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!

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.

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?

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!

Thoughts on e-books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet TED

Well.

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

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

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

Have you ever heard of TED?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ALADIN Mobile

I was browsing through the latest WRLC monthly newsletter -- it's sent out to all librarians in the Consortium and updates us all on what the high mucky-mucks in Upper Marlboro are up to as a result of our collaboration -- and thought I'd take another look at last month's newsletter.

It just happened to mention ALADIN Mobile and how well it's been doing over the past six months.

Hmm, I thought to myself. Have I done a blog post about that? It's the kind of thing people ought to know, especially with the increasing prevalence of Web-heavy but Flash-light (no groans from the peanut gallery, please) devices like iPhones and iPads, which can't handle the full power of our catalog directly from our home page.

So I did a search from our home page for anything in this blog that might have mentioned it, and came up with this. It's in the Question of the Week, way down at the bottom, and is a little thin on details.

Well, details are what librarians do best, so here goes!

First, ALADIN Mobile is, obviously, a response to the aforementioned increase in portable Web devices. It's a mobile Web site at m.wrlc.org that's been optimized for browsers on Apple and Android devices (as well as those who qualify as "other"). It's been slickly designed to resemble an actual app and has three significant functions:

1. Search the catalog
   
1. Including the holdings of all Consortium universities or just Gallaudet
   
2. Request items through CLS on the go
   
3. Text the record of the item you're looking at (so you can get the number right away when you arrive at the library on your way somewhere else)
   
4. E-mail it to yourself as a reminder later
2. Use myALADIN
   
1. Check what books you have borrowed
2. Check fines incurred
   
3. Unfortunately you cannot renew items through the mobile app -- that's still largely the province of myALADIN on your home computer.
3. Find locations and hours. This sounds simple, but ...
   
1. Finding the location for a specific library will automatically take you to Google Maps, which will display that location
2. Today's hours are automatically displayed in the listing for each library, and for each library, the full hours are displayed. It saves you a lot of time and irritation!

In general, it's a pretty great thing for us to have -- I know it is for me. It's saved me a ton of money when I find myself trapped in a bookstore with no way out except past the cash register; I just look it up on my phone and if we have it, I don't get it. And increasingly, it's available here or at a Consortium library!

It's also useful for doing quick research when you're not at a computer or when it's not convenient to use one -- say, on the Metro on your way in to campus, eating lunch in the cafeteria, or walking out of your book group (because if you're not first to make the CLS request, someone else in your book group will beat you to it, and then where will you be? Not that I've ever been in that position ... ).

It's also great for navigating the stacks downstairs if you need a few books but can only find one on the shelf; often there will be related books in the general vicinity, but different aspects of the same topic (such as psychological assessments of Napoleon versus prevalent medical conditions of the time that might explain his behavior) may be shelved in completely different parts of the Library. ALADIN Mobile can save you the trip upstairs and back. A small improvement but measurable.

I know, all of this sounds kind of commercial -- of course I'm pushing a service that the Consortium provides. But even if I weren't a Library shill, I'd still use ALADIN Mobile pretty heavily. I might be an outlier -- what normal person considers buying a book every time he walks by the Hudson News by the Amtrak gates in Union Station? -- but it has real utility and performs it in a very appealing and accessible manner.

Okay, that's about it for today. You'll get yourselves a vlog before the end of the week -- the first one since the last week of October!

Home page shortcuts

Finally, a real blog post!

I have to admit it's nice to be able to dust off the old posting engine and get to writing again. Of course, I may have picked a lousy time to do it -- the semester hasn't calmed down as I thought it might post-October. But that's okay. I soldiered through it last year and can do it again!

Anyway, this post is going to be for the power users, people who use our more specialized resources with a narrower focus; there are ways to get at our electronic resources from our home page at library.gallaudet.edu without going through the ALADIN portal page, which usually adds a step or two to the process. Then why do we have it in the first place? I'll explain further down; first things first.

Our most heavily-used resources available on the ALADIN page are technically five-fold, but really three:

1/2) ProQuest Research Library/Ebscohost Academic Search Complete
3/4) Databases by Subject/Databases by Title
5) Gallaudet e-Journals

I grouped ProQuest and Ebscohost together because they're very similar in terms of their utility for our students; both are large aggregators that collect licenses which allow them to provide access to thousands of academic journals in hundreds of disciplines. They are, in general, terrific places to start and will, for the majority of class assignments, be all that's needed. They're relatively convenient and are therefore the most heavily-used, particularly by undergraduates. The setup is simple enough for most -- click on "ALADIN" on library.gallaudet.edu, then click on the link to either ProQuest or Ebscohost, then start searching -- so we don't worry as much about adding shortcuts.

On the other hand, our more specialized offerings are a little harder to get to. We have a lot -- around fifty specialized databases and, whether directly or indirectly, access to thousands of electronic journals -- so there's no real way to just provide a one-click discovery process.

Still, we've tried. Take the databases, for instance. Fifty's a fairly manageable number, and we've categorized them according to discipline and function -- such as "Medical sciences" and "Education" for the former and "Multi-Subject" (meaning multidisciplinary databases like ProQuest and others) and "Reference" (like Credo and the Encyclopedia Britannica) for the latter.

That's the basis for the Databases by Subject link on ALADIN, but -- and this is less well-known -- also for the Database QuickAccess drop-down menu in the "Research Help" box on library.gallaudet.edu. All of our categories are listed in that menu; pick one that fits your topic, click "Go," and you'll see a list of all of our databases that will contain relevant information.

So to review:

Going through ALADIN to a specialized database = library.gallaudet.edu + "ALADIN" link + "Databases by Subject" link + category link + database link

Using Database QuickAccess = library.gallaudet.edu + category link + database link

So obviously not perfect, but a distinct improvement.

Another imperfect-but-better shortcut is for our electronic journal search page. The database categories help in a very general way, but for a specific resource, the rest of the journey to your journal goes through this search page.

The process is similar to what you do for databases when you go through ALADIN, although since there are no categories to go through, it's a little shorter. We've made it even shorter by including a link to "GA's e-Journals" on library.gallaudet.edu in the "Research Help" box (why GA? It saves space and is our WRLC abbreviation); just click on it and start searching.

Again, this is mostly for the power user: researchers who know exactly what journals they want. If you don't know this, you're better off with ProQuest, Ebscohost, and the database categories. Or you can always go to the chat widget on our Web site and ask us for help. We can help you decide which database is best for your assignment.

The other three shortcuts I have in mind are fairly straightforward, although they may not seem so at first glance.

The first is, of course, LibGuides. As with Database QuickAccess and e-Journals, the shortcut is in the "Research Help" box. Most students encounter LibGuides with a direct link to the one made specifically for their course or general subject, but don't know that they can see the overall listing of LibGuides and browse through them. It's all right there!

The second is RefWorks. It's actually listed in the "Reference" database category that you can get to through QuickAccess, but for the most part, it's not strictly necessary to do that; you can head straight there through the link from the "Research Help" box.

The last one is our search box -- not the one for the catalog. That one's pretty clear (or at least I hope so). No, I'm talking about the one down on the bottom of the page. It'll let you search for anything on all of our Web pages and this blog. This is actually a pretty huge shortcut that covers anything from "Songs in ASL" to book titles that may have been reviewed in this blog. It's pretty neat and is powered by Google, so you know it's good.

Yes, I realize the irony of a librarian saying that something from Google is "good." Chortle and let's move on with our lives, okay?

That's it for this week. Thanks for tuning in; no vlog next week, either, because I have a short and very busy week in store for myself. But I'll post something, never fear!

What you need to know: Part 1 (Fall 2010)

See, I told you. There'll still be text posts. Welcome to the first of this year's posts about important information about the Library you'll need to know!

First, I want to refer you to last year's posts, some of which are outdated, and some of which are very outdated. However, there's still plenty of useful information in them that will serve as an introduction to our Library. Here they are:

• What you need to know: Part 1
• Includes a FAQ post link, links to individual librarian profiles (although Jane Rutherford will be retiring right at the beginning of the Fall semester, she's still worth learning more about!), and a few sample review posts of various books and films we have here. As I said, outdated, but it should give you an idea of the kinds of items we do have. In addition, there's a link to a comprehensive overview of the equipment we have available for you, which is worth checking out.
• What you need to know: Part 2
• This post includes links to a comprehensive discussion about the nuts and bolts of (a) finding journal articles; and (b) what our electronic article databases are all about. After that is a long, comprehensive listing of the previous year's Questions of the Week (which we'll do next week).
• What you need to know: Part 3
• Essentially a more focused update on exactly what changed from May to September 2009. The 2010 version will be the week after next.
  
• What you need to know: Part 4
• This was a long discussion of our new ALADIN Discovery catalog. We're not changing that this year -- not much, anyway -- so if you're new and need to know how to use our catalog, read this.

Now, let's take a look at the research-related posts of the past year or so, organized by category.

General Research
Research Paper Award, Dutch painters, baseball, and free stuff
If nothing else, this particular post explains why we're using a new format. Anyway, down at the bottom, I discuss some resources you can use freely for your research without having to pay for access. It's great as a supplement to what we have for you here, as well as a main source if you're not affiliated with Gallaudet and can't get into our databases.

Why does research take time?
What essentially passes for a "philosophical" meditation from me. It's really just me explaining to a proverbial Student that research isn't always as easy as it may seem sometimes and some of the reasons why.

Using databases for personal research
We really do encourage students, staff, and faculty to take advantage of our resources to the fullest; that includes not just schoolwork, but also important information that may affect other areas of your life. Our Library is an informational gold mine in comparison to the average schmo's experience; why use it so narrowly?

It's all about RefWorks
RefWorks is one of the most useful resources we have. It doesn't offer any information in and of itself, but it does offer a great way to manage all the information you dig up while you're researching. In this Q&A post, I go over the basics of RefWorks and explain why it's so good.

A word about searching
Basically, I sit you, Dear Reader, down, and outline the steps you need to take in order to research more efficiently and effectively. You'd be surprised how many people take a scattershot approach and just put in whatever search term sounds good, then say that there's no information available on the subject!

Specific aspects of our collection
Some words on the Little Paper Family
A recent uptick in research on the Little Paper Family (LPF) resulted in this post; what is it? Why does it exist? And how can you look at it? It's all explained in this post.

E-books: How do they work?
Any resemblance to recent works by the Insane Clown Posse are completely coincidental. However, I do explain our e-book collection and how you can use them. This is increasingly becoming a must; although our print collections are holding steady, we are expanding our electronic holdings.

Introduction to our e-books
As in: Dear Reader, meet e-book. E-book, meet Dear Reader. I sift through the catalog and dig up a few real gems in a variety of topics.

Exploring our e-journals
It can be easy to fall into the habit of thinking that our e-journals are mostly dry piles of academia in your field, but when you wander outside of the discipline you're focusing on, you can find much that's weird and wonderful!

What's hiding in our collection?
I wander the stacks and dig up a few fascinating and unusual books as an example of the sheer serendipity you can encounter while you're among the shelves.

Meet Credo, your new best friend
IN WHICH introductions are made between readers and Credo Reference. All joking aside, Credo really is a fantastic resource and should be relied upon for important historical context and a terrific method of sussing out interrelationships between people, ideas, and events. It's a database of hundreds of reference books in dozens of specialties and links them all together in a very useful way. I also offer some examples of when Credo is the perfect database to use and when it isn't.

A good way to make searching our catalog easier
In the adjustment period we underwent after switching to ALADIN Discovery, I wrote this post in order to help people use the built-in search-narrowing features. This is really one of Discovery's biggest advantages over our old catalog; it lets you limit your search to, for example, only items published in the last 10 years, or just films, or books written on specific topics by specific authors. Among other things.

That about covers it all for now. Next week, you can expect a couple of book-review vlogs (to make up for the lack) and a guide to the questions of the week that have been posted since last August. Since those are usually questions that come up at the Service Desk, keep a close eye; you might satisfy your burning curiosity about the Library!

New site and Jane Rutherford's retirement

Thursday post! Yay, jury duty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E-books: How do they work?

Things have slowed down a lot here at the Library. The sheet where we keep our statistics is much whiter than it used to be, and the building has quieted down considerably. It's kind of nice, but a little dull between projects.

To enliven things a little bit, I read through The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I guess you could call this a young-adult book, which is okay with me, because some of the most interesting novels being written these days are being written for the 11-17 age group (with certain notable exceptions, such as a certain vampire-themed series I won't name here).

I briefly mentioned The Hunger Games in a previous post as a recommendation, but didn't think anything of it beyond a decent premise. Boy, how wrong I was.

It's a terrific book! You've got this young woman, Katniss, who lives in the poorest of 12 districts centered on the Capitol. Her district is the furthest out and is mostly focused on coal mining; starvation is rampant, while the few merchants and business owners live fairly comfortably. There's a healthy black market, to which the Capitol's enforcers turn a blind eye, and Katniss ekes out a basic living for her mother (who hasn't been the same since her husband died) and her younger sister by hunting in a forbidden section of the woods with a boy she's known her entire life. It's not a very good life by the most generous of definitions, but she does all right with what she has. She's a survivor.

In Katniss's country (which stretches from the Capitol, located in present-day Denver, to the Appalachians, where Katniss lives), a yearly event involves a lottery drawing in which teenagers are required to participate. This lottery results in one boy and one girl from each district being sent to the Capitol, where they must participate in the eponymous Hunger Games.

However, something nasty happens; this year just so happens to be the first year Katniss's younger sister, Prim, becomes eligible for the drawing. Because of the way the lottery is set up, the odds of a first-year candidate's name coming up are astronomically low, but Prim is selected. Katniss freaks out and volunteers to go in her little sister's place, which is allowable by an old and little-used rule.

In general, the book between this point and the actual Games itself is by far the most interesting part. That's not to say it's the only interesting part -- all of it is good -- but it's certainly thought-provoking. After volunteering, Katniss is immediately whisked off to the Capitol, where she has her very first encounter with an abundance of food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, and money. Meals are intricately detailed, surroundings richly described, clothing exulted in. It's an interesting perspective, because although, of course, this is a different culture than ours, there are enough similarities that lead you to wonder what a diamond miner from the darkest regions of the Congo would think if he saw New York, courtesy of Donald Trump.

Of course, I forgot to mention the boy sent to the Capitol along with Katniss; the son of the local baker, he lives more comfortably than most in their district. The two of them have history -- he did her a significant kindness in one of the darkest periods of a an already-dark life -- but, in the poisonous atmosphere of the Games and the industry surrounding it, she questions his motivations and embarks on a little adventure in paranoia culminating in the Games.

The Games are set up in a very interesting way. A large area of land -- whether woods, desert (unpopular because the competitors die too quickly), mountains, whatever -- is sectioned off, wired with cameras and microphones, and booby-trapped. A cornucopia is put in the middle of the initial staging area, full of important supplies, which the competitors have to scramble for when the starting gun goes off. Of course, a good number of players are killed in the initial scramble, and the rest disperse to ally with one another and strategize their way through the competition. The whole point is to have only one person left alive.

It sounds pretty dark, and it is -- the wealthiest districts train all of their kids for participation in the Hunger Games, while the poorest districts see it as a possible way out of crushing poverty for the survivor. The odds are against the poorer players, though; a lifetime without proper nutrition and medical care works against them. District 12, Katniss's district, though poor, is the sole exception; they see it in its true light as a way of subjugating the population and emphasizing the power of the government centered on the Capitol. Katniss manages to outlive all but a few of the players, but this means she has to fight for her life against the most efficient killers in the Capitol.

I devoted a lot of space in this post to The Hunger Games because it's probably one of the best pure-fiction books I've read so far this year, and that is saying a lot. Recommended!

Now, moving on ...

I said last week that I'd talk a little bit about e-books today. Some folks do get a little confused about how they really work, mostly because, I think, they have an image in their mind of a PDF they can download, save to their computer, cell phone, or e-reader, and carry around with them. At the very least, they can print it out, right?

Not ... really. This would be the point where I embark on a rant about ridiculous proprietary software restrictions and digital rights management and so on and so forth. There's some debate happening right now on the "right" way to distribute published texts electronically for profit, and we won't go into that today (unfortunate, because I had an awesome metaphor all ready to go, involving Lunchables!).

Basically, an e-book is an electronic book; it's generally a text that's been scanned or published digitally in some form. E-books are distributed in a few different ways; some are totally free to read and play around with (like most of Cory Doctorow's work, including Makers and Little Brother, everything in Project Gutenberg, and many things in Google Books), while others require special software and carry restrictions depending on the publisher and distributors.

In the case of the Gallaudet University Library, the e-books available are of the latter kind. Proprietary formats and the protection of the rights of the people producing and distributing the work is more or less typical of academic publishing; if you've ever had to buy textbooks for a class, you know how expensive they can be. This is because of the various contracts at play here; usually, the author has some rights, the university where the author works has some rights, and the publisher has some rights, and they all need to make some money. Fortunately, if you're a Gallaudet student or faculty or staff member, you have free access through the Gallaudet University Library!

Most of the e-books you'll find in our catalog will open inside the distributor's e-reading software; it's usually eBrary, one of our biggest providers. Occasionally, you'll come across a book with both a print copy in our collection and an electronic copy online, which is nice if you're not the only one researching your topic; classmates and other researchers can get access to the same book electronically without competing with one another for a single print resource.

However, we do sometimes have restrictions on use, which are outlined in the e-book's record in ALADIN Discovery. You'll see a note in the Item availability area of a record that'll tell you if you can only view the e-book for two hours at a time, or if only one person can view it at a time. For example, take a look at the record for Everything you need to know about deafness; you'll see under Location in "Item availability" the following:

GA: UNIV Electronic Book--Two Hour Limit

It's fairly self-explanatory. However, not a lot of our e-books have 2-hour limits or viewing restrictions; the vast majority of our e-book holdings are available through eBrary, and they generally don't restrict viewing of the material. They do, however, limit the ability to print; I've seen e-books that only allow you to print up to 9 pages at a time, while others allow 60 or 100. Again, this is mostly because of licensing and copyright. Still, we do our best to purchase e-books from less-restrictive distributors like eBrary -- that's why so many of our electronic holdings are from them.

Now, access. People usually have a problem with this, because the link to actually get into the book isn't surrounded by flashing lights; it's just one link among quite a few in your average record. However, each record usually has at least two links you can use; one in the URL field near the top of the record and one in "Item availability" near the bottom in the Linked resources field (take a look at the above record for Everything you need to know about deafness to see what I mean). For the most part, if you're on campus, clicking on either link will take you straight to the e-book. If you're off-campus, you'll need to log in in the same way as any of our other electronic resources; this means that if you're not a Gallaudet-affiliated individual with a Gallaudet ID number or Library bar code number, you won't be able to get in.

Once you're in ... well, I will be the first to admit that the e-reader interface is usually less than intuitive. Some people like it, and some people don't; I know faculty who have their own (free) accounts with eBrary, which allows them to save bookmarks and highlighted passages in our e-books to their account, but this feature isn't used very much by students. Still, accounts are free and available to anyone who needs this kind of functionality.

So why do we have e-books at all? First, because they do represent a significant pool of available knowledge that can only benefit our collection. There are plenty of fantastic books in there, especially if you're exploring more esoteric subjects like, for example, proteomics (the large-scale study of proteins, their structures, and their functions). We do have a few print books on the subject, but the majority of our holdings in the field are e-books. Depending on the circumstance, this can mean that access to e-books is superior to access to scholarly articles; most articles are very narrowly focused on specific aspects of a particular field and the general overviews usually contained therein are too brief to offer a useful understanding of the field at large.

Second, they're fairly cheap; we can get a big block of thousands of books at a significantly lower cost than print. Actually publishing books on paper isn't getting any cheaper, while distributing them electronically is. This is a fact of our lives today, and we do benefit from it.

Third, e-books are a terrific way to stay current in your field of research. Print books can sometimes be outdated by the day we get them, two weeks after we ordered them -- another mixed blessing of our age. This way, eBrary or our other e-book providers can swap out outdated books for newer editions almost instantly, thereby ensuring access to up-to-date and in-depth information.

And fourth, they are, on the whole, easier to work with than printed text in some ways. For one, they're searchable; it's much easier to zero in on the exact chapter or passage that you want without having to search through the entire book. E-books can save a lot of time and headaches.

In general, e-books are great resources to have for research purposes. Granted, they're not perfect -- the air is still being massaged out of the pipes of this new mode of access to information -- but their benefits outweigh their inconveniences.

Next week, a more in-depth look at some examples of our e-books. We've got some fun ones!

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Question of the Week
I noticed that the way you capitalize book titles is pretty weird. I was always taught that you capitalize every word except prepositions, articles, and conjunctions, but you usually only capitalize the first word and proper nouns -- except for the books you review every week. What's up with that?
What's up with that? Well, I'm weird in general. If that answer isn't enough to satisfy you, try this: I'm an APA guy.

What? That's not good enough? Well ... okay. See, for books I read for pleasure, I usually capitalize them the way I was taught in my English classes growing up, basically the same way you were. However, for academic titles, I've fallen into the habit of using the APA citation style's capitalization rules for book and article titles in references, which usually mandates that you capitalize only the first word, any proper nouns, and the first word in a subtitle. Everything else is in lower case. Journal titles, like the ones I listed in my previous post, have every major word capitalized, also according to APA.

What can I say? Academic indoctrination can be very effective, especially when you've been involved with one university or another for close to a decade. But why the difference between books I read for pleasure and scholarly texts? Call it an idiosyncrasy. Diff'rent strokes ...