What students think about the library...

It's been quite some time since I posted. It has been quite the busy Fall semester, and we are glad that students are using the libraries. The library at the School of Business has REALLY been busy: in one week, Sara Godbee's records indicate over 900 students came into the library at Owings Mills. We are guessing that many students living in the residence halls enjoy the convenience of a quiet library in which to study, do reserve readings, computing work, and meet with study groups located just across the parking lot from the dorms. What this indicates is that we need to do some thinking about other library sites on that campus.

Meanwhile, at the Greenspring Campus, things are jumping. Now that papers are due, the reference librarians are busily helping students locate materials. My most challenging question came from a SU student looking for primary source materials relating to the Byzantine Empire. Such fun! Really, I so enjoy the student contact, and a challenging question or two to enliven my work day. Today is even busier because 3 of my staff are presenting or otherwise involved with the MILEX conference!

What I really want to talk about is how excited the library staff are about working with Dr. Leeane Bell and her Proxemics classes. These students are learning about space and human communication, and how the two interact with each other, and they are applying what they have learned to help us to design and reconfigure the Greenspring Campus Library. One "aha" moment came when students revealed that they feel self-conscious entering that library because of the layout, and that they hesitate to ask for help because of the way the large Reserves Desk is set up. Who knew! We have lived with that setup for probably 15 years or more! And we have just gotten accustomed to it. The fact that Dr. Bell's students are willing to open and up and tell us what they think will result in a better functioning library for future generations of SU students! Thanks, guys!

Faculty who may be reading this, stand by to hear about a new Renovation Committee. I will be putting this together in partnership with faculty on the Learning Beyond Committee and of course the FLAC (Faculty Library Advisory Committee) soon.

May you live in interesting times...

I know intellectually that change is good, but this semester has to be the changin'-est one EVER. We now have a new School of Business Library at Owings Mills and a brand new Librarian to manage it, Sara Godbee. She has lots on her plate, and is stepping up to the challenge wonderfully. Getting there has been very interesting: we had to weed, select titles and ship them over to the new site. There is now small functional Paralegal Collection on-site at Owings Mills, along with a small Current Periodicals collection and business reference titles. Today saw the installation of printing in the Instruction Lab there. And, we have 3 new student Library Assistants, who are woman-ing and man-ning the front desk until 10 PM during the week (except Friday), and on weekends. In the works are extended hours for 5 days a week, so stay tuned for developments on that front. Meanwhile, at the main Library on the Greenspring campus, things are jumpin'! The Reserves Desk is busier than ever, with additional students pouring in to view media titles, check their email, attend instruction sessions, study, or just hang out. We are fortunate to have a little more seating space to accomodate them. Is it just my imagination, or is the frenzy beginning earlier this Fall than it has in other years? The good news is, we are still a place where students want to work and relax. Watch for news about our efforts to glean information from SU's students about how they want the renovated library at Greenspring to look and feel!

Welcome Back!

If you are reading this, you are thinking about the Fall Semester, right around the corner. Here's what's up in the Library!

Sara Godbee will join our Library Team on September 2d as the first School of Business Librarian. Sara comes to us from the University of Maryland University College where she worked in Access Services. This is her second career: prior to obtaining her Master of Library Science degree, Sara was a market research analyst, and has a strong background in this area. She also loves to cook!

Sara will be in charge of the new Library. Stop by and say hello. BTW, both Sara, and our own Sue Bonsteel and Gina Phillips are on the program for "How in the world? Getting Students to Think Critically", sponsored by MILEX (Maryland Information Literacy Exchange) on Friday, October 24, 2008, 8:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. View the program at http://www.milexmd.org/conference08.html. It looks excellent!

The main Library at the Greenspring Campus has some new exhibits: one on the Baltimore Speaker Series (sponsored by Stevenson University), and one on graphic novels. You'll also notice that our Periodicals collections have moved to the second floor, in the space vacated by the Paralegal collection, which is now housed in the School of Busienss Library. Near the new Periodicals area there is some nice comfy furniture, for relaxing in while you read your latest journal, magazine, or newspaper. The removal of Periodicals from the overcrowded first floor area has freed up a little space for badly-needed student seating. We hope you like these improvements. Stop by and see us soon!

Summer in the Library

Library staff are busy with projects as usual, either tying up projects from the end of Spring Semester, or getting ready for Fall. The big news is, of course, our new University status and the name change. University status will have an impact on the library collections in terms of supporting expanded programs. This fall, we plan to begin a new Liaison model in which a librarian will be assigned to a department or program. We hope that this new approach will facilitate communication acorss the entire University and enable us to improve our responsiveness to program needs. Watch for details on this important change in this blog.

We will also unveil a new web page (with help from Jenn Brechin in the IS Dept.): I am excited that students and faculty will be able to begin searching resources like the SHARC Catalog, Central Search and the Full Text journal Locater RIGHT ON THE FRONT PAGE! No extra clicking required. Can't wait for that! And finally, our long-awaited School of Business and Leadership Library will open. In tandem with the move of some departments to the new SBL Building, we will be able to open a dedicated Archives Room that will also house the Center for Experiential History. So, lots of positive changes are coming.

Have a great summer!

Welcome to our new Evening Supervisor

We will soon welcome a new staff member: Martin Cleaver, formerly a bookstore manager and library staff member at La Salle University will join us on May 30th. His first evening stint will be on June 2d, and if you are on campus, please stop by and say hello. Martin is seriously considering attending graduate school for library science down the road.

Sadly, this is farewell to Maurice Champagne, whose last day is today! We will miss him. Congrats to Maurice on attaining his PhD in Rhetoric from the University of Maryland. We hope he will stay in touch with us.

We have much to accomplish this summer! We will soon begin to set up our satellite library at the Owings Mills campus. It will be exciting to see the library there taking shape. We have also taken the first steps in planning the renovation here at Stevenson. We have generated some interest among members of the Learning Beyond Committee and will soon call together a planning committee. We also plan to solicit input from students via course-related projects currently in the planning stages.

Summer hours in the library are posted on our website, so be sure to check it out if you are taking or teaching courses this summer. I will continue to post as things develop. Happy Summer to all of you!

CIC-PKAL Workshop on Learning Spaces

I just returned from Decatur, Georgia, where I joined my Dean and Sue Bonsteel (a library staff member) in learning how to rethink our library space. Wow! This was really inspiring! One highlight was a tour of the Cox Computer Center at Emory University, which features exciting floor layout and furniture configurations designed to enhance group work. We toured the facility on Friday afternoon, and were those students enagaged! If you want to see photos of this cutting edge computer lab, try a search on Flickr.

After the Emory tour, we began meeting in groups on the campus of Agnes Scott College (which was the prettiest college campus I think I've ever seen). Our assignment was to decide on a goal for our project, and we found it: we have decided we want to explore ways to support Villa Julie's Learning Beyond program, which encompasses experiential learning beyond the classroom.

Returning on the plane, Sue and I brainstormed ways to reach out to our campus and engage faculty, students and staff. We will begin at our Library staff Retreat in May, and keep building on this, hoping we can sustain momentum.

New Exhibit

Library staffer, Carol Maxwell has done it again! She's created a fabulous display as part of the College's 60th Anniversary on one of the most famous residents of the Greenspring Valley, opera singer Rosa Ponselle. The Display features some unique photos of the Singer, news clippings detailing events in her life, and 2 pairs of the star's shoes on loan from a friend of the library who wishes to remain anonymous. Oh yes, and books about her life are also featured. If you want to hear how she sounded, you can borrow a DVD or CD recording from the library's collection, or easier still, go to YouTube and plug her name into the search box. I promise you will not be disappointed. Rosa's voice is amazing, and she had quite a stage presence. To see where she lives, all you need to do is look out the window and across Greenspring Valley Road to her former home, Villa Pace.

In Spring a Young Man's (or Woman's) Fancy...

...turns not to Love, as might be expected and hoped for, but to Finals and Graduation!

The Library has been a hive of activity since we returned from Easter Break. Everyone is studying in groups or working on those last papers. We welcome the activity but we do find ourselves needing to do a little more shushing, as did our fore-mothers and -fathers in days gone by.

Shushing patrons is not a favorite librarian activity: we prefer as a rule to be genial and helpful. Perhaps this is overcompensation for those grade school, middle school and high school librarians all too ubiquitous in my day (I am NOT going to tell you what century) who delighted in correcting, glaring at, and otherwise making life in the school library a nerve-wracking experience. This behavior seems to have disappeared, probably since Dr. Spock's famous book was published! And all to the better!

We want you to love being in our library as much as we love it. However, we do need to remind you from time to time of the rules: no loud conversations (unless you are lucky enough to snag a study room upstairs and can close the door), and no real food.

M&Ms can be overlooked! Etudiez bien!

Library Renovation

We recently had our official Architect's Walkthrough of the Library at Stevenson in preparation for the planned renovation, which I understand is scheduled to take place after the Summer of 2009. It seems like a long time to wait, especially when there are aspects of our current configuration that are not very functional. However, we will use the time wisely to plan and get input from our user community. Here is what we are planning to do:

• Library Staff will write a Strategic Plan in May 2008 which will serve as a guiding document for the Renovation


• Faculty member Esther Horrocks will work with advanced anthropology students to gather ideas from students about library spaces (Fall 2008)


• Library staff will take field trips to renovated libraries and bring back ideas and photographs for discussion
  

Here's what we don't know:

• How will we gather input from Faculty?
  
• Should there be a Library Design Committee with faculty and student representation?
  
• How will we convey our needs to the Architect?
  

Stay tuned for the answers!

Celebrating Our Past in the Library

If you haven't yet done so, stop by and spend a couple of minutes with Carol Maxwell's lovely tribute to St. Julie Billiart, foundress of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. This exhibit features a photograph of the statue of St. Julie which stands in the grounds of the Sisters' home next door to campus. There are also historical shots of important buildings associated with her life, and the sunflower motif, reflecting St. Julie's famous quote about following God as the sunflower does the sun. Carol has done a beautiful job of creating an exhibit that embodies the spirit of "the smiling saint."

In tandem with the above exhibit, I had the privilege and pleasure of sharing my experience of reading St. Julie's biography last week with the Villa Julie community, including 3 of our friends from the convent next door.

I came across an article describing a recent study done at the University of Michigan Cancer Center. The study looked at the information that patients were able to find on their own compared with what they found with a librarian's help: 95 percent of the 513 Patient Education Center's visitors who participated indicated that they found new information with a librarian's help. "For 65 percent of visitors, the professional search returned information they had not obtained from other sources, and an additional 30 percent said the librarian provided some new information. Only 4 percent of users said they found all the same information on their own." Finding information about a health issue can be lifesaving, so this survey says something important about the role of information professionals in a world where everyone assumes that a Google or Wikipedia search is all they need.

While the librarians at Villa Julie don't often have to help with life or death questions, we are helping to educate healthcare professionals as well as paralegals, fledgling business professionals, and other participants in our society, our economy, and our environment. Part of what we are trying to help them learn is how to navigate the world of information, and how a trained librarian can help them to efficiently find the best resources.

Reference Librarians spend a lot of time every day of the week working with subscription databases, search engines, reference materials, and more kinds of information than can be listed here. Researching facts and finding needles in haystacks is what we do best because we are doing it constantly. The library staff behind the scenes (i.e. in the Workroom) are also constantly interacting with information resources to figure out which ones best support the curriculum here, and how to best organize and make them available so they can be found.

So, the next time you have an information need that you suspect may require more skill than typing a few search terms into Google, stop by the big blue "Ask Me" sign in the library and do just that! It's why we're here! And we love a challenge!

Local Librarian-Author wins Newbery Award

I just learned that Laura Amy Schlitz, a librarian-author currently working at the Park School, has won the highest award for children's literature, the Newbery Award. Chris Flax stopped by the library and asked for the book, called Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village. We are ordering the book, but interested readers can request a copy in the SHARC Catalog if you can't wait until Chris reads it.

I write about this for two reasons: one, I am really pleased to have faculty who are engaged by books and reading and will take the time to recommend books for the collection. Kudos to Chris and the other faculty who do this often. Secondly, isn't it terrific that we have such talent in the Baltimore area, and that Laura is a librarian?

The Newbery is a prestigous international award that was established in 1921 by Frederic Melcher of the American Library Association. The purpose of the medal was "To encourage original creative work in the field of books for children. To emphasize to the public that contributions to the literature for children deserve similar recognition to poetry, plays, or novels. To give those librarians, who make it their life work to serve children's reading interests, an opportunity to encourage good writing in this field."

That's one of the things that makes libraries and librarians unique: reading and books. While we are techno-savvy and more than willing to employ technology as a tool, really our mission is to encourage the acquisition of knowledge, and to do that, we must encourage reading. If there are any faculty out there who are interested in discussing ways to encourage reading on this campus, please drop by to chat. One of the ways the library staff does this is by sponsoring the J.R. Mitchell Book Talk series, so please come even if you haven't read the book being discussed: perhaps you'll be inspired.

I'll close this post by recommending a wonderful article about the value of reading and how it literally changes one's way of thinking in the New Yorker magazine. (TWILIGHT OF THE BOOKS. By: Crain, Caleb. New Yorker, 12/24/2007) A fascinating summary of the research that has been done on reading as a cognitive skill, you'll learn something new if you read it, I promise. And here is an invitation: do come and browse the New Books section if you want to stimulate your brain! We would love to have you.

And we're off....

The semester is back in full swing and it feels as though we were never away! That's a good thing, though.

The next Faculty Library Advisory Committee meeting has been scheduled, with the agenda centering on the costs of creating digital collections, as well as plans for the planned student study. (See minutes from the November meeting here. ) We hope the anthropology study will be underway in Fall 2008 semester and that the results will help us to plan the renovation. By the way, Library staff were thrilled to see a library renovation on the list of projects at the Faculty-Staff meeting last week.

We will soon begin our Faculty Workshop series. A new session has been added to the tried and true offerings on database searching and copyright, among other things: Steve Rouzer will talk about the selection process and entertain questions about how it's done. Specific dates are:

Research While You Sleep Tues 2/5 9:30-10:30 (Virginia Polley)

Database Basics Thurs 2/7 12:15-1:15 (Sandy Marinaro)

Intro to the Library for New Faculty Tues 2/12 12:15-1:15 (Maureen Beck)

Building Library Collections for Faculty Thurs 2/14 12:15-1:15 (Steve Rouzer)

Keeping Up with Web 2.0. What It Is-Why It Matters-Where It's Going Wed 2/20 12:15-1:15 (Sue Bonsteel)

Practical Copyright For Faculty Wed 4/9 12:15-1:15 (Sue Bonsteel)

Welcome back!

After a really wonderful break, it's time to knuckle down to work again. Library staff accomplished much in the Fall semester: we got a great start on re-envisioning the Stevenson Library courtesy of Steve Bell, who spent a day with us (I am still digesting his report!). We also received a full-fledged Preservation report on our Archival collection from CCAHA in Philadelphia, thanks to Kim Andrews. Several library staff have been working on the Middle States self study document. Thanks to our dedicated Faculty Library Advisory Committee, ably chaired this year by Chris Reed of the Film, Video and Theater Department, we have begin productive conversations about the strategic direction of the Library. (Pssst...if you can, be sure to attend Chris's planned Booktalk on the work Story: Substance, Structure and Style and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee, rescheduled for January 31 at 3 PM in the Library. I'm intrigued by the book and interested in his take on it).

The Spring Semester will bring a new face to the staff: Maurice Champagne will join us temporarily while our Evening Supervisor, Adam Mecinski, is on leave. Maurice has worked in several libraries, and is preparing to defend his dissertation at UMCP in April. Please join us in making him feel at home. His first day here will be January 9th.

Library staff will be attending the Faculty - Staff meeting on January 10th, so we'll see you there! Happy New Year!