A good way to make searching our catalog easier

I feel like I'm overdosing on nonfiction a little bit -- I don't ordinarily read as much as I have in the past few weeks -- so I'm going to throw off the shackles of fact and history.

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon has precisely none of either. Pynchon's one of those authors that I've always kind of felt I should read at least once. His Gravity's Rainbow and The Crying of Lot 49 come up fairly often in my conversations with fellow bibliomaniacs, so I figured that this was a good opportunity to give him a test drive with Vineland.

Vineland is the story of a woman named Frenesi Gates (no relation to our Diana) and her evolution from gorgeous radical to gorgeous filmmaker to gorgeous narc to gorgeous mother. You get the idea. The book is also about quite the handful of auxiliary characters: her hippie ex-husband, Valley Girl daughter, straight-arrow DEA lover, former ninja girlfriend, and her former ninja girlfriend's current ninja boyfriend. The smaller stories of Billy Barf and the Vomitones (a surfer-rock band), the Wayvone Mob family, a roving cult of ghosts suffering from severe karmic imbalances, a few visits from aliens and Godzilla, a television-addicted DEA agent with marvelous hair, and the Emerald Triangle's pot-growing underpinnings are interwoven throughout the larger plot, which takes the form of a series of reminiscences that hop all over the country and make it as far as Japan.

It's pretty outlandish, but the basic plot outline is this: Frenesi, having worked undercover for the DEA for 20 years, setting up drug stings, has vanished. Her lover, a high-ranking DEA agent under Reagan, has a slight insanity problem, and immediately reacts by invading the small town of Vineland, California, where Frenesi's ex-husband and daughter reside. This forces Frenesi's ex-husband, who hasn't seen her since their daughter Prairie (I told you he was a hippie) was a baby, to send Prairie away with the Vomitones until, quite by accident, she runs into her mother's former ninja girlfriend at a Wayvone Mob wedding. This sets off much of the story, as both women disappear into a commune of fighting Buddhist nuns somewhere in the Sierras and Prairie learns more and more about her mother's history and gets to know her through the stories her old friends tell about her. The book culminates in Frenesi's reappearance at a family reunion and the DEA agent's abduction by a deeply weird tribe of local Indians.

Could you follow any of that? I barely could. It's a super-entertaining read, though, which reminds me of a number of other writers I've enjoyed, like Tom Robbins, Neal Stephenson, Michael Chabon, David Foster Wallace ... well, the list goes on. Pick it up sometime and enjoy the ride!

Now that I'm off that ride, let's talk a little bit about ALADIN Discovery, our new online catalog system.

I've had a few weeks to get used to it -- even librarians have to adjust to new things -- and I've developed a habit that seems to make things much, much easier to find.

Since we set up the new catalog, people have asked how they're supposed to make their search more specific. There's only one box to enter their keywords, and this leaves them with two choices:

1. Figure out how to get the one box to include all the information they need to narrow the search down to the exact book they want, OR;
2. Just throw what they can think of in there and then sit back, slightly stunned at the sheer number of books they'll have to search through.

As it turns out, there's a third choice, and it's one that I'm making increasingly often. Check out the example to the right.

You'll see it on the far right-hand side of the results page. It's swiftly becoming the first place I go when I encounter a long list of search results even after selecting 'Gallaudet' from the Select Library drop-down menu. The number of results I got from the search I performed here, for instance, was about 70. Not bad, but who has time at this stage in the Fall semester to go looking through 70 items? However, if I were looking for a movie, clicking on the "Movie" link in the above list under Format cuts it right down to 6 items.

If I were looking for a book, it'd be time to check out the other possibilities. One of my favorites is by author. This has turned out to be one of the most useful options when someone comes up and knows only the title (which is usually something very generic, like "Land" -- there is a book called Land, which is all sorts of fun to find) and author; I just find the list of authors that appears in the right-hand column and click on "more," then scan the list until I find the author I'm looking for, click on that, and there it is.

Other ways you can use this listing of options (called "facets" in Librarianese):

• A general subject in a specific part of the world (say, child prostitution in Southeast Asia)
• A topic relating to a specific time period (telecommunication devices before 1934)
• Specific applications of words that are used in a number of contexts ("play" as a therapeutic methodology)
• Common forms that can cross genres (Detective fiction instead of histories of criminology or the biography of a detective)
• Recent works with the latest theories or best practices (Reviews of pharmaceutical intervention in the treatment of schizophrenia published within the last 3 years)

You get the idea. Those facets are incredibly useful and save a lot of time from going down the drain of repeated search attempts or slow scrutiny of pages and pages of search results. They make the search process feel more like a process, proceeding from the initial search to the first facet you see that will be useful, to the second (although usually you get what you need with the first facet), and so on until you find what you're looking for -- or don't, in which case you need to start over, but with a better idea of what keywords to enter next time. Things also tend to go a lot faster with this method, which comes in handy when you've got a slightly wild-eyed student standing on the other side of the counter with five minutes left before class.

That wraps it up for this week. Enjoy your weekend!

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Question of the Week
I was looking for a book on the catalog earlier this week, and I noticed that some of the results that came up for that book said "electronic resource." What does that mean?
Basically, that means the book is available as an e-book. In other words, it's totally online and can be accessed from anywhere.

However, there are a couple of catches. The first catch is that those books usually can't be downloaded. You can't save them to your computer. You can, however, set up a personal account that will enable you to save your favorite books so you can find them again, and even set bookmarks to keep your place. It's pretty neat ... but it does lead us to the second catch: Even if you have a personal account, you still need to go through ALADIN in order to access your books.

For example, one of our biggest e-book providers is eBrary, Inc. They have a website where you can go and log in and check out their library outside of Gallaudet. Unfortunately, they'll charge you for the privilege, which trips up a lot of people who head home somewhere off campus, log in to ebrary.com, and try to start reading the same book they've been reading here on campus; they won't be able to get in. The reason for this is simple: there are no free accounts on ebrary.com. You have to either pay for access yourself or be a member of an institution (like the Library) that does.

In order to take advantage of the Library's access (and we have quite a lot of it), you will need to go through ALADIN. You'll have to log in, find the e-book in our catalog, and then access the book from there. This is because when you log in to ALADIN and then access the e-book, our network will tell eBrary that you're part of Gallaudet and they'll let you in without a problem. Then you can log in to your personal account and you'll find everything just like you left it.

Meet Credo, your new best friend

Back in July, I was riding the Metro home from a game at Nationals Park (thanks to my boss, Sarah Hamrick, who is a true baseball fanatic; she doesn't care about winning or losing, if you can imagine that). I wound up sitting behind a mother-son pair, both of whom were reading books.

Now, I happen to be one of the worst kinds of Metro riders: I have no problem with looking over the shoulders of people in front of me to see what they're reading. In this case, the son was reading Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky, which looked interesting, so I mentally filed away the title. A couple of weeks later, I remembered that night and checked our catalog. Imagine my surprise when I found out we had it! So I checked it out and began to read it.

Rules for Radicals is sort of a primer for people looking to get involved in community organization, which also happens to be part of our Social Work program's curriculum (SWK 482: Social Work Practice III: Organizations and Communities). It's an interesting historical text in one way: It was published in 1972, a time of particular upheaval in American history. It's right around the time, in fact, that the word "radical" came to be associated not simply with union organizers and peaceful community protesters, but with more violent methods of social protest, such as those undertaken by the Symbionese Liberation Army (the folks who kidnapped Patty Hearst) and other organizations.

In Rules for Radicals, it's definitely the older association -- Alinsky is an old-school radical who was active from the 1930s all the way up the early '70s, and talks about the importance of communication, understanding your community's needs, and various tactics to, for example, get large corporations to accede to workers' demands or to persuade city governments to meet the needs of underserved minority groups. It's a thoughtful, funny book that also offers a new perspective on American history and how radicalism has had its part to play in the world we live in today; it sort of makes you reexamine things like the recent Obamacare town hall meetings that erupted in shouting and recriminations.

The book actually showed up kind of coincidentally: I found out last week from one of my good friends that the Free Library of Philadelphia -- where she works -- was to be shut down indefinitely as of October 2nd, because of a budget crisis. It's a pretty un-American thing, mostly because the first lending library in the US was established there by Benjamin Franklin himself in 1731 (The Library Company of Philadelphia). This news caused ripples as far away as Spokane, Washington. It was covered by the Huffington Post and BoingBoing (written by one of my favorite authors, Cory Doctorow -- he wrote Little Brother, which I reviewed a few weeks ago).

The whole thing was pretty awful, but Rules for Radicals made me very curious about how the community would behave as October 2 drew nearer. Last night, though, the state legislature finally passed a bill that'll infuse more money into Philadelphia so the city can survive another year without massive service cuts. So that's okay.

Now that the giant sigh of relief has come and gone, I'm gonna introduce you to Credo Reference. We're all excited about this! We just got it set up a few days ago and had a guy from there come in and tell us all about it. Here's the basic concept: It's like Wikipedia, only better.

Let's clarify this claim a little bit. What Credo Reference does, basically, is work as a research database for hundreds of specialized reference books. Here's one book from each subject area covered by Credo:

• An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films: 1895-1930
• The Cambridge Dictionary of Scientists
• Encyclopedia of the History of American Management
  
• Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition
• Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
• Cambridge World History of Food
• The CIA World Factbook (including customizable data tables)
• Encyclopedia of African History
• Who's Who in Gay & Lesbian History
• Concise Encyclopedia of Sociolinguistics
• Great American Court Cases
• A Dictionary of Literary Symbols
• Collins Dictionary of Medicine
• The Harvard Dictionary of Music
• Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained
• Handbook of Forensic Psychology: Resource for Mental Health and Legal Professionals
• Chambers Classic Speeches
• Critical Terms for Religious Studies
• Atlas of the Universe
• Encyclopedia of Urban America: The Cities and Suburbs
• Encyclopedia of Computer Science
• McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms

That's the merest taste of the pages and pages of listed resources we now have access to. I say Credo is much, much better than Wikipedia, because Wikipedia relies on basically anyone who knows how to use a computer for its information, which makes it A) academically suspect (you have no idea what sort of unqualified laymen have had their fingers all over that article about coffee) and B) unverifiable in most cases (sources aren't always listed, which makes it difficult for you to go to that source and make sure that the information in the Wikipedia article accurately reflects it -- plus the whole process of verifying sources kind of defeats the purpose of Wikipedia to begin with!). Credo Reference is super-trustworthy and amazingly comprehensive.

Seriously. Try it. Go to library.gallaudet.edu, look for the link to ALADIN in the green header bar of the box labeled "Shortcuts to ALADIN," then when ALADIN comes up, click on "Databases by Title" in the top row, and search for "Credo." You're good to go!

Now that we've gotten the basic introduction out of the way ("Gallaudetian, meet Credo. Credo, meet Gallaudetian."), let's get into the nuts and bolts of exactly what Credo is good for.

First, it needs to be said that Credo is not a source of articles from academic journals! It's for reference only, like a dictionary or encyclopedia; the stuff you find therein (whether text, images, or videos) can be cited in an academic paper, though. For example, let's say you want to do some research on widely-used foodstuffs that have been found to have medical benefits and decide you want to look at caffeine. It's a chemical that has a lot of associated meanings, a ton of history, and some fairly complex chemistry.

One good way to use Credo in your paper about caffeine is by establishing what caffeine actually is right at the beginning -- whether a drug that's been instrumental in the rise of leisure fiction, a chemical that slows heart rate, or a medicine that can protect against most types of cancer; Credo can be cited in order to back you up. This also applies to basic biographical facts, summaries of important scientific theories, and descriptions of known mental illnesses, among other things. Still, you'll come across a lot of jargon -- highly-specialized vocabulary that may mean something different in different fields, or only actually be a word in a single field -- which can get in the way of actually learning something.

This is where you come across the second part of Credo's real utility: conceptual linking. By 'conceptual linking,' I mean something really simple: finding other words for what you're looking for that will enable you to both understand your topic better and find more information about it. In a lot of cases, a single word for a topic will only take you so far in your research; the best word to use is one that's part of the jargon in your field, but it's not always easy to figure out. Credo will help you with that, especially the dictionaries for terms used in various disciplines. It's a fantastic starting point for your research.

Credo also provides a feature called the Conceptual Map to help with this process. If you've ever used ALADIN Discovery and noticed the little web of words on the left-hand side of the screen that starts swirling around when you search for something, you'll recognize the Conceptual Map. Clicking on a word in the map centers it, and adds and removes linkages accordingly. Also, when you hover the mouse arrow over a given word -- but don't click on it -- a little box pops up that gives you the first few sentences of that word's entry in a given book. Caffeine actually yields a surprisingly large map that spans various psychological disorders, aspects of neurochemistry, the history of Honore de Balzac and European coffeehouses, and the "methylxanthine" family. So you click on "methylxanthine" to figure out exactly what it is. The entry you get to -- the one from Taber's Cyclopedia Medical Dictionary, of all things -- tells you some basic stuff: methylxanthines are stimulants that occur naturally in certain plants, and they have specific medical effects on the human body.

So far, so good. Now you can get started on finding helpful books and articles about methylxanthines, their recreational uses in the forms of coffee, chocolate, and tea, and their medical effects. Credo's gone ahead and made the process of searching for books and articles much easier: take a look at the sidebar on the left. The first thing that should pop out at you is the list of "Related resources." You see stuff like "Library Catalog" and "Academic Search Premier" (Ebsco).

Yes, clicking on one of those links will automatically take you to a search for "methylxanthine" in the linked resource. This means you get to a library book or academic journal article that much more quickly and saves you quite a bit of time and effort (although you will still have to do some actual legwork after this point).

Seriously. Try it. Learn it. Love it. Live it.

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Question of the Week
What happened to the stapler you used to keep by Printer 2?
It's broken, and we don't have a spare. This was an easy question!

New movies!

I'm feeling a little bit jittery today. Just a little bit.

Why? Coffee. Before you scoff, you should know that caffeine is probably one of the most interesting psychoactive drugs in the world, if not the most interesting. To find out more, you'll just have to check out The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug. Honestly, it's kind of mind-blowing, covering all the major sources of caffeine in modern society, including tea and chocolate as well as coffee. You'll learn about how mysterious coffee really is, why tea seems to have easily lent itself to an elaborate ceremonial structure, and just what it is about chocolate that makes it so irresistible (at least to me; I have an incorrigible sweet tooth). The only downside is that it's such a large read -- almost letter-size pages (same size that comes out of your printer) and fairly dense text that seeks to cover virtually everything it's possible to discuss about caffeine, up to and including the specifics of its molecular structure and interactions with human neurochemistry. Nevertheless, it's a wonderful ride through art, science, and the good times of 18th-century poets.

Pick it up sometime soon, once you're willing to commit to such a weighty tome; it's worth it!

So, this week, we're going to take a little detour from the usual academic stuff and take a look at some of the new-ish popular movies that have recently arrived.

You should bear in mind: Most of those movies aren't exactly new releases. They've all been pre-loved, which is a cutesy way of saying "donated" -- we've gotten quite the wave of donations in the past few months, and are super happy to have them here! Don't be shy about cleaning out your DVD collections and bringing them by if you think we don't have them. In fact, if you want to maybe save yourself a trip, check ALADIN Discovery before schlepping your load of movies over here.

Anyway, here's a sampling of what we've gotten recently:

Jawbreaker
One of those classically silly '90s movies where all the high-school students look 30 (even the 15-year-olds), Jawbreaker is the story of one girl and her guilt after the accidental murder of the most popular member of her clique (a jawbreaker is, of course, involved). No Lawrence of Arabia but still a fun way to kill a couple hours!

Night Watch
A crazy sort of Russian fantasy flick with awesome special effects. It's about these two opposing armies of supernatural beings (including witches, vampires, werewolves, psychics, and pretty much anything else you can think of) who suddenly clash over a young boy who may wind up being the savior of either side. Beautiful and stylishly-done, it's one of the best supernatural movies you'll see all year.

Animal House
C'mon, who doesn't love this movie? John Belushi made a name for himself as gently-psychotic Bluto, Tim Matheson got a whole generation of girls to fall in love with him, and an entire genre of college movies was birthed. It all culminates in a hilarious raid on a town parade that can't be missed. I was hoping this movie would turn up in our collection eventually, and all my hopes were confirmed.

Nine 1/2 Weeks
Quite possibly one of the most erotic popular films to make it into theatres, Mickey Rourke (before his face fell off) and Kim Basinger embark on an increasingly sinister odyssey of sexual exploration set against the backdrop of a gritty 1980s-vintage Manhattan. Controversial in its time, it seems quite tame now (very little actual nudity), but is still a tense, absorbing watch.

Marley & Me
Okay, this one is pretty new. Still, if you're a dog-lover, this film is sort of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's a funny dog movie about a puppy with an unusual talent for wreaking extraordinary havoc. On the other hand, the ending is pretty sad. Think Old Yeller. If you've never read it or seen the movie, go with God.

Adventures in Babysitting
One of my fellow librarians donated this one and got me all excited! It's a terrific '80s classic that's one of the more obscure films in Chris Columbus' oeuvre (he did two Harry Potter movies, plus Rent, which is also awesome; we have all three). A senior in high school has her heart broken on the same night she gets called to babysit a particularly rambunctious pair of siblings -- and on the same night her best friend decides to run away, only to end up stranded at a bus station in downtown Chicago. This leads our intrepid babysitter, her charges, and an extra teenager on a wild adventure through a 1980s Chicago whose grittiness rivals that of Nine 1/2 Weeks' New York. It's also hilarious and nostalgic! In a weird way, it also makes me think about how different our big cities are now compared to the 1980s ... but mostly it's just funny.

A League of their Own
The story of the All-American Girl's Professional Baseball League of the 1940s, based on a true story. When all the men were off fighting the Nazis and Nipponese in World War II, national baseball was in danger of collapse -- until the club owners stepped in and started a women's league. This movie follows the Rockford Peaches through their first season, told through the eyes of a pair of young women from Oregon, and how they -- and all the women they played with -- saved baseball and changed the role of women in society. It's both funny and poignant, and both qualities are especially encapsulated in Tom Hanks' character, a famous ballplayer in the mold of Babe Ruth who is pulled out of a spiral into alcoholism by the demands of managing a professional women's sports team. His reaction when one of his players bursts into tears after she messes up a play is a classic.

Contact
Based on Carl Sagan's novel, this is the story of a brilliant astronomer who suddenly discovers a signal from an alien civilization and must persuade her country to explore the message it brings, with knock-on impacts on every part of society, including politics and religion. This movie offers a realistic look at how we currently search for extraterrestrials, although the hard science breaks down once the alien message is decoded. Still, it's a good and thought-provoking watch with some beautiful special-effects.

Monster-In-Law
Definitely a chick flick. I felt the estrogen surging while watching this one. Still, it's pretty funny to watch Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez go to ridiculous extremes to one-up each other in the race to get Jennifer married to Jane's son. From fake nervous breakdowns to poisoning, things get pretty far-out, but a last-minute deus ex machina in the form of Jane's former mother-in-law resolves everything in an eruption of tears and hugs.

As you can see, we're cultivating quite the wide variety of films in our collection, and as more donations come in, that will continue. Drop by our DVD shelves sometime soon and check it out!

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You've talked about donating books and movies to the Library in the past. How do you deal with donations? What if the Library already has a copy of what I bring in?
Here's our process for checking over donated books and movies:

1. The librarian that's responsible for the part of the collection where the donated item would belong has to check the item over with the following questions in mind:
1. Do we already have a copy?
1. If so, is the donated item in better or worse condition?
2. Is our copy checked out often enough that an extra copy would be a good idea?
2. If we don't have a copy, will the donated item contribute to the collection?
1. How old is it?
2. Does it cover a specific topic that doesn't have much coverage yet?
   
3. Does it present a different argument on the same topic?
4. (In my case, for popular stuff) Is it a fun read?
5. (In my case) Is there a demand for it?
   
2. The librarian then decides whether or not to add it to the collection.
1. If the item is added, it goes to Technical Services so they can work their magic.
2. If the item isn't added, we move on to the next step.
3. Put the item on the Book Sale shelf by the women's restroom.
   

We put donated items that don't make it into the collection on the Book Sale shelf mostly because even though we may not have a pressing need for it, someone else might. We also hate to let go of perfectly good books or movies without ensuring that they have a chance at going to a good home. Payment is mostly by the honor code: We have a little collection box with suggested prices posted above it, and we do appreciate any money that appears in the box, but we don't police it. As long as it all goes home with someone, we're happy.

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!

---

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).