This is Halloween

I'm seeing some great costumes from the circ desk, both inside and outside the library. Alex just left, waddling around in his inflatable Sumo wrestler suit. A whole herd of cats went by, some fairies, a troupe of rednecks complete with rebel-flag tattoos, there's an inflatable elephant standing on its head somewhere, two angels, Laura as a gypsy, several cowgirls, all four Ninja Turtles, and my favorites: Nick and Taylor as the Mario Brothers, followed by Maria as Sarah Palin, a close second. (Nice suit - very authentic!)

There was some discussion at lunch among the faculty about whether we were more or less effective in our Halloween getups: Mr. N, who came as Sweat (and was accompanied by Miss E and Mrs. F as Tears and Blood, respectively) said he actually felt better sans tie, and I volunteered I felt more benevolent and terrible as the harvest goddess herself. But what about the students? Can actual learning happen when the head is under a halo, a cowboy hat, or a witch's peak?

The Greek philosopher in me says yes, not so much book-learning as perhaps a firsthand experience of what our ancient predecessors knew all along: sometimes you have to give Apollo a day off and let Dionysos take over. Furthermore, we do learn by doing. I forgot my sheaf of wheat today, one of Demeter's attributes. I kicked myself, but look at it this way - at least I knew enough to understand what I'd left out.

Math test

Today I got a really great request: some information about the Mayan system of performing mathematical calculations. It's well-known that Mayan reckoning of time is some of the most accurate in the history of the world - how did they do it? Turns out they used a vigesimal, or base-20, system. Euro-Westerners use a decimal, or base-10 system. The Mayans also had the concept of zero long before anyone in this part of the world even thought of it. Among the Maya, who inhabited parts of Mexico and areas of Central America between about 1000-1675, zero was represented by the sign of a shell, 1 was represented by a dot, and 5 a stick or line, grouped together with the horizontal lines below and the dots arranged horizontally above. To create larger numbers another group was simply placed vertically atop the previous group, and this upper group of signs increased by the power of 20, allowing for much larger numbers. I don't get to do much math, or much investigation into ancient hieroglyphic either - in my mind, I was Indiana Librarian today.

Switcheroo

If you visit me at the circulation desk you will notice that I appear to be drowning in a sea of VHS tapes. I am, actually. I am trying to totally renovate our collection of video materials: get rid of what's just collecting dust, replace the old favorites with DVD versions, get new and exciting things for the future. Surely though, as I take things out of the collection and donate them or let people choose things to take home I will be criticized for appearing to just let go of a valuable resource. Believe me, I agonize over every title that I take out of the collection - what if I weed this thing someone was about to love? - but here's my criterion: if no one has checked it out it the last ten years, it goes. That's pretty generous, I think. If you really desperately want to hang on to a VHS copy of Shane, let me know and you can hoard it yourself. Otherwise, please understand that growth sometimes involves sacrifice, and the future looks bright (and easy to store on disk!)

. . . what is your quest?

I don't know how many of you have used Questia in the past, but the library does subscribe to it and today I worked very hard getting every student and teacher his or her own password to use it! Questia is a full-text source - books and articles! - a very valuable resource for researchers, writers - anyone wanting more and better information than Wikiwhatever can provide. I'll be doing a more formal introduction to the delights of Questia later on, but feel free to stop by the desk and ask me all about it!

Great new stuff in the DVD section

This week I added four of my very favorite titles to our DVD collection: Pyramid, Roman City, Castle and Cathedral. These are all video adaptations of the books by David Macaulay, in which he illustrates the construction of all of these through his wonderful drawings and clear explanations. He uses a fictional setting to describe real techniques: the Roman city, for example, never existed but is a kind of composite of what Roman provincial towns were like and how they were built. I have shown these every year in my art history classes and can't wait to do so here. If you want a sneak preview, though, they are ready and waiting for you to watch them.

THERE IS STILL REALLY NO EATING IN THE LIBRARY

In the last two weeks I have found myself repeating over and over again that there is no eating in the library. Is it OK to eat apples? No. Is it OK to eat after school but not during? No. Is it OK if I'm at a table and not looking at the books? NO. And here's why:

There you are, eating your granola bar or whatever at the table. Crumbs fall from your hand onto the carpet. Someone opens the door and a bug crawls in. Attracted to the granola crumbs, it crawls a little further, scarfs them up, and goes looking for another snack. And finds one in the glue bindings of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Music, which it proceeds to eat and thus refreshed goes searching for a mate. They reproduce, and now you're eating in a library full of bugs everywhere.

Stop eating in the library, or I'll tell the bugs where you live.

Everywhere a sign

As part of my overall plan to improve the way the library works, I have started making new (and I hope better) signs to mark the bookshelves. This may seem like a small thing, but not being able to find the right shelf holding the book you want is a really big deal when you're between classes and in a hurry. Now we have signs that have directional arrows pointing to the side of the bookcase in which the books are organized. For example, on the bookcase nearest the easy chairs, the biography side is clearly marked with an arrow and the word "biography," and the other side, which has fiction, has its own arrow and the alphabetic span of books in that area.

I'm all for wandering around the stacks, of course, but sometimes you just really want that copy of Robin Lane Fox's biography of Alexander the Great and don't have time to wait. Now you don't have to.

Electronic resources

I am very, very, very happy to say that today I got two requests from different students to show them how to use the electronic resources we have here at the Savidge/Bowers Library. If you're wondering the same thing but are too shy to ask, here's some help. You can just click here to go to the library's databases page, or you can go to the school's site first,then go to "academics," then select the link for "library," and then you can click on the icon for the database you want. I recommend the Gale Student Resource Center Gold collection, by the way. I further recommend choosing only full-text articles, because otherwise you're just frustrating yourself. If you don't check that box it returns everything out there, including stuff we don't have, and there you are wanting something you know exists but can't access. Terrible! So pick the full-text option and then you can read or print to your heart's content.

If that doesn't get you where you need to be, come see me. That's my job, remember?

Holy shift!

Today is Breast Cancer Awareness Day, and in addition to my pink ribbon I am wearing jeans. A $5 donation buys the giver the chance to wear denim to work and I took it! I dedicated today to physical labor: I shifted too-tightly-packed books onto empty shelves to make room for new titles and to give me a chance to clear out ten years' worth of dust. You deserve a clean working environment and so do I. Next week, new shelf labels to tell you where I put stuff, whee!

Help me help you

I hear through the grapevine that not everyone knows I'm here to help you. Oh sure, everybody comes to me to unjam the copier, refill the stapler, save their homework to flash drive and print from my computer - I even gave out a Band-Aid today. But what I'm really best at is finding the information you want. Need to look up a passage from the Aeneid in the original Latin? I got it, with the English right next to it. Want a subject to analyze for your math-class graphing problem paper? I can do that too. What about the history of the Protestant movement? I have all the answers you need.

All you have to do is ask. But I can't read your mind - you gotta come up to the desk!