Meet Summon, our new catalog: The basics

Hello, there! I’ve come out of my long summer hibernation because there’s a big New Thing you need to know about.

This New Thing has been a long time in coming for a lot of reasons, including, well, it’s just been a complicated process getting all the parts working together.

If you go to http://library.gallaudet.edu, you’ll see it right away. No, not the new look -- I like it, myself, but as far as you’re concerned, it’s mostly cosmetic. I’m talking about Summon. It’s our new catalog, sort of.  You’ll see it named above the search box.  Below the search box, you’ll see a few options for focusing your searches, and a link to our good ol’ Classic Catalog too.

Here’s the thing about Summon: It’s big. It includes not only the usual books, DVDs, e-books, and streaming videos that we and other libraries in the Consortium offer, but also journal articles that you’d usually have to go to a database (like ProQuest, EBSCO Academic Search Complete, and PsycARTICLES) to find.

Summon is a unified search interface for most of our e-resources in addition to our usual stuff. So naturally, it runs a little differently. I thought it’d be a good idea to do a quick run-through of the basics. We’ll start with how results for books appear in Summon, then talk a little bit about journal articles.

Books

Suppose we need to find resources on bilingual families, leaving all the default options as they are -- those are the checkboxes you see underneath the search box on our home page, some of which are already checked, and others that are blank. Here’s what comes up:

 

I hope you noticed that the search brought up over 60,000 results! But fear not. On the left-hand side, you can see the usual options for narrowing your search: more-specific choices for what you want to appear on the list, which institution you’re interested in (I decided not to limit it to Gallaudet’s stuff), the types of content, and so on. There are a few more options below where I cut off the screenshot, like subject terms and publication dates, but you get the idea.

The really important part is that you can see right away exactly where to find specific items: not just which institution owns each item, but also whether it’s available, what the call number is, and which library -- or part of a library -- has it. Here’s a more complete example: 

 

So right away, you can see that our copy is available, the call number is 404.2 G76b, 2010, and you can find it in the General Stacks, downstairs. Pretty sweet! There’s also an e-book in the list, complete with a link -- in light-blue text above -- that I clicked so you can see that it’s working. We’ll cover e-books in more detail in a later post.

In some ways, Summon’s not as complicated as it looks, because it uses a neat trick: the Classic Catalog! Yep, the old bare-bones workhorse, which you may have thought died years ago, is still around, and both the title link above and the links to all the locations below it will take you to Classic Catalog records.

Journal articles

Journal articles work a little differently. Limiting the ‘bilingual families’ search to “ … articles from scholarly publications, including peer-review’ by clicking the relevant checkbox on the left side of the following picture yields this: 

 

You can see the full article citation for “Learning from bilingual family literacies” -- journal name (Language Arts), publication date (09/2012), volume and issue information (Volume 90, Issue 1), and even page numbers. Before we get to the “Full Text Online” link at the bottom, which I’m sure you’re slavering over, here’s a neat feature: 

 

Hovering your mouse pointer over the title link will bring up a preview! This will often include an abstract, so, in this case, there’s no need to get over to the article itself to find out what it’s about.

But suppose the abstract reveals that the article is probably something you want to look at in more depth. Clicking on the “Full Text Online” link for this particular article gets this: 

 

In the immortal words of Emeril LaGasse: BAM. If you’ve never heard of him, look him up in Summon!

It should be noted that if you already have the full citation of the article you want to find, our article finder will probably be a better bet. Summon and the article finder (known officially as 360 Link) are sibling products from the same company. The key difference is that, as far as finding specific articles are concerned, Summon is a searchlight, while 360 Link is a laser.

Concluding thoughts

This is the part of the post where I offer the customary caution. First, Summon doesn’t provide access to all of our e-resources. Also, the Summon catalog is still very much in beta, which means we’re still working out all the bugs -- for instance, it’s not always very clear whether or not you have access to a given full-text article or e-book -- so search with patience and care. One strategy you could use is start off with Summon, gather a few titles, then switch to Classic -- http://catalog.wrlc.org -- for a clearer picture of what’s available. This works best with finding books, e-books, and films.

Another strategy, of course, is using the big, giant, red Chat With Us! button at the top of the Summon search page during regular business hours. It’ll pop up a window that looks like this: 

 

Which, I hope, is self-explanatory.

Above all, always remember to:

• Be patient
• Get in touch with us before throwing your computer out the window

Good luck, and happy searching!

Update ... for real.

I hope everyone enjoyed that April Fool’s post, because now it’s time to bring the pain.

Just kidding! Actually, we’re long overdue for new stuff on this thing, which I admit is my fault.

First and most immediate, we’d like to announce a trial subscription to EasyBib; it’s an online citation tool similar to RefWorks.

And by “citation tool,” we really mean, “thing that does all the work for you when you have a bunch of references to cope with for your paper, project, or other academic product.” This trial expires April 25, so if you’re curious, you’ll need to hop to the following:

• Go to http://www.easybib.com while on campus.
• Register for a free personal account. You can tell you’ve done it right if you see the Gallaudet logo.
• Once that’s done, you can get in from off-campus with your login information.
• Play around a little bit. Maybe take a stab at it with an actual assignment.
• Let us know what you think. We’ve got a survey up and running.

A lot of other things that we’ve been working on are taking place behind the scenes. For instance, we’re in the process of getting some new inter-library loan software on its feet.

That doesn’t sound terribly interesting, but the immediate advantage for students, staff, and faculty is that the turnaround time required to get your requests out and the loaned items in should go down somewhat. Ideally, you wouldn’t notice much of a change from the way we already do it, but the truth is, a lot of work had to happen in order to get your requests out there and taken care of as quickly as possible. It saves you time and us a lot of work!

Speaking of lengthy implementations, you can expect to see one version of our catalog, ALADIN Discovery (the search box on our web site), change considerably at some point in the near future, mostly in terms of what it looks like and the results that will show up when you search. I’m careful to say “at some point,” because I’ve been teasing this announcement for the past year. But the light at the end of the tunnel is finally visible.

Basically, we’re replacing Discovery with a newer product from the same company, one that will -- wait for it -- also search quite a few of our databases in addition to our print and electronic books. It’ll be more of a one-stop shop than ever!

It’s taken so long because, as it turns out, figuring out how several universities and their library collections, database subscriptions, and generally-weird resources, some of which are publicly-available and some of which aren’t, all slot together so that the right people take the right pathways to the right resources ... is a bit of a challenge.

Each university library also has its own individual preferences for how to present things -- do we want to make sure Gallaudet items are at the top of the list (well ... yes)? Do we display books only first, or let the articles come through full blast, or tweak the relevancy algorithm, or set up a tabbed search box for each type of resource? That kind of thing -- so that’s also taken some time.

I’m sure that the folks directly involved with this process would roll their eyes and say “a bit of a challenge” is a bit of an understatement, and they’re right about that.

Either way, we’re looking forward to the final implementation at some point before the next Fall semester, and getting prepared for the inevitable flood of confused and delighted e-mails from the campus community.

And our old-school users don’t need to worry: the Classic Catalog isn’t going anywhere. Truth is, it’ll be years before that one goes away; it actually grows directly from the backbone system that most of WRLC uses to handle, well, everything. That backbone has to be replaced before Classic goes anywhere. We’ve begun the process of figuring out what we want from the new system, but are looking at, possibly, several years before a final decision is reached.

What can I say? We’re picky.

Anyway, those are the big things, as well as all the smaller things we all do every day, that keep the Library moving along.

Next week, you can anticipate a vlog of some kind. Stay tuned ...

Post-summer wrap-up

We’re well into the third week of the semester, and everyone seems pretty well-situated.

Fortunately, so are we. The long work of the summer is over, and we get to shift our focus to more immediately-pressing matters, which usually involves offering in-depth research help to students, posting electronic readings on Blackboard for faculty, wrapping up the last of our orders for this fiscal year, giving presentations to classes, breaking in new student assistants, and generally just keeping things in good working order.

A few weeks ago, we bought two whiteboards on wheels and parked them around the Library; a big one (known as Whitey) went by the Deaf School Yearbooks, and a smaller one (Whitey, Jr., natch) went to the basement, just under the main stairs. We know groups like to work on our study tables and sometimes struggle to find ways to work together without having to tape a bunch of paper up on one of our walls.

So far, we’ve seen people using them fairly well, in addition to some humor. The sign we put up on Whitey, Jr. to encourage people to use the board resulted in an unidentified someone writing a note to poor little Junior, breaking up with the smaller whiteboard in favor of the larger one. He rebounded fairly well, though, so we have every confidence in his ability to pull through!

We also ordered a pretty cool table that’s basically a circular horizontal whiteboard that you can write on. It should arrive sometime in the next few weeks. If anyone has any suggestions for the best place to put it, we’re all eyes! Right now, we’re thinking the seating area with all the couches next to the stairs on the first floor by the Service Desk.

We’ve also finally installed a bunch of Macs in the first-floor public computer area after years of requests. The last straw was a survey we gave out around a year and a half ago, with plenty of demands for Macs. This year, most of our public computers were up for replacement, so we opted to make the switch, reasoning that since they can run either OS X or Windows 7, it wouldn’t be too much of a burden on anyone who has a preference. I have to admit they’re pretty good for making vlogs!

As I said earlier, summer is fairly disruptive to our routines -- fewer classes and students, but more logistical work behind the scenes -- and it’s pretty nice to see everyone coming back and get into the swing of what’s shaping up to be a terrific fall semester!

Later this week, I plan to post another vlog reviewing a pair of graphic novels that aren’t related but ended up complementing each other in very interesting ways when I read them. It should be fun. See you then!

Quick update!

Two weeks later, we’re back!

If you’re a regular reader, I’m going to go ahead and assume that you may also be a regular user of our Web site. The new version has been up and running for a couple of weeks now (and no, the timing is purely coincidental). We figured right now was a good time to put up a survey -- just three questions and a comment area -- and get people’s thoughts.

We got one comment on the site within an hour of it going live, an IM asking in a rather shocked manner what had happened to our site and that “it’s so … boring.”

I was lucky enough to get that chat -- I’m being sincere; I was pretty amused -- but unfortunately, my identity as the anonymous librarian chatter was sniffed out, so our one bored user remains nameless, perhaps permanently. Still, in case he or she isn’t alone, I’m going to admit something that might shock, surprise, disgust, or even appall some readers.

Are you ready? Here it is: The Gallaudet University Library is not a sexy place.

We have sexy things, certainly, once you figure out where to look -- and if you don’t, one of us will be happy to help you find them.

But we’re a library. With stuff that people use. And there’s a lot of it. Most of it sprawls across the Internet, and a lot of it only works if you go through us. We want to make getting to information as easy on our students, staff, and faculty as possible, which is not really served by whiz-bang graphics or walls of text.

I’m inclined to think that we’re getting closer to pulling it off with each new iteration of the Library’s Web site -- this will be the fourth version I’ve seen -- but as a librarian, I’m not the best judge of that.

In case you’re curious, the Wayback Machine has archived the Library’s Web site all the way back to 2000! If you’re looking for nostalgia, a good laugh, or some satisfaction of your curiosity about how far we -- and the Internet -- have managed to come in the past 12 years, I highly recommend it.

In other news, Lee Murphy, our Circulation Specialist, has retired, after just about 35 years of service. She’s seen the Library, Gallaudet University, and Washington, DC, grow and transform beyond all recognition. We’re sorry to see her go, but wish her well!

August still isn’t over, the Fall semester still hasn’t begun, and we’ve still got some changes coming in the next few weeks. Keep your eyes peeled!

Web site update

Well, this is interesting. It’s been a while.

There’s a simple reason for it, which will appear later today or tomorrow when you head to our Web site, library.gallaudet.edu. We’ve pretty well overhauled it.

A lot of the content remains more or less the same, but it’s been updated and transferred to LibGuides. More on that in a little while.

First, the look of the site is -- we hope, at least -- simpler and cleaner. Not as many long and ambiguous links, and there are fewer Web pages that function as simple lists leading to more Web pages without any more identifying information that explains exactly what you can find there.

The new drop-down menu on top is intended to help people navigate their way to their specific needs more quickly and efficiently. Down below, electronic content is now front and center; this should make life a little easier for people who aren’t in the Library to find what they need.

We also got rid of the announcements and blog areas. The vast majority of our work takes place on a day-to-day basis, so big new databases and other resources come along only a few times a year. The announcements were getting old! Some of the stuff that used to be there, like our mobile site and Facebook page, have been moved to the new electronic resources area.

And no, blog headlines won’t be updated on the new Web site; it’s down to a simple link you can check quickly for any updates. We’re still figuring out how we might be able to make it easier to see when it’s been updated, so stay tuned!

Now, the content. We’ve moved a lot of it to LibGuides. The main reason for pulling this move is to make it easier for us to keep it up to date. Only a few people on staff have access to the content management system that gallaudet.edu runs on, to say nothing of the technical skills needed to present information clearly on a Web page. This is inconvenient, because we all contribute stuff to the Web site, but only one or two people can actually make the changes, so that’s a big bottleneck.

This way, we all have access to our information pages and can update it as needed. Those pages are also a lot easier to read; under the old system, we had to essentially write very long pages and use some clumsy workarounds to make them more navigable.

LibGuides also make it easier to tag similar types of pages -- Deaf-related FAQs, for example -- so you can see the relationships between our services, policies, and general public information more clearly.

I won’t say we’re excited -- it’s just a Web site, after all, and bound to present its own quirks in the fullness of time -- but it’s a fairly nice change that will make things easier on everyone in the long run. We’re still making changes and editing, as well as moving stuff over to LibGuides, so it’s a work in progress, to say the least!

This ongoing work also means that you need to provide feedback. We’ll post a survey in a couple of weeks that you can use once you’ve gotten used to the new layout, or just e-mail us at library.help@gallaudet.edu. Compliments, complaints, comments, concerns, we want it all! We’re also curious about what more we can add to the site, so please let us know what you’d like to see on there, too!

And no. This is far from the last big change of the summer. Keep an eye out for more details in the coming weeks. I’m out of the office for a week and a half starting tomorrow, so will be silent for at least that long, but never fear! I shall return.

Graduation season

It’s getting to be that time of year again. Students panicking over graduation, our preparation for the oncoming summer, and the LURP Award.

Just because I’m in that kind of mood, let’s take each thing in reverse order.

First, “LURP” is short for “Library Undergraduate Research Paper.” We do this every year; undergraduates submit their best papers from the last couple of semesters and a group of Library people reviews them and determines a winner in a blind judging. Winning relies on a number of factors, including the use of Library resources in the paper. The prize? A $200 gift card to Amazon.com!

There’s a link to the submission details and form on our home page, but here it is as a Word document anyway.

Second, our summer is going to go pretty much as usual; there’ll be a few projects we’re undertaking. This year, however, they won’t be disruptive to people who want to use the Library.

One thing I’d like to add for students, though: Even if you aren’t registered for the summer semester, you can still use the Library if you’re in town! Just come in after the end of the spring semester (after May 6, in other words) and let us know:

• You’re here and want to use the Library
• You’re registered for the fall
• You’re going to be around long enough to return your materials on time

Every time we come upon a break between semesters or the beginning of the summer, we get a few students, staff, and faculty who ask if we can extend the due date while checking stuff out because they plan to leave town at some point and don’t want to end up with fines on their record if the due date falls before their return.

We also get a few people who contact us after a month, upset because they suddenly have fines; maybe they thought they could borrow an item for the entire summer, or someone else placed a hold on their item, so it can’t be renewed, or they just maxed out their number of permitted renewals. After asking some questions, we generally find out they’re not in town, one of the local states, the country, or -- in rare cases -- on this planet*.

Our advice in each case, often given pre-emptively and sometimes far too late, is the same, and here it is: Although we understand the desire for some free vacation reading, books have a nasty habit of being left behind on planes, forgotten under hotel beds, dropped on mountain tops, or buried in beach sand. Depending on how conscientious you are about keeping track of your things while backpacking through Peru, it may be a better idea to spend the money on a new book for yourself. Better safe than sorry!

Third and finally, graduation. If you’re graduating in May and have outstanding fines or fees on your record, please don’t forget to get that taken care of before you leave. Commencement is still more than a month away, but as the victim of two graduations myself, I know those final weeks can be hectic!

That’s three. Vlog next week. Ditto MLB’s Opening Day. Spring is here!
-----
*Just kidding. As far as we know, no one at Gallaudet University has been definitively proven to be an extraterrestrial.

Kindles and Hugo Cabret

Here I am again!

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

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

Thing number 2: We just got this thing.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why e-books are neat

Elizabeth Henry, E-Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian

---

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

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

• eBook Collection, owned by EBSCO
• Ebrary
• PsycBooks (the platform is provided by Ovid)
• Safari Books Online, owned by ProQuest

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy reading!

We're underway!

We survived without a scratch!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome back!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vlog review of The Magicians

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

Anyway, this week's vlog, as promised:



The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

Summer isn't over yet!

Mea culpa.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick updates

A thing or three for today …

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



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

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

Yeah, it’s been a busy summer.

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

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

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

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

We've been busy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEW resource: Films on Demand!

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, this thing is awesome.

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

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

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

Fast forward to ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy your weekend!

Vlog review of The Word

The Word, edited by Marita Golden.

Find out about our Library Undergraduate Research Paper Award here!

New books!

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

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

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

You can find more details about submission here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some cool news

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coffee and e-books

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

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

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

Now for the main attraction ...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Library computer area survey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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