Student Assistant Appreciation Party - Spring 2008

On May 9, 2008, Gleeson Library staff and the Dean’s Office proudly honored our student assistants for their tireless work this past school year. Student Library workers, from all departments, gathered together for food, prizes, and good times.

Gleeson is lucky to have such a wonderful team of cool, professional, students workers. You provide our library with the kind of pleasant expertise that all libraries should have.

To paraphrase the Dean, you rock, and we can’t do any of this without you! (He said it much nicer, tho..)

For more pictures from the party, visit my Flickr photostream

Good luck on Finals!

 

Library Open Late/Open Early for Finals

Hey everyone!

The Library is open extra hours for finals:

Friday, May 9, 2008 : 8 am - 12 mid

Saturday, May 10, 2008: 10 am - 12 mid

Sunday, May 11, 2008: 10 am - 12 mid

Good luck studying for finals and writing papers!

And don’t get so busy with finals that you forget Moms’ Day on Sunday!

This is the New York Public Library.

 

USF School of Business and Management Gleeson Library Project

Four students in one of J.P. Allen’s courses (School of Business and Management - SOBAM) recently completed a class project that involved developing a proposal to solve a complex problem we’ve had at the library for some time – automating the reservation process for group study rooms.

Willis, David, Phoebe & Eddie came by Gleeson in early April with their idea. They interviewed me and we discussed some of the background on group study rooms at the library, I shared some study room usage data and along the way they also interviewed the folks in the USF OneCard office as well.

I went by their class today and was amazed by what the team put together. Not only did they come up with an elegant proposal to solve to a thorny library problem, I think they also made an eloquent and convincing proposal to their colleagues in class.

It was great to work with Willis, David, Phoebe & Eddie and I hope to see them in a few years at the USF MBA competition! Many thanks to JP for letting me sit-in on the presentations.

 

Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month

Check out our resource guide in celebration of Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month

Feel free to share other resources and events on our blog!

 

National Library Week celebration continues (updated)

Thanks again to David Silver’s Davies Forum Digital Literacy class for installing the wonderful Reading Fort in celebration of National Library Week.

Update: May 5, 2008 by Deborah Malone

Check out the audio slideshow done by Lulu McAllister and Lis Bartlett!!! Thanks Lulu and Lis!

Also available on youtube: National Library Week at USF.

And read the Davies Forum blog posts about National Library Week and Gleeson Library: David Silver, Amber (& here), Kelly, Lulu and Blake.

Check out some of the students’ favorite books and recommend your favorites as well!

 

USF Book Club: The Glass Castle

The USF Book Club will discuss The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls on May 28, 2008 (Wednesday). We will meet in the Seminar Room (2nd Fl) of Gleeson Library | Geschke Resource Center from 12 noon - 1 pm. Bring your lunch! (Faculty and staff only.)

If you want to request this book through the library’s free service Link+, click here. It takes 3-4 business days for a book to arrive.

“I WAS SITTING IN a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster,” begins The Glass Castle. Jeanette Walls’ memoir recounts her bizarre (and traumatic) upbringing by her brilliant alcoholic dad and her free spirit artsy mom, but never verges on sentimental. Click here for reviews via Amazon, or click here for a lengthy (plot spoiling) review from the New York Times.

 

AJCU Library Directors/Chief Information Officers/Educational Technology Conference hosted at USF

The University of San Francisco recently hosted the bi-annual Joint Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities Library Directors/Chief Information Officers/Educational Technology conference.  Close to 100 individuals attended and their reviews of the meeting were excellent.  While many timely issues facing academic libraries, IT, and the use of technology in the classroom were discussed, we also reserved time for some great socialization including a dinner cruise on the San Francisco Bay, a trip to the wine country, and a tour of the new 95 million learning commons at Santa Clara University. Mary Lee Sweat and her colleagues created a flickr photo gallery.  The meeting represented 10 years of library directors’ meeting outside of the American Library Association’s annual conference. Thanks to Carmen Fernandez-Baybay, Shawn P. Calhoun, Vicki Rosen, Tracy Schroeder, Carol Cook, Richard Soo, John Bansavich, and a host of other Library and IT staff for making this one of the best conferences ever!

 

Reading Fort explodes on the scene

The Davies Forum Digital Literacy class invaded the library last night and transformed the space between the Circulation and Reference desks into a reading fort with comfy chairs, library flip books, and their reading favorites along with an annotated list posted on the wall (See the list here), plus space where we’re invited to add our own favorites. Below are photos of parts of the installation.

Here’s Gleeson gleaner Kelci Baughman McDowell perusing a flip book.

There’s even a contest!

The fort provides a cozy place to read.

Class Professor David Silver took excellent pictures of the construction process including the image above.

Alas the fort fell sometime this morning! We’ve been assured that help is on the way. In the meantime here’s how it looks all vanquished. Kelci swears she had nothing to do with it.

*****
NOON UPDATE: Hooray! The fort is back!

 

It’s National Library Week

and Prof. David Silver’s Digital Literacy class is helping us celebrate, in part by letting us know what students wish we would do as well as what they appreciate about the library. I’m looking forward to seeing more students’ ideas.

Here’s what National Library Week is all about.

 

The “Private Lives” of Gleeson Library’s Books

The National Library of Scotland’s “The Private Lives of Books” website notes that “Books can tell all kinds of surprising stories through inscriptions people wrote in them, through the signatures of their owners, special bookplates and bindings.” Did you know that many of Gleeson Library’s books had “private lives” before they reached our stacks? Peruse the “P” section (or Library of Congress code for Language and Literature books) of the library, for example, and you may find inscriptions hinting of the adventures our books took prior to arriving at their current home!

The inscription in this 1924 printing of Carl Van Vechten’s The Tiger in the House (Gleeson Library Call Number PS3543.A653 T5) reads “for the Lady Nora (Gros) with a smile on the face of the Tiger Albert — Christmas 1924 with an affection that takes no note of the Atlantic Ocean.” The author of this poetic note is unknown, but look where this book was probably purchased…..Paris!

Let us know if you happen to uncover a library book in our stacks that appears as though it has had an interesting past; we’ll post a picture of it on this blog and reward the best “find.” Please remember, though, inscriptions are a charm of our books’ pasts. Writing in library books is prohibited.