From the Director's Desk

McQuade Library staff has identified 4 principle strategic directions that will position the library as a state of the art academic center for teaching, learning, discovery, and reflection. A renovated and expanded facility is integral to this vision, as it will increase opportunities for active and engaged learning and provide a more inviting and comfortable place for Merrimack students, faculty, and staff to think, study, and learn.

In collaboration with other college constituencies, the Library will continue to enhance student learning, streamline the provision of student services, and develop programming to facilitate learning beyond the classroom.

Our four strategic goals are:
1) To provide study and learning spaces throughout the building that are comfortable, flexible, functional, inviting, safe, technology-equipped and universally accessible.
2) To empower the Merrimack College community to become independent, lifelong learners.
3) To provide convenient, seamless access to materials in appropriate formats.
4) To preserve the institutional memory of Merrimack College.

Your input and ideas are important to us as we achieve these goals. Please feel free to contact any member of the library staff with your thoughts and suggestions.

~ Barbara Lachance, Library Director

The intention of this exhibition is not to produce a timeline of events, but to celebrate sixty years of Merrimack College, a pastiche in words and pictures. Representative of an on-going project to digitize and conserve the archives of the college, many of the images here come from crumbling scrapbooks and photo albums kept by our Augustinian founders, as well as those who have come after them each contributing to its growth, participating in its community, and dreaming of a future. The results of these sixty years are a collective institutional memory housed in file cabinets and archival storage boxes, and in the hearts and memories of all those who have been touched by our school.

As we contemplate the sixty years that gave rise to a thriving campus community out of a section of fallow farmland, growing one building at a time, we reflect upon our own contributions to Merrimack College. We dedicate this exhibition to those who founded and nurtured our institution, to those who carried it to the present, and to those who will shape its future.

Kevin Salemme ‘88 & Robert J. O’Brien ‘73

Every fall, the Circulation Department receives dozens of work study student applications and this year was no different. While reviewing these applications and conducting interviews gives the department the wonderful opportunity to meet and get to know many incoming and returning students, it is always sad to have to narrow down the candidates, many of whom are qualified and eager for the opportunity to work at the library.

The process for selecting candidates is based on several factors including financial aid status, availability, and previous work experience. Once hired, student workers perform the vital tasks of covering the front desk, processing checkouts, answering the phone, referring patrons to staff, shelving, retrieving interlibrary loans and course reserves, and representing the library to current and potential students.

This year, we are pleased to welcome the following 8 students to our staff:

• Audrey Bean, Freshman
• Calvin Burgett, Sophmore
• Meghan Clements, Junior
• Ryan McLaughlin, Freshman
• Daniel Morris, Freshman
• Yanil Rojas, Freshman
• Nicole Zaffini, Freshman

Joe St. Germain, Evening Circulation Supervisor

RefWorks Is Here

What is RefWorks? It is an online research management tool now available to the Merrimack College community. It allows researchers to create a personal database (accessible online from anywhere) in which they can gather, manage and store all kinds of information. Bibliographic information for articles, books and many other kinds of sources can be automatically imported from most of McQuade Library’s subscription databases. You can also create citations and bibliographies within RefWorks using hundreds of different citation styles, including APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian.

McQuade Library will be offering workshops later this month to teach users how to make the most of this new product.

Workshop schedule:

Tuesday, October 30th. at 3:30pm

Wednesday, October 31st. at 10:30am

The workshops will last approximately one hour, and will be held in the Alden classroom on the 3rd. floor of McQuade Library. These workshops are open to all members of the Merrimack College community (students, faculty and staff). Please contact Bridget Rawding ( Bridget.Rawding@merrimack.edu, or x4229) if you are planning to attend or would like more information.