December Successes!

The entire staff was very glad to see that we had a turn-out of 100% for the library- sponsored massages yesterday.  We were able to provide free massages for 24 students who signed up in the library the day prior.  Massages were advertised in the library via flyers over the weekend, with additional information posted here on this blog in addition to a posting on the library's Facebook page.  Many thanks to the women of LaJames International College who made the trek up from Iowa City to provide the students with their own respite from the stresses of finals week.  We hope to continue providing fun stress relievers to Coe Students in the future, so please feel free to provide feedback here and through Facebook for other neat ideas that the library could try.

 

On a totally different note, in January is Data Privacy Month.  I'll be blogging more about it in coming weeks (after the much needed holiday break), but in the meantime, feel free to check out these websites to start educating yourself on data privacy rights online.

American Library Association: Privacy Revolution
Educause.edu: Data Privacy Month
 
Great job to everyone for making through another semester, and we will look forward to seeing you all back next year!

-Katelyn, Head of Reference
 

 

Massages at the library

Alright folks, the post last week ended up serving as a bit of teaser, but today we can officially announce that the library will be offering chair massages as a stress-buster for students during finals.  The chair massages will be Wednesday, December 14th from 2-5 PM.  Massages will each be 10 minutes long, and they will be free!  So how do you get one, and what's the catch?

• Sign up will start at 9 AM on Tuesday, December 13th.


• You go to the Reference Desk to sign up.


• Only current Coe students are eligible to receive a free massage


• You must come in person to sign up (no signing up for a group of friends, or by phone/email.)


• The day of the massages, you must check in 5 minutes prior to your massage.  If you do not check in prior to your massage, you are liable to lose your spot to students on the waiting list.

Sound good?  Great!  Swing by the library to sign up for your free massage, and good luck on you finals!

-Katelyn, Head of Reference

Lost and Found

As you start packing up to go home (I personally plan on spending the holidays here at Coe, campus is always so peaceful this time of year), you might notice that you are missing that delightful flash drive/portable computer storage device upon which you stored some important paper/chat transcript/PowerPoint presentation.  You have looked in your bag, in your purse, between your desk and the wall, NADA.  You are desolate.  But wait!  Have you thought to check up at the library circulation desk, home of the library's lost and found?  We have lots of them here, left by undoubtedly industrious students that are probably forlorn over their loss.  So before you go home to have some hot cocoa with those that you hold dear, come swing by the library to see if you've forgotten some vital piece of your academic history here, and good luck with finals next week!

-Bronze Boy

From the Archives...

If you need a quick break from studying, check out the digital exhibits on the archive website.  You can watch old Coe Advancement films, listen to Coe songs, see what the campus looked like in the 1930s, and read about student life (did you know you had to have a permission slip from your parents to attend dances in 1913?).  There are also flunk day posters, the Cosmos from 1890-2008, and George T. Henry photographs. ~Sara

Finals Week Perks

With finals fast approaching, and only one week of regularly-scheduled happenings, the reference department staff has started brainstorming as to things that could be done or sponsored by the library to help ease the pressure on students as they work to the end of the semester.

I have started poking around ye olde Interwebs to see what other schools have been doing, and some of the finds have been pretty neat. At Coastal Carolina University, they have a food cart that travels around the library every hour on the hour in the evenings distributing free treats (healthy and otherwise) to students holed up in the library.  They also sponsored a station in the library where students could create their own stress squeezeballs using balloons and sand.  At UW-Madison, the library created a theme for finals week that was promoted via Twitter while hosting giveaways of things like coffee, Emergen-C, and candy.  The University chancellor also ordered pizza to be distributed for free at the main library one night.  Finally, my favorite, at William and Mary the school arranged for the rental of 8 personal massage chairs (the electric kind) to be available to students during finals week.  The chairs were so popular, the school now leases several chairs all semester long available to students, you guessed it, in the campus library.

Due to its role in campus life, the library becomes a very popular place during finals.  The question is, what can we do make your life better, as a user of the library?  Let us know of ideas that you like, or feel free to get creative with ways we can improve the experience of working and studying in the library leading up to finals!

 

Recent arrivals in the reference department

Hey everyone!  We have a few new titles that we've added to the reference collection that I wanted to let you know about.  In the latest raft of books to make it through processing, we received two new reference titles.  One is "Encyclopedia of comic books and graphic novels," a two volume set of encyclopedias with tons of good information on the history of comics and graphic novels.  For examples of what you find in this set, the entries include articles on DC Comics, Stan Lee, Ex Machina, and Art Spiegleman (of "Maus" fame.)  Each entry also includes references to direct your reading further (par for the course when it comes to reference titles.)  This two-volume set can be found in the reference collection, on the first floor of the library, with the call number PN6707 .E49 2010.  One thing to note, however, these two books do focus on English-language works, so this title might not be as useful if you are more interested in manga.

The other new addition to the reference collection is an encyclopedia on cyber-terrorism, appropriately titled "Cyber warfare and cyber terrorism."  This title, located on the first floor with call numbers U163 .C946 2008, focuses on a variety of issues relating to cyber warfare, including malware, social stalking, and Trojan horse viruses.  I could see this book being particularly useful for those in computer sciences, communication courses, perhaps also for those with a focus on sociology and history.  As technology continues to intertwine with daily life throughout the world, I think this book could offer an interesting view of the present and future when it comes to security of resources online.

If you do want to take a look at these items, but find that you are having trouble locating them, remember you can always ask for assistance at the reference desk/department during the day, and the circulation desk during the evening.  Also, just remember that reference titles are not available for checkout, but are for in-library use only.  This ensures that these volumes are always available for the students who need them.  Enjoy!

-Katelyn

From the Archives...Coe has an Archive?

Student: Coe has an archive?

Archives Assistant (Sara): Yes! The George T. Henry College Archives (Coe's archives) is located in the basement of Stewart Memorial Library.

Student: What is an archive?

Sara: An archives is a library that contains primary documents (original material such as correspondence, meeting minutes, newspapers, and manuscripts) and collections about people, places or things.

The Coe Archives specializes in collections about or relating to Coe College, including its history, its students, its alumni, and all things Coe related.

Student: Who is this George guy?

Sara: George T. Henry was the college photographer for 50 years.  You can still occasionally see him taking pictures around campus today, even though he’s retired.  The archive holds over 10,000 negatives of photographs taken of Coe by George.  You can see a sampling of these photographs on the archive’s walls.

Student: Can I use the archives?

Sara:  Yes, Yes, YES (I am so glad you asked).  Students, faculty, and staff can use the archive for research, projects, or papers.  We have material from poets, WWII correspondents, Physics professors, and on any number of topics.  Our material is listed in the Library Catalog, or you can ask a librarian to help you find something in our collections.

~Sara

Movies based on books

Personally, I find myself split at times, as to whether or not I like books based upon a movie.  When I read a book, a very clear picture forms in my mind as to how the story should look, so seeing an actor who looks like the stand-in that I've created in my head results in a dissonance that can be tough to get over.  Likewise, I also hate how parts of the plot invariably end up getting cut because there's not enough time, or because it doesn't translate into film well.  However, there is one movie based upon a book that I am looking forward to: The Hunger Games.  Based on Suzanne Collins' young adult novel, the Hunger Games is set in a post-modern dystopia in which young tributes compete to the death on live television, evoking the Greek myth of the minotaur.  If this sounds a little dark, well, it is.



As you can see from the trailer, the movie looks fairly intense.  And while the books might be written for a young adult audience, there will no doubt be a level of violence with which some parents of younger readers are not going to be comfortable.  However, I think this movie will still do fine, box-office wise, due to the fact that there seems to be less stigma associated with adults reading young adult fiction, so there will be plenty of twenty-somethings and up waiting in line at midnight the day this opens.  With current young adult fiction, the themes are often just as mature as those found in "adult" fiction, with allowances made for the book's length or pacing.  It can be nice to pick up a YA novel and blow through it in an afternoon or two, when you are just looking to escape for a while.  And if you are looking to escape for a bit, with finals fast approaching,  feel free to stop by the library here at Coe and check out the Hunger Games. Because really, it's almost always best to the read the book before you see the movie.

-Katelyn, Head of Reference

New Library Webpage!

Speaking of Stewart Memorial Library website (which I just did, in my last post,) what do everyone think of the new site?  While the center of the page remains essentially unchanged, visitors will find a few new additions that I think will make the site much more user friendly, not to mention the sleek new color palette.  I might be partial though, due to the browns matching my sleek bronze physique.  One of the changes that I really like is the menu bar down at the bottom of the page, which makes it very obvious as to where to find a map of the library, a suggestion box (*cough*bring back donuts on Wednesdays *cough*), and a link to the library's staff information.  Also, the page now features a help section that has FAQs that the library hears on a regular basis.  We will add questions as they come up, so don't be afraid to ask.  We do understand that since the page has undergone some changes, everything might not be working perfectly.  Find a broken link?  Database access not working?  Just let the staff know!  And when I say staff, just go ahead and email Katelyn, the head of the reference department at kwazny@coe.edu.  That's probably the easiest way to ensure that things get fixed.  We hope that this site is generally an improvement upon previous iterations, and we believe that the changes that we made are positive ones.  We know that faculty and staff alike are going to be using the library's resources far more regularly as finals rapidly approach, and we think that the new site is going to make it easier for everyone to get what they need.

-Bronze Boy

P.S.  The snow yesterday has me thinking its almost time to break out my most stylish fedora.  If only I had a stylish fedora.

Blogging Statue-Style

Now that the library's newly-redesigned website is live, the library staff thought that now was the time to fully unleash the new library blog.  You might be asking, why does the library need a blog?   The main goal for this blog is to give the library's staff (and its statues) another way to connect with the Coe campus community.  It will be a place to not only discuss events at the library, upcoming changes, and new acquisitions, but also a place to discuss larger issues relating to higher education and information policy issues.   We hope that we can, on occasion, get a dialogue going that will give everyone a sense as to how people are using the library, and what role this place should play on campus.  However, we realize this is new thing and there are lots of blogs out there, so if you see something that you like, make sure to tell your friends.  Or, if you don't want to admit to your friends that you are a regular library blog reader, feel free to tell your parents instead.  I'm sure that it will make them feel like you're being very studious and not getting into any type of trouble.

-Bronze Boy

Hello world!

Welcome, you've found the future home of the Coe College Library blog.  Please check back in the coming weeks for new posts!