How long can I keep it for?

Our library borrowing policies are right online!

WorldCat

Looking for books? Our collection here is quite substantial, but no library has everything. If, after you've checked our catalog, you might want to try WorldCat if you still need books. WorldCat has records of books held in libraries all over the state and country, so if we don't have it, maybe someone else does. Then if you want it, we will get it for you through inter-library loan, there's a link for that service right in the WorldCat record.

In WorldCat, if we own the item, it says so, otherwise there is a link that says "Request an Inter-Library Loan." Just click on that and fill out the form. (If you never used the service before, you'll just have to click on the "first time users" link to set up an account.)

New campus email

Email is an important part of information gathering these days. Did you know for example that in our article databases like Academic Search you can email articles as well as print or save them? Related to this is the news that the campus is getting a new email system this summer. You user ID and password will be the same, and the mail you currently have online will be moved over. You can learn more by following this link.

New look for Academic Search etc.

We get many databases from a company called Ebsco. For example, Academic Search, America: History & Life, PsychArticles and many others. They are going to have a new look soon, and you can preview it here. It looks like there will be many new and useful features! Let us know what you think by posting here.

Information on the UN

We just got the sixtieth anniversary 2005 edition of the Yearbook of the United Nations, REF JX .A37 Y4. UN materials come out somewhat slowly, but they do contain a wealth of information, not only on the UN's activities, but statistics of all sorts. One valuable statistics set we receive from the UN is the Demographic Yearbook, REF HA17 .D45, which we have from 1949 through the current 2004 edition.

For online resources there is the UN's online data site, and of course articles from our article databases like Academic Search and JSTOR. You could also look for books in our catalog.

Pictured here is President Harry Truman looking on as US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius signs the UN Security Charter for the United States in June 1945. (From our AP Multimedia Archive.)

Librarians in the summer

So, what do librarians do all summer anyway? Well, we work full year, so we are here helping you at the reference desk, continuing to catalog books, retrieve items through interlibrary loan, circulate books and so on. It's also a time of year when we are more free to attend conferences where we can learn and grow in our profession to better serve you.

Right now a number of our librarians are up in the North Country of New York, attending the annual SUNY Librarian's Conference at SUNY Potsdam.

Free Range Kids

Lenore Skenazy, a journalist for the NY Sun recently stirred up some conversation because of a column she wrote about letting her 9 year old son ride the subway in NYC alone. Some of the talking points coming out of that column include questions and debate about safety, numbers of crimes against children, numbers of mothers working etc.

A great place for crime statistics is the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports page. For stats on women workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics page would be an important source, especially the BLS data on women workers page. Our Article/Databases page would be the place to go to start looking for articles on the subject.

And of course you can always take a look at her new blog, freerangekids.com!

Office 2007

As mentioned recently, the campus is moving to Office 2007. Many of the PCs in the library now run Office 2007, instead of the 2003 version you are probably familiar with. The new version does look quite different and there is a learning curve to get through, but there are many improvements to the software. Computerworld.com has a good cheat sheet article on making the transition.

Canadianisms anyone?

Interested in English as spoken in Canada? We now have the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, REF PE3235 .C36. Among other things, it lists "...2,200 Canadian words and senses." For example, take the word "eh," an "informal interjection." The special Canadian sense is described as follows:

"...2 Cdn ascertaining the comprehension, continued interest, agreement etc. of the person or persons addressed (it's way out in the suburbs eh, so I can't get there by bike). This is the only usage of eh that can be catagorized as peculiarly Canadian..."