Oliver Wendell Holmes Library Newsletter

Join us in the lobby of the OWHL on Tuesdays at 10am for children’s readings.  We have a wonderful selection of books for your tots, so stop on by and one of our Summer Session librarians will be happy to help you select a book or read aloud to your little one at Storytime.

Storytimes start Tuesdays July 7 - July 28, at 10am.

For more information contact Ms. Emma McElfresh at emcelfresh@andover.edu or x 4230.

The OWHL will be open during Summer Session during the following times:

Monday - Friday: 7:30 a.m. - 9:15 p.m.

Saturday: 7:30 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Sunday: 11:00 a.m. - 9:15 p.m.

See you this summer!

I will attempt to distill what amounted to a full day jam-packed with information.  With fellow librarians, we gathered in Devens to hear keynote speakers, network, and check out vendors.

The first speaker was John Carroll, a WUBR radio personality, who talked about “Mess Media” - and how the media has gone from being a horizontal, locally run set of entities, to a vertical, major network owned body.  Most of today’s media is owned by one of the 5 huge networks, and is so cross promoted, that TV show premiers are being treated as news, and news is being sensationalized into entertainment.  He ended his talk questioning when the backlash will occur, when the masses tire of American Idol and Twitter, where will they turn for substance?  Libraries.

Christopher Mackie, of the Mellon Foundation, called his talk “Doing More with Less” - everyone knows the economy has hurt libraries, causing them to slash budgets, lay off workers, shorten business hours, and in some cases, close branches.  Mackie suggested that collaboration is how libraries are going to weather the storm.  Open source software, working with consortia, and using tools like OLE - which stands for Open Library Environment, where librarians can share openly, knowledge with 120+ other institutions instantly - helping to absolve the dichotomy between traditional and e-libraries - are all examples Mackie used as examples of collaboration.

The last speaker was Steve Coffman, VP of LSSI.  He suggested a “Library as a Bookstore” model for some libraries.  Mentioning that when big box stores started looking at designs/merchandising, they took many notes from libraries.  Comfy chairs and study areas, programs and readings, and providing access to lots and lots of books.  Coffman suggests it is time for libraries to look at what makes large chain bookstores so successful and possibly adopt some of their business models - such as being open more hours per day, hiring more part-time workers (who aren’t professionals, but rather book lovers), place emphasis on self-service.  Perhaps what he is suggesting is the libraries of the future. 

As a side note - Nelinet did spend some time presenting it’s proposed merger with Lyrasis - another large consortium.  If the vote (which is active from June 2-16) passes, Lyrasis will encompass approximately 1/3 of the US - streamlining collaboration, best practices, and media transfers between these libraries.

As the school year winds down, thoughts turn to summer reading (of course!).

Perhaps someone has asked you for some good suggestions, but you just can’t remember the name of that book. Perhaps, even, you want to read a favorite old poem in a friends’ wedding and you can’t for the life of you remember who wrote it.

Well, the Library of Congress feels your pain and has come up with a wonderful online guide of places to look when you can’t remember what you’re looking for.

The guide “is intended to help readers identify a literary work when they know only its plot or subject, or other textual information such as a character’s name, a line of poetry, or a unique word or phrase.”

Visit the site at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/lost/ and start remembering!

…and talks like a library book, it’s probably a library book.

In the next few weeks as students prepare to vacate their rooms and campus for the summer, we here at the OWHL would be o-so-grateful if you could keep an eye out for run-away library books and encourage them to make their way back to the library.

Let those books know we miss them and want very much for them to come home.

Their spot on the shelf is still there and ready for them to snuggle in for the summer.

Help a book find it’s way!

Thank you!

The Library Staff

Every year, in honor of Craig Thorn, the David Fox of the English Department solicits summer reading suggestions from the PA community.

The list contains a diverse and varied selection of great reads sure to keep your mind stimulated all summer long (and beyond!).

This year, as always the OWHL’s main display bookshelf (front and center as you enter the OWHL) will be showcasing books from the list.

So if you’re looking for something to read this summer, come by the library, have a look at our display and you’ll be sure to find a literary gem.

Are you taking any English or literature classes? Or are you teaching English? If so, you definitely do not want to miss LRC.

Literary Reference Center is a comprehensive database that provides users with a broad spectrum of information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes. LRC is a highly graphical interface intended for public, academic and high school libraries. The primary goal of LRC is to assist high school and undergraduate English and Humanities students with homework and research assignments of a literary nature. It would be especially helpful to PA students who take English classes.

Contents: LRC is a full text database that combines information from major respected reference works, books, literacy journals as well as original contents from EBSCO Publishing. Readers will not only be able to read more than 31,000 plot summaries, synopses and work overviews, but also find nearly 100,000 essays of literary criticism and early 140,000 author biographies. Book Highlight rotates its book and reference collection, including titles like: Literary Contexts in Novels, in Poetry & Short Stories, in Plays, as well as Literary Contexts in Essays & Memoirs. Also, LRC has a section for “Author in Focus”.

Reference Shelf: On the right side of the screen, you will be introduced into a reference shelf which offers Literary-Historical Timeline, Encyclopedia of Literature, Dictionary, Research Guide as well as Citation Help. Additionally, it has a corner matching the theme of the season of the year.

Access and Search: From LRC’s homepage, you can start with basic search via a “Find” box, or via its “Browse Authors” and “Browse Works”. In the lower screen, you are given “Book Highlight” which displays a list of reference books highlighted on a rotating basis. A click on each link in this section will lead you into all details of their contents. You may also try “Advanced search” for very specific search with its document types, limiters and expanders, and literary author’s gender. The advanced search also offers image search.

In a word, LRC is a very comprehensive and updated literary database. To access LRC, please click http://978.andover.edu/library/databases/disciplinelist.html#english. To get an online tutorial, please visit http://support.epnet.com/training/flash_videos/lrc/LiteraryReferenceCenter.html

Submitted by Sharon Pei

More and more often, books are being published first or exclusively in digital format.  With the success of ebook readers like Amazon’s Kindle, it is quickly becoming more lucritive, earth friendly, and less expensive for the consumer to download the newest best-selling titles, rather than buy them in hardcover, or waiting for them to come out on paperback.

Read the whole article here:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6657392.html

Looking for a scholarly journal or popular press article to round out your research and support your thesis? Academic Search Elite is a subscription database that contains scholarly journal and popular press articles (from publications such as Time, Newsweek, and People). Academic Search Elite contains full text for more than 2,000 journals. More than 140 journals have PDF images dating back to 1985.
Academic Search Elite is available in the Databases A-Z link on the OWHL homepage. Be sure to use an “advanced search” to focus your search results. Give it a try next time you need to gather resources for a paper or presentation!

Sharon Pei, one of our instructional librarians at the OWHL, once again will be teaching during this upcoming summer session. This will be her third year of teaching for the Andover’s Summer Session.
Sharon has been enjoying teaching the Chinese language during the past two summer sessions for PA while she continues to be the language teacher at the local Chinese community language school in Acton, MA. Also, this is her 5th year teaching Tai Chi in the local community education program where she lives.
Sharon considers this summer teaching opportunity as an extension of her services to the PA community at large. With her great enthusiasm in teaching what she excels at and loves, we wish her another successful summer session ahead!