Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Hear about Hurricane Relief - Tonight

The students from Karen Larson's class who traveled to Key West to help with recovery from Hurricane Wilma will be presenting their insights and observations at the library this evening, January 25th, starting at 7 p.m. We'll be gathering on the first floor, in front of the current periodicals. Come hear how students integrated anthropological observations and social justice principles into their service learning. It's likely you may also be able to purchase a key-lime colored Wilma Relief T-shirt to commemorate the trip.

J-term is in its final week. Though it has been fairly quiet in the library, this year two librarians taught courses. Michelle Twait's class (in keeping with the Vocation theme) explored information professions. Edi Thorstensson taught weaving to students at the St. Peter Arts Center while exposing them to textile traditions around the world.

Cal State San Marcos has a new library that has been a big success. So why is this news? In the 1990s this new campus of the California system was not going to have a library at all - who needs it when everything's online? What this new library demonstrates is that there is s social dimension to learning that can't be easily replicated in cyberspace.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Happy Birthday, Louis Braille!

Google is honoring the inventor of Braille today.

Another new books list has been posted on our Web site. Better yet, we will soon be returning to the practice of sending those who request books a slip with its call number when they head out to the shelves. We had discontinued that process a few years ago to streamline the work, but we missed it. So those of you who suggest books for purchase will be finding those little slips in your POs again before too long. Thanks to Sonja Timmerman for making it happen.

RSS readers are dead? Just as I'm getting used to this fascinating way to waste incredible amounts of time? RSS - "Really Simple Syndication" - is a technological way to "feed" digital stories to potential audiences. And while I never got used to my checking Bloglines account routinely, I now have a dozen feeds on my upgraded FireFox toolbar. They call them "live bookmarks." I call them procrastination's best friend.