Blog – Page 31

The Library Tour

August 21, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

A tour is a great way to get to know the library and the people who work here. I took one of the college’s newest residents, Dove, on a tour this summer. He got to see one of our new spaces, the browsable DVD collection, and tried out some technology. Being a 21st century bear he opted for the scanner rather than the copy machine, but couldn’t resist the record player. Dove also checked out his first book, got help with some research and found pretty much every comfortable ~~napping~~ study spot available. You can see Dove’s full tour on our Facebook page.

Pamela

Now Hiring: Library PFP position, Instructional Media Fellow

August 20, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

The SMCM Career Development Center has a fantastic Professional Fellowship Program for interested sophomores, juniors, and seniors. You can get a great internship-like experience at a greater pay rate ($10 / hour) than your average student worker. Last year, the library’s PFP student, Taylor Robb-McCord, started work on a new video series: The SMCM Library in 60 Seconds. This year, we’re looking for a new PFP student to continue the series and put their own creative spin on it.

We’re calling our PFP position an Instructional Media Fellowship. You can learn more about it on the CDC website, but here’s a brief description:

The library is seeking a creative student interested in video production or advertising to help develop the “SMCM Library in 60 Seconds” video series. The fellow will develop instructional videos promoting library services and resources to the SMCM community.

To apply, email me, Veronica Arellano Douglas with your

resume
cover letter describing your interest in and fit for the position as well as your cumulative GPA and
contact information for one faculty/staff reference.

You can also call (240-895-4265) or email me with questions about the position!

Summer Reading 2013 has ended

August 20, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Thanks to all the readers who posted reviews on our Summer Reading blog. Don’t forget to pick up your prizes!

Too Awesome Not to Share

August 9, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

As Celia mentioned in her last post, librarians have a long tradition of upholding library users’ privacy. It’s in our professional Code of Ethics!

We protect each library user’s right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.

Code of Ethics of the American Library Association (last amended Jan. 2008)

We’re quite good at making sure that library users’ records and web browsing sessions are kept private (or not kept at all), and have a great history of standing up to legislation we see as infringing on users’ right to privacy (see the NYTimes article in which we receive the now infamous radical militant librarians label, then see us put it on a t-shirt). In general, people love us for this, but people also love social media, online shopping recommendations, and seeing what their best friends just bought on Etsy. There’s a weird conflict between the kind of privacy people say they want and the kind of privacy infringement they’re willing to put up with in order to have a personalized online experience. Libraries have largely stayed out of it, but recently I came across this really cool initiative that seems to have a good balance of user privacy and personalized recommendations.

Behold, THE AWESOME BOX:

This project is the brainchild of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and is being implemented at not only Harvard but a select group of public and academic libraries in the U.S. The concept is simple: Think something is awesome? Return it to a special “awesome box” or flag it with an “awesome bookmark” and library staff will scan it and have it magically appear on that library’s Awesome Page. What you read remains private, but you now have a better sense of what your fellow-library-goers are reading, watching, and listening to throughout the year.

Plus who doesn’t need a little awesome in their day?

What are your thoughts on the Awesome Box? Would something like it fly at St. Mary’s?

The Library, the Surveillance State, and You

July 29, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

This has been the summer of surveillance. The Edward Snowden affair, the Bradley Manning trial, and WikiLeaks have dominated the news and prompted lots of conversations about privacy and surveillance.

How much privacy are we guaranteed? How much do we need? How much do we willingly give up? Did the events of September 11, 2001 change how we must think about the right to privacy?

All of us who use retail bonus or frequent customer cards, or have bought anything from Amazon know that our purchasing habits are well-known. Many of us willingly offer up all kinds of information about ourselves, including photos, on Facebook and other social media. But – in these examples we control what information we put other there (or at least we think we do).

How do you feel about finding out that the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on all of the phone calls you have made. What information? Metadata. What are metadata? We librarians thought you’d never ask! Metadata are pieces of information that describe or help locate other information. In the library authors’ names or titles (or even individual words in titles) are types of metadata. So are the descriptor words we use to describe the content of an article or book. The metadata you have been reading about in the news includes lots of information about the phone calls you make, but not the actual conversations you have had.

But there is metadata about you, too, if you have every borrowed something from the library. We can tell how many SMCM undergraduates borrowed SMCM books, we can tell how many times a particular book or DVD has been loaned, but most libraries scrub the specific data about who borrowed a particular book. In fact, the Annotated Code of the State of Maryland states that your library record is confidential and not subject to scrutiny even by a Freedom of Information Act request.

The USA Patriot Act changes all that in some ways. It says that the FBI can require us to given them information about what you library materials you have borrowed (if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court gives permission) and that we are not permitted to tell you that you are being investigated.

We think what you read, or watch, or listen to, is your business. Does it matter to you? Would it matter to your employer that you have been reading about how to get unions into a workplace? Would it matter to the government that you have been reading about anarchy? Should it?

The librarians’ code of ethics has been based on reader confidentiality since 1939. Some of the metadata can be very useful. We want to know if that book on anarchy has been borrowed 5 or 15 or 50 times in the past ten years. But we don’t want to know who has been reading it.

Keep your eye on the surveillance debate. This is about more than which brand of frozen peas you bought, or the banana slicer you purchased on Amazon, or the book on socialism you borrowed from the library. In the meantime, we’ll keep working hard to protect your privacy.

A librarian walked into a bar…

July 9, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Do you remember Paula Cole? She is a singer songwriter known by some for her first big hit, “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone” and by others for the Dawson’s Creek theme, “I Don’t Want to Wait.” You are most likely not in the rarefied group, those of us who will remember her as the singer who shushed librarians in the House of Blues. Yes, it was a very special occasion for us all when she politely but firmly asked us to shut up and listen to her sing. Since becoming a librarian I have been shushed many times in the library, but never before have I been shushed in a bar. This was without a doubt one of the most memorable moments of this year’s American Library Association’s Annual Conference (ALA.)

There were few celebrity sightings at ALA this year, but there was a panel with Baltimore native Laura Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan mystery series and winner of almost every crime award possible; the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Agatha Award, Nero Wolfe Award, Shamus Award, and the Quill Award.

I did get a sneak peak at Grumpy Cat’s new book, A Grumpy Book. Unfortunately he wasn’t available to sign his book so the question remains, will he sign autographs with his left or right paw?

–Pamela

Reading this Summer?

June 25, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Reading on the Beach by Courtney McGough on Flickr

Last weekend I broke down. I bought a Kindle (a Kindle Paperwhite to be exact). Despite my ambivalence towards e-reading, it’s getting harder for me to deny the conveniences of an e-reader. I’m a reader. Although chasing a toddler around the house has but a kink in my reading style, I still try to get in as much eyeball-to-text time as I possibly can. When I go on a trip, I take as much care and effort packing my reading materials as I do packing my clothes. This little 5 x 7 inch device is making upcoming travel so much more convenient and amazingly less stressful. Instead of trying to squeeze in 3-4 different volumes I can just pop that Kindle in my purse and call it a day. It’s fantastic.

Will I stop buying and checking out print books from the library? No way. In fact, as I type, I have two books on my nightstand from the St. Mary’s County Library. The Kindle is just a new addition to my reading lifestyle and a great way to kick off the summer reading season. If you’re interested in getting your summer reading off right, the SMCM Library can help.

Kindles

We have 6 different Kindles for SMCM students, faculty, and staff to borrow loaded with all kinds of fantastic fiction. Want to find out what all the Game of Thrones fuss is about? Read it on our Kindle Fire. Curious about Gone Girl or Kate Atkinson’s latest, Life after Life? Read one on a Kindle Touch. For more about our Kindles and the books on them, check out our online Kindle Guide.

Popular Reading Collection

If you’re more of a print-on-paper kind of reader. We have you covered. Our popular reading collection has a great selection of fiction and non-fiction bestsellers to help you take a break from heavy academic reading. Take a walk up to the 2nd floor and hang a left. In the reading area you’ll find a beautiful water-front view and our awesome Popular Reading Collection.

St. Mary’s County Public Libraries

I wouldn’t be doing my due-diligence as a librarian if I didn’t do a little cross-promotion. We are fortunate to have an amazing public library system in our county. If you haven’t visited one of the branches in Lexington Park, Leonardtown, or Charlotte Hall, please do it. Their book, movie, and music selection is amazing! A few weekends ago I picked up Tom Perotta’s The Leftovers, a copy of the Alabama Shakes album, and Dinosaur vs. The Potty, a board book for my son. They have fun summer programming for kids too!

Summer Book Club

Since you’re doing all this reading anyway, you might as well win a prize or two for your efforts. The SMCM Library’s Summer Reading Program continues this year and gives all SMCM students, faculty, staff, and alumni a chance to contribute book reviews to the Summer Reading Blog and win prizes.

Happy Reading,

Ronnie

List of known pre-1941 St. Mary’s alumni now available on the SMCM Archives website!

June 20, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

Did you ever wonder if an ancestor attended St. Mary’s College of Maryland when it was a female seminary? Or wanted to know who was voted “cutest girl” by her classmates in 1925? And did you know that seminary alumna Emily Louise Clayton Bishop (1900) was a prize-winning artist who studied under Rodin in Paris?

The St. Mary’s College of Maryland Archive is actively compiling a list of all known St. Mary’s Female Seminary and Junior College alumni up to the year 1940. Due to a fire in Calvert Hall in 1924, many records are lost to history. In an effort to recreate a list of alumni, extant commencement programs were transcribed and information was gathered from the alumni office. Other sources used include the 1925 Pepper Pot yearbook (another yearbook would not appear until 1948), and J. Rederick Fausz’ 1990 book Monument School of The People.

Students of the female seminary having fun in 1904. The seminary initially had students of all grades before becoming a high school, later a junior college, and finally a public honors college (P1905-004)

Commencement programs sometimes listed salutatorian or valedictorians, which are also noted in the alumni list. Occasionally, lists of prize-winners were also available, sometimes from the notes of M. Adele France herself (principal/president from 1923-1948), and these are also noted. For example, Dorothy Hope Hodgkinson of Piney Point won the 1929 Goerge Narbury Mackenzie Prize Essay award. Known photographs, surnames of husbands, and other informational tidbits are also included in this new online resource.

St. Mary’s Seminary students in costume sitting on the steps of Calvert Hall, photo taken about 1930. Three are holding musical instruments (P1930-015 © St. Mary’s College of Maryland)

Future additions to the list will include: information gleaned from searching the St. Mary’s Beacon newspaper for evidence of 19th Century alumnae, names from the historic photos database, and further investigation of the scant student records.

List of Known Alumni from St. Mary’s Seminary and Junior College to 1940

If you have any additions or corrections to this resource, please email ask@smcm.libanswers.com or leave a comment below. You can visit the archives main website at https://library.smcm.edu/archives/.

Weeding: It’s Not Just for Gardens

June 18, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

All of you gardeners out there know that keeping your garden healthy means regular weeding. Weeding takes time and care. It can mean pulling out and discarding flowers that look pretty but which still crowd out the plants you really want to grow. Weeding gardens is a lot of work but novice gardeners can use guides to help them distinguish between the weeds and the plants you want to keep.

Dandelion Field by Petr Kratochvil

All of us also occasionally “weed” our belongings. Haven’t worn that shirt in how many years? Donate it. Bought that DVD and decided you didn’t want to watch it more than once? Give it to a friend. Remember when you thought it would be fun to try fishing as a hobby? Know anyone who might take a slightly used fishing rod?

Library collections need weeding, too. Why would we need, or want, to discard any of our books? Isn’t everything important and useful? How would we decide what to keep and what to withdraw? Well, turns out there are lots of articles and guidelines that help librarians decide what criteria to use when weeding. BUT . . . “throwing out” books is still a risky business. Just last week a public library director in Illinois got into trouble for deciding to withdraw a lot (!) of books just because they were published before 2003.

At the SMCM library we do a lot of weeding in the summer. That’s not because we don’t want anyone to see what we are doing. There are two main reasons. First, most of the books are here in the library so we can see how crowded the shelves are. Second, the librarians have fewer meetings and classes so we have more time to spend because weeding is time-consuming.

Why do we weed? Yes, we actually do want to get rid of books that may be getting in the way. In some areas we can’t fit any new books on the shelves. Since we’d like you to be able to see those nice, shiny new books we need to decide which are no longer useful. Sometimes books are outdated. Sometimes they are perfectly good books, but not ones which fit our curriculum anymore.

Here are some of the factors that go into our decision-making:

How long has it been since the book was last checked out? We can get reports of books that have not been borrowed in at least 10 years. BUT – we probably wouldn’t discard a version of the Bible or a Shakespeare play just because no one has borrowed them.

How many other libraries own the book? If we own a book along with only 10 other libraries in the US, we will probably keep it.

Is it outdated? A book on using MS Excel 2007 might not be that old, but it might not be very useful either.

Is it still important to our curriculum? Is it in poor condition (and if so, should we replace it)? Do we need the 1^st and 2^nd editions of that book?

See – there are lots of questions and making decisions is not always as easy as when you weed your garden. Some decisions are really judgment calls and some can be based on data.

But all libraries need to be weeded regularly in order to keep them health. And that’s especially true for small college libraries. We want you to see the brand new books we are getting. And we want you to be able to pull a book off the shelf without breaking the spine or because the books are so packed together.

So if you see the librarians up in the book stacks this summer with carts, you will know it’s just us weeding, except without the gloves or the bug spray. And if you want to know why and how we are making our weeding decisions, please ask!