Talking in the Library

Good morning class, I'll be your professor today and I have a brain

And that's all I'll tell you about the content of this clip.  It's a great lecture and Dr.Marian Diamond seems to be the kind of professor that we dream of having.  If you like this lecture, there are more on (you guessed it) YouTube.

Oh, I didn't stumble upon this all by myself.  I learned about the lecture on a blog I follow, On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess.  The blog's author, Dr. Isis, is a researcher and professor at a university. She writes about being a woman in a male dominated field while also being a wife and mother.  For all of you women in male-dominated fields (can I get a shout out from Engineering?) Dr. Isis may lead you to a virtual mentor or role model.

Bring your class and experience the awesome

I think K-State Libraries are awesome. I’m not just saying that because I work here, though the Dean did give me a little $omething under the table for saying so. Recently, we had some elementary schoolers visit and here is what they have to say about Hale Library (disclaimer: spelling and grammar are preserved to preserve the awesome):

 

“I want to come and squish a beany baby in the book cases of DOOM! That’s a Joke. I Love Your Library!”

“I thought the moving book shelfs werer asome. And that place is realy clean.”

“The moving shelves were cool but unusual. I wish that could be in my library.”

“The check out ting was cool. The book rolle!!”

“I like Your moveing Book shelfs. I like cat in the hat.”

“I really liked your library. Are you sure you have 3,0000 Books there? IF you are…I’m COMEING BACK!!”

Are you a teacher or media specialist who would like your own students to experience such awesomeness? Or do you have a high school class that would benefit from using our resources? Bring ‘em over! You can find more information on our Services for K-12 Students web page.

Reception for the K-State First Ladies exhibit

A vocalist, a Scotswoman, a ballerina, an artist, and eight other accomplished women have been first ladies of K-State.  K-State Libraries' Department of Special Collections & Archives created an exhibit that explores the lives and accomplishments of K-State's twelve first ladies.

The exhibit is on display in the Special Collections gallery on Hale's 5th floor.

But wait, there's more.

The Department of Special Collections & Archives and the Friends of the K-State Libraries are hosting a reception for the exhibit in honor of First Lady RuthAnn Wefald. Remarks will be given by Dean Lori Goetsch, Dr. Michaeline Chance-Ray, author of Land Grant Ladies, Kansas State University Presidential Wives, and Sharon Reagan, President of the Friends of the K-State Libraries.  The opening reception will be held March 25th, in the Hemisphere Room, 5th floor Hale Library, 3:30p.m.

Lecture: The Changing Face of Aggieville

How did Aggieville grow from this

to this?

Blake Gumprecht, author of The American College Town, will reveal all at a lecture at 1:30 p.m. on March 28th in Manhattan Public Library's 2nd floor auditorium.  The lecture is sponsored by the Friends of the K-State Libraries, the Manhattan Public Library, Varney's Bookstore, and the K-State Department of Geography.

The lecture is free and open to the public.  Rumor has it that a reception will follow.

Through the magic that is Flickr, the slideshow below features photos of college towns explored by Gumprecht.

Paradise Lost

Milton isn't someone I've actually read, alas, but I may just have discovered how Adam and Eve felt when booted out of Eden. Only my Eden was an American academic library, specifically, K-State Libraries.

Normally a librarian at K-State, I currently have to make do with the services and collections offered by the library at the University of Applied Sciences in Leipzig, Germany. In nearly every interaction with the library thus far, I've had one of those "oh, I see" moments and come to realize that my days of frolicking in the garden have come to an abrupt end.

Libraries in Germany are very different beasts, and many US scholars return from their sojourns thither somewhat scarred by the experience. Some examples from my current locale:

• I arrived during a vacation period, and the library had short hours. I though, oh, once things pick up the library will expand its hours. Ha. We have a total of 37 hours weekly. Monday to Wednesday, 9 to 5. Thursday 9 to 7. Friday 9 to noon. No kidding.
• K-State Libraries no longer requires one to recall a book that's checked out. They'll get you a copy ASAP via interlibrary loan. Not so here. Once a book is recalled, the user has three weeks to return it.
• Requesting articles from other libraries costs nothing at K-State in 99.9% of instances. Here we pay 1.50 Euro per article, regardless of length. With the current exchange rate, I think that's $86 and climbing (well, not quite). Oh, and getting articles as scanned PDFs? Forget it. I get paper, and have to go pick it up!
• Don't even get me started on their call numbering system. You think LC is complicated? I'm a librarian and I can't find a book here to save my life. It's idiosyncratic, locally-developed, and completely obscure.
• Oh, no link resolver (aka GET IT), no public scanners, no reference desk worthy of the name, and if there are bathrooms, I haven't found them. They must be there. One last thing: finding the door to the main library requires a GPS and a bit of imagination and fortitude. Seriously.

I knew I needed to lower my expectations here based on past experiences, but woefully underestimated just how low I'd have to go. A colleague here keeps telling me that I need to write an article about this for the university paper (sure to win me many friends from the library), since they all feel the same way and want someone from outside to weigh in. Mind you, I'm in a department that teaches, among other things, library science, but the library here refuses to have anything to do with the department.

My point: K-State has pretty fabulous library services. Even as a modestly endowed state university the services at the disposal of every member of the K-State community are infinitely better than at any European library I've ever used. Sure, there are better collections elsewhere, but as technology improves, that advantage means less and less, and unless your thing is medieval manuscripts, K-State is pretty solid in that area, too.

Moving announcement: Current newspapers now located on Hale 2nd floor

Well, not the actual floor because that would be silly and messy. 

In addition to local newspapers like Horton Headlight and Marysville Advocate, you can now find the last two months of the following newspapers at the Current Periodicals, Soc. Sci./Humanities shelves on Hale's 2nd Floor:

• Kansas City Star
• Manhattan Mercury
• New York Times
• Topeka Capital Journal
• Wall Street Journal 
• Washington Post

 

After two months, we get the issues on microfilm and/or have them online through databases like LexisNexis Academic and ABI Inform.

By the way, we're all about responsible recycling here, but if you see a newspaper with the Kansas State University Libraries stamp on it (and these will all be stamped on the front of every section) DO NOT RECYCLE IT. 

Evolution, juiced

As often happens when doing research, I got a bit sidetracked today. I was ostensibly reading up on professional ethics for librarians (it was thrilling, trust me), when while reading a 1991 article on that topic my eyes came to rest on an ad for the Bureau of Electronic Publishing. They were selling Pioneer CD-ROM changers (data, not audio) and rather expensive reference works on CD-ROM, e.g.- Languages of the World for $899 and the OED for $929 (steep discounts if you buy the changer, too!!!). Beyond their somewhat highfalutin' name, they had a silly logo that reminded me of the FBI emblem. They also had, at the time, millions of dollars in sales.

This was only 1991, remember. We were still a few years away from the commercial Web, but the foundation was already being laid. It really wasn't all that long ago, and yet this ad made me feel like I was looking at the Sears Catalog from 1903. Ooh, hair tonics and wired corsets! Incidentally, the last Sears catalog came out in 1993.

Only eighteen years later, both the products in that ad and many of the companies that sold them are practically gone from the face of the earth. The CD-ROM still lingers, but it's like watching the last dodo wandering around looking for a mate. Those changers lie in discard piles in libraries or are being torn apart in toxic dumps around the world for the copper and other bits of useful metals.

What of the Bureau of Electronic Publishing? In the mid 1990s, they went public (NASDAQ: BEPI, now defunct), paid dividends on their stock, but within a few years, they were gone. Their end came, oddly enough, through a practice known as a reverse merger, where a foreign company in a growth industry uses the shell of a dying American firm for its legal status so that it can enter the US market without going through all of the red tape. In this case, a company known as Pacific Chemical came into being, which ran a large chemical plant in China that produced a key component of polyester fibers. That's pretty far from hawking CDs to libraries, and a bizarre ending to their story. Can't help but see in this tale a metaphor for so much of our economy, but that's another research project.

Eighteen years. To say that we live in times of rapid technological change has long since become cliche, but that doesn't mean it's not true. What are we doing today that in eighteen years will look as silly as CD-ROM towers?

Document delivery service goes on Spring Break

And for some reason, I imagine it skiing.

 

OK, back on track.  The very cool service that we offer to K-State faculty, staff, and students of scanning materials owned by K-State Libraries and delivering them to you using the Interlibrary Loan system will not be available next week, March 14-22. 

Why?  Well, the little elves that go out and pull these journals and books off the shelf and scan them and post them to your interlibrary loan account, they aren't elves after all.  They are students.  And students go on Spring Break---yeah, you try looking at their faces and telling them they can't go on Spring Break.  But, the students will be back March 23rd and so will Document Delivery.

Regular interlibrary loan will continue during Spring Break--so, if we don't own a book, journal article, whatever, we will still borrow it for you from another library.

Image credits: Achilles and the tortoise by Uqbar is back on Flickr.com and
our little elf by sierraromeo [sarah-ji] on Flickr.com

Plan ahead for Spring Break in the libraries

Spring Break is next week.  Let's all take a moment and revel in that thought.

So, Spring Break is next week, that means the libraries will have reduced hours.  As always, our hours are posted on our website, but below are the highlights.

Hale:
Sunday, March 15              open 1pm-5pm
Monday-Friday                   open 8am-6pm
Saturday                            open 1pm-5pm
Sunday, March 23               open at 1pm, normal hours resume

The Anita C. Lehner 24-Hour Study Area on Hale's first floor will remain open . . . all 24 hours of every day during Spring Break.

Fiedler Engineering Library
Saturday, March 14            closed
Sunday, March 15              closed
Monday-Friday                   open 8am-5pm
Saturday, March 21            closed
Sunday, March 23              open at 1pm, normal hours resume

Math/Physics Library
Normal hours
Saturday & Sunday             Closed
Monday - Thursday             8:00 AM - 5:00 PM & 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Friday                                8:00 AM - 5:00 PM

Paul Weigel Library of Architecture, Planning, and Design
Saturday March 14          Closed
Sunday March 15            Closed
Monday - Friday              8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Saturday March 21         Closed
Sunday March 22           Closed

An introduction to the birth of our murals

We're rather proud of the murals in Hale Library.  Well, we like the entire Great Room with its cathedral ceiling, beautiful windows, long library tables, shelves with doors on them, and its whole Harry Potter ambiance.  But truly, we really dig the murals.

When I give tours, I mention that the murals were painted in 1934 as part of the Public Works of Art Program (WPA).  Some people know what I'm talking about, but not everyone does.  Well, Smithsonian American Art Museum has created an exhibit called "1934: A New Deal For Artists."  You see, our magnificent murals were part of a nationwide project to provide employment for artists, to beautify communities in the depths of the Depression and, according the NPR story, '1934': Reflecting On America's First Big Art Buy, to record the Depression's effect across the United States.

As part of the exhibit, The American Art Museum created a photo pool on Flickr.  Since we're proud owners of a WPA mural, we added photos of our murals to the pool.  Sadly, some gremlin is preventing others from seeing that we're in the pool, but we are, we are!

So, below is a slideshow of WPA art as posted on Flickr.

And you can follow this link to see our murals through the years.