Going Green?

Everyone seems to be going green... the bookstores are full of books about it, the grocery stores are selling reusable bags, and the Governor is creating websites about things you can do. Today, I attended an online chat about college libraries going green and there were librarians from all across the country writing in about different things libraries can do to help create a sustainable future.

Some of the librarians were from community colleges like ours (I asked) and we talked about reducing the amount of wasteful printing, bike riding to campus (there are bike racks in the front of Founders now!), and recycling. It seems like a lot of colleges, including commuter campuses like Naugatuck Valley, are making an effort to make their college an environmentally friendly place.

For now, we're buying lots of new books on the subject, and asking that you keep your printing down as much as possible. But, if anyone has suggestions on the topic, we'd be thrilled to hear them!

Learn to speak Librarian!

Completely free lessons!

The basics:

Library Online Catalog= Search for books
Electronic Databases= Search for articles
reQuest= all the library books in the whole state all at one time (WOW!)
Serials Solutions= Magazine/Journal Locator
Journals & Newspapers= Nothing. Don't look at that page.

Library Lingo:

Stacks= Bookshelves
Circulation Desk= Big desk on 4th floor where you check things out
Reference Desk= Big desk near computers where you ask questions
Serials= Magazines and Journals
Journals= Academic Magazines
Reserve= on hold

Database Lingo:

Databases= digital (online) collections of journals and magazines
Ebsco= a company that owns several databases
full-text= you can read/print it
citation= can't read/print it
PDF= scanned version of an article
html= digitized version of an article (may not have images/graphs)
download= save

Hope you enjoyed this beginning library lingo session! See you in the library soon!

Libraries + Flickr = Amazing Stuff

If you don't know what Flickr is, its a photosharing website, like Photobucket or Picasa. You log in, upload photos, share them or make them private, tag them, group them, post them on your blog or your Facebook page or whatever you want to do with them.

The Library of Congress (the big poppa of libraries, you may have seen it in National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets) has uploaded approximately 171,000 photos to Flickr and asked the public to view, tag and comment on them. The results are fascinating, and you can see it, for free, here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/Library_of_Congress

To view a webcast created by the LOC, visit this link: Opening the Photo Vaults: A Web 2.0 Pilot Project to Enhance Discovery and Gather Input for the Library's Photograph Collections" (presented Jan. 29, 2008).

Amazing!