Ramsey Library News

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."
~ Heinrich Heine

Good News and a BIG Thank You!

Like the rest of the campus community, Ramsey Library faculty and staff have been holding their collective breaths as we hoped for the best possible budget outcomes and prepared as best we could for the worst. Given the complexities of differing renewal dates for periodicals and electronic resources, the library had to cancel some materials beginning last spring. And, like many areas of the University, the library has suffered significant personnel loses.

So far, our community is very fortunate and we are all greatly appreciative for the relatively low reduction in UNC Asheville’s recurring state funding. Chancellor Ponder, our Board of Trustees, and others have succeeded admirably in advocating the value of UNC Asheville’s mission while demonstrating both our efficiencies and our persisting lack of resources.

But in addition, I want to take advantage of this “bully pulpit” to personally and on behalf of the community to send a special thank you to Chancellor Ponder and all the members of the Chancellor’s Senior Staff. Recognizing the fundamental importance of books, journals, electronic databases, videos, and other library materials to the learning and research processes we so value, they worked diligently to provide a materials acquisition budget which is stronger than circumstances would lead to expect. And while we will continue careful stewardship of our funds by examining existing expenditures and seeking better ways to meet community needs, librarians have already begun the process of seeing what databases and products can and should be restored (e.g., an improved “Research Central is on the way) and will be working with faculty and students on those decisions. More later . . . .

Again, many thanks!

Jim Kuhlman

University Librarian

New Online Resource for Philosophers

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently announced a new online resource for philosophers “Billed as ‘a comprehensive directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers. . . .” Check it out at:

Archive Watch: Taking It Philosophically

PhilPapers

What They’re Reading on College Campuses

If you haven’t seen it lately, you might want to check out the Chronicle of Higher Education’s best seller list, “What They’re Reading on College Campuses.” Top of the list this month and last? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Now who said great literature was dead???

“What They’re Reading on College Campuses”

Recent News of Note

Copyright-Law Curricula Face Each Other in a Duel

Chemistry Journals Go Digital-Only

University Presses Can Hang Together to Make E-Books, or All Hang Separately
Wired Campus: 5 Major Research Universities Endorse Open-Access Journals

And NOTES FROM RAMSEY’S personal favorite:

If You Dance With No Pants, a Well-Defined Body (of Slang) Helps

Posted by Brandy at 4:39 PM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

NEW BOOKS!!!

Even though this year’s budget picture isn’t perfectly clear as yet, Ramsey Library is certainly more optimistic about the financial forecast and we’re back buying books at a moderate pace. Faculty should continue to request materials for the library collection through your library liaison.

Not only do we have new books to share, we are trying an enhanced display for the new books to spark interest. Many thanks to Barbara Svenson, Noel Jones, Anita White-Carter, and Brandy Bourne for making this happen. We are leaving the dust jackets on the new books until they’re transferred to the stacks and devoting two of the shelves in the display cases to take advantage of all the nice art work. We’re also trying the elimination of the pop reading shelves (those titles have been moved to the stacks and are in the catalog) to allow space and to emphasize that all books are popular. (Is NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY exposing its bias here? Hope so!)

Please visit the new new book display. In the meantime check it out at https://sites.google.com/a/unca.edu/new-book-display/.

INSTRUCTION RESOURCES FOR INFORMATION INTENSIVES

Like many areas on campus and as NOTES FROM RAMSEY mentioned earlier, the library enters the new academic year with fewer staff. We have been particularly affected by the loss of the professional librarian position previously devoted to coordinating and supplying a great deal of the library’s user education. While everyone is trying to do as much as possible to fill the gap, many instructors will inevitably find that we’re unable to help at the time requested. Please be patient as we all attempt to cope as well as we can.

NOTES FROM RAMSEY does want to invite instructors’ attention to digitally available resources that can help them in presenting information resources to their students (actually better than a librarian coming to your class because the students pay much more attention to their “real” teacher) and to help their students directly. On the “InfoLit” page on the library’s web site you can find learning modules on research basics, finding articles, finding and evaluating web resources, suggested sample assignments, and resources for LANG 120 and LSIC 379 instructors.

Check it out at http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/infolit/Default.htm.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

· Research on Teaching Reading Shows What?

· Pricey Cost per Page Hurts Humanities and Social-Science Journals

· Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars
“Geoffrey Nunberg gets lost in the metadata of digital books.”

· New Editing Process Seeks to Improve Wikipedia's Accuracy

Posted by Brandy at 11:29 AM | Permalink

"Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt."

~ Heinrich Heine

REMODELING TO ENCOURAGE PERIODICAL USE

For those of you who could get away, welcome back to campus! For the many who pushed on through the summer, NOTES FROM RAMSEY hopes you did have some good time away and that the fall semester is off to a great start for you. Many of you may have missed this announcement in an earlier NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY, so like the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION in dealing with its summer vacation, NOTES wants to share our new periodicals layout with you one more time.

Under the expert eye of Noel Jones, one of Ramsey Library’s able circulation supervisors, keen minds and strong backs recently completed a no cost rearrangement in the current periodicals area of the main floor to encourage the reading of current magazines and journals. The project consolidated shelving of the majority of paper periodicals, grouped by subject according to their Library of Congress classification, into an area nearer the windows of the periodicals area in order to create more space for group work and comfortable seating. In addition, the library pulled some of the more popular titles from the single subject grouping and added new titles selected as a result of a student, staff, and faculty survey to create an easily accessible range of popular magazines suitable for browsing. Older titles included in this new grouping include:

American Craft

Ebony

Ecologist

Economist

Harper’s

Mother Jones

Ms.

Newsweek (NOTES FROM RAMSEY hates the new format!)

NYT Book Review

Rolling Stone

Scientific American

Time

U.S. News

Women’s Health

New titles added in response to survey requests include (note: less popular titles in the survey were canceled to allow for the change):

The Believer

Bitch

Bust

Dwell

Make

Men’s Health

Mental Floss

Paste

ReadyMade

Shambala Sun

Spin

Vanity Fair

Veg News

Week

See photos at: https://sites.google.com/a/unca.edu/ramsey-library-pop-periodicals/ and be sure to stop by for a visit!!

RESEARCH CENTRAL CANCELED

"Research Central" was the name for a commercial product embedded on the library's web main page which allowed you to put in a search term or phrase and retrieve results from the catalog (books, primarily) and the library's electronic databases (largely citations to articles and full text) all in one search. This is a feature known as "federated searching" for all you library groupies out there. Library staff had worked with this product for about a year while making it available to you in "Beta." While we felt there were still functional problems we also recognized that some faculty and more students found this an easy and productive way to search. Unfortunately, it also cost us $6,500 a year. In light of the anticipated limitations of this year's budget and the somewhat less than dependable performance, the library recently canceled the product so that we can spend the $6,500 on books and electronic information content that we would otherwise not be able to provide. When the library's budget begins to recover (and it will!) we'll return to our search for an affordable and functional federated search engine.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

* Google Hopes Readers Can Download, Share, and Use Books
"The company announced . . . that it will work with Creative Commons to let authors decide how their works can be used and cited."

*A Laboratory of Collaborative Learning

"How can we put the library back at the center of undergraduate education where it belongs?"

AND FOR THE ANNUAL BACK TO SCHOOL REALITY CHECK

* Beyond the Experience of Today's College Freshman: Johnny Carson and the KGB
blockquote>"As professors dust off their lecture notes in preparation for the new academic year, they might want to vet their cultural references with the folks at Beloit College."

Posted by Brandy at 10:16 AM | Permalink