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!

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.

It’s getting to be that time of year!

The last week of classes for Spring 2012 is wrapping up, finals are coming, and a bunch of students are graduating. Then school’s out for the summer!

Well, for the majority of students, anyway. Things are as busy as ever here at the Library, which is a year-round condition for us. I have a couple of conferences to go to, myself -- one of which is next week, in fact, which means no blog post. I’m excited about this one, actually, even though it’s in Columbus, Ohio (Honolulu would have been nicer, or my birthplace of Clearwater, Florida), because there’ll be a lot of interesting talks about information literacy, a subject near and dear to my professional heart. And, of course, we’ve got some projects lined up.

Personally, it’s all about the weeding. I’m looking to offload a lot of our really old, outdated books that are a) falling apart, b) not being used, and c) silly. This’ll free up more room in the stacks for new books, plus give us some more flexibility in the future.

Collectively, there are three major initiatives on the agenda for the warm months, all of which have to do with managing the unruly pack of books roaming around our basement.

First, Deaf Copy 1. Fair warning: there’s quite a bit of background to this.

If you’re not familiar with that, here it is in a nutshell: Closed stacks. This room contains what we call the “first copies” of the entire Deaf Stacks you see on the first floor. The Deaf Copy 1 (hereafter abbreviated as “DC1”) stacks are our permanent, final, must-preserve copies. This room is what keeps safe the world’s best, most comprehensive collection of Deaf-related work, so obviously it’s very important.

Up until last year, DC1 -- and the Deaf Collection in general -- had a very broad purview that included everything from Deaf culture to otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat, for those unfamiliar with bastardized Greek roots). This presented a problem, both practically (medical literature has a short shelf life that becomes unmanageable when mixed in with a very large multidisciplinary collection) and culturally -- deafness as a physical state and deafness as a culture are two very different things.

So we relieved the Deaf Collection & Archives staffers of all the stuff that treated deafness as a pathological condition and absorbed it into the General Collection. Since it had all been part of the Deaf Collection up to that point, this also meant cleaning out the first copies of the books affected, which in turn left a ton of empty space on the shelves down there.

So we’re moving the Deaf Copy 1 stacks around a little bit this summer to fill in those gaps and make room for more stuff. It’s actually warm-up for …

The General Stacks. Yup, we’re shifting them again. It’s nowhere near as drastic as last year’s shift, though -- mostly it’s just adjusting the collection to fill in some empty spaces opened up by weeding, and to add more space on the shelves for overcrowded books. They’re distributed pretty unevenly at the moment because when last year’s shift happened, we had to estimate which areas might need more room than others.

A year later, it turns out that a number of factors, including e-books, shifts in departmental focus, and the aforementioned weeding, have solved a lot of the space issues we used to have, so instead of worrying about specific areas, we get to make sure the entire collection has room to grow.

The third thing is, of course, inventory. We’ve spent most of the Spring semester working out a process for what is probably the largest project we’ve undertaken in recent memory: finding out exactly what we have on the shelves.

It sounds funny, I know, as though we haven’t been keeping track all along. But the truth is, even the systems we’ve put into place to track the movement of our stuff -- all 220,000 pieces of it -- aren’t perfect, and the Library’s been through so many technological changes since it moved into the current building that things fall through the cracks.

The causes of these problems are surprisingly varied, ranging from obvious theft to cataloging snafus -- records get left in the system for books we weeded years ago, or sometimes it goes the other way: books that clearly belong to us, but which the system thinks don’t exist. Other times, browsing students will pull a book off the shelf, skim through it, and put it back -- somewhere else.

So we’re going to spend the next couple of years going through the entire thing, shelf by shelf.

Yes, years. It’s not as bad as it sounds; the Consortium offers us the ability to scan a whole bunch of books in one fell swoop, upload their barcode numbers, and get back a nicely-detailed report letting us know what’s out of order, what should be there that isn’t, and what shouldn’t be there that is. It’s a little weird to read, but makes the process go fairly smoothly. And because the Library will continue to be used the entire time, of course, it’ll take a long while to get through the full collection.

Actually, we will probably never get through the full collection. By the time we finish going through it, enough will have changed in the rest of the collection that we’ll need to start over again. And again. And again, and again, and …

Believe it or not, this is okay with us. We’re undertaking this huge project -- along with the General Stacks shift -- specifically so people can find stuff more easily. That is, after all, why we’re here.

And it starts this summer, along with our usual day-to-day work. We’re looking forward to getting started!

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!
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*Just kidding. As far as we know, no one at Gallaudet University has been definitively proven to be an extraterrestrial.

Spring break update and ILL

Spring break is here!

Well, not for much longer. But it’s still been a very quiet week as far as helping students is concerned. I’ve taken the opportunity to finish a few projects and clean out my office. If you’re reading this and have visited my office, you know how cluttered it’s been for the past three years. It was about 75% donated books and films I was considering adding to the collection and about 25% my own natural messiness.

No more! By the end of Spring Break, it’ll all be either in the collection or for sale on the Book Sale shelf we use to re-home any donations we don’t need. My office feels so much larger now.

We’ve also been adjusting the DVD shelves; for the past few weeks we’ve replaced nearly all of the security cases with a new batch we ordered last summer specifically for this reason. Before this project, we had three or four different kinds, requiring about the same number of magnetic unlockers, and that was a bit of a silly headache. Now we’re down to two kinds -- one for DVDs and one for VHS tapes.

Of course, the new DVD cases are a little funny in comparison to others we’ve had in the past; they’re thicker at the top than they are at the bottom. This leads to some shelving weirdness where half a shelf is tilted one way and half is tilted the other. Although it all takes up about the same amount of space, it needed to be arranged differently, so we’ve spread them out. We're also working on a better way to store DVDs in those cases that might alleviate some of these issues.

Complicating matters is the weather. It’s so incredible! Perfect temperatures, blue skies, blooming flowers, lovely breezes. Spring has arrived a little ahead of schedule, and it’s making it tough to work in the Library all day long.

It’s also been a busy semester. On top of everything else, I’ve added inter-library loan (ILL) work on a temporary basis, and it’s been an eye-opener!

Truth is, ILL is a pretty fascinating portion of what we do here. Since so much of the Deaf Collection consists of publications that are pretty tough to find -- theses, for instance, or non-profit organization reports on services to populations with hearing loss -- a good deal of ILL has to do with fulfilling requests from outside libraries for our stuff, providing nobody at our Library needs it right then. We also do a fairly brisk business for Gallaudet students and faculty who need stuff that manages to slip through the cracks in the Consortium -- those cracks are small, given our huge collective holdings of around eight million items, but do exist!

There’s a pretty good system in place that allows libraries nationwide, sometimes even worldwide, to share their stuff. It includes everything from simply being able to see that another library has what you want, to managing the shipping of those items, down to providing labels that you can print out and use for mailing.

The sheer scale of this system is mind-boggling. We’ve been using Rolodexes -- kind of like this one from Staples if you’re young and clueless about these things -- for years to keep records of institutions that have requested things from us in the past, using cards with all the information we need for shipping and bar codes for each one. This way, it’s easier to lend to them again if they ask: scan, drop in envelope, stick on label, and go. Those things are huge by now, which means there are hundreds of libraries in there.

That just covers institutions that have borrowed from us in the past. On top of that, we still get one or two new ones every other week that don’t have a card in either Rolodex and have to add one for them.

This lends itself to a new sort of perspective on how this whole library thing works. Funny, isn’t it, to think of the staggering investment involved in providing people the information they need?

How new books work

I’m going to swap out the vlogs for a bona-fide blog this week.

It’s been an interesting semester so far. I still can’t quite account for the fact that midterms are already coming next week.

Just what have I been doing? Well, stuff. Ordering books (not many movies, though, just yet -- I’m waiting for the spring DVD rush of films released during the holidays), coping with the cataloging challenges presented by some of those books, navigating the wilds of our e-books with anyone and everyone who’ll hear from me, getting our new Digital Campus service off the ground, and figuring out ways to work with the English Language Institute here on campus. I’ve also temporarily added inter-library loan processing to the list while our specialist is out for a few weeks. There’ll be another post on that new experience soon!

On an interesting note, someone who managed to walk into my office a week or two ago and noticed a new-book cart full of, well, new books, wanted to know exactly what it is that I do with them. The silly thing actually mentioned writing about it on the blog, because he thought it was always interesting to really get a look behind the scenes.

If you disagree, turn back now. Otherwise, abandon all hope.

We do the majority of our purchases through a single vendor with which we have a very good long-standing relationship. They take care of just about everything for us, from providing information about each book to load into the catalog, to putting the barcode sticker on the front of the book. They’re a major time-saver.

9 times out of 10, new books arrive in perfect shape and head straight to the shelves within a week of arriving. The rest of the time is where I come in.

Sometimes the record loaded doesn’t include enough information (a frequent-enough occurrence for less-mainstream titles like She seized the balls), or sometimes the systems involved get a little confused about what goes where. The end result is usually a record that only has the title and ISBN number (that mess of 13 digits you usually see above the barcode on a book’s back cover), or a record that’s really fine, it just needs a little extra information. Other times, the source of those records -- a national database of published items associated with the Library of Congress -- just has a weird call number we can’t use because the library that created the original record uses a different system.

In case you’re curious, the most common wrong-call-number issue we deal with involves biographies. Lots of public libraries tend to just put “B” for “biography” on the spine and alphabetize by the last name of the person the book’s about.

We always use Dewey, of course. When any of the above happens to a given book, I hunt down the information we need and add it to the record. Sometimes it’s easy -- the national database may have what I need, just in a different version of the same item -- other times it’s hard, like when there are no Dewey call numbers available for a particular book. Then I have to make it up from scratch, using a set of four ridiculously-complicated books that include instructions like:

“Add to each subdivision identified by * the numbers following the numbers following 671 in 671.2-671.8, e.g., welding aluminum 673.72252.”

Or:

“Add to 01 the numbers following 781 in 781.1-781.5, e.g., Spanish folk music for springtime 781.6261015242, rhythm in Spanish folk music for springtime 781.62610152421224.”

These are unusual cases, I admit; it isn’t often you see a sentence that says, “the numbers following the numbers following …” or call numbers that are 17 digits long focusing on a specific aspect of a specific type of folk music used during a specific time of year.

These cataloging issues are relatively rare. Out of a cart of 90 books or so, we’ll pull maybe four or five. Once or twice a year, the systems involved decide to stop speaking to each other -- maybe the Consortium just so happens to shut our system down for maintenance, or the Sun gets trigger-happy -- so we’ll get a cartload or two of books that apparently don’t exist. Fortunately, there’s some redundancy built in, like weekly updates that include downloadable packages of records that we can load manually fairly easily.

Sometimes we order books and films from Amazon because they aren’t available through our primary vendor, and those arrive completely naked. No record, no physical processing, nothing. For those, I grab the records from the same national database, check them over for accuracy, double-check the call number, and load them into the catalog. Then they’re physically processed and come back out, ready for shelving.

It probably sounds like a bunch of things that can go wrong, but truthfully, that’s the only thing I really need to do: deal with what goes wrong. It’s a testament to the services we use that it’s rare enough to leave me time for all the other things I do.

Next week, you’ll get another vlog, just as soon as I decide which “classic” to review. I also take requests; just e-mail me or post a comment!

Keeping track of current research

Patrick Oberholtzer, Instruction & Reference Librarian

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

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

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

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

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

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

An argument for open access

Sarah Hamrick, Library Director

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why e-books are neat

Elizabeth Henry, E-Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian

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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!

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!

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.

Summer update!

No vlogs this week!

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

With what? Fair question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... wait for it ...

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

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

Amazons shifting into OverDrive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A peek behind the scenes

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Let's look inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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