Curl Up With a Good IEX January Course

Library faculty are offering two courses this January. A new course jointly taught by Anna Hulseberg and Julie Gilbert is Fact and Fiction (NDL 109). "In this course students will explore the relationship between fact and fiction in the experience of the reader and the writer. We will commence with an investigation into the psychology of reading and apply this framework to interactions with course readings. We will read works of fiction, explore the related historical record, and further consider the ethical implications of the often blurry relationship between fiction and truth through fieldwork. The term will culminate in the investigation of an historical event and the production and presentation of a creative work related to that event."

Barbara Fister will teach Books & Culture (NDL 105): "To read the news, you would think books and readers are on the brink of extinction. The National Endowment for the Arts warns that reading is in precipitous decline and numerous 'experts' say people in their teens and twenties have no interest in anything that isn't high tech. Yet more books are being published than ever before and the number of people using public libraries is at an all-time high. This course will explore books in contemporary culture, the book industry from writers to readers, the intellectual history of reading, and the future of the book."

Stay tuned for news of our Spring course offerings . . .

New Peer Reference Tutors - and Longer Hours

We know that as busy as students are, they often can't really settle down to work on their papers until 9:00 pm or later And 10pm is when the librarians are yawning, hanging up the reference shingle, and heading to bed. (Okay, one of us is a night owl, but he's the exception to the rule.)

We're trying a new experiment. With the help of two talented student employees who volunteered to get some reference training and burn the midnight oil, we will be offering extended reference assistance from 10pm until midnight several evenings a week. Keep an eye out for our peer reference tutors who will be available to help out at the reference desk for a few extra hours, just when students need it the most.

photo courtesy of mortsan

Do You Hear What I Hear?

At the entrance to the library are security gates. Every book we own and equipment now too, are secured so that unless we desensitize items, the alarm (or beeping) will sound as you leave the building. Our items, books, computers, DVD’s, CD’s, etc., are precious to us. We want everyone to be able to use our resources, but responsibly, by checking things out at the circulation desk appropriately.

Should an item in your backpack trigger the alarm, kindly come back to the front desk and we will assist in figuring out what made the alarm sound. The Book Mark and many other stores place sensitized/magnetic strips into their items as well. It often isn’t compatible with our system so we will desensitize your textbooks so they won’t sound the alarm again.

Our final word is please don’t be alarmed by the alarm!

Open Access Week

We're coming to the end of the now-annual celebration of the Open Access movement. The idea of open access is that knowledge is most useful when it can be shared and is not behind barriers. As anyone who has done research in our library knows, there are limits to our collection, both print and online. Sharing among libraries helps, but even so we often run into situations where we need to pay a copyright permission fee to get an article in a journal we don't have. These can run up to $50 per article, so it's no small matter.

Open Access is a response to those barriers. To quote Peter Suber, who knows more about it than anyone, "Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder."

To support this movement, the library has recently begun adding open access books that fit our collection to our catalog. (If you encounter one of these, and think we should have a print copy available, let us know; we understand that reading long-form texts on paper has certain advantages). You will also find that journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals are included in our software that matches database references to actual articles. And as a department, the library adopted its own open access mandate a couple of years ago - being the first department at a liberal arts college to adopt such a mandate. Since then at least three liberal arts college faculties have adopted college-wide mandates - Trinity, Rollins, and Oberlin colleges. What this means is that the faculty involved will make every effort to make their research available to all, either through publishing in open access venues or through making sure they retain rights as authors to self-archive their work online.

A reminder to Gustavus faculty: though we do not have an official institutional repository for open research, the campus web team has added a handy feature to profiles that makes it easy to upload your work and make it available to the world - as simply as attaching a file to an e-mail message. If you aren't sure if a particular publisher allows self-archiving, check the Sherpa/Romeo database of publisher policies.

For examples of open access projects, see -

• Directory of Open Access Journals
• Hathi Trust
• OAPEN
  
• Open Folklore
• PubMed Central

images courtesy of Bob Fornal and the Wikimedia Commons

Library Hours - Fall Break 2010

Library hours for Reading Days:
Friday Oct. 22: 8:00am-4:45pm;
Saturday, Oct. 23: 10:00am - 5:00pm;
Sunday, Oct. 24: 12:00pm - 6:00pm;
Monday, Oct. 25: 8:00am - 4:45pm;
Tuesday, Oct. 26: 8:00am - 1:00am

Fun facts: Interlibrary loan

Although you may have been the grateful recipient of an obscure dissertation borrowed through ILL from a library across the nation, you probably don't think about the lending side of ILL. What kinds of materials are being requested by other libraries from the Gustavus collection?

Our Scandinavian crime fiction has been enormously popular. Here's an example.

The Redeemer by Jo Nesbø has been in the Gustavus collection since April 2009. To date, it has circulated 13 times. Seven of those circulations have been to libraries out of state. The Redeemer has traveled to Wyoming, Vermont, Texas, New York, Maryland and was sent twice to Oregon.

In addition, between May 2009 and September 2010, we had to say "no" to thirty-four requests for this title from out-of-state libraries because it was already checked out!

As always, our interlibrary loan privileges with other institutions are dependent on "good behavior." Help us return material in a timely manner so we don't jeopardize those privileges. Questions? See the ILL page of the library website.

Used Book and VHS Sale

Stop by the library this week for our used books and VHS sale. Everything is only 50 cents! With a clearance sale on Friday, everything you can fit in a bag for $2.00.

Libraries can be dangerous places.

The American Library Association (and freedom-lovers everywhere) are celebrating Banned Books Week September 25 - October 2, 2010.

Did you know The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are all books that have been banned or challenged?

Exercise your freedom to read (and make up your own mind) by checking out these and other challenged books. Read more about Banned Books Week at the ALA site.

Constitution Day talk - 'Ground Zero Mosque'

Join us in the library's GLA Reading Room on Friday, September 17th at 2:30, when Associate Professor Alisa Rosenthal of the Political Science department will give a talk on the constitutional issues raised by the proposed Islamic Cultural Center in lower Manhattan.

Come and discuss an issue that offers a topical take on a document signed on Sept. 17th, 1787. Yes, Virginia, there will be refreshments.

Additional resources:

New York Times coverage
The U.S. Constitution (National Archives)
The U.S. Constitution: Analysis and Interpretation (Government Printing Office, via FindLaw) 
Research Guide for Constitutional Law (Gustavus library)

Archives Insider

As a new academic year begins, I thought I'd give an update and a bit of inside information.

Regular open hours will be on the following days.
Monday, 8:00-noon and 1:00-4:30
Tuesday, 8:00-noon and 1:00-4:30
Wednesday, 8-noon

Please contact archives staff if you are unable to visit during these hours. We are located directly above the main entrance of Folke Bernadotte Memorial library.

This past academic year was very busy. We helped approximately 280 users. Patrons included students working on classroom assignments, academics conducting professional research, and family history researchers seeking to uncover their roots. To see how students used the archives in Glen Kranking's J-Term "History Bytes" course, please see their course page.

What's new? Library e-resources updates

As you get ready for fall term, visit the library's E-resources Informer site for updates on our e-resources collection. Some highlights from this fall's E-Resources Informer:

• Not so trivial trivia: selected statistics on the databases and online journals used most frequently by the Gustavus community
• Tips and tools: find out how the Assignment Calculator can help students stay on on track as they research and write an assignment
• New e-resources: learn about Naxos Music Library and Sabin Americana
• New looks: Don't be surprised if your favorite e-resource looks a bit different this fall. Many of our e-resources have new search interfaces: Annual Reviews, EBSCOhost databases (includes Academic Search Premier and others), Journals@OVID, JSTOR, LexisNexis Academic, and SAGE Premier
  
  

Want more details? Visit the E-resources Informer

Possible Interlibrary Loan delays

The interlibrary loan office will be operating with minimal student staffing June 8 - June 13, 2010. You may experience some minor delays on requests submitted during this period.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact Sonja as soon as possible. Thanks!

Past and Present Gustavus Buildings - Display

A new addition is being added to the Gustavus campus! Literally! Construction of the "New Academic Building" is underway, and to keep with the theme, the College and Lutheran Church Archives have brought you a new display, "Ch-ch-ch-ch Changes: Buildings at Gustavus." The display chronicles how particular buildings at the college have changed, progressed, and even been demolished over time. Come see what the first gymnasium looked like! Learn what happened to Johnson Hall! This exciting new display was created by library and archives intern Maura Coonan. It is located on the main floor of the library by the reference desk. Come check it out!

To see more images of the the college's past, visit the archives.

Author Tea! Join us this Thursday, May 6th

The Book Mark and the library host an annual author tea for Gustavus authors who have published books within the past year. Join us this Thursday, May 6th, at 3:30 in the Courtyard Cafe to hear a bit about the books and enjoy refreshments.

Here is this year's bookshelf:

Sidonia Alenuma (Education) Race and Educational Reform in America
Mark Bjelland (Geography) Human Geography
Mary Everett (Spanish, retired) My White Orchid
Barbara Fister (Library) Through the Cracks
Paschal Kyoore (French) Folktales of the Dagara of West Africa
Roger McKnight (Scandinavian Studies) Watonwan County: Past, Present, and Future
Joyce Sutphen (English) First Words

... and More Sunshine

The 2010 State of the Media Report has just been released - a terrific review of what's going on with the news media and where things are headed.

There is also a freshly-issued Secrecy Report Card from Open the Government that sums up developments is government secrecy and transparency in 2009.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a blog post on the importance of Freedom of Information Act requests being carried out without undue over-redaction.

To give credit where it's due, the federal government does share lots of information - including a new website that includes copies of the decennial census of population and housing going back to 1790.

It's Sunshine Week

Sunshine week is March 14th-20th. In celebration Open the Government.org is presenting a web cast called "Building Transparency." Stream the live teleconference to your desktop on March 19th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Click here for more information.

This teleconference is made available by Minitex and promoted by the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library.

We Need You!

Want to improve the library? We need students to participate in our library study. Your participation could win you 100 pages of free printing or pizza!

Your role may include any of the following:

• Designer
• Photographer
• Web Consultant

When do we need you? And for how long? Sometime between now and the end of April for about an hour of your time.

Interested? Contact libstudy@gustavus.edu

Get Ready to Celebrate!

Are you a student who has done some cool research? Have a creative project you're proud of? Are you involved with a campus group that did something awesome? Why not share it at the annual Celebration of Creative Inquiry? It will be held on April 30th between 5-7 pm in the campus center.

To join in, round up a faculty sponsor and submit an abstract. The deadline is March 19th.

Have a project in mind, but you're not sure how to present it? No problem. There's help available on making posters, and there will be workshops

Still have questions? Check on this page or e-mail your questions to creativeinquiry@gustavus.edu.

And be sure to come on April 30th to see the amazing things students have accomplished. The refreshments are yummy, too.

New Catalog Arrival

MnPALS Plus, our new catalog, is up and running! You can access it directly from the search box on the library's homepage. We'd love to hear your thoughts on the new interface. Please click here to send us comments and questions. (Fans of the old catalog, Classic MnPALS, can still access it from the library's homepage. Each catalog searches the same information - it's just the interface that's different.)

The catalogs they are a changin’…

We’re pleased to announce the launch of a new library catalog. It's the same great data with a bold new look. MnPALS Plus, which was developed locally by our library consortium, boasts improved location information, sophisticated ways to refine searches and a number of other features that make it more user-friendly and in line with the next generation of library catalogs.

MnPALS Plus will become the library’s default catalog but fans of the old catalog (Classic MnPALS) will still be able to access it from the library’s homepage. The transition will be completed by the beginning of spring semester but you can preview MnPALS Plus now.

Tell us what you think of the new catalog!