This week in Library News:
The public is invited to “Meet Eyal Press, author of ‘Beautiful Souls,’” in an interview by Steven Herb on Tuesday, September 10, 6:30 p.m., in Schlow Centre Region Library, 211 S. Allen Street, State College, Pennsylvania. “Beautiful Souls,” Macmillan Publishers, explores what impels ordinary people to defy the sway of authority and convention. It was selected by the Penn State Reads series to be read and discussed by incoming freshmen.
Press’s work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Nation, and the Raritan Review. He also is the author of “Absolute Convictions,” a narrative account of the abortion conflict. He is a past recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism.
The popular Earth and Mineral Sciences Library film series returns this fall semester with a varied line-up of documentaries. The film screenings are held every Wednesday at 12:15 p.m. in 105 Deike Building, and are free and open to the public. More details about the series can be seen online at: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/content/psul/emsl/aboutus/filmseries.html.
An Indigenous Geography Workshop, led by Dr. Douglas Herman, will be held Monday, September 16, 1:00–4:00 p.m., in the Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library. Herman, a senior geographer at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, will introduce participants to a novel grid he developed to document, through the voices of local residents, the important elements of life in an indigenous community. He created the grid during his research in the Pacific, described at www.pacificworlds.com, and he has used it with classes he teaches at Towson University. In the workshop, Herman will illustrate how the indigenous geographic technique can be employed to compare and contrast communities in different regions of the world.
The University Libraries have scheduled a wide range of free seminars this semester to help students, faculty and staff with their research needs. Classes are available in basic library research skills and the following citation management tools: Zotero, Endnote and Mendeley. Additional introductory level and advanced level classes will be offered in LionSearch, Penn State’s powerful library search engine. In addition, two workshops will be held on data management. The full line up of classes, including descriptions and direct registration links, is listed below. More details and registration information are also available from the Libraries’ website.
August 24, 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. “Plants get sick too!” presentation on Pennsylvania peach production, Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. Presented by Frederick Gildow, department head in the Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology.
August 29, 10-11 a.m., 302 Paterno Library: Library Research Basics
September 4, 10 –11:30 a.m. Introduction to Zotero
Library Clean Up Day will take place tomorrow, August 20, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., in Mann Assembly Room. Items may be brought down throughout the day. Feel free to drop and shop!
Ever consider donating scrap paper? Any scraps without sensitive information are welcome. One man’s trash is another’s treasure! While you’re at it, why not clean up your virtual space by deleting old files! As the libraries move towards a greener tomorrow, use this opportunity to clean out and recycle unwanted items. Participation in the cleanup is voluntary, but encouraged. Nearly all remaining items at the end of the day will be reused or recycled by university salvage.
Please contact Megan Folmar at M.Folmar@psu.edu with any questions.
Note: All University Park libraries should discard the brochures from last year for:
Updated one sheet Quick Start Guides will be distributed week of 8/19. In the interim, the new Guide to the Libraries should be distributed. Questions? Contact Lana Munip
By Barbara Coopey, assistant head, Access Services
Spring 2013 was the first semester with floating collection in production at 19 campus libraries. 965,046 monographs were converted from BOOK to the BOOKFLOAT item type during the transition to a floating collection. This number will continue to increase as new books added to the general stacks areas of the campus libraries are assigned the BOOKFLOAT item type during the acquisition process.
Approximately 5,000 BOOKFLOAT items have the potential to float because they are currently checked out to users where the user’s campus library doesn’t match the item’s library. For example, Mont Alto users have 11 Hazleton books. As books are checked out and returned among the 19 libraries, the number of floating books on the shelf at a particular library is constantly changing.
Continue reading
By Tom Reinsfelder, for the Online Reference Team
The new online reference system known as Ask A Librarian will be online beginning August 20. We need to thank everyone on CMS web development team for their hard work in helping to get everything ready before the start of the fall semester.
A few important items to note:
1. Although the system will be online and operational this week it will not be fully staffed until Monday August 26.
Beginning next week we will follow this Online Reference Schedule offering nearly 24 hour live chat coverage on week days.
2. The Ask A Librarian tab will appear on the right side of every page in the CMS and LionSearch. In the future this will be added to other locations including the CAT, Get It! pages, and ILLiad.
3. In addition to live chat, users may choose to submit questions by email using the form at http://ask.libraries.psu.edu or sending a message directly to askalibrarian@psu.edu
4. At times when live chat is not being monitored users will be directed to http://ask.libraries.psu.edu where they will be able to search for their answer or submit a question by email.
5. Further information about the Online Reference Team is posted on our Intranet Page.
Any questions or feedback about this service may be directed to UL-REFERENCE-TEAM@lists.psu.edu
By Ryan Johnson, technology training coordinator
One of the great features I like about Dropbox is the ability to automatically upload photos and videos taken from your Android device into Dropbox. This capability, called Camera Upload, will ensure you don’t lose an important photo or video if something happens to your phone or other device.
You can turn on this capability when you first install the app or by going to the Dropbox apps settings. When setup a folder called camera uploads will appear in your Dropbox folders.
Depending on your device, you can also do this manually. For instructions on how to do this, please refer to Dropbox’s website and select the instructions for the device you have.
Please join us in welcoming the following new hires:
Part-time:
Freya Austine Decker – Commons Services
Sonya Kokus – John M. Lilley Library, Behrend College
Holly Boyle – George T. Harrell Health Sciences Library, Penn State Hershey
Amy Du – George T. Harrell Health Sciences Library, Penn State Hershey
Arrick Lanfrancki – Tombros McWhirter Knowledge Commons
Teressa Pressler – Fletcher L. Byrom Earth & Mineral Sciences Library
Full-time:
8/15/13
Stephanie Diaz – Reference and Instruction Librarian, Lee R. Glatfelter Library, Penn State York
8/19/13
Mohamed Berray – Diversity resident, Administration
Chuck Jones – Librarian and Tombros Chair for Classics and the Humanities, Arts & Humanities Library
Rachel Smith – Diversity resident, Administration
Internal Moves
8/19/13
Amy Deuink – Head librarian, Beaver Campus Library
Stephen Mattes – Monographs cataloger, Cataloging & Metadata Services
By Binky Lush, manager, Discovery, Access and Web Services
On Tuesday, August 20, the CMS Development Team and the Online Reference Team will be making the following changes to the web site:
Ask A Librarian
The new online reference service will be called “Ask a Librarian.”
Web Site Refresh
The Libraries site is getting an updated look! With some slight color changes and some changes to our fonts and styles, we are “refreshing” the Libraries web site to make it a bit more contemporary, without making any content changes at all. This is part of the effort of the Libraries Web Stakeholders Group and the CMS Development Team to make ongoing and continual enhancements to the site, while ensuring our users are not confronted with any drastic or confusing changes.
Research Guides Search
The Research Guides Search will appear on the Research Guides page and will allow our users to more effectively search for Research Guides. Results will display in a sortable table, making the guides and the subject specialists much more discoverable.
We are excited to bringing you these new web site updates and we welcome your questions and comments!
The CMS Development Team and the Online Reference Team