Library News

Questions? Ask a Librarian!

Did you know that you can Text a Librarian for answers to all of your library or literature questions? All you have to do is text your question to 66746 and begin your message with the word husky. You can also get answers at the Reference Desk  by calling (617) 373-2356, or visiting on the second floor of Snell Library during these hours:
Mon-Thurs: 9:00am – 9:00pm
Fri: 9:00am – 6:00pm
Sat: 12:00pm – 5:00pm
Sun: 12:00pm – 8:00pm
Coming to a Snell Librarian with your questions guarantees that you’ll get put in the right direction, and they often go above and beyond the scope of their job to assist you in whatever project you have.

Publishers improve searching and retrieval

Several of our ejournal and online publishers have launched improved, redesigned web sites over the past weekend.  I’m not sure why all of a sudden everyone’s doing this, perhaps to prepare for the beginning of the academic year. Wiley’s web site, rechristened Wiley Online Library, has a more intuitive interface with neater layout and more white space.  There’s a new search engine to deliver more relevant results, and more options for receiving up-to-date information. If you already had a personal account on Wiley to receive alerts, your account has been migrated to the new system. Table of Contents, EarlyView  and Accepted Article Alerts have all been migrated with your account. Saved searches and saved search alerts were not transferred and will have to be re-created. Lexis-Nexis weighs in with a new interface as well, with more search options on the home page, easier access to “landmark” court cases, and improved navigation.   The Lexis-Nexis change is significant, and because this is a large database with many different types of materials, it may take some getting used to.  If you don’t see something you are looking for, please let us know. Finally our new Discovery service has some cosmetic changes on the results screen, with shadow boxes on the left for refining results and linked databases higher up on the right.  Because this service is currently under development at the NU Libraries, there will be further changes over the next few weeks.

Bloomberg Coming Soon

Exciting news for business students! The Snell Library will soon house 2 Bloomberg terminals on the 2nd floor, thanks to the generosity of the College of Business Administration.  The table is all set up, ready for the arrival of the special terminals. Look for them soon!

Seeking New Writers for Snell Snippets

With the school year coming around and new students pouring in, not to mention some new Library employees who have started working or will soon begin working at Snell, I want to send out a call for all potential bloggers. At Snell Snippets, we are trying to branch out, both in our service to the library and in the way we encompass all sections of the library. This means we are promoting news, resources, and general updates at a good rate, but we are also looking to include more people as contributing writers. A contributing writer would be required to complete at least one post per week and they would be required to be trained as a blogger. All blog posts are intrinsically related to the library; either they are about a recent library development, or a book, film, CD, etc., that we have at Snell. Posts may also be about the broad topic of libraries, literature and literacy as it relates to our own goals. As one of the primary blog goals is to get more students reading it, we are therefore trying to get more students to write for it. As of now, the blog administrators are mainly divided between the 2nd and third floor; Karen, Rebecca and myself. The same can be said of all contributors. Having several students working at Circulation to blog about the library from their perspective would be just one of many welcome additions. Of course, this is only an example. I look forward to hearing from interested writers. Anybody with a skill for writing, reading and intellectual curiosity may apply. I know that includes a good many people here.

Promotional Strategies?

As the title may indicate, this is a post that will raise only questions and provide no answers. I hope readers are okay with that, because it’s one of my favorite things to do. These are important questions about the Library website.  First, let me draw your attention to the intriguing organization of the Hunter College Library web page. Not only is their web page beautifully organized, I think, but they have also taken advantage of mentioning the other libraries in the same area. Hunter College is located in Manhattan and is part of the CUNY (City University of New York) system. So one of the links at the bottom-center of their page has to be the CUNY Libraries. Hunter also uses Blackboard, like so many colleges, so it has a link for that. Same with Facebook and Google. But the other three links are to the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Library. Why, I asked myself, would Hunter College want to link to institutions that are essentially competitors? There are a few reasons I can think of: 1. Hunter College believes its Library web page is more appealing than the other web pages, so it wants to place a point of comparison in the mind of the visitor. They are hoping that the visitor will be put off by the Queens Library’s web page in comparison to theirs, therefore causing the web page visitor to be more inclined to visit the Hunter College Libraries. (And it knows that the vast majority of visitors are students and faculty, who are in close proximity to their Library; other nearby territory simply must be blocked off.) 2. The Hunter College Library doesn’t care about the amount of attention its website gets, because that alone won’t guarantee more donations or visits to the actual Library. What the staff of the library cares about is the world of reading and researching, period. Any institution that promotes those habits is a friend of theirs in the grand scheme. 3. There is some New York Library web that I’m unaware of; i.e. all these libraries aren’t really competitors at all, but have arrangements where they share books and resources and common donors; Hunter feels obliged to provide links. I am not an advertising expert. But I did major in Communications; so I stand by these educated guesses.  The question simply becomes; do we want to be competitors, or do we want to find common ground? Do we want to acknowledge our connections to the Boston Library system (I think there is one, correct me if I’m wrong?)? Or do we want to take a more isolated approach to Library promotion? That last question sounds silly, because we are not taking an isolated approach. But as of now, we provide no links to libraries in the greater Boston area on our homepage. Considering the vast number of Universities here, not to mention the many branches of the Boston Public Library, we are at no shortage of these “connections.” In fact, by linking to other sites in this blog post, I am publicizing them. Perhaps we should consider these three reasons for linking to other libraries, think of some more reasons and provide links. (For the record, we do provide links to YouTube and Flickr, sites that involve us but are inherently unrelated. Do we think these links are beneficial or are they distracting?)