We welcome the following new staff members to the Library.   

Jenny Doctor joined the Library in January as director of the Belfer Audio Archive. She will hold a concurrent appointment as a faculty member in the Newhouse School of Public Communications. A faculty member in the Department of Music at the University of York (UK) from 2005 - 2011, Doctor is a musicologist who has specialized in twentieth-century British composers and the development of sound recording technologies. She was awarded a Fulbright grant to the UK in 1989, and remained as a resident in that country until this appointment.

Sarah Allis joined the Learning Commons department in December. Her previous positions include Geek Squad Counter Intelligence Agent at Best Buy and Digital Scanning Technician at Penn State. She holds a BA in fine arts and a BA in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design.  

The Library recently signed the contract to purchase Serials Solutions' Summon service and will begin implementation soon. Summon is a web-scale discovery service that provides an easy and intuitive full-text search of almost all of the Library's licensed content, as well as web-based resources. It offers a very effective starting point for research. 

 

A cornerstone of the Summon service is its unified index, which makes the full breadth of the Library's collections easily discoverable. The index will include: library catalog records, full-text databases, SUrface repository, digital collections, subject guides, website, archival finding aids, and much more. The single search box is familiar and straightforward. Users can further refine the relevancy-ranked list of search results by content type, date range, and other facets, or click through to the full-text where it is available.

 

The Summon service will make the Library's resources much easier to find and will bring students back to the Library as the starting point for research. More than 250 libraries and research institutions have implemented Summon, and many are seeing a substantial increase in the use of their collections, enabling a greater return on their investment in these resources. This tool is especially effective for undergraduates and for those conducting interdisciplinary research.

 

We will be convening two teams to begin work on the implementation and will share more information on our process and timeline soon. In the meantime, there is much more information on the Serials Solutions website, including this short video.  

Refilling your own water bottle reduces the purchase of bottled water and helps cut back on the plastic waste in the library. The electronic display on the new fountain keeps track of the number of fill ups which translates to a reduction in bottled water purchases. This unit also filters the water and can accommodate most refillable water bottles.

The new unit is on the first floor of Bird, just outside the back door to the PGSC on the west side of the building. This project was initiated by the Library's Green Team and made possible by funding from the Library.

By becoming a member of OCLC's Research Library Partnership Program, Syracuse University Library has been able to re-join the SHARES program. SHARES enables participating institutions to offer a collaborative interlibrary loan program, as well as on-site access at participating libraries.

Faculty, emeritus faculty, students, and academic and professional staff of partner institutions are able to visit and use the collections and services of SHARES member libraries. This international sharing partnership expands and enhances local collections with materials owned by partners around the world.

SHARES institutions include Brown University, Columbia, Cornell, NYU, Penn State, Princeton, University of Michigan, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, University of Toronto, and many others. For a full list of participants, www.oclc.org/research/activities/shares/partners/symbols.pdf.

Visitors must present a currently valid institutional ID card. A photo identification may be requested if the ID does not include a photograph. In-library use of material is permitted, but SHARES members are not granted borrowing privileges. Visitors will receive the same degree of access accorded their peers at the host institution; for example, visiting faculty will be granted local faculty privileges. Access to special or restricted collections or materials may be possible if arranged in advance.

On-site access is available during the institution's regular business hours. To verify hours, holiday access, and access to departmental libraries and special collections, contact the SHARES liaison in advance.

For more information, see www.oclc.org/research/activities/shares.

Disenchantment by Catherine D. Chatterley has been selected as a finalist of the 2011 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Modern Jewish Thought and Experience.

The National Jewish Book Awards, now in its 61st year, is the longest-running program of its kind in North America.

Finalists of the 2011 National Jewish Book Awards are invited to attend a gala ceremony on March 14 at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.

The SU Library mentoring group is looking for links to include on its website, both those specific to librarians and those with more general career/professional development advice.

Is there a blog, Twitter feed or other online resource you find particularly useful for mentoring or developing your career? Please let us know by contacting any member of the SUL mentoring group: Nancy Turner (coordinator); Marty Hanson; Susan Kline; Peter Verheyen.

Since last month, we've received a number of suggestions and comments from the two-sided suggestion board, located on the first floor of Bird Library, as well as through social media outlets such as the Library's Facebook page and Twitter feed:

• You should put a book drop at Manley.
• The photocopy machines should be able to accept our student printing account funds. 
• All of the tables should have power outlets.
• Parking is too difficult.
• The Library needs new furniture. 
• Pages is too expensive and always has the same food.
• Why are these computers so slow?!

If you have a response you'd like us to post, please contact Pamela McLaughlin at pwmclaug@syr.edu.

Got news? Please feel free to send us any news items that you would like to share with colleagues -- graduations, weddings, new babies, travels, and such. As always, we welcome your feedback, comments, questions, or story ideas. Send your contributions to libcom@syr.edu.

Many thanks for your interest!