Wilder Winter Wonderland

We had a fun going away party for Stanley on Friday. The them was a "Wilder Winter Wonderland". We all wore scarves and ate snow cones. (I thought it was hilarious.) Each department gave him a funny gift to remember the UR. The Access Services department each made a "flat Stanley"; I also thought that was hilarious. Nora made a movie, which was amazing. And oh yeah, we all wore Wisconsin tattoos (temporary).

I will miss Stanley most at budget time. He has the best budget gestalt of anyone I have ever worked with. He knew when it was the numbers just didn't seem right. He knew when we were overspending. He could tell when we were "where we expect to be". It was both years and years of working with budgets and a natural ability. It is going to be rough without him.

Rotated and Condensed?

I feel like I'm the only one who is shocked to learn that the American Chemical Society (ACS) will be "publishing the print editions of most of its journals in a "rotated and condensed" format that will fit two pages of content on one printed page." In other words, we won't really be able to actually READ the print. And the price for the print is increasing significantly at the same time. At least in my library, the chemists have been one of the most vocal defenders of keeping print. This feels like a sea change to me. Of course, I didn't think email was any big deal the first time I used it, so what do I know about predicting the future....

Not Quite Ready For Adult Books

Lois and Margaret organized a "not quite ready for adult books" reading group at work. We are reading children's books. To date we have read "The Wind in the Willows", "The Borrowers", and "All Of A Kind Family".  It has turned out to be fun and informative.  Some people have read the books as kids, some are reading the books for the first time.  Some people do research (!) about the author, book setting, and vocabulary terms.  And it brings together people from all parts of the library, who rarely work together.  It's been just terrific. Next we are reading "Mary Poppins".  I think it is going to be a shock for people who only know the story from the movie.

We Should Do This

I was reading an article from nytimes.com this morning and noticed that I could send it to my phone and to facebook. When did that happen? I predict they'll add twitter soon too. We should do that for the catalog. Grrrr.

We were inspirational????

Wow. How cool is this? Our book was inspirational to Char Booth!

Chatting with Char Booth ALA TechSourceBy Daniel A. Freeman Char Booth is a Library Journal Mover and Shaker and one of ALA's Emerging Leaders, and is a voice of growing prominence in the Library Technology community. As the E-Learning Librarian at UC Berkeley, Char works at a unique .... The Foster and Gibbons Studying Students report from the University of Rochester was inspirational in that it illustrated the value of detailing the results of local research project in order to provide insight and motivation for similar studies ...

Only electronic

I had a interesting dinner conversation last night with a science faculty member. He admitted that rather than coming to the library to copy an article only available in print, he would simply request it through ILL.  Why? Because the ILL article is delivered to him electronically as a pdf.  He didn't want a paper copy. He wanted the article in electronic form.  

Because you can’t sleep in the library every night

I was invited to a facebook event,  "Residence Halls Open for New Students", subtitle."Because you can’t sleep in the library every night ".  I'm of the philosophy that any publicity is good publicity.

Reasons for Choosing the UofR

According to their facebook posts, here are some of the reasons students (class of 2013) chose UR over other schools. Campus atmosphere and people they met during their visit, flexible curriculum, , and financial aid seemed to be the factors most mentioned.

• just love Rochester
  
• had everything
  
• traditional campus
  
• atmosphere is "me"
  
• scholarship
  
• portable research grant (4)
  
• people less intimidating
  
• almost no one offers a microbiology major
  
• fits my personality
  
• feel most at home at UofR
  
• has everything I want - engineering, great location, beautiful campus, amazing resources
  
• feel more comfortable
  
• better financial aid (yet several turned down full rides at other schools)
  
• money was a huge issue
  
• open curriculum
  
• sciences
  
• research situation always trumps an arts and science college
  
• from rochester
  
• cool program - I can study art and be premed
  
• homey feeling
  
• most money
  
• people extremely nice
  
• campus is gorgeous
  
• incredibly nice people - left with such a happy feeling
  
• people were great
  
• gave off the right vibe - great place, awesome people, awesome campus
  
• aid
  
• balance between social and academic life
  
• curriculum would easily allow you to study art and still fulfill all your premed reqs
  
• opportunity for someone interested in both music and sciences
  
• campus gorgeous
  
• people were nice as could be
  
• after visiting the Rochester campus allowed me to easily discard the other 7
  

Some students (posted in April) were still deciding. Financial aid was certainly a big factor as well as pressure from parents. Reasons given for NOT choosing the "other" school --- heard that the bio program is not as great as the UofR. Afraid of big class size at X.

What Did YOu Choose Rochester Over?

I was reading discussion board at (one of) the University of Rochester Class of 2013 facebook group this morning.  "Rochester is clearly the best, but what did you choose Rochester over?"  I'm always fascinated by this list.  Why does the some kid who applies to Purdue also apply to the University of Rochester?  Why did they turn down Yale for University of Rochester?  Hmmmm.

Northeastern

Purdue

Dickinson

NYU

Brown

Naval Academy

Washington University

Amherst

Emory

Vanderbilt

University of Vermont

Franklin and Marshall

Connecticut College

Brandeis

Tufts

Middlebury

Yale

Vassar

Cornell

Ithaca

Clark

American

University of Delaware

SUNY Binghamton

Carnegie Mellon

University of Iowa

Indiana

University of South Carolina

Ole Miss

Appalachian State

George Mason

Michigan State

University of Scranton

Pitt

Dartmouth

Penn State

Rutgers

Leheigh

Fordham

Sarah Lawrence

Tufts

Middlebury

Geneseo

Rice 

Seton Hall

Alleghany