Collection Box for UNICEF

The Student Governing Association (SGA) will be collecting for UNICEF at various places on campus next week. We are going to be hosting one of their collection boxes at the Information Services Desk. It will be on the desk by the pencil holder, and they will also put up a sign by it so that everyone knows who's doing the collection. There shouldn't be much else for us to do, except at closing/opening time. I would ask those that close/open the building to put the box in the vault at night (with the cash box) and those that open in the morning to set it out again. Someone from SGA will be coming daily to empy it.

English 115/125 Library Tutorial

Lots of questions regarding the English 115/125 tutorial are coming and most of them relate to the quiz that students are expected to take once they have completed all of the modules.

Once the student has gone through all of the modules the final link takes them to the Blackboard login screen. They need to login and go to their English 115/125 course Blackboard page. Then if they click on the Assignments heading they will see a Library Tutorial Quiz.

Where the big issue lies is that some of the students are getting ahead of their instructors and are ready to complete the quiz before the instructor has even put the quiz into Blackboard. So if a student comes to you and says they can't find the quiz, take them through the above steps. If they are in the Assignments section of their English 115/125 Blackboard page and still don't see the quiz then they need to talk to their instructor.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Course of Study

Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (Evanston) offers a a three-week series of classes each year that they call "Course of Study." This year they are going to be using our campus for this program, which runs from July 13-31. In addition to knowing that you will see more people around campus for a few weeks, you need to be aware that:

1. Course of Study students and faculty have been entered into our system as "Courtesy Borrowers." They each should have an ID badge that has our barcode on it. They will be able to check out up to 3 of our books (no videos/dvds) at a time. All books will be due no later than July 31, when this program ends. Since this won't match our regular stamp date, you will need to write the due date in the items.

2. We have a large number of items on Reserve for these classes. They have been entered into the sytem in our usual manner, so anyone requesting a Reserve will need to give you either the faculty name or the course number (which will begin with "CS") in order for you to access the appropriate list.

3. Even though the system will only allow you to check three items out to these patrons, WE WILL NOT BE LIMITING THE NUMBER OF RESERVE ITEMS THAT THEY CAN BORROW AT ONE TIME. If you run into a system limit on the computer, simply use the Reserves manual charge sheet kept at the desk to check out the rest of their Reserve items. Please DO NOT do any manual charges for non-Reserve items, however.

4. All of the items on Reserve are owned by Garrett. Therefore, they have LC call numbers instead of Dewey. If you need a quick lesson in reading these numbers/locating the correct items, please see Heidi or me.

5. All items are on Reserve for 2 hour use. The bands say "in building use only." However, their items are not secruity tagged, so we really aren't going to be able to enforce this. As long as the items come back on time, we're not going to make a big issue out of this point.

6. Both the students and the faculty are supposed to have access to the campus network, so they should be able to use computers in the building and access our wireless network. If they have any problems with this, please direct them to ITS.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions/suggestions/concerns.

Documentation and Lexis Nexis Linking

A new section has been added to the ISD Google Site. It's called "Documentation" and can be found in the left-side Navigation menu. The types of things you will find there (and please let me know if you have something that you would like to have added) are documentation related to library procedures.

Also, Jennie was able to determine a way to link directly and persistently to journals and articles in the Lexis Nexis database, something that we had been unable to do in the past. It's slightly complex if you're not familiar with certain aspects of library databases, so we're just telling faculty who wish to link to Lexis Nexis articles to contact the library. Feel free to refer them to Jennie, Emily or myself if you receive a question like this. If you feel like you want to familiarize yourself with the process, however, the step-by-step instructions Jennie created are on the ISD Site under "Documentation." Please let Jennie know if you have questions about the instructions.

~Aimee

Special Collections Guidelines forms

In the filing cabinet at the ISD we now have copies of the Special Collections Use Guidelines forms. Use of the collection is by appointment only, and patrons need to speak to Emily (or in her absence, Kim) to make the appointment. However, if the patron would like to see more information about using the Special Collections when neither of those staff are available, you can feel free to give them a copy of the form.

Harvard Business School Case Studies

As happens periodically, we are getting questions from Prof. Woodruff's students about accessing/borrowing Harvard Business School Case Studies. These are not available through Oesterle Library, and we cannot borrow them via interlibrary loan. These are materials that the students need to purchase, and they are available from the NCC Bookstore. If you get questions from these students, please direct them to the bookstore.

Earth Day bookmarks

Bookmarks are now available at the ISD to promote our participation in the Earth Day events next Wednesday. As you and student assistants are checking out materials to patrons, please slip a bookmark in the top item!

Periodicals in Storage

Over spring break, Jennie moved several periodical titles into storage. These are titles that we hold just a few issues of and that see very little usage (and in some cases, are completely covered by online holdings). In the catalog, the location for these titles is: Storage/Technical Services (Ask at Information Services); this is also indicated in SFX, in the A-Z list and in OCLC. They are actually being held in the dungeon, on one of the middle ranges of shelves, marked with bright green shelf tags and separated by title. If a patron wants to use one of these issues, treat it like any other request for an item from Technical Services. During weekdays, contact Technical Services and they will pull the issue(s) needed and mark them so it will be clear they should be routed back down to Tech Services when the patron is finished. Evening/weekend staff can go in and pull issues if they need to. Please be sure to send Jennie a note about what you pulled.

The titles in storage are:

C/C++ Users Journal

Chemical Health & Safety

DBMS

E-Business Advisor

History and Technology

New Architect

News in Physiological Sciences

Perspectives on Science

Rationality and Society

Teaching and Computers

Web Techniques

Windows Developer Magazine

Windows Developers Journal

Writing Teacher

If you have any questions, please let Jennie know!

2 Important Notes

Two things you all need to be aware of over the next few days:

1. Rosemary's NCC 120 students will be stopping by the desk in the next few days to pick up some papers from her. She has placed each student's papers in an envelope in her mailbox. If a student asks you for these papers, please get their name and then retrieve their envelope from Rosemary's box to give them.

2. We continue to have some water problems. Known issues include Aimee's office, the Art Gallery, and the large study room down in Periodicals. Unless one of these areas gets considerably worse, you should not need to report anything further to Maintenance. If any new areas become an issue, please act accordingly!

Public Computers - Update

ITS has done some additional work on the Public Computers, and you can once again navigate through multiple screens more easily. The look is a bit different than most of us are used to in Firefox, but once you know that you are looking for tabs, I think you'll be able to figure it out. Along the top of the screen there is a gray bar. Multiple screens will open up as new tabs in that bar, and you can move between them or close them as needed.

Chicago History Membership Card Available!

We have joined the Chicago History Museum in order to receive one of their magazines for our collection. As a result of this, we now have a membership card that is available for any student, faculty or staff member to borrow for three days! The card will get two people into the Chicago History Museum at no charge. It will also give them a 10% discount at both the museum cafe and the museum store.

The care is in a pink, plastic file envelope. It will be stored in the vault next to the Crerar Card binder. Detailed instructions are taped to the front of the envelope - please be sure to follow them!

Public Computers

The public computers are back in operation - mostly! You may occasionally get a blank gray screen. If this happens, double-click anywhere on the screen and the web page should load properly. Please keep Heidi notified if you have any other problems with these computers.

Scantron

Move something that you think is never used, and you'll soon see how wrong you are!

The Scantron machine is currently being stored in the Roberts Room, and patrons will need to ask at the ISD to access this machine. It is set up on the counter, so you can just let a patron in to use it. Please make sure that the lights get turned off and the doors both locked again when they finish.

And, there is one other piece of equipment that we feel is rarely, if ever, used these days: the typewriter. This is also currently in the Roberts Room. You can follow the same procedures with this, in the rare event that someone asks for it. (Go ahead, prove me wrong on this one as well!)

The Roberts Room will eventually be open all of the time as a Curriculum Center workroom. (In fact, we will be removing the door that leads in from Giere.) Therefore, this is probably going to be the new "permanent" home for this equipment. As soon as we are ready to make this an open workspace, I will let you all know.

Video Players

UPDATE! As of 11:15 this morning, the video player is now available in the large study room off of the Reference Room - thanks, Tom!

The shifting of equipment and materials in Giere has begun. Tom has moved the audiovisual equipment either to its new home or out of the room. We now have two video players in the room that play standard size videocassettes and dvds. Within a few days, he will also be adding a video player to the large conference room off of the Reference Room.

A few things to note about these changes:

1. Persons wishing to watch dvds can also do so at any of the computers in the building. They will need to check out headphones from the desk. Encourage them to use this option so that the players in Giere can be used by those wishing to watch videocassettes.

2. All of the speech mini-cassettes are currently being converted to standard videocassette. We are exploring other options for future access to those particular vidoes.

3. The video players in Giere are not particularly set up for group viewing. Groups wishing to watch video should be encouraged to use the group study room (once the player is installed, of course). Remember, that room has priority use for the projector, so you are free to ask those in the room who are not using the projector to move to another space.

Once everything is a bit more in place and settled, we will consider what signage in Giere might help with these issues. In the meantime, we need your help to monitor how things are going. If issues arise, or if you have questions/suggestions, please let me know!

Other changes in Giere should be happening soon. I will try to keep you posted as quickly as I can when I have more specifics.

Stools at Public Computers

You've probably walked through the lobby many a time and pushed in the stools at the public computers so that they wouldn't block traffic flow. Since those computers are mainly intended for "short term use" anyway, we are going to experiment for a time with no seating for the two taller workstations. For now, we are going to leave the chair at the handicap accessible workstation, although, if this experiment is successful, we may re-think that one as well.

Never fear, we're not going to be so bold as to "throw out" the stools! This is a trial period, so please add "comments" to this post with patron reactions (positive and negative) to this experiment. It would be helpful if your comments could include the category of patron (student, faculty, public, etc.), but I know that is not always information you'll have. As always, please share your thoughts and concerns as well!

Microsoft Word issues

We've had a couple of situations this morning where students felt that Microsoft Word was not working properly. We think these were specific to these students, but we're not sure. If you continue to receive questions about Word, please let Heidi know. We are trying to track the situation.

Lion Heads will be in use for Chinese New Year celebrations

As the Chinese New Year approaches, students in the Chinese program will be using the lion heads for various practices and events. Students will be coming on Tuesday, January 20 to pick up both lion heads. The key for the cases is in the key box. It is on a yellow tab, #46. Whoever is on desk when the students arrive on Tuesday will need to unlock the cases for them. Once they take the lion heads, just re-lock the empty cases and put the key back in the key box.

The main event for this program will be on the evening of February 17. Until that time, students will be coming and going with the lion heads at various times. Since it's a lot of work to get them in and out of the cases, let's just store them on the counter in the Roberts Room until they are all finished with them. Your regular "Q" key will open that room.

Please let me know if you have any questions/concerns about this plan.

AnthroSource issues

Jennie reports that we are having a problem AnthroSource today. AnthroSource just updated/changed their whole platform...without letting anyone know they were going to do so. Consequently, both Serials Solutions (A-Z) list and SFX are having some issues connecting to AnthroSource. Any attempts to connect to AnthroSource via Serials Solutions or SFX will result in a "Service Unavailable" screen. There is a workaround, however. AnthroSource can be accessed from the drop down menu of databases on the library's home page; click on "Browse Journals" for access to the included journals.

If you have any questions, please let Jennie know. We'll let you know when these issues are resolved.