Busy Little Bees!

Although the summer has ended and a brand new year has started, some of us feel like we never left! We have indeed been busy little bees here at the library! We would like to update you on just what we have accomplished. Check it out!

• We are now on Facebook!
  That's right! Click on the link and become a Fan today!
• We also have our own YouTube channel!
  Watch quick how-to video tutorials on various library resources! (More videos coming soon!)
• Chat Reference! Starting Wednesday, August 26th, we are using Meebo!
  (Check out the chat box on our home page!)
• Our Online Catalog has a new look and feel to it.

Those are some of the bigger changes and improvements we've made. A few other things you may want to know about are:

• We've added a new page to our faculty resources: What Resources Should My Students Be Using?
• Our Juvenile collection has been shifted (but is still located on the Basement Level) and our Textbook collection has been moved upstairs to the Third Floor.
• One of our Reference Librarians attended the American Library Association's annual convention in Chicago, Illinois.

We hope that these new additions will bring a swarm of faculty and students to the library, be it physically or virtually. :-)

Citation, Citation...Sigh-tation!

(sigh) Yep, it's that time of semester again. The library is abuzz with activity, fingers are flying on the keyboards, and caffeinated beverages are being consumed by the gallon. Yes indeed, final papers are being written!

But with that final paper comes the ever-so-fun Works Cited list, the icing on the final-paper cake, as it were. (Now, if only putting that part together were as fun as well, eating cake icing. At least with icing you don't have to worry about hanging indents, when to use a period or semi-colon, or how to handle a cake, er book, with multiple bakers, er, I mean, authors.) Well, I think we may have a remedy for you.

So, here's the part where I, as a librarian, am supposed to recommend diving into the 'reader-friendly' MLA Citation Guide, as well as the APA and Chicago guides, right?

Well...I'm not. Why, you might ask? Because we know those guides can be about as appealing as that dry bricklet of angel food cake they tried to serve you in the school cafeteria in sixth grade. No, my knowledge-hungry students! We have something just a little more appealing...

We have...(insert dramatic cliff-hanger music here)... DianaHacker.com!!

This is a fantastic website that has easy-to-understand directions and up-to-date examples on various citation styles. We always give this site a plug whenever we can, so I thought here on my blog would be a great place to do just that.

Check out these direct links to guidance on using various citation styles:

MLA Citation
APA Citation
Chicago

We hope you find the DianaHacker website helpful in your quest for Works Cited perfection! So, when you turn in your final paper to your professor, s/he will deem it a masterpiece worthy of Paula Deen-ness!

And if not?

Well, let them eat cake!

What are they doing back there...? Part II

You know that door near the computers on the library’s Main Floor near the Reference Desk? The one near the purple wall that says ‘212: Technical Services’? Yeahe, that door. Ever wonder what’s behind it?

That’s OK. A lot of people do.

Student A: Is that where the library people think up those long, complicated call numbers? Like PR2829.A2 P43 2004?

Student B: No, I think it’s where they go to flip through book catalogs to find new thick, heavy encyclopedias to order to make our papers harder to research!

Faculty member to him/herself: Gee, I thought it was sort of a library ER/triage center for books that have seen better days. (Vision: a group of panicked librarians gathered around a tattered volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biography lying open on a table. “I need six feet of mending tape, stat!!” one shouts as she dramatically straddles the dying serial to perform CPR.)

Actually, all three of you are correct!

Er, well, sort of.

OK, here’s the deal. There’s a heckuva lot that goes on behind that door that keeps this place organized and running like a well-oiled machine. And over the next few weeks, I’m going to let the folks back there tell you a little bit about who they are and what they do and why it’s so darned important.

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Hi, my name is Tamara Jordan, and I have been the Catalog/Systems Librarian here at Columbia College for just over a year and a half now. The main responsibilities of my position are cataloging the new materials received by the library and maintaining the database that houses the online catalog. I spend a lot of quality time at my desk with my computer adding, deleting, searching, correcting and updating records for the library’s materials; in other words, I don’t get out much. But on such occasions when you do see me out in the stacks, please feel free to say hello, ask a question or tell me what you do or don’t like about the library, the collection, the online catalog, etc. I am easy to recognize—the red hair is hard to miss, and I am never without bits of paper, stickie notes or, all else failing, illegible scrawl on my palms--computers are grand, but you haven’t done a good day’s work if you leave without ink-stained hands. In fact, that is the beauty of my job, I get to work with all the cool technology AND still have the tactile experience of magic markers, spine labels, book stampers and making book fortresses around my desk!
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OK, folks. Stay tuned for more exciting accounts of "What are they doing back there...?"

What are they doing back there...? Part I

You know that door near the computers on the library’s Main Floor near the Reference Desk? The one near the purple wall that says ‘212: Technical Services’? Yeahe, that door. Ever wonder what’s behind it?

That’s OK. A lot of people do.

Student A: Is that where the library people think up those long, complicated call numbers? Like PR2829.A2 P43 2004?

Student B: No, I think it’s where they go to flip through book catalogs to find new thick, heavy encyclopedias to order to make our papers harder to research!

Faculty member to him/herself: Gee, I thought it was sort of a library ER/triage center for books that have seen better days. (Vision: a group of panicked librarians gathered around a tattered volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biography lying open on a table. “I need six feet of mending tape, stat!!” one shouts as she dramatically straddles the dying serial to perform CPR.)

Actually, all three of you are correct!

Er, well, sort of.

OK, here’s the deal. There’s a heckuva lot that goes on behind that door that keeps this place organized and running like a well-oiled machine. And over the next few weeks, I’m going to let the folks back there tell you a little bit about who they are and what they do and why it’s so darned important.

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Hello, my name is Lin Lake and I hold the position of Collection Development Librarian. One of my responsibilities is to acquire the supportive materials that faculty/staff/students need for their classes. Faculty/staff submit library purchase requests for books, DVDs, or compact discs that they will use in their classes or will assign students to use outside the classroom.

You will notice on the New Book Shelves across from the Circulation Desk that the 2009 Caldecott Medal, John Newbery Medal, Coretta Scott King Book Awards, Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal, Pura Belpre Awards, Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, Schneider Family Book Award, Michael L. Printz Award, Mildred L. Batchelder Award titles are available. These titles will be used by EDU 377 Children’s Literature class. We also have past award winning titles which may be found within the Children’s Collection downstairs!

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OK, folks. Stay tuned for more exciting accounts of "What are they doing back there...?"

I Heard a Rumor

We all get them. Those crazy, can’t-be-true forwarded emails that your Aunt Matilda has sent out to 162 unsuspecting recipients with one click of her I’m-retired-so-I’ve-got-plenty-of-time finger. And of course, we do the responsible thing and delete them, right? OK, well maybe not all of them. Some of them are just too juicy and fun not to read!

But do you ever wonder if there’s anywhere you can go on the Web to see if ol’ Aunt Matilda knows what she’s talking about? There is indeed! It’s called Snopes.com.

According to the Snopes website, the site “…employs the more expansive popular (if not academically inaccurate) use of ”urban legend” as a term that embraces not only urban legends but also common fallacies, misinformation, old wives’ tales, strange news stories, rumors, celebrity gossip, and similar items.” (Snopes FAQ)

The site is easy to navigate. You can either search for a rumor you’ve already heard of or search by category. Each entry cuts to the chase with a simple “True” or “False” listed at the top followed by an explanation that’s fun, informative, and easy to read. You could say Snopes is sort of the Mythbusters of the Internet world.

And if the name “Snopes” sounds familiar to some of you English majors, there’s a reason. Think William Faulkner. Yep, the Snopes family. That’s where the website got its name. Pretty fitting, don’t you think?

So, the next time Auntie sends you yet another email warning you about the dangers lurking in your residence hall plumbing or telling you to beware of some guy going around burning barns, check it out on Snopes.com!

-Ms. Hood

New Year’s Resolutions

Resolution: a firm decision to do or not to do something

-The New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd edition

As we close the door on a rather wild and woolly Fall semester (and yes, I realize some of us want to lock that door as well), I realized that the library is coming up on a particular milestone that I thought worthy of mentioning: As of February 11th, our not-so-new director, Dan Murphy, will have been with us one full year, taking over for John Pritchett, who retired in December of 2007. And, as anyone in LITS (Library and Information Technology Services) can attest, during Dan’s time here there’s been more change in this building than a swear jar on a sailing vessel. But considering where we were a year ago, that’s a good thing. While Mr. Pritchett did a fantastic job of bringing this building into the 21st century before he retired, we knew the same needed to be done for our equipment and technology. Easier said than done.

Enter Dan.

Armed with the dry humor of a seasoned musician (which he is, by the way), several years of leadership in IT and libraries, and a cup of java, Dan has orchestrated multiple projects - none of which could be described as ‘easy’ - including the successful merging of the IT and Library Departments, the acquisition of badly needed - and highly used - equipment and technology, and the fantastically jaw-dropping transformation of the Overton Media Center, to name a few.

Not surprisingly, Dan has even more planned (trust me, the list of his projects covers a lot of real estate on the bulletin board in my office), and I’ve come to learn that when the smell of a freshly-brewed pot of coffee comes wafting from Dan’s office, that usually means that yet another project is taking shape. So there is certainly a sense of vitality in the library that is, if nothing else, contagious.

Another thing, though, that Dan has brought is related more to that word at the top of your screen, but a slightly different meaning of it. Follow me here. Lately, it seems as though everywhere we turn there’s a pair of snapping scissors headed our way, whether it’s state budget cuts that make Swiss cheese out of PASCAL (the funding source of many of our electronic databases) or federal budget cuts that make that student financial aid oh so much harder to get ahold of. Despite this, Dan has brought with him a philosophy that while yes, money does occasionally need to be spent on much needed technology, we can, in fact, be creative in our approach to acquiring and disseminating information, which is generally what libraries are in the business of doing. And we can do this without breaking the budget. With web conferencing software like Dimdim (coming soon) and databases like the Directory of Open Access Journals (here now), the library and IT departments – now known as LITS - can continue to offer the services today’s students and faculty have come to expect and, in fact, need.

So while many of us are focused upon keeping our New Year’s resolutions, whether it’s losing weight or making better grades, my mind wanders to that other meaning that I mentioned of the word resolution: “The degree of detail visible in a photographic or television image.” I like this definition even better because it reminds me of what we’re doing here in the library. OK, so the library and all that goes on in here isn’t just an image. We’re real, trust me. But we, like everyone else, are having to deal with a tighter budget. Yet if we can focus on the details of what we do have at our disposal, as well as what we can easily acquire, then we could potentially be much the better for it.

And that, my friends, is what we here at LITS hope to accomplish. Our New Year’s resolution is to focus on what we do have, what we will have, and how to deliver that to you in the best, most efficient way possible. And with Dan continuing to lead a fantastic crew of IT and Library staff, I believe we will do just that.

Now, off to the gym!

Ms. Hood