Library Home Page Changes

We’ve made a few small tweaks to the library home page. Subject Guides can now be found on their own tab in the tabbed search box. The Databases A-Z list has moved to the Quick Links bar, and Connect from Off-Campus has moved to the Get Help Fast section at the bottom of the page. Research Pro can no longer be accessed directly from the home page, but you can still find it in the “More Resources” menu. We think that these changes will provide faster access, with fewer clicks, to the most frequently-used resources. Please let us know what you think!

President Obama Proclaims October 2009 National Information Literacy Awareness Month

"National Information Literacy Awareness Month highlights the need for all Americans to be adept in the skills necessary to effectively navigate the Information Age." To view the official press release from the White House Briefing Room, please see http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Presidential-Proclamation-National-Information-Literacy-Awareness-Month/.

And to learn about Grinnell College Libraries' information literacy program, please review our Guide to Academic Research web page: http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/research/infolit/academicresearchguide.html

Questions or suggestions? Please contact Phil Jones, [jonesphi] or x3355.

What's New at the Libraries Fall 2009

Library Resources in Pioneer Web

Library resources are now better integrated into P-Web course pages. When you log into a course page, you will find:

• the e-reserve password for that course


• contact information for your consulting librarian


• a message box for instant messaging with a librarian


• a link to any course-specific web pages that your consulting librarian has created, with links to recommended databases, Web sites, and other important resources, or


• a link to a subject Web page, which will have a broader array of library resources in the course's discipline.

We hope this gives you more convenient access to the library resources you will need for learning and teaching.

Changes in Burling Reference

We will experiment this fall with a new reference schedule in Burling Library and a new approach to reference service. Beginning about mid-semester, we will expand desk coverage to midnight Sunday through Wednesday, but we have dropped it for Saturday afternoon (a very slow period, according to our statistics). On Fridays (another slow period at the reference desk) a librarian will be on call but not at the reference desk.

We will also be involving students in providing reference and information services—partly to give librarians more time for individual consultations and for liaison work with their departments, and partly because research suggests that student-to-student advising can be an effective complement to professional reference service. Students at the circulation desk are receiving intensified training in basic assistance with the catalog, databases, etc., and, as the fall progresses, you'll find students working at the reference desk during certain afternoon and evening hours. We'll be working very closely with these students and monitoring the service carefully. Please let us know what you think.

You'll find our complete Reference schedule at http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/general/libhours.html.
And remember that students and faculty can always contact http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/librarylab/ or query@grinnell.edu to schedule an individual or group reference consultation with a librarian!

New Face in the Libraries!

Amy Roberson has joined us as a one-year term Reference & Instruction Librarian, filling in for Gail Bonath, who is on sabbatical leave this year. Amy is a recent graduate of the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her professional interests include reference services, information literacy, and Web usability. When not at work, Amy enjoys cooking, playing music, knitting, and hiking.

Middle East Studies: New Videos

With funding from the Mellon Foundation through the Mellon 23 Consortium, we have purchased 24 documentary and feature films on the Middle East and North Africa. The films are available for loan to any of the Mellon 23 member institutions. The borrowing period is 4 weeks. For a list of films, please see http://www.barnard.edu/provost/mellon23/GrinnellCollege08.pdf. For a description of the Mellon 23 Faculty Development program, please see http://www.barnard.edu/provost/mellon23.html.

New Video Players in Burling

New video players have been installed in Burling Library’s Listening Room. Six high-definition players allow patrons to directly control their DVD and VHS playing experience. Four of those are combination VCR/DVD devices for United States/Canadian region videos, and two players are set to play multi-region (international) DVDs.

Two other stations are directly connected to the Listening Room bus control system to allow small group viewing and to provide access to video formats not available on the free-standing players.

All of the video stations are also equipped with 22-inch high-definition monitors.

Visitors are welcome to use this equipment during the Listening Room’s regular hours. For more information, please call x3365.

Selected New Library Resources

(Print, Digital, Video, and Audio)

AP Images provides access to the photo archives of the Associated Press with over 4.9 million primary-source photographs and other images from 1825 to the present documenting significant moments in history, news, sports and entertainment.

Early English Books Online contains digital facsimile page images of 100,000 works printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere, between 1473 and 1700. It complements Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO).

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (6 vols).

James Bond Collection (the entire series of 21 films).

Oxford Reference Online provides online access to 200 specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries useful to both student and faculty research.

Play Along Jazz Recordings series. Music scores with accompanying CDs by noted jazz musicians.

Russian language encyclopedias: The new edition of The Great Russian Encyclopedia and The New Russian Encyclopedia.

Roper Center Public Opinion Data: Grinnell’s subscription to the Roper Archives provides access to over 60 years of polling data from surveys conducted around the world. Roper’s iPoll Database allows users to search for results for over 400,000 questions asked in the United States; RoperExpress allows users to download over 15,000 full datasets, including over 6,000 datasets from outside the United States, for analysis.

Times Digital Archive: Access to the complete backfile of the London Times, 1785-1985, including text, images, editorials and advertisements.

Trade Analysis and Information System (TRAINS), produced by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, provides comprehensive tariff and trade information for over 140 countries. Grinnell users have access to TRAINS through the WITS (World Integrated Trade Solutions) software client.

Viva Pedro: the collected works (on video) of Pedro Almodóvar.

Preview the New Grinnell College Libraries' Homepage

The Grinnell College Libraries will soon launch a re-designed homepage. You can get a sneak peek by clicking the “Preview the new homepage” link at the top of the page. Please take a look and let us know what you think! To return to the original page, click on the text "Grinnell College Libraries" on the black header.

LibX Browser Toolbar

The LibX toolbar gives you easy access to many of the Grinnell College Libraries' resources, right in Firefox or Internet Explorer. You can search the catalog and online journals by highlighting, dragging and dropping—no typing required!

Down load the toolbar for Firefox at http://libx.org/editions/download.php?edition=7866E019.

Down load the toolbar for Internet Explorer at http://libx.org/editions/78/66/7866E019/libx-7866E019.exe.

If you don't want the full LibX toolbar, you can also add the library catalog to your browser's search box.

5-Question Survey for Human-Computer Interaction Class

Students in Janet Davis' Computer Science 295 class, Human-Computer Interaction, have written the following survey in consultation with the Libraries to determine the usability of the Libraries website. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DQ8OP2vBaJK0sk7qY_
2byrcw_3d_3d. It has only five questions!

Grinnell College Libraries Website Improvements

One of the things we learned from the LibQUAL survey (http://www.lib.grinnell.edu/general/LibQUAL/index.html) that the libraries administered in Spring of 2007 is that the Libraries’ website is not as easy to navigate as we would like it to be. The website provides a central interface and delivery platform for the Libraries’ services and collections. During the Fall of 2007, the Libraries held a series of feedback sessions with students, faculty, and staff to gather opinions on how to improve the usefulness of the Libraries’ home page. We asked each group what they are trying to do when they visit the Libraries’ website, and what would make it easier to accomplish these things. The changes made to the Libraries’ home page are a response to what we learned in the feedback sessions and from other comments about the website. Our goals are to make the links for the most needed items more visible, to group links more logically, and to use more familiar terminology. Because the Libraries’ website is constantly evolving to better meet the needs of students, faculty, and staff, we always welcome your input. Please send feedback and further suggestions to Cecilia Knight [knight@grinnell.edu] and/or Sharon Clayton [clayton@grinnell.edu].