Friday, January 25, 2008

No to reserves. No to ebooks

This was interesting. I just had someone desperate to get a copy of "Numeric Recipes in Fortran". Of course all the copies are on reserve. The reserve loan period was absolutely not long enough. A link to an electronic version of the book was useless; he needed to "flip through the pages". Hmmmm. So much for my stereotype that computer scientists find e-books useful.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Visitors

We had visitors yesterday from Cornell. I love to talk to people from other libraries. They were curious as to why we hadn't installed lockers in the new Gleason Library space. Students hadn't asked for them; I guess we just don't have a "locker culture" here. One of the women told me that before she left Ithaca, there was a line snaking around the library (I'm not exactly which one) of students waiting to sign up for lockers! Lockers are given out the first day of the semester on a first come first serve basis. Wow. They definitely DO have a "locker culture" there. It's always useful to remember that what's a big issue for one campus, may not be on another.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Serrandipity at Midwinter

This is the second time that I have accidentally stumbled onto the meetings of the YALSA committee that chooses the Best Books for Young Adults. Wow. It is an amazing process. The committee must read over a hundred books. They discuss and vote on them several times. They also get input from teens who have read the books. I think they met Friday, Saturday, Sunday, AND Monday of Midwinter. I was amazed at how much work they had done, how very seriously they took their work, AND how very open the process was. I probably sat in on the their meetings for several hours just listening and watching. I was wildly impressed and now I can't wait to go read some of the books on the list!

Monday, January 07, 2008

Please Use Elevator

Bat in Stairwell.

Sigh. The first Monday of 2008....