Don't Judge a Book by It's Cover or

a freshman by their facebook page. I looked at the facebook pages of my six freshman advisees; all but one of them was completely open. I had a very strong and very wrong impression of them after looking at their profiles. The student with the "come hither" profile picture turned out to be a shy, sweet pea. The frat boy turned out to be smart, articulate, and one of the sunniest people I've ever met. The student with the slightly creepy, goth-like profile turned out to be super smart, shy, and totally on top of it. The cocky athlete turned out to be eager, enthusiastic, and excited to be at college. I thought their profiles created a negative impression, but of course they probably want to look hot and confident. I guess I've just never had any experience with such large disconnects between the online and actual person. Once again my advisees are opening my eyes!

League of Librarians Trading Cards

Credit goes to the librarians from Carleton College who created the "original" librarian trading cards. We just took their idea and expanded on it. Our amazing Marc Bollman came up with the league of librarians concept, took the photographs, and then made magic happen. We're going to roll them out at the technology expo today and Parent's breakfast tomorrow. I'll be interested to see if they're silly enough to be popular... Check out the whole set on  flickr. 

Messinger Library Staff of the Year Award 2009

Susan announced the winner of the Messigner Library Staff Award at yesterday's general staff meeting.  It was super cool because Ann was surprised! It was definitely the highlight of my day.

"In her 7 years at the River Campus Libraries she has blossomed into an exemplar subject librarian.  She has built an ideal and enviable relationship with her academic department.  She is heavily involved with the curriculum of the undergraduates, graduates and faculty of the department to such an extent that they have provided her with space within the department to hold regular office hours.

 She was one of the first volunteers to become a writing tutor and was so talented in that role that she was asked to teach one of the WRT 105 courses.

She has been a very active and creative colleague; very involved in the undergraduate and graduate research projects; experiences which she has both written and presented on numerous times.  She is also one of the ECO coordinators.  She took it upon herself to learn Cold Fusion so that she could create a database-drive subject guide; which has become the model for the subject guides that will be launched with the new website.

She is very active at a national level as well.  She served as the Vice Chair of the Law and Political Science Section of the ACRL, wherein she worked hard to raise the visibility of librarians within the American Political Science Association.  Under her leadership the LPSS held its first ever virtual meeting so that librarians unable to attend ALA could still participate.  This virtual meeting has now become a model for other committees within the ACRL.

If you have not guess already, this year’s Messinger Library Staff of the Year award goes to Ann Marshall."

Reading on the Kindle

I finally borrowed my mother's Kindle for a trip and actually *read*  several books.  I want to capture my impressions before I read this week's New Yorker article by Nicholson Baker...

The Kindle is fantastic for a trip.  There was none of my usual agony about choosing which books to take.  I didn't run out of books to read, which is deadly.  The device itself is tiny and easy to tuck in the outside pocket of my bag.  I recharged the battery once, but I don't think I needed to.  

I love the wireless Amazon bookstore. I was in Oak Park and decided I wanted to read a book about Frank Lloyd Wright.  Presto. I bought one and read it.  I *love* that feature.

I quickly got into the reading experience and got caught up in the book rather than the device.

The book cover and reviews on the back of the book influence my choice much more than I thought.  I actually had a hard time browsing Amazon online.  The awkward keyboard was also a contributing factor because it was a pain to use the "if you like this book..." feature.  Next time I will bring the Kindle to the bookstore with me and buy Kindle books after looking at the physical book.

Initially I struggled with my itouch because of the touch screen.  Apparently I've acclimated because I was very frustrated that the kindle did not use a touch screen.  

I don't know why I missed this, but I found it disorienting to not know how much of the book I had read or had left to read.  The kindle shows me what percentage of the book I've read, but it wasn't quite the same.

Someone needs to invent a single,  universal recharging cord!!! I had a cord for my phone, my camera, my itouch AND the kindle.  Enough is enough.

Overall the Kindle is definitely a good reading experience and it is ideal for travel.  I must like it because I checked out a book from the library yesterday and instead found myself reading the title on the Kindle!  Which reminds me of my last wish for the next generation Kindle - a light. I would love to be able to read in bed or on a dark plane.  

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

Time to Remember

librarian

gardener

shopper

Disney World vacationer

teacher

QVC fan

gift giver

cat lover

pony owner

beader

reader

t.v. watcher

sister

daughter

my friend

Clean and Go Green Week

Wow. It's been a long time since I've posted to my blog.  Time definitely gets away from me.  We had a clean up WEEK at work. I wasn't sure if anyone would bother to participate. What was I thinking??? We're all drowning in paper.  Suzanne (whose office is spotless) spent two days cleaning out her file drawers.  Even she threw away a huge pile of papers, literally.  Interesting how we all needed permission (?) to take the time to clean, sort, and throw away.  

Mentioned in the student newspaper

I love to find the library mentioned in the student newspaper. We were listed 5 times in an article, "Almost 30 reasons to love UR".

• You dress up to go to Gleason [library], considering you will probably run into more people there than you will anywhere else on campus.
  
• You have a straight face when you tell your friends back home that a library is the social hub of the campus.
  
• You realize that the graffiti in the stacks is better than PostSecret's could ever be.
  
• One of the things on your to-do list before you graduate is doing some promiscuous acts in the stacks.
  
• There is always one person in the Gleason cubicle with a bathrobe on, and, yes, he probably lives there.

Student Grades

More on freshman advising. I was able to see first semester grades for my advisees.

• mostly B's with a few A's. Hmmmm. I guess I also shared the impression of my advisees that most students got A's in most classes. If my six are representative, that is not a true assumption.
  
• one student made the dean's list. I have much greater appreciation for a what a big deal this is now that I have seen every one's grades.


• a student who nearly withdrew from a class, buckled down and pulled off a good final grade. Impressive. First semester was a shock for all of them. Some were shocked on the first day of classes. It took some of them until the first exam...


• one student did quite poorly in a key class and yet had been totally confident the entire semester. I'm not sure what to make of that one.

Subject line: naked student

Email from Marylou, "There are jeans on the floor next to one of the tables near compact shelving and there are socks hanging over the back of one of the chairs. BTW, there is a book bag on the floor & books on the table." Gotta love exam week!

Day 2 Exam Week

I Think I Might Know Why They Use the Library

We had a dinner for our freshman advises sat their dorm on Tuesday night. It was great. The RA really did all the work. She ordered Indian food, which turned out to be perfect. The kids are sick and tired of pizza. Some of them had never eaten Indian food! The RA also arranged for one of the students on the hall to give an informal Indian dance performance. It was super fun. The boys all sat squeezed together on one side of the lounge, punching each other. The girls all sat squeezed together on the other side of the lounge, giggling. I forget that they were in high school last year...

I came away with another reason why students might be coming to the library in droves. The dorms, at least the dorm I was in, was pretty grim. I saw four sterile, ugly lounges. The first thing that greets you when you come in the door are the washing machines and the smell of wet clothes. There are no elevators. To get to the fourth floor, I had to trudge up an ugly, cement brick stairwell. In comparison, the library must seem like the Ritz. Beautiful furniture. Big tables. Clean. Attractive. What will we do if they ever upgrade the dorms?