events and visits from the author of the book; the idea is to engender discussion about various topics and provide some commonality among all first-year students. This year, the Common Reading is Hands of my Father: A Hearing Boy, his Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg.

This is a great choice! The book itself is a good read -- not only is it the story of a CODA, which has a special flavor all its own, but it also relates the story of a kid growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s and 1940s, a very different time and place. The usual deaf-parents-hearing-kid story is strongly colored by the atmosphere of the time, and a lot of the best anecdotes couldn't have happened today.

For example, Myron came to visit for a talk last Spring and related a hilarious story about the Fight of the Century: Joe Louis versus Max Schmeling. This was actually a rematch -- Louis and Schmeling had fought before, but Louis had lost, a sore disappointment to his American fans. He was -- and still is -- considered one of the greatest boxers in history and a representative of the American fighting spirit, while Schmeling was an imposing German. Bearing in mind that this fight took place in the mid-1930s, right when Hitler was getting very aggressive in Central Europe and catching the attention of the United States, this fight was heavily freighted with meaning and promised to be a terrific spectacle besides. Now, Myron's father also happened to be a huge boxing fan and tried to get tickets, but the fight was sold out, with over 70,000 people filling the stands. He had to be one of the millions of people listening to the fight on the radio, which was being broadcast all over the world in four different languages. Unfortunately, he was deaf. Fortunately, he had an interpreter: his five-year-old son!

This confronted Myron with a quandary. How does a five-year-old interpret one of the greatest fights of all time, based on the excited spluttering of an announcer over an ancient radio? He came up with a terrific solution: Listen to the announcer and act out the fight himself! So the fight began, and Myron immediately began pantomiming punches being thrown, bodies falling to the floor, running and jumping and jabbing and dropping while his father watched, laughing and absorbed in what was happening. The bout lasted only two minutes; Schmeling threw two punches and hit the ground three times; so did Myron. The apartment suddenly erupted in shouting and pounding -- the neighbors could hear him banging around through the thin walls and were yelling at him to be quiet!

Still, the fight was done. Joe Louis, and through him, the United States, was victorious. Schmeling was on the ground for the third and final time. And his father had seen it all.

Hands of my Father is full of memories like this. Deaf club meetings at Coney Island, old friends from long ago (including Robert Davila's parents!), and life as a child of deaf adults. There is much that seems familiar regardless of the era. There is also much that is very different, offering a peek into what is, for many younger people, an alien world.

Myron's also written several terrific children's books:

• Dad, Jackie, and Me - How a deaf man and his son encountered and overcame discrimination in the time of the first African-American baseball player.
• The Printer - The story of a deaf man working at a printer and what happens when a fire breaks out and he's the only one who can warn the others. Loosely based on Myron's father, who worked at a newspaper printing plant, this book includes some fun instructions on how to make your own printer's hat!
  
• Mad Dog McGraw - A sweet little tale of a mean dog, a scared kid, and how kindness can overcome even the most intimidating barriers.
• Lemuel, the Fool - The hilarious story of a foolish fisherman who tries to sail to a magical city over the horizon, but encounters a village that looks mighty similar to his own.
• Flying over Brooklyn - A young boy in the midst of the Great Blizzard of 1947 dreams of flying through the falling snow and seeing the city laid out below him. Wonderful art, and an enjoyable tale.

All of his books (except Hands of my Father, which is understandably in high demand right now) are on display on the table by the West entrance (facing Peet). We've also thrown in other books by and about CODAs, most of which are autobiographical, as well as some films. They're all worth taking home to read or watch!

I'm short on blog posts this week because I'm long on work, so we're done for the week. In honor of Labor Day and its message of rest and recreation for all the nation's workers (including me!), no Question of the Week. Instead, enjoy your three days of freedom and (hopefully) beautiful weather!

What You Need to Know: Part 5 (Fall 2009)

What a busy week!

We did the GSO Arrival Day event on Monday and handed out plenty of fliers and goodies; then the GSO Lunch on Tuesday and had a great time meeting all the new grad students (and giving them the third degree about what they wanted to see from us, which will have an impact on this blog for the rest of the Fall semester; you can expect more reviews and research tips!); then spent all day Wednesday outside in the sun and warmth giving out ice-cold lemonade and even more goodies to new students and their families, earning, I am sure, the eternal gratitude of some on such a hot day; and welcoming faculty members into our Library on Thursday for Faculty Development Week.

In the middle of it all, I've been working hard on making electronic reserves available to the professors who need it, putting together materials for GSO Arrival Day and the lunch, trying to finish off a LibGuide that'll help you find good stuff to read in the stacks, keeping library.gallaudet.edu updated with important news and downloads (such as this PDF of our GSO Lunch presentation -- check it out, the trivia's good!), carrying heavy stuff, meeting new students, helping new faculty, and just generally being all librarian-ish.

Not to mention getting the new Library online catalog actually ... online. It should be up and running by Monday -- keep an eye out!

In the middle of it all, I actually managed to finish Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Really, the only reason I could pull it off was just that the book is one of the most page-turningest things I've read in a long time. Cory's one of my favorite authors; he's a very active blogger and all-around techie and is something of a prominent civil liberties advocate (he believes in copyfighting, the principle that information "wants to be free," works with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and distributes news about various government intrusions on individual rights in the Anglosphere). He's also a fantastic writer who's written some fascinating "in the very near future" books (almost all of which can be found as free downloads online under Creative Commons licenses), which includes Little Brother.

Little Brother is the story of a 17-year-old San Franciscan technological prodigy who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when San Francisco is attacked by terrorists. The Bay Bridge (and underlying BART tunnel) is blown up, thousands are killed, and San Francisco is cut in half. Predictably (this novel was published a year before the 2008 elections), the government swoops in, arrests the main character and his friends, and detains them all on suspicion of terrorism in a torture-prison camp in the middle of San Francisco Bay without any legal recourse. He just disappears for a few days and is tortured into giving up his secrets, then released. The rest of the book follows him as he becomes a cyberterrorist, using all the various technological means the government employs to keep track of every citizen in San Francisco against them to both foment chaos and make a point about overbearing government intrusion. Along the way, he finds love, frees his best friend from the government, causes massive traffic jams, stops the BART in its tracks (so to speak), and leads a movement of tens of thousands of people under the age of 25 in their fight to overthrow the Department of Homeland Security and take the city back for themselves.

It's an amazing read. You learn a lot about how some newer technology actually works (like radio-frequency identification (RFID) -- which you can find in your Metro SmarTrip card; it's what lets you just tap it at the faregate and move right on through) and how to subvert it, you meet some truly fascinating characters along the way, and you see what happens when Big Brother clamps down and Little Brother decides to fight back.

Ordinarily, because it's been a lazy summer, I'd say the book is on display. However, we've just swapped out the book recommendations for a display of books on college survival strategies. I would also strongly recommend checking out the other display table by the West entrance (near Peet) -- we just put up a bunch of Myron Uhlberg's other books in celebration of his memoir, Hands of my Father, being this year's Common Reading, as well as a few other CODA memoirs and videos.

Okay. On with the show.

We're going to wrap up "What You Need to Know" with just a straight clarification of our borrowing policies. The idea is just so you're clued in on how long you get our materials, how much of our materials you can get, and what happens if things get overdue. This way, you can read this and then come on over and start borrowing stuff!

The first and most important thing: you need a Library barcode. It's affixed to the back of your Gallaudet ID card (which means only students, faculty, staff, and alumni with a lifetime membership can get it). You will not be able to borrow anything without that barcode; we need to have that piece of plastic in our hand before we can check anything out to you. That's the first, most basic thing you can remember.

Now, let's talk about our borrowing periods for books. They're pretty context-specific, which means they vary according to who you are and what you're checking out. I'm just going to make a bullet-point list, categorized according to whether you're an undergrad, graduate student, faculty member, or staff member.

• Undergraduate student
• 4 weeks
• Graduate student
• Books from the General Stacks: 6 weeks
• Books from the Deaf Stacks: 4 weeks
  
• Faculty
• Books from the General Stacks: 1 semester; all annual due dates are: 1/31, 5/31, 9/30. All books are subject to recall (very rare) after 4 weeks
  
• Books from the Deaf Stacks: 4 weeks
  
• Staff member
• 4 weeks
• All groups can check out an unlimited number of books
• All groups have the same restriction on videos:
• Each person can only borrow up to three videos at a time
• Up to 3 days
• The reason for this is explained in Part 3's Question of the Week
  

Alumni have a few different rules, according to the terms of the AA's lifetime membership:

• 4 weeks, same as most other groups
• 10 books max
• Videos can only be checked up for up to 2 hours and cannot leave the building

Why? Well, because our alumni are fairly far-flung; many do not live anywhere near Washington, DC. A lot of times, when they come in to check out materials, it's while they're in town for a few days to visit. In the hubbub of visiting the ol' alma mater, it's easy to forget that you've got a Library DVD in a suitcase pocket until you're halfway to Dulles, and then what do you do? We also realize that there's a huge number of Gallaudet alumni still in the DC Metro area, but in the interest of fairness, the same limits apply to all alumni with lifetime memberships. Then there's the fact that our first responsibility is to our students, so we do what we can to make sure they have the best chance possible to use our collection, given the demand for our materials.

So, okay. You've checked out some books and movies with the understanding entailed by the bullet points above. What happens if you go past the due date without returning your stuff?

We start charging by the day. 25 cents for books, $1 for movies. We do this because it turns out to be a pretty good incentive for people to bring our things back. This way, we can make sure that others who may want the same book or movie can get it within a reasonable time. Our fines accumulate until the total for each item hits $10; after that point, the item is marked as 'Lost' and we hit you with $87 for replacement and processing (explained in further detail here). We also give a three-day grace period in case the book really is lost -- we'll waive everything if the book is returned within those three days, but if the book comes back after those three days are up, all of the overdue fines accrued since the end of the three-day period have to be paid.

If you've accumulated more than $25 altogether in fines, you won't be able to borrow anything else until you've gotten that number down to $24.99 or less. Hit $50, and you won't be able to register for classes. Hit graduation with any fines on your record, and you won't be able to get your diploma or any academic transcripts until your record's been cleared. Kind of tough, but it's for good reason: all of our books and movies actually belong to Gallaudet University. Things need to be even-Steven between you and the University before you can get that sheepskin, get a job, or stick around for the next semester.

Don't think we exact every cent we can from anyone who owes us money; we don't break legs, manufacture concrete overshoes, or encourage people to sleep with the fishes. We just want our stuff back. If the item was overdue because of unavoidable situations (like suddenly being called out of town due to a family member's medical emergency), come in and talk to the staff at the desk, and we'll work with you to figure something out. In the meantime, it's usually possible to renew books electronically through myALADIN to buy a little more time.

That about covers the basics of What You Need to Know before Monday, August 31 hits.

Next week, we'll talk a little bit more about Hands of my Father. It should be fun -- I was fortunate enough to attend a talk by Myron here on campus last spring, and he was just an incredibly energetic and entertaining speaker. Something to look forward to!

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Question of the Week
I was watching that PowerPoint that was running on your computers this week, and noticed something about eReserves. I know it's for faculty, but what is it?
If you're a student, chances are you've had a course where the professor had all of his readings on Blackboard. Sometimes they're PDFs, sometimes they take you to a page on ProQuest or Ebsco. Those are eReserves -- we accept requests from faculty for help getting their readings online so they don't need to make 320 copies (say, 16 readings for 20 students) to hand out in class. It just cuts down on paper for everyone, especially since we used to offer actual, physical reserves here at the Library -- rows and rows of photocopied articles!

We also scan any readings that don't have electronic copies for professors who want those articles to be available online. We take care of any copyright issues that might come up and make sure everything's accessible, complete, and readable for all the students in a given course. It's a very popular service, and helps out a lot of harried, overworked faculty and keeps students from being loaded down with a bunch of dead trees.

All in all, it's just one way for us to contribute to the smooth running of Gallaudet's curriculum!

What You Need to Know: Part 4 (Fall 2009)

First: What has Jim the Librarian Read Lately?

Sort of a mélange, actually. I got through both Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson and White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.

Tree of Smoke was an interesting book. It follows a few characters through Asia in the time of the Vietnam War, touched off by the assassination of President Kennedy. Some of it takes place in Vietnam and some of it takes place in the Philippines, and all of it consists of interesting episodes in the lives of its characters as they struggle through the expanding ripples of the war. Most of it seems to be a commentary of sorts on human nature, both in terms of the local culture and the Americans who are there for various reasons. It's also pretty funny in parts. White Tiger, on the other hand, is one of that rare breed of books: both screamingly hilarious and deeply thought-provoking. It follows the life of one Balram Halwai and his trajectory from an impoverished village in rural India to a job as a driver for a wealthy man in Delhi, then to a murder, flight, and eventually success as a Bangalore entrepreneur, all in the form of a series of letters to Chinese premier Hu Jintao. The letters also serve as a meditation on India itself and the people who live in it; there's so much that's both familiar and jarringly different. Large, sparkling malls rise next to slums where people use a communal trough as both a bathroom and a ward against outsiders, and Balram must learn to live with his employer's American wife and her startling, last-minute compassion while placating his traditional grandmother's demands that he return to the village to be married. It's a truly fantastic book.

As always, both are on display.

Now, moving on. We've reached part 4, and this is a big post: I'll be talking about the changes we're making to our online catalog. They're big and bold, and you should start coming across them sometime next week while searching through our collection.

As you can see in the screenshot to the left, the changes, though largely cosmetic in terms of utility, are drastic. Things look a little blank for now because we're still tweaking the eye-candy. Still, you can really see how different it is from the old catalog.

First, some background, then we'll go over the different elements step-by-step.

We've basically switched over from the old platform to a new one. This new platform is called "Aquabrowser," and it's been getting a lot of interest from libraries all over, including the one at Harvard University. We're calling it "ALADIN Discovery," and it's an improvement over the old one because more information is immediately visible, and it provides quite a few more options for manipulating your search so you can more easily navigate your way through both our collection and the collections of the seven other universities in the WRLC.

With that said, let's get specific!

It's in beta
This isn't by any stretch of the imagination the final product. We plan to tinker with various elements of the catalog search as we hear more from all of you about what you like or dislike about using the new system. There's quite a bit of customization possible with this, which is why it's such a good thing to have!

That word-web kind of thingy on the left
... for lack of a better term, anyway. This is one of the key features that's coming in with this change. This is mostly a semantic web; that means that any keyword will automatically bring up a bunch of other words that are related to your original keyword. This can help you find other words for the same thing, related concepts, spelling variants (in case you mistyped the keyword or there's an equally-applicable word that's just a little different -- like "emphasize" and "emphasise"), translations, or what is called a "Discovery trail," which consists of the last words you searched for. It's good for either expanding your ability to search for related concepts or just plain old looking around.

The search results
You'll see right away that it's now much easier to see whether the item you're looking at is a book or a movie. No more [videorecording]s! We also used to have individual records for the same item held by different schools. It didn't matter if our copy of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest was identical to Georgetown's copy; both copies had their own separate records because they were at different schools. Not anymore! We've managed to accomplish the monumental feat of merging all of our records so that one record can now apply to multiple copies across multiple schools. This should help make things much easier for you to find.

Select location
Basically exactly what it looks like. Right now, the default search will show all the libraries in the WRLC, but you can still limit your search to Gallaudet's holdings only, just by using this drop-down menu.

Narrow results by:
Also pretty much what it looks like. You can do this for time period (such as "telecommunication devices" before 1931), region ("children's literature" from China), online (do you prefer e-books or would you rather avoid those?), and so on and so forth. There are a lot of different options that should come in very handy when you're searching for something that may be difficult to find.

Now let's take a look at an actual item record ...

As you can see in the screenshot to the right, the first part in the middle isn't so new -- it looks a lot like the kind of record you could get through the old catalog system. However, the Notes (which tells you what additional stuff is included, like an index or a bibliography), Summary (self-explanatory), and Contents (basically a table of contents) fields are all now collapsible; you can show or hide them as you please. This saves space and makes it easier to make sure that the item has what you need before you go looking for it and possibly checking it out.

Below that, you can see the new "Item availability" section, which tells you which school has a copy, where that copy is located, and whether or not it's available. If you can't check the book out right away, but want to keep the record for later, we also now provide a few different ways to do so, whether by printing, e-mailing, Twittering, or digging. Also, the CLS request process has been simplified: just click the "Request" button!

Up on the left, you can see the options for viewing the MARC record (basically the actual record as it's coded into our catalog, untranslated into the nice, neat version you see here), options for working with the record's Web address (URL) so you'll be able to go straight to it from an external source, and exporting all the information in the record into RefWorks, where it'll create a citation for you if you use the book in a paper.

In a nutshell, we're just looking to make our catalog into even more of a one-stop shop than ever. You should be able to do many more things on your own. It also looks a bit more updated than the old catalog, which was kind of static, confusingly laid-out, and anything but visually-oriented. It was a great workhorse while it lasted, but, as you can see, we're ready to move on to the next generation, and we think you are, too.

We are also totally open for any comments or feedback on ALADIN Discovery; I've said the system is pretty flexible and there are many customizable elements, but we can't make very good changes without your input. We'll be adding a link to leave comments soon, but in the meantime, just click on "Ask a Librarian" up top on the right-hand side and let us know what you think!

That wraps it up for Part 4. As I said, we'll be rolling this new system out sometime next week, so keep an eye out and get ready to experiment!

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Question of the Week
I'm a grad student, and I love to read, but would like to find out more about the Library. Will the Library be involved in any orientation activities?
You bet we are. On Monday, August 24, we'll have a table at GSO Arrival Day in JSAC, where you can pick up some goodies, grab this handout (PDF), and give ALADIN a try, including searching the catalog for your favorite book or movie and checking out our very impressive list of databases.

Then on Tuesday, we'll be doing lunch with all the new grad students at the Plaza Dining Hall. We're going to give a multimedia presentation full of interesting Library facts and some very far-out trivia. You'll also be able to talk to some of our librarians and ask us anything!

Then we'll be hanging out in front of the building on Wednesday, giving out lemonade and other treats for New Undergraduate Student Arrival Day, although, of course, anyone (including grad students) is welcome to stop by and get a nice cool drink and a delicious snack!

And, of course, all through the week, feel free to drop by the Library (we're open until 5 p.m. all week), take a look at what we have, meet the people who work here, ask questions, and maybe borrow something nice to take home with you before you get too busy to enjoy the Library for anything other than academic work!

What You Need to Know: Part 3 (Fall 2009)

Wow.

That's all I can say after polishing off The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. It's kind of a crazy book, describing a sort of alternate universe where, after World War II, the Jews were resettled temporarily in Alaska instead of the Middle East. Temporarily, I said -- the book is set two months before the Jews have to turn over control of the land to the United States after occupying it for 50 years. In the middle of all this, a police detective finds a dead man in his apartment building, murdered in what appears to be a professional manner. It's police-department policy that all cases have to be cleared before the Americans take over, so our main character has to navigate his way through organized crime, the world of chess and its champions, a crazed rehab center, a shootout or two, the death of his sister years before, and a whole lot of alcohol before a lot of questions get answered in very surprising ways.

Oh, there's also American-government-funded international terrorism, a burning cow, and a whacked-out religious cult who thinks dynamite can bring back the Messiah. Surprisingly enough, it's also pretty funny. Highly recommended, worth the awards it's won, and available on the display table by the entrance facing the SAC!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Now that we've gotten all the previous blogs out of the way, let's move on.

Back in May, I posted this. Did any of it happen? Let's go over it point by point.

New computers
Yes and no. We did get new computers, but instead of adding them to what we already have, we decided that everyone would be best served by using the new computers to replace some of our older ones, which were getting decidedly creaky. It happens to all computers after a while, especially when they see usage as heavy as ours have. We also had Information Technology Services (ITS) come in and load some fresh Gallaudet images on their hard drives (geekspeak for "They cleaned it all up"), so you should see things running a little quicker this Fall.

New Web site
This was covered in the subsequent week, but we're actually still tweaking and adding stuff. There'll be a pretty big change happening to the ALADIN Catalog next week as well, which will be covered in next week's post; it's a pretty big "What You Need to Know" that deserves a week to itself.

New Library hours
The hours for Fall 2009 have been posted (down at the bottom). The most immediate change you may notice is that starting Monday, August 31, we'll be open until midnight Sundays through Thursdays, and until 8 p.m. on Friday. That's a fairly significant change, one that's a little kinder to night-owls and people who need a little extra time to get work done.

LibGuides
As I mentioned in the original post back in May, LibGuides are basically quick and easy research guides that we can whip up on any given topic for a particular course. They also serve as a way for us to introduce students to all of our resources and teach them how to fend for themselves in the wilds of academic research. Some students -- particularly those in GSR courses -- may end up using one or two of them this Fall; we're sort of gingerly dipping our toes in the water when it comes to integrating LibGuides with the curriculum. As always, if you do use one, feedback is welcome!

Aside from that, I thought I'd add a little note about our current hours, which seems to have taken some by surprise. We are indeed closing at 5 p.m. until the start of the Fall semester, which is -- wow -- only two weeks from Monday. It's what we do during intersession (the break between semesters) in order to make sure everyone's here at the same time for various reasons. Come August 31, things will go back to what we so laughably call "normal."

Enjoy your weekend!

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Question of the Week
I was curious about the borrowing limits. We're allowed to check out as many books as we want, but we can only take out three movies at a time. Why is that?
Simply put, we have a whole lot more books than movies -- about 260,000 books versus 8,000 movies, or around 30 times as many books. This is because we do our best to make sure that every conceivable topic that could be studied at Gallaudet is well-covered from a variety of viewpoints. The system works pretty well for one of the following four reasons:

• When someone's researching a topic, it's usually with a fairly narrow focus -- only a few books on the subject will actually apply, while the rest are free for others to use (say, the Constitution of the Weimar Republic, as opposed to the subsequent rise of the Third Reich).
  
• The sheer number of books makes it pretty hard to carry out everything we have on the more common topics (17th-Century British poetry, for instance).
  
• If someone actually does do that, it's usually because their topic is so esoteric (like the mating dances of the Ruahuaparura tribe of the darkest Amazon as undertaken under the waning gibbous) that nobody else will be researching it at the same time.
• If the above three fail to apply to a particular situation, the professor leading the class usually will have foreseen the problem and placed the most important books on reserve so nobody can hang on to them for more than two hours at a time.
  

In other words, our supply of books is well-matched to the demand for them.

However, our supply of movies is a bit less than the demand for them, so we try to make sure people have a reasonable number of movies and a reasonable amount of time to watch them in, before asking that they be returned so fellow Gallaudetians can enjoy them too!

What You Need to Know: Part 2 (Fall 2009)

I just realized that I haven't said anything about what books I've read in the past couple weeks. So much for that habit.

The main reason for that is The Dumbest Generation, which I started and put down when I got within 100 pages of finishing. In case you're curious, this book discusses what feels like a couple thousand studies, all of which outline a pretty basic, simple fact: the people of my generation, the so-called Millennials, don't read. At all. And this will destroy our civilization. Cheerful.

I put it down before finishing because another book kept distracting me: the Selected Poems of Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson. I usually call him Lord Alfred -- he's one of my favorite poets, along with a few others from that era, but I hadn't read his stuff in a long time, so I finally caved in and brought The Dumbest Generation back here so I could focus more fully on that. Absurd, really: I put down a book that was telling me that I don't read -- in order to pay more attention to a book of Victorian poetry.

Since then, I've gone through The Age of American Unreason, which is sort of similar to The Dumbest Generation, but instead of focusing only on my age group, Unreason examines some of the more disturbing trends in American society over the past few decades toward anti-intellectualism for a number of reasons, culminating -- and this isn't a political opinion, it's just what the book says -- in the last presidential administration. Really a fascinating book. Also Never Let Me Go, which reminds me a lot of Margaret Atwood's work -- which is a good thing if you liked The Handmaid's Tale, not so much if you didn't like Oryx & Crake. It's the gently-dystopian story of a trio of clones in Britain who were bred for organ donations and the ways in which their lives intertwine as they, both together and separately, slowly figure out what it means to be a human being in the face of a society seeking to deny them that knowledge. It's a beautifully-written story -- especially if you like the English countryside, which, in this book, appears to be less damp and more scenic. It also happens to be one of those books with a very ambiguous ending; it's up to you whether or not to feel a sense of closure. Terrific book.

Out of the above, only The Dumbest Generation and Never Let Me Go are on display. Selected Poems and American Unreason don't have very eye-catching covers, which happens to be one of my major criteria for deciding whether to put a book up on display. You can still find them easily, though -- just click on the linked titles above and that'll take you right to their records and call numbers.

Now that that's over with, back to more utilitarian considerations.

Last week, I took you through this blog's previous posts which could be classified as focusing mostly on the librarians, the collection, and our equipment and important resources, as well as a kinda-sorta FAQ. This week, we'll be looking at directly research-related posts -- if you're wondering about how to get started on your research here at the Library, this is where you should start -- and the Questions of the Week by category.

First up: Finding Journal Articles
Part 1 | Part 2
This pair of posts details the process of finding journal articles in our databases. Part 1 gives a general overview of how to find journals in ALADIN and what most of the terms mean, as well as good general advice for starting your research from a broader standpoint (when you know the topic but not the specific articles you want to find). Part 2 gets even more specific, starting with a sample citation and explaining exactly how to find the article it belongs to.

Databases
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

This series of posts is considerably more comprehensive. Part 1 discusses how to access databases from off-campus, which can be a sticking point for people who are not used to having to log in to see an article. After this point, the general idea is to familiarize you with the hows and whys of databases -- Part 2 covers how our access works (and explaining why it may seem to be funky from time to time), Part 3 is about why our access works the way it does and how much databases cost in general, and Part 4 includes a preview of new stuff we may be getting in the coming months.

Questions of the Week
Bear in mind: all Questions of the Week (or as we refer to them around here in our e-mail missives, QotWs) appear at the bottom of the linked posts. I've split up all the QotWs into four rough categories, as follows:

Library building
What's up with the recent construction around the Library? (July 31, 2009)
Why is the big skylight in the middle of the first floor blocked by sails? (June 12, 2009)
Where can I plug in my laptop or charge my phone? (June 5, 2009)
Does the Library own the entire building? (May 22, 2009)

Library system and policies
How does a new student get into the system? (July 24, 2009)
Why do the Library hours change? (May 15, 2009)
How do the shelves behind the Service Desk work? (March 27, 2009)
What is the Consortium? (March 13, 2009)

Library collection
How does the Library make room for all the new books? (June 19, 2009)
How do I get the Library to buy a book I'd really like to read? (April 17, 2009)
What are "microforms" and how do I use them? (April 3, 2009)

Searching
How do I search for a movie in ALADIN without having to wade through a long list of books? (May 1, 2009)
How do call numbers work? (April 24, 2009)
Why can't I find what I'm looking for? (April 9, 2009)
What does 'peer-reviewed' mean? (March 6, 2009)

Alternatively, you can click on the 'qotw' label in the sidebar to the right to see all 15 of them in one go.

Since there are 15 Questions of the Week in this post alone, I'll give you a break and forgo it this week. I also mentioned last week the possibility of comparing our plans for the summer from back in May with what's actually happened, but we'll put it off until next week -- this post is quite long enough already, thanks to my bookish babbling up top.

I'm off to watch the Nationals play Arizona (I would have said "lose to," but my boss is a Nats fan, so ... ). Enjoy your weekend ... if it doesn't rain too much!

What You Need to Know: Part 1 (Fall 2009)

I looked at my travel coffee mug this morning and noticed the surface rippling slightly, like in the movies when something big is coming towards the main character. The first thing they notice is a conveniently-placed container of liquid that suddenly begins to quiver, and by then it's too late.

I think it's a few thousand feet marching toward Gallaudet. It's Fall, and it's coming.

In that spirit, here's the first post of What You Need to Know. For the first couple of weeks, I'll be collecting all the previous posts and categorizing them according to what's in them -- librarian profiles, research tips, available resources. You'll see some of the same posts under different headings; that's partly because I do try to pack a lot of information into a single week. The Questions of the Week are also to blame, because they usually cover different topics from the main posts; these will be organized separately next week.

Once that's done, I'll move on to more focused posts for the new Gallaudet students, as well as clarifying what exactly has changed over the summer in preparation for the Fall semester.

First things first: The first post, which clarifies exactly what this blog's purpose is and why you should be reading it. This also serves as a good introduction to me in particular. Another good way to get an idea of what goes on in my life as a Gallaudet librarian is to read this sort-of-FAQ post.

The Librarians
Jane Rutherford
Management of Information Systems, Computer Science, Education, Educational Foundations and Research, Administration and Supervision, Family and Child Studies

Diana Gates
The entire Deaf collection

Patrick Oberholtzer
Government & History, PE & Recreation, Business, Economics and Finance, Accounting, Biology, Foreign Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Chemistry & Physics

Laura Jacobi
Reference, Social Work, Psychology, Sociology, Communication Studies, Counseling

Our Collection
March Movies
Albeit a tad outdated -- we've gotten many more movies since March -- this should give you some idea of what kind of films we have to offer. We also welcome donations, by the way!

Book Recommendations
Stuff our librarians like. We're an exceptionally well-read bunch, so when we recommend something, you know it's good!

Graphic Novels
A discussion of graphic novels in general; some of ours are highlighted. We've also gotten quite a few more, which I will be updating you on soon. I promise. Just as soon as the Library quits having so much stuff to write about.

Summer Reading
MORE librarian recommendations. I told you we read a lot. These books were pushed as good for summer reading, but honestly, they're also good in the fall. Also the winter. And, I believe, the spring. In fact, let's just call them all-around good reading all year long.

New Book Cart Day
This will probably become a regular feature -- we get cartloads of new books in, you get to find out what's on them and assume your positions so you can snap them up once they're on the shelf. This represents the last cartload of popular fiction that arrived for this year, but we do have a healthy stream of donations coming in, so keep your eyes peeled until we start the new year and begin buying books again.

Deaf Memories
This post details how the most popular parts of the Deaf Collection work, including Deaf School Yearbooks and Periodicals. It's all located on the first floor of the Library.

Equipment/Important Resources
A Comprehensive Overview
I'm not kidding when I say "comprehensive." This post covers all the equipment we have, from TVs to microform readers to magnifiers for people with visual impairments. If you need some kind of doohickey and you think the Library might have it for you to use, check this post.

Behind the Scenes
Go inside the belly of the beast. What are we hiding behind that big old desk? Read this post and find out!

Our New Web Site
A quick overview of our Web site, which was redesigned in May.

That should be enough for this week. Next week will be a collection of posts discussing research at the Gallaudet Library and the Questions of the Week, organized by category. If there's room (which I doubt), we'll also compare this coming-previews post from May to how things are looking here, at the other side of the summer.

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Question of the Week
What's going on with all the construction around the Library? My friends and I noticed it the other week and were trying to figure it out.
It's actually less construction and more maintenance. You may have noticed that the Library has a few skylights at ground level. While they definitely add a nice aesthetic touch to campus and add a lot of natural light to the Library, there are also some practical considerations involved. As with any other architectural element made of glass, the panes need to be cleaned and re-sealed every few years. Also, the skylights have brick abutments to protect the glass from the elements, which means the bricks themselves are vulnerable to cracking or chipping. Because of this, we also replace any damaged bricks while working on the skylights, killing two birds with one stone and incidentally keeping things nice and fresh-looking in the process!

Meet Laura Jacobi

Without much preamble, we're going to meet Laura Jacobi today. Laura is actually kind of a bigwig. Her official title is Manager of Instruction & Reference Services, which means she's my supervisor. Bureaucratic considerations aside, though, she's also a hard-working librarian like Jane, Diana, and Patrick, someone who has to be quick on her feet and with her wits. She's also spent some time in prison and may, in fact, be an extraterrestrial. Read on to find out more!

1) Where are you from, anyway?
My heart is in the Klaatu Nebula, but I'm also a proud daughter of the Garden State (Exit 135 on the Parkway). I now live in Takoma Park, aka Berkeley East. I occasionally see other Gallaudet faculty and staff members as we get our exercise in Sligo Creek Park.

2) How did you get here?
Usually by car (ask me anything about the Jersey Turnpike) or Amtrak. I came to attend what was then called Trinity College, hung around to work here, went to graduate school at Catholic U, and married a local guy. I thought I'd work for a business, but instead started out as a children's librarian. I worked for many years in a variety of jobs in a variety of branches of the Prince George's County public library. I also worked for Prince George's Community College. My other jobs have included: clerk, dictation typist (ask your grandparents what a typewriter is), and -- very briefly -- maximum security prison librarian. Anyhow, eventually it was time for a new challenge, and I certainly found it here!

3) How long have you worked here, and can you give me an idea of some of the more interesting things you've seen in your tenure at Gallaudet?
I've been here since 1993. The biggest change is that the Internet has become so absolutely an essential part of our lives. As a librarian, I think it's fun to find (not search for) information, and the web has expanded our ability to find stuff easily, far beyond anything I ever imagined. Technology for deaf people has changed too -- I used to think ttys were high tech. It’s always neat to see students start out as freshman, advance to senior year, march in their caps and gowns, and come back as grad students or with their spouses and children. And of course it's been very interesting to watch Gallaudet politics over the years.

4) I don't think a lot of people know that the librarians here at Gallaudet tend to specialize in specific subjects. What are your specialties?
A cool part of my job is deciding which books, journals, and online sources to buy for my specialties -- Reference and “Human Relations.” Reference books are designed to be used to find specific information very quickly. Now people usually prefer web resources to books for quick information, so we buy lots of online reference sources. They’re available in the ALADIN computer system. “Human Relations” refers to the disciplines of Communication Studies, Counseling, Psychology, Social Work, and Sociology. I pick books, journals, and databases for them too. And until you came along, I used to have the fun of selecting pleasure reading and viewing books and videos – I miss that! I regularly ask the faculty in my disciplines to tell me what I should buy, and I like to get suggestions from students too.

5) What can you do for students or faculty in these fields?
First, I try to make sure we have what students and faculty need before they even know they need it. Also, we have cool new software called “LibGuides,” and I’m writing some guides on different subjects and, I hope, for specific courses – faculty and student suggestions are welcome! I can go to classes or do workshops in the Library to help students research particular topics, and anyone can make an appointment to work with me in private without interruptions.

6) Can you list some of the resources that you use the most in working with students and faculty? Why are they good resources to use?
This is a hard question, because ALADIN has 60+ databases. I particularly like ERIC and PsycINFO, which are two education and psychology databases, because you can use their built-in thesauri to do very specific searches for very complex topics. One example might be: How can I find quantitative research reports on psychological services for disadvantaged minority deaf-blind people? Another nifty database, mostly created by former Gallaudet librarian Tom Harrington, is the Gallaudet University Library Guide to Deaf Biographies. Have there ever been any deaf totem pole carvers? That’s the place to find out.

7) What do you like the most about working here?
Wow, I have a long list! I work with some really smart librarians who know a lot more than I do and like to share information too. I love it when my help transforms a student from confused or frustrated to satisfied and confident. I never know what people are going to ask next. And they’re going to ask it in sign language! (I learned to sign pretty late in life, and it’s still a thrill to understand and be understood.) Because we’re a fairly small library, I do a lot of different things -- checking out books, making schedules, learning new databases, trying to figure out how to explain complex things simply –- so there’s always something fun or challenging to do. And I get to learn for a living.

8) There's been some talk about a new library building in the works over the next few years. What's the one thing you'd most like to see included in the new one?
Long before I decided to become a librarian, I always loved the feeling of walking into a library – a spacious, serene place full of things to be discovered, and they were there for me. Whatever the physical space is like, as long as the space and staff inspire that feeling in students, it will be all right.

9) Last question, I promise: What's your favorite color?
Blue, but then there’s green, and they’re best in contrast to red and yellow …

Good grief. That finishes off all the librarians in the public eye (including me). There are actually a few others on staff, but they're kind of more behind the scenes, and although they will be profiled later, I ... I feel like I've been collecting trading cards or collectibles and just finished the set. What am I going to do now?

This has plunged me into a funk. Just ... read the Question of the Week and I'll see you next week, when we start on a series of What Arriving Students Need to Know ...

Sigh.

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Question of the Week
I'm a new freshman and I just arrived for Jump Start. I went to the Library and asked the person behind the Desk how I could start checking out books and movies, but they said I wasn't in the system yet. Why not? How does the Library get me into the system?
Through the Registrar's Office. Our system only allows students at all levels (undergraduate, graduate, doctoral) to check out items from the Library if they're registered for the current semester, and this is accomplished by an injection of student data from the Registrar every few days. It takes a little bit of time (especially during the crunch that happens before the Fall semester begins), but both the Library and the Registrar do everything we can to get everyone who should be in the system into the system as soon as possible. If you are registered for the current term, but that information isn't showing on your record, let us know about the problem and we'll do our best to find out where the hangup is and fix it.

In the meantime, you are more than welcome to pull books or magazines (Vogue,The Amazing Spider-Man, Hot Rod, whatever) from the shelves and hang out in the Library to read and relax. You can also check out DVDs and videotapes for up to 2 hours in exchange for a photo ID and watch them in the Library -- we have tons of TVs, VCRs, and DVD players. My personal recommendation is room 1220, the Deaf Library Study Center; you can either use the 55-inch flat-panel through the computer that's hooked up to it, or one of the wall-mounted TV/DVD/VCR booths. There are comfortable chairs in there that you can pull up to one of the booths and lounge in with snacks and a refreshing beverage. The only stipulation is that the stuff you're looking at isn't allowed to leave the building. Otherwise, feel free to make yourself at home (so to speak).

Databases, part 4: What's next

I may as well go ahead and make a habit of it. Here goes:

What did Jim the Librarian read this week?
I read The Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke. I've been hoping for a chance to really read through it since it arrived but it wasn't available for checkout until recently. Even librarians can get beaten to the punch by enthusiastic readers. Anyway, it's about this guy who accidentally burns Emily Dickinson's house to the ground -- with two people in it. He gets sent to prison for ten years, where he befriends a very strange group of bond analysts, and when he gets out, he goes off to college, where he meets a woman and marries her and has a couple of children with her ... all without telling her about his sordid past. It's when the truth comes out at last that everything goes all fruity and our bumbling, possibly slightly-sociopathic protagonist stumbles across secret after secret and ends up back in a place he thought he'd never see again. All along the way is this hilarious trip through literature: he meets a man whose brother has a flaming hatred for a writer who wrote only one book, a professor who thinks Mark Twain is a -- ahem -- feminine apparatus, a hideously masculine New England Writer and the real New England Men who hate him, and the general absurdity of the memoir craze of recent years. It's literary satire, and extremely well-done at that.

Once again, it's on the display table by the entrance facing the JSAC if anyone would like to check it out. I highly, highly recommend it.

Okay. Enough of my gushing. On with the show.

For the past few weeks, we've been discussing various aspects of life with databases: how to get in from off-campus, why you'll see such a wide variation in database access through our Library, and the reasons for limiting access and the costs thereof. Today, we're going to get away from all that and take a look at the wishlist we librarians have in mind for our next few electronic acquisitions.

We'll cover databases first, and then move on to individual journals -- many of which have ended up on the list by faculty or staff request. We always welcome feedback and more requests, incidentally; feel free to comment on this post or get in touch with one of us if you want to suggest possible new acquisitions.

Databases
Gale Literature Resource Center (LRC)
This is our number-one priority at the moment -- as soon as funds are available, we'll be snapping this up. It's also the one I'm most excited about at the moment. It's basically a huge repository of literary analysis and criticism on nearly everything from Stephen King to Ernest Hemingway. Super-useful for those required English classes and full of good reading if you're a literature nerd like me. This will also enable us to get rid of some print subscriptions, freeing up shelf space and budgetary room for other things.

Counseling and Therapy in Video
Currently containing close to 300 videos about social work, psychotherapy, and psychiatric counseling, this is a pretty unusual resource for us. And yes, before you ask: each video is accompanied with a synchronized transcript that will follow along with the video, highlighting what's being spoken and allowing you to skip to various points in the video by clicking on the section of the transcript you want to watch.

CountryWatch
A database of country-specific data and other types of information that strives to remain as up to date on the country of your choice as possible. Good for courses in the following programs: Business, Communication Studies, Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Government, History, and Sociology.

Philosopher's Index
Indexes philosophical books, articles, contributions to anthologies, and anthologies themselves. Good for courses in the following programs: Business, Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Government, and History.

Global Issues in Context
Essentially, a database of issues and linked resources that help explain the background of those issues, such as child slavery -- in which countries is this practice prevalent? What's the history behind it? What global organizations are working to stop it? Good for courses in pretty much every program.

JSTOR Africa Collection
An expansion of our JSTOR access, this will let us into their extensive coverage of the African countries and historical academic coverage. Good for courses in: Business, History, Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Government, Sociology.

E-Journals
Career development for exceptional individuals
Communication disorders quarterly
Focus on autism and other developmental disorders
Human factors
International social work
Intervention in school and clinic
Journal of disability policy studies
Journal of early intervention
Journal of emotional and behavioral disorders
Journal of English linguistics
Journal of learning disabilities
Journal of positive behavior interventions
Journal of social work (JSW)
Journal of social work in disability and rehabilitation
Journal of special education
Language and speech
Neurology
Qualitative social work
Rehabilitation counseling bulletin
Remedial and special education
Topics in early childhood special education
Translation and Interpreting Studies

Other than the LRC, none of the items listed here have been prioritized in any way; although we do have some preferences for which items to get first, this is just our basic shopping list for the next few months after we've sacrificed a few virgins to appease our budget.

Okay. This completely and totally wraps up our database series. Next week will be our last librarian profile for a while, and then we'll move on to the back-to-school collections of super-important posts for new and returning students.

Enjoy your weekend!

Databases, part 3: The bottom line

I'm learning to really like three-day weekends.

That's mostly because I had time to finish up Cormac McCarthy's The Road and think about it afterwards. It's the story of a man and his son in a postapocalyptic America; an unexplained disaster has wiped out pretty much every living thing on the continent, except for the people who were lucky enough to be sheltered. The weather has devolved into endless winter and the land to an ashy grey. The man and boy embark on a long journey south along a highway (the eponymous road) in search of warmer, friendlier climes, and encounter some truly disturbing things along the way. It's less science fiction and more fable, a look at human nature in a state of constant privation. This is the guy who wrote No Country for Old Men, and if you've seen the movie, this book probably won't surprise you much. If you're into mindless books with happy endings, I'd avoid this one; otherwise, it's utterly absorbing. I put it on the display table by the East entrance (facing JSAC) if anyone else wants to pick it up.

I seem to be making a habit of mentioning Library books that I've read over the past week. Truly, the Library's a great place to spend time if you're a book addict. Fortunately, I'm not greedy; I'll put any books I've read up on display if any of them catches anyone's interest.

Back to what I'm really supposed to be writing about: databases.

Among all the questions we've gotten about database access over the past few years, there's an ongoing undercurrent of curiosity about why we limit access to Gallaudet students, staff, and faculty. I've already explained most of it by boiling down all the various kinds of subscriptions available to two basic types, but so far I haven't explained why we have to pay for access to knowledge. It wants to be free, right? Not exactly ...

Time to boil the issue down some more: we usually have to pay for access chiefly because of copyright. It's like paying for a DVD: when you buy a movie, you aren't actually paying for the movie itself. You're paying for the right to watch it. The same concept applies to all of our subscriptions. The issue of copyright ensures that the people who did all the work get paid for their efforts, and also means that we have to negotiate licenses with all of the indexes and publishers we use to gain access. Those licenses outline what rights we have to look at their material and use it for academic purposes, as well as the cost of doing so.

And here we arrive at the bottom line: how much do databases cost, anyway? The answer is that it all depends on the pricing structure negotiated upon in the license that allows us access to a particular database. Here are a few different ways we can pay for access:

• Pay per view: This is pretty elastic -- it can change from year to year based on how much use the database gets. Usually, we pay based on how many articles were downloaded in the database over the course of a year. It's also the kind of plan we use with ScienceDirect, which I explained last week. This can be pretty cost-effective, especially for databases that aren't used quite as much as the two biggies, ProQuest Research Library and Ebscohost Academic Search Premier.
  
• Pay per user: This is generally based on how many full-time students are enrolled in a given year, among other statistics -- this way, we pay for everyone who could use the database. This also changes from year to year as the student population varies, but is less elastic than pay-per-view plans. Pay-per-user is a good kind of plan for the most heavily-used databases because it lets us pay for everyone's rights to the material without actually paying for the sheer amount of material itself, which can be intimidatingly mountainous.
  
• Flat rate: More or less self-explanatory. The price can only vary in one of two ways: if we decide we want to change how much access we have to the database, or if the vendor decides to raise the price, which can happen when they add more material to the database. One usually sees this sort of pricing with more specialized databases; either it will not see enough traffic to charge per view, or it will appeal to such a small percentage of the student population that charging based on total full-time enrollment will be unrealistically expensive.

Generally speaking, though, regardless of whatever payment plan is set up, a good database will run into the thousands of dollars per year. The biggest and best, like ProQuest, can get up into the tens of thousands.

This is the point at which I usually have to scrape people's jaws off the pavement. Yes, databases are very expensive. No, it doesn't bother us. It's what we're here for. And yes, we do, in fact, freely provide them to Gallaudet students, staff and faculty -- it's all funded at least in part by student tuition. It's also one very important way in which Gallaudet continues to be as academically competitive as possible. Trying to do research without this kind of access would be like watching a single fifth-season episode of Lost and trying to understand the entire show based on that one hour and a few old TV Guides.

Besides, when the math is done, databases are terrific bargains on general principle, because they allow us to get you access to just over 36,000 electronic publications, and that number grows a little bit every year. I've used this word before, but that's an astronomical number! We always do our best to budget for annual subscriptions and even manage to find room in our funds to hunt for new ones to try.

So what new electronic subscriptions might we get over the next few months? Hold on to your seats -- that's next week. After that, we'll have another librarian profile, and then we'll start a back-to-school series that'll collect some older posts and add in a little more of "What You Need To Know ... " for students both new and returning.

Databases, part 2: How subscriptions work

There's nothing like the feeling one gets after digesting a six-hundred-page monster book. I just finished up Brothers by Yu Hua (which I originally recommended here), and it really is a fantastic book -- plenty of dirty humor mixed up with trenchant commentary about Chinese culture and a sort of unflinching confrontation of some of the nastier aspects of revolution. It's a big book, but doesn't read like one at all; you don't find yourself counting how many pages you have left before it's over. That's the sign of a good read.

Just thought I'd sneak that in before continuing with our topic for the week, to show that I do read the stuff I recommend and enjoy it! It's on the display table by the entrance facing the SAC for anyone who might want to pick it up.

Anyway, last week, we talked about accessing databases off-campus. Some have asked me about finding journal articles, which I've already covered here, and others became curious about databases in general after reading last week's post, so today we'll talk a little bit about how our electronic subscriptions work. These days, most of the newer non-deaf-related subscriptions coming into the Gallaudet University Library are online-only, and we're working on cutting down on our print issues, so electronic subscriptions are becoming more and more important.

The word "database" is, to use an example I've used before, a lot like the word "fruit" -- apples and oranges are two different kinds of fruit, and very roughly speaking, we have access to two different kinds of databases:

• A publisher: We can subscribe directly to individual journals or to a group of them from a single publisher. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education is a good example of this; it's published by the Oxford University Press, an academic publisher. They have dozens of journals, but we only actually subscribe to that one. Haworth Press is an example of the opposite -- we subscribe to 27 journals from them, including the Journal of Social Service Research and Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, a useful resource for college students if I ever heard of one!
  
• An index: ProQuest Research Library and Ebscohost Academic Search Premier are two examples of an index. They don't actually publish any journals -- they just basically collect information about them. However, a lot of times, they can strike up deals with the publishers of those journals for full-text access, which they can then turn around and provide to their subscribers. We get the vast majority of our electronic journals through indexes like ProQuest (6,761 listed journals), Ebscohost (5,924), and LexisNexis (11,029!).
  

One thing that's important to understand, though, is that although we do have a huge number of journal subscriptions, we don't necessarily have full-text access to all of them. Sometimes, access may be determined by the index's deal with a particular publisher. Other times, access may be determined through various kinds of subscription plans, which can boil down to:

• Partial access: The terms for this kind of subscription varies, but our current partial-access subscriptions involve abstract-only for students and faculty, with full-text available on request. Under this plan, we get to pay for each individual full-text article downloaded, which is more cost-effective than paying for the whole shebang. We use this plan for the ScienceDirect index, for example.
  
• Full-text access: ... when it's available, that is. Sometimes publishers will allow one index to provide access only to abstracts, while making the full text available to another one in order to reach as many scholars as possible. Other times, full-text access can vary even within a single journal for many different reasons, ranging from simply not having had time yet to fully digitize older issues to the publisher's deal with the index in question.
  

Most databases offer a range of options that fit what I've outlined here, with endless variations that I won't go into here. Our decisions about what kind of subscription to get for a particular online journal or database depend on a number of factors: Are students and faculty requesting journals from this database? Are there enough people using it? Does this database have enough potentially useful journals to justify getting a subscription at all?

With a brand-new database, we'll usually give it a shot for one year. If enough people use it, we'll try to keep it or expand access, depending on our budget constraints. If the cost can't be justified, then we won't keep it.

So what kind of costs are involved? Well ... that's another post. Next week's, in fact. We will also not be doing Questions of the Week until our little series on databases comes to a conclusion, which will occur the week of July 17th with a blockbuster post detailing the new databases we're getting for the Fall semester! There'll be explosions and stuff. I promise.

Okay. See you next week. Enjoy your July 4th weekend! Just remember: allow yourself enough time to get away before the fuse runs out.