OLIN LIBRARY NEWS

Free Books
5/15/08

We are cleaning out one of our storage areas and have placed a cart of free books on the atrium of the Olin Library. These titles were given to our library but that are already in our collection or don’t meet our collection development guidelines. Each cart load of books will remain there for 24 hours. After that time the remaining items will be discarded because all other ways of disposing of these items have already been tried. There is a real variety, including hardcover, paperbacks, fiction, non-fiction, popular, academic, English, and other languages.

Please help yourself!

Please note:  as of 6/16, the free book cart is temporarily on hiatus for processing, but will be put back out again starting on 6/18 or 6/19.

Wii Available at Olin Library
5/15/08

Take a break from studying.

Starting right NOW anyone with an R-Card can check out a Nintendo Wii System from the Olin Circulation desk.

24 Hour Checkout FOR FREE!!

INCLUDES Super Smash Bros. Brawl, controllers & everything you need!

You CAN take it out of the library or use it in one of the group "study" rooms with a plasma screens -- as long as no one is actually studying in there!

Also, this means anyone LIVING ON CAMPUS over the SUMMER can checkout it out.

A big thank you to Luke Taylor and Res Life for making this happen.

Jonathan Miller
Director of Libraries

Credo: Online Reference Sources
5/1/08

Our newest online database is Credo Reference. Credo provides reference material from hundreds of high-quality encyclopedias, dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, handbooks, and other reference books. The majority of our online databases feature content from journals, magazines, and other periodicals, which are good for tracking specific arguments and new research. With Credo, we now have a powerful tool for quickly locating broad overviews of topics, facts, definitions, and other reference information.

Olin Open 24 Hours for Finals
04/20/08

From midnight on April 20^th until 10 p.m. on Tuesday May 4^th, the library will be open 24 hours per day.  The overnight hours will be staffed with campus security officers, and from 2 a.m until the library reopens at 7:45 a.m. there will be no library personnel to assist students with checking-out materials or reference help.

Good luck with your finals!

Olin Announces New Ways to Provide Research Assistance
03/17/08

The Olin Library is trying out two new ways for you to contact a librarian for research assistance.  We have offered e-mail reference for a long time.  Now you can send a text message to askolinlibrary@gmail.com as well or chat with a librarian using the “Ask A Librarian” box on the homepage or by using the following instant messaging services:

These new services will be available for the rest of the spring semester.  At the end of the semester we will evaluate the service and decide whether to continue and if we need to make any changes.

Of course, you can always receive research assistance by visiting the library or calling a reference librarian at (407) 646-2507 during the following times:

At all other times you can send an e-mail or text message or leave a message in our IM service and we will respond as soon as we resume service.  For general information and renewals, please contact Circulation at (407) 646-2521.

Super Tuesday at Olin Library
02/04/08

Super Duper Tuesday is near and is it big this year!

When: Tuesday February 5th, 2008, 8pm 'til late.
Where: Atrium of the Olin Library.
Red and blue snacks will be provided.
Everyone is welcome.

We will fire up the plasma TV, switch back & forth between CNN and Fox, and surf the politico-web on a laptop.

24 states are holding primary elections or caucuses.
Both primary battles, Democratic and Republican, are competitive.

Will McCain retain his front runner status? Or will Romney become the first Mormon nominee? If he loses, how will he react when he realizes how much of his own money he has spent? How will his family react? Could Ron Paul go all the way?
Will Hillary Clinton make history by holding on to her national lead over Barack Obama? One or the other will make history by being either the first woman or the first African American to be the Presidential nominee of a major party.

It doesn't get much more historic than this! Come and be among the first to find out. One day you will be able to bring your grand kids to campus, show them the Olin Library and say, "I was there when [fill in name of historic first here] clinched victory."
 

Olin Launches Beta Version of Federated Search
01/25/08

The Olin Library currently has under development the beta version of a "federated" search engine: a tool that can search many of our databases simultaneously. When performing a federated search, first decide whether to select from our list of databases or to use librarian-recommended lists of databases for particular subjects. Then, perform a search on keywords, title words, or other criteria, combining them as you wish with Boolean logic. Search results are clustered by subject area and by database, allowing you to narrow your search more precisely. Each article title listed in the results is linked to the content of our online databases. The federated search is a work in progress; you should soon be seeing a smoother interface, more subject-customization, and many other improvements.

Olin Announces "Your Librarian"
12/13/07

The librarians have fine tuned the way we communicate and work with the faculty. We have had a liaison program for a number of years but it lacked clear goals. So over the last few weeks we have defined clear goals and expectations, cleaned up the division of department and programs amongst librarians and dropped the name "liaison" Instead we are now talking about "Your Librarian."

Our goals are, within our areas of responsibility, to:

1. Partner with faculty to improve student information literacy.
2. Work with the Collection Development Librarian and faculty to develop the collection in appropriate disciplines.
3. Communicate with faculty in departments and programs and encourage them to communicate with us.
4. Seek innovative projects, services, and resources in partnership with faculty and students to improve library support.

Canned Searches
11/13/07

We can now provide links to the library catalog that perform a predetermined search. For example, we recently created a link to the Rollins College China Center Collection, a collection of books on Chinese culture and business generously donated by Professor Linda Sprague. Similar links could be useful to list materials from Blackboard, other course pages departmental or program pages, or e-mail messages. To get the URL for a canned search, contact electronic resources librarian Bill Svitavsky.
 

Internship Opportunity at the Olin Library
Updated 11/13/07

This year-long fellowship/internship will emphasize projects using materials in the archives, the special collections, and other sources at the College as they pertain to the fine arts, the performing arts, and/or the humanities. The fellowship/internship will compliment the experience of a well qualified liberal arts junior student in the undergraduate college in his or her major. It will provide valuable practical experience of library and/or archival work for students interested in graduate work or a career in the arts and humanities, a historical field, or the professional fields of archives, librarianship, or museum studies. Interns will get an overview of all library functions including Technical Services, Collection Management, Public Services, Digital Library, and Administration. This internship is being very kindly funded by Fred Hicks. Apply now for Spring '08. Further information and application details are available here here.

Link Resolver Interconnects Databases with Full Text
6/6/07

We are currently configuring a new link resolver service that will make database searching at Rollins both easier more powerful. If one of our databases indexes an article but does not contain the full text, and the full text of the article is available in another one of our resources, the link resolver will create a link from the citation to the full article. This service will also work with searches in Google Scholar and will provide stable links to articles that can be included in Blackboard or course web pages. During the configuration stages, the new links appearing in our online databases might be a little unclear or confusing. Please bear with us; the end result will be worth it.

New Off-Campus Access to Databases and Journals
3/5/07

We have now launched new software to provided improved access to databases and online journals. This software, called EZproxy, should improve off-campus access and simplify connections on-campus. When connecting to databases on campus, EZproxy will be virtually invisible; you no longer need to enter a username or password. From off-campus, you must enter your FoxID (Novell username) and password, but will not have to install any local client software. The idea is that it should be more intuitive and less obtrusive for all our users. Hopefully, you will hardly notice it at all.

Visit http://www.rollins.edu/olin/databases/index.html or http://www.rollins.edu/olin/journals/index.html to see it in action. If you have created shortcuts or bookmarks to specific databases or journals, you may need to update those. If you encounter any problems the first time you access our updated pages, you might need to refresh them in your browser to eliminate cached older versions.

We have done extensive testing on the software, but if you find any problems, or links that do not work, please contact electronic resources librarian Bill Svitavsky at bsvitavsky@rollins.edu.