Talking in the Library

Yo grammer is wack

I got called out today for using incorrect grammar. I also got called out for abusing the office plants. Then threatened with the punishment of having to diagram a sentence until I learn to treat the plants better. Why am I sharing this story with you? A) in my head it is a funny story. B) it gives me a reason to share this YouTube video I recently discovered.

So what did I learn? Dumping too much tea into the plants makes the soil very acidic, which is apparently bad. If you are going to do it, don't leave the tea bag in the pot as evidence. And what's most importantly (yeah I wrote that on purpose), check your grammar. Or at least learn to spell.

We're making an entrance

Progress on Hale Library's 2nd floor construction continues.  The latest and greatest change is switching out the two entrances on either side of the former Reception Desk for one grand, central entrance.  I can almost feel the building sigh at the perfection.

Just look at how it frames the arched window:

Nice, isn't it?

And when you walk in the gates, you know immediately where to get help.

The old entrances are being converted into display cases. 

They'll be snazzy when they're done.  For now, you mostly see a lot of plywood.

And, if you've been following us on Twitter, here's a shot of the new chairs in the InfoCommons.

New Leisure Reading Books, HOORAY!!

The Leisure Reading collection is back!  It has moved to the east end of the 2nd (entrance) floor - that's to your right as you come in the building. 

Let us know how you like the books you find in the collection.  What else would you like to see there?

Here are the latest books we have added to the collection:

Her roof is greener than yours

Yep, those are native Kansas plants you see poking above that roofline--and they're not there accidentally.  It's all intentional as a couple of K-State architecture professors, Lee Skabelund and Todd Gabbard, are running an experiment to learn if the green roof will reduce the hot, hot, hot, temperatures on the roof.

Maxine Ganske's view of the Seaton Hall's green roof is the best on campus.  From her desk in Weigel Architecture Library, on Seaton's 3rd floor, Maxine has been watching the green roof grow.  Considering her usual greenery is a huge fern, featured in this KTKA interview of professors Skabelund and Gabbard in Weigel Library, Maxine's pretty happy with her unusal view of the nature.

If you want to be all educational and learn more, Maxine has a display of books from our collection about green roofs.  Here are a few titles:
Green roof : a case study
Green roof plants : a resource and planting guide
Green roofs : ecological design and construction
Green roofs
Planting green roofs and living walls

Maxine loves visitors, so stop by and ask about the green roof.

A nostalgia list for geeks and nerds

As we await Beloit College's Mindset List for the class of 2013, cruise on over to Wired Magazine's list of 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About.

I'm not enough of a geek to know what some things on the list even refer to, but my fave is:

70) Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive. --it's why my sibs and I are all Pogues fans.

Now, libraries only get mentioned twice in this list, and I think we all know that the library constitutes home ground for nerds, so I thought I'd compile my own list of things kids today may never need to know about libraries:

1) Library checkout cards

 2) Using big fat books with little tiny print to find magazine, newspaper, and journal articles on your topic.  We called them periodicals indices.  Now they are almost all online in databases.

3) The library as a quiet place to study

4) Card catalogs (unless your library doesn't have any money)

 

5) Having to actually go to the library to use the library.

Image credits:

Beyond the Grave by quinn.anya. http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Man with periodical guide by K-State Libraries:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kstatelibraries/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Subject catalog by K-State Libraries http://www.flickr.com/photos/kstatelibraries/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

LibraryThing for Libraries (or, what's that new stuff in the catalog?)

Have you ever read the perfect book and wished you could find more like it?  Or found something in our catalog that sounded pretty awesome and wanted to browse for similar books without having to trek up to the shelves? Have you ever gone to someone's house and looked at the books on their shelves and, in between noticing the books you have in common, discovered half a dozen new ones?

Thanks to LibraryThing (for Libraries), all of these things are now possible in K-State Libraries catalog.

Catalog users with observational superpowers may have already noticed this new addition to our library catalog. Information from LibraryThing, a social networking tool that allows readers to compile lists of favorite books and describe them in their own words, is now linked at the bottom of the record for many of our books. For many books, you'll see a list of similar books and, below that, might also see a tag browser.

The similar books are based on the virtual bookshelves of LibraryThing readers. If enough people read the same book, let's say the Bhagavad gita, and then read Analects by Confucius, and the Tao te ching, LibraryThing might notice a pattern and list the latter two as "similar books" when you search for the first.  Now, be warned, some of those titles may seem completely unrelated.  And they can be, if you're just looking at the topic.  What they have in common is that several people who read the first book, also happened to read the other books.  So, it's like going to one friend's house and seeing that they have The American porch : an informal history of an informal place, and America without the death penalty. And then you go to another friend's house and see that they also own the same two books.  This overlap in collections means that if all three of you read and liked those books, you may find other books on each other shelves interesting. Sophisticated, right? I think there's some math involved. Or magic. But, don't worry, most of the time the connection between books is pretty obvious.

The tag browser  lets you click on "tags" or keywords that users of LibraryThing have used to describe the book you're viewing. By clicking on a tag, you can navigate to other books in our collection that have been tagged similarly.

Anyone who has accidentally posted on someone's Facebook wall instead of updating their own status knows that social tools like this aren't perfect, but we think this one is pretty great, especially when it comes to fiction and popular non-fiction. For your more hardcore research needs, the books or tags recommended by LibraryThing might not be appropriate. Luckily, we'll always have our handy Library of Congress subject headings that will lead you to other books in our collection that have been classified with the same subject heading.

Want to see LibraryThing for Libraries in action? Here's a short demonstration.

Infographics

Ah, the power of a really good diagram.  Even we word loving English major types can succumb to the beauty of an image that transforms data into information without wasting words or your time.  

For instance, here's how to know what's in different espresso drinks

 

How does someone go about creating these visual encyclopedias?  Wendy Ding offers a tutorial detailing how she created her infographic "Skirt Lengths on Flickr" over at Digital Arts.

Want to see more? Check out these sites:
information aesthetics
GOOD Transparencies Archive on Flickr
Cool Infographics

Finding infographics is pretty easy on Google--just search for your main concept and infographic, like this: toe infographic.  It works even better if you try it in Google images.  

Flickr has at least two pools of infographics: Info Graphics and Infografia/Infographics

Intrigued by infographics? Try Alberto Cairo's book, Sailing to the Future: Infographics in the Internet Era. He's made it freely available to download from his website.

Infographics are sources of information, just like books and journal articles.  If you are going to refer to one in a paper or presentation and you didn't create it, you may need to cite it or at least give credit. How this is done varies according to disciplines. Not sure how?  Check your style guide! 
Here are a couple of quick overviews:

Citing Images -- APA Examples --CalPoly
Citing Digital Images--Yale

By the way, an infographic I'd pay big bucks for (at least $5) is one that illustrates how to find a book in Hale Library's stacks.

Please note that I went this whole post without once referring to Bread's 1971 hit, If, movingly performed here by the great Telly Savalas.  Please be grateful that I did not post a video of me performing If on the flute, as I can thanks to my flute lessons in 6th grade.

Image source: Espresso Drinks by Lakesh Dhakar, distributed on a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.

The Hale Library Stacks Experiment

Last week, I posted huge sheets of paper in Hale Library's Stacks asking these questions:
Did you find the information you were looking for?
Do you have any suggestions for us that would make it easier for you?
What confuses you about the stacks?
What makes sense?

We know that a lot of people either don't like the stacks or are afraid to go into them.  We wondered why  Because if we have an idea of specifically what annoys you or creeps you out, we can try to fix those things. 

The signs were up all week and, despite the summertime lull, some of you took the time to answer our questions--and offer tributes to Michael Jackson.

Wonder what people said?  Here's a run down:
Nothing makes sense and its dusty--j/k the stacks are fine :)
When no call # at the end of stacks. Like Stack A & B**
The stacks rock my world...
Its confusing that you go down the stairs & don't find the next shelf--it's out down the hall!  That happens on every floor
The numbers should go from bottom to top not top to bottom (1st floor up not 4th down)
 I like books
Have call #'s on end of shelves**
They seem simple enough to me
They are massive
I <3 the stacks
I think stacks need better book to take.  The lighting is all wrong too, talk about your Wal-Mart lighting, gross! and the colors of the books are not aestheticly (sic) pleasing
The number system is bothersome
I think more here
The coding--I wish there were librarians on every level to help find books easier
Thanks for the carts!
The people making out
The gratuitous amount of sex that happens.  [Someone else noted next to this--myth]
I love Michael Jackson Jackson 5
The map in the elevator helps
Having a computer to access the catalog just to figure out if confused/need more info

**More explanation on these two comments would be helpful because we do have call numbers on the ends of rows and shelves--but maybe what we have isn't what you need.

We'll try to do this again in the fall. All of these comments (well, maybe not the MJ stuff) will guide us on making the stacks easier for you.  Also, feel free to post more comments about the stacks to this post, too.

If you've never been in the stacks, haven't been in lately, or just like looking at photos of the stacks, here's a slide show, just for you:

If you click on the link to Your Hale Stacks sets, you'll be able to see the notes we placed on some of the photos, explaining things like the arrows directing you into cement walls.

Swing shift Leonard

Swing shift Leonard, who are you?

Due to construction, Hale Library has a Great Wall of Plywood near the entrance to the library proper.

Yesterday, while hanging out near the Great Wall of Plywood, I happened to spy this stamped on several of the plywood sheets:

And now I have so many questions: is Swing shift Leonard a real person?  If so, why does he get a cool stamp?  Does everyone at the plywood factory get a stamp?  Is there a "Night shift Tomas" and a "Day shift Susan?"  Can I get a stamp?  Please?

Vintage

I love looking at old pictures and posters. I was at a conference a while back and discovered that the History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the U.S National Library of Medicine (NLM) has tons of digitized pictures and posters available for viewing.

Here are a few of my favorites. Some of these images are copyrighted, so please be aware of that before you do anything crazy like put them on a t-shirt or print off wallpaper for your bathroom.