Library Adjuncts Honored

Addlestone Interlibrary Loan and Reference librarians Ann Cotton and Beverly Gumb were honored today as adjunct faculty members at a ceremony in the Beaty Center.

Both of these distinguished librarians have been faithfully serving the Reference Department in Interlibrary loan and the Reference Desk since 1993. Their warmth and dedication are well known, and their efforts have made ILL the respected icon of efficient service and productivity that it is. All of the library staff congratulate Ann and Beverly for a great job.

You are truly two very wonderful ladies and precious friends. Thank you.

Shoah Photo Exhibit

Yom HaShoah, literally, the day of the whirlwind, is observed by Jews worldwide as a day of mourning for the six million men, women, and children who, between 1938 and 1945, were butchered by the Nazis for only one reason—because they were Jews.

Dr. Joseph Rubin, photo archivist of the Jewish Heritage Collection, has prepared a moving exhibition of restored photographs featuring Charlestonians and residents of South Carolina who knew the horror of the Holocaust first-hand.

The photo exhibit is currently on display in Special Collections, on the third floor of the Addlestone Library. To view a related slide presentation, click here:

Shoah Photo Presentation

The slide show is best viewed from the Internet Explorer Browser.

Summer Hours

Library summer hours will begin May 15^th. Hours will be

Mondays-Thursdays 7:30 am – 9:00 pm

Fridays 7:30 am – 6:00 pm

Saturdays 10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Sundays 10:00 am – 9:00 pm

The library will be closed Monday May 29^th for Memorial Day. For additional information on hours, visit the library Web page http://www.cofc.edu/~library/hours.html

New Search Engine

This week Microsoft launched its own academic search engine, Windows Live Academic http://academic.live.com/

Windows Live Academic is in beta mode. It currently indexes content related to computer science, physics, electrical engineering, and related subject areas. Academic search enables its users to search for peer reviewed journal articles contained in journal publisher portals and on the Web.

Information supplied by Sheila Seaman

Browsing Books

You may have noticed the new wood carts between the Research and Information Desk and the Computer Lab. The library now has a number of books for recreational reading, and we will continue to enhance this collection. The library plans to add up to 50 books. If you would like to suggest a title, link to the book request form here:

http://www.cofc.edu/~library/forms/bookrequest.html

Information supplied by Sheila Seaman

New Campus Card & New Printers

Beginning May 8^th, the old Cougar ID Card will be deactivated. New cards will be distributed from the Cougar Card Office starting May 15^th. The office is open Monday - Friday 8:30 am – 5:00 pm. What this means in terms of the library is that if you have any money on your vending account, you need to use it by May 8^th. Money in the discretionary account will automatically be transferred to your new card.

Coordinating with the new cards, the Copy Center will be replacing the public machines in the copier rooms from May 9^th -12^th . Also there will be a new printer for use by the public.

Information supplied by Sheila Seaman

Google Tips—Better Searches, Better Results

This week Google’s Librarian Center http://www.google.com/librariancenter/ offered this free tip sheet:

http://www.google.com/librariancenter/downloads/Tips_Tricks_85x11.pdf

The tip sheet marks the release of Google’s first teaching tool. According to the producers of the tip sheet, there will be more materials to follow. Also, Google invites everyone to download and distribute these materials.

Information supplied by Sheila Seaman

A Blog for the Science Community and Beyond (From Your Science Librarian’s Desk)

Science Reference Librarian Dongmei Cao started a blog “From Your Science Librarian’s Desk” (http://scilibrarian.wordpress.com) on January 23, 2006 as a new communication tool to keep the College’s science community informed of newly acquired library resources and open Internet resources that related to science and technology.

The blog is featured on the hot spot of the Library’s Web site. If you use any RSS feeds reader/news aggregator (Bloglines, Google Reader, Sharpreader, etc.), the blog’s RSS feed URL is: http://scilibrarian.wordpress.com/feed.

What’s the purpose of the blog? It’s intended to provide the following to the College’s science community, other fellow science and technology/engineering librarians (and those cool next generation librarians):

• science related library news (e.g. databases, e-journals, database features, etc. that related to the sciences);


• info about science and technology related Internet resources (e.g. Web resources for specific subjects esp. those related to biology and chemistry, open access resources related to the sciences);


• info about information and Web technology (e.g. specialized/vertical search engines, open source software, Google news, Web 2.0 technology such as blogs, wikis, social book-marking and tagging, etc.);


• other info that will be of interest to the science community, and to the sci-tech librarians in general.

The blog is now featured prominently on Librarian.net (“Science Librarian” on the Sidebar), one of the 10 Blogs to Read in 2006 that published on LISNews.org. It’s also linked from Canada’s National Science Library and Publisher NRC CISTI’s technology architect Richard Akerman’s blog Science Library Pad as one of the science library blogs. The blog’s feed is indexed in LISFeeds.com, a main directory and search engine for librarian oriented blogs and feeds around the world.

Considering the blog’s rather young life (2 months and 9 days old), its statistics is quite encouraging: for the past 30 days, it had average 25 views per day, the most viewed post had 34 views for the past month; over the 2 months period, it had over 120 views pay day for several peak days, the most viewed post had 58 views in just one month (the stats doesn’t count the blogger/author’s own visits). Some of the original writings/posts were cited by other well-known researchers/bloggers such as the open access researcher Steven Suber (Open Access News).

She would love to hear from faculty and students in the CofC’s science community and others, let her know what you think, what you would like to see included on this science librarian blog (please email her). Any ideas, suggestions, observations are welcome.

Submitted by Dongmei Cao, 3/31/2006.