Friday, August 09, 2013

Summer 2013: Lots of new things to be excited about!

Inventory

The Library conducted an inventory of the entire collection this summer. Out of our collection of 15,000+ print resources, we were missing roughly 100 books. We reviewed these missing materials and decided to replace the ones with medium to high usage. The Library will make an effort to remind our students to check out their books in the following school year.

Collection Development

We’ve added some new Young Adult and popular bestselling fiction books to our collection. These new titles will be on display for the first semester in the lower library. If you’re interested in reading something new, please visit the lower library and check out a book! Some popular additions include: The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer, The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, and We are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Joy Karen Fowler.

New databases, new periodicals

The Library has subscribed to some new EBSCO databases, including Academic Search Premier, Consumer Health Complete, Literary Reference Center, and a bunch more. We are planning on integrating all of our resources—print and digital—into a unifying searchable index. This means that our students and faculty will no longer need to hunt down links to a database they want to use. The Library has also subscribed to some new magazines, including Cooks Illustrated, Harvard Business Review, and Yoga. Swing through the lower library and browse our newly updated periodicals!

More mobile shelving units

Our plan to move the entire fiction collection downstairs continues this summer as the Library received approval for adding four new mobile shelving units. The next step in the phase is to continue moving through the alphabet. We expect three-quarters of our fiction collection to be house downstairs by the end of the year.

Kindles and requests for eBooks

The Library purchased two new Kindles for student and faculty use. We are currently building a small collection of books in the curriculum. The Library plans to use these Kindles to meet resource requests on-the-spot. This means that if you have a request that is in the Amazon marketplace, we can purchase it on-the-spot and lend you a Kindle.