What's New in the Grinnell College Libraries, Fall 2010

New Spaces and Tools:

Consultation Spaces: Two semi-private spaces are now available on Burling's first floor (west side, next to Current Journals) for group meetings. Each accommodates up to 5 people around a table, with power and data. Faculty, staff, and students will be able to schedule these spaces for one-on-one or small-group meetings. They will be available for student group study on a first-come first-served basis when not reserved.

How to Schedule: Use Outlook to send a Meeting Request to either "Conference Room Burling Consult1" or "Conference Room Burling Consult2" (you will find these in the Exchange Global Address List). Your request will be checked for conflicts with other users, and you will get a confirmation. Updated calendars for each space will be posted every morning at the stations.

These Consultation Spaces are one of four experimental projects linked to the campus plan update. The campus plan envisions an Academic Commons that brings together traditional library services and materials and services with other resources supporting inquiry-based learning and research. With these spaces, we want to explore Burling’s role as the location for learning services of all sorts.

The Event Area in Burling (Level 1, north west corner) has been enlarged and outfitted with more tables for relaxation, group conversation, and more comfortable seating for our Wednesday Nights @ Burling series of readings, lectures, and performances. Watch our Web site and the Campus Memo for upcoming events!

A Large Flat screen Monitor has been added to the Burling Computer Commons (Level 1, north east corner). When not being used for scheduled teaching, students and other members of the community may use it for practicing presentations and other academic purposes. Under certain circumstances it may also be moved to the Burling Listening Room for group video viewing; please check with the Listening Room Supervisor for additional information.

Send us a Text Message! Text to (712) 560-9033 for brief answers to your simple questions. Reference help is also available in-person at Burling and Kistle Science Libraries, via instant messaging, e-mail, phone and by appointment.  

The Library Catalog 2.0: Public Beta Test of a New Interface to the Library Catalog:

You now have two options for searching the library catalog: the classic interface, and a new interface, currently in beta testing, powered by the open-source software VuFind. The VuFind beta catalog provides several new options, such as:

• Limit your search to a particular format, time period, or geographic area with a single click .
• Subscribe to an RSS feed for any search, which will notify you when the library acquires a new book that matches your search.
• Get suggestions for “more books like this one.”
• View automatically generated APA and MLA citations for a book
• VuFind has a mobile interface! Go to VuFind on a mobile device and give this feature a try.

 Additionally, the following options will be added to the beta catalog in the near future:

• Tag books.
• Review books.
• Sign up to receive an e-mail alert when the library acquires a new book matching your search.

We’re interested in your feedback on the beta catalog, so please let us know how you like it and how you think it could be improved!  

The Library Web Site:

… has moved to the College's Drupal platform with a new look. We have reorganized the links and we hope you can find what you need more easily. Please let us know!

New Faces:

Lauren Hester '09 has joined us on a one-year appointment as Evening Desk Supervisor/Library Assistant - Serials. Lauren majored in Theatre and appeared in several main stage and student-directed productions, her last being Women of Troy. While a student at Grinnell, she served on the Department of Theatre and Dance SEPC and also worked for the department in the Scene Shop. In the Fall of 2007, she studied off-campus at the National Theatre Institute in Waterford, CT, and spent two weeks in England studying with members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Lauren also worked in Burling’s Listening Room during her four years as a student, and is pleased to return to the Libraries as a staff member.

Christopher ("Chris") Jones has joined the Libraries as the new Special Collections Assistant. Chris has a B.A. in French from the University of Northern Iowa and earned his MLS from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. He has worked in the Rare Book and Special Collections Library at Illinois both as a graduate student and as an Assistant to the Curator of Special Collections in grant-funded positions. Since January 2007, Chris has been Scanning Center Supervisor for the Internet Archive, working to digitize materials from the University of Illinois' special collections. 

Databases and Other Collections:

BioOne: a global, not-for-profit collaboration bringing together scientific societies, publishers, and libraries to provide access to critical, peer-reviewed research in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences.

China Academic Journals: A full-text database of Chinese-language journals in the areas of literature, history, and philosophy from 1994-present.

Congressional Record Online: Complete text of the Congressional Record--from 1789 to 2013

Jazz Music Library streams over 5,000 albums containing over 60,000 tracks. New albums are added on a regular basis. With jazz broadly defined, genres range from Folk to Reggae to Gospel to Bossa Nova. You may search by performer, composer, genre, song or album titles. Latin American Newspapers provides more than 35 fully searchable newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and elsewhere. LAN is the first collection of the World Newspaper Archive, a partnership between the Center for Research Libraries community and Readex, to systematically create an extensive Web-based collection of international newspapers. CRL will ensure the long-term availability of this news content for the CRL community.

Literary Encyclopedia is an original literary reference work, written by specialists from universities around the world. It provides over 3200 authoritative profiles, usually around 2500 words in length, of authors, works and topics written by over 1200 experts.

National Newspapers includes the Christian Science Monitor, 1988-present; Los Angeles Times, 1985-present; New York Times, 1980-present; Wall Street Journal, 1984-present; Washington Post, 1987-present.

New York Times Historical: Complete online access (including advertisements) to the full text of the New York Times from 1851 up to the last three years. For current access, see National Newspapers, LexisNexis Academic, and other sources.

Pravda Digital Archive: The newspaper Pravda was established in 1912 and is the chief chronicle of Russian and Soviet history, from the beginnings of the Russian Revolution through World War II, the Cold War, the fall of the Soviet Union, and up to the present day. The archive contains PDFs of nearly every year of this primary resource. The full text of all articles can be searched in Cyrillic or Roman characters.

PsycBOOKS: a full-text database of more than 1400 books and book chapters published by the American Psychological Association, as well as classic books from other publishers.

Times Digital Archive: Online access to the complete backfile of the London Times newspaper, 1785-1985, including text, images, editorials and advertisements.