Oliver Wendell Holmes Library Newsletter

Hello Staff, Faculty, and Students!  Welcome to the Summer Session Edition of “What we are reading” by the OWHL Librarians.  We love to share our recommendations and reviews of books we have here in our stacks - but one of the best ways we can communicate what we enjoy is by letting you know what we are reading RIGHT NOW.  Hopefully, this will inspire some of you to pick up a book you may not have read before.  Happy Summer!

• Borchsenius, Poul - The three rings; the history of the Spanish Jews. Translated by Michael Heron
• Cabot, Meg - The princess diaries
• DeFrank, Thomas M - Write it when I’m gone : remarkable off-the-record conversations with Gerald R. Ford
• Hellman, Hal - Great feuds in science : ten of the liveliest disputes ever
• Hub - Okko. The cycle of water
• Li, Moying - Snow falling in spring : growing up in China during the cultural revolution
• Montross, Christine - Body of work : meditations on mortality from the human anatomy lab
• O’Rourke, P. J - The CEO of the sofa
• O’Toole, Randal - The best-laid plans : how government planning harms your quality of life, your pocketbook, and your future
• Peffer, Randall - Old School Bones
• Queen, Ellery - The player on the other side
• Queen, Ellery, comp - Ellery Queen’s Challenge to the reader: an anthology
• Stiglitz, Joseph E - The economists’ voice : top economists take on today’s problems
• Vargas Llosa, Mario - The bad girl
• Wiseman, Rosalind - Queen bees & wannabes : helping your daughter survive cliques, gossip, boyfriends, and other realities of adolescence

The OWHL will be open the following hours during the month of June.

June 9 - 13 9AM- 4PM
June 14 9AM – 5PM
June 15-22 CLOSED
June 23-27 9AM- 4PM
June 28-29 CLOSED
June 30 9AM- 4PM

Have a lovely summer everyone!

On Tuesday, June 3 every member of the OWHL staff engaged in learning about technology with implications for how we will deliver services in the future by attending the annual NOBLE “Tech Fair.” The day featured a series of presentations, demonstrations, and hands-on activities.   OWH Director Elisabeth Tully offered a presentation on how the OWHL staff is using wiki technology to create and organize library procedures.

Other presentations included:

• A discussion of planned improvements to the NOBLE telecommunications infrastructure, by Ron Gagnon, NOBLE Executive Director. Faster, Faster

• “The World Is Not Flat: Information Literacy in Three Dimensions”, by Elizabeth Thomsen, NOBLE Member Services Manager. This session considered the basic concepts of geographic and 3D systems, and how they are being transforming the way we see our world. The World is Not Flat

• “Information on the Go,” also by Elizabeth Thomsen. This session considered the move to feeds, gadgets and widgets that give people many more options for getting content from your website, and the use of cellphones, iPods, PDAs and various other small devices that allow them to access information on the go. Information on the Go

• NOBLE Digital Library, by Beth Willis, NOBLE Digital Librarian. Beth spoke about the relationship between NOBLE’s digitization project an the Massachusetts digital library. See her presentation slides here: NOBLE Digital Library

• Interesting mini-sessions were held on Picnik (Christine Morgan), Animoto (Beth Willis) Public Firefox (Michele Morgan) and Self Check (Martha Driscoll)

Attendees were given the opportunity to try electronic devices, including:

• Flip Video — A super-simple video recorder
• Amazon Kindle — Amazon’s e-book reader
• Sending Cameraphone Photos to Flickr — Use your cellphone camera to quickly update your Flickr account with pictures of special events

All staff returned with new ideas and energy to use this technology in our efforts to continuously improve our programs and services.

During this academic year, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library has engaged in a long range strategic planning process for library services, programs, and facilities.  Planning is essential because of the pace of change in the information environment, the changing expectations and preferences of Millennial library users, and the need to assure alignment with the goals of the Academy’s strategic plan. Beginning last fall with the administration of the LibQual survey to the students, faculty, and staff,  the OWHL staff has been involved in a process of creating a vision for the library for the next five years, and specific action plans to achieve that vision. A planning wiki was developed to support the effort and to facilitate collaboration. [Read more →]

From the popular “Craig’s List” reading suggestions, OWHL has created a new display in the front lobby under the owls in the front of the library for the summer. Books from this list will come up as “Display-Circ” in the web catalouge.  Feel free to drop in and pick up a book for that day at the beach, the plane ride, or to lounge with on the Great Lawn! 

• Adiga, Aravind - The white tiger : a novel
• Atta, Sefi - Everything good will come : a novel
• Baker, Nicholson - Human smoke : the beginning of the Second World War and the end of civilization
• Barber, Benjamin R. - Con$umed : how markets corrupt children, infantilize adults, and swallow citizens whole
• Barlow, Maude - Blue covenant : the global water crisis and the coming battle for the right to water
• Bell, Madison Smartt - All souls’ rising
• Bell, Madison Smartt - The stone that the builder refused
• Bell, Madison Smartt - Master of the crossroads
• Broyard, Bliss - One drop : my father’s hidden life–a story of race and family secrets
• Chanda, Nayan - Bound together : how traders, preachers, adventurers, and warriors shaped globalization
• Dahl, Robert Alan - On political equality
• Danticat, Edwidge - The farming of bones : a novel
• Donohue, Keith - The stolen child
• Díaz, Junot - The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao
• Díaz, Junot - Drown
• Fadiman, Anne - The spirit catches you and you fall down : a Hmong child, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures
• Follett, Ken - Pillars of the earth
• Follett, Ken - World without end
• Friedman, Thomas L - The world is flat : a brief history of the twenty-first century
• Friedman, Thomas L - The world is flat
• Fuller, Alexandra - The legend of Colton H. Bryant
• Grandin, Temple - Animals in translation : using the mysteries of autism to decode animal behavior
• Gruen, Sara - Water for elephants : a novel
• Guterson, David - Snow falling on cedars
• Haddon, Mark - The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
• Harr, Jonathan - The lost painting
• Harrison, Jim - Returning to earth
• Hass, Robert - Time and materials : poems, 1997-2005
• Hawkins, Jeff - On intelligence
• Heaney, Seamus - District and circle
• Hockney, David - Secret knowledge : rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters
• Hosseini, Khaled - A thousand splendid suns
• Hosseini, Khaled - A thousand splendid suns
• Irving, John - The cider house rules : a novel
• Junger, Sebastian - A death in Belmont
• Kandel, Eric R - In search of memory : the emergence of a new science of mind
• Karr, Mary - Sinners welcome : poems
• King, Ross - The judgment of Paris : the revolutionary decade that gave the world Impressionism
• Kingsolver, Barbara - Animal, vegetable, miracle : a year of food life
• Kingsolver, Barbara - The poisonwood Bible : a novel
• Klaus, Ian - Elvis is titanic : classroom tales from the other Iraq
• Lahiri, Jhumpa - Unaccustomed earth : stories
• Lee, Min Jin - Free food for millionaires
• Lehane, Dennis - Shutter Island
• Lomborg, Bjørn - Cool it : the skeptical environmentalist’s guide to global warming
• Lychack, William - The wasp eater
• Manji, Irshad - The trouble with Islam : a Muslim’s call for reform in her faith
• McCarthy, Mary - The stones of Florence
• McEwan, Ian - Atonement : a novel
• McEwan, Ian - Atonement : a novel
• Mengestu, Dinaw - The beautiful things that heaven bears
• Morgan, Maud - Maud’s journey : a life from art
• Mortenson, Greg - Three cups of tea : one man’s mission to promote peace — one school at a time
• Murakami, Haruki - After dark
• Murray, Sabina - Forgery
• Niffenegger, Audrey - The time traveler’s wife
• Obama, Barack - Dreams from my father : a story of race and inheritance
• Palin, Michael - Diaries 1969-1979 : the Python years
• Pancake, Ann - Strange as this weather has been : a novel
• Petterson, Per - Out stealing horses
• Pollan, Michael - In defense of food : an eater’s manifesto
• Powers, Richard - The echo maker
• Robbins, Tom - Fierce invalids home from hot climates
• Russo, Richard - Empire Falls
• Sandel, Michael J - Democracy’s discontent : America in search of a public philosophy
• Shanley, John Patrick - Doubt : a parable
• Shubin, Neil - Your inner fish : a journey into the 3.5-billion-year history of the human body
• Speth, James Gustave - The bridge at the edge of the world : capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability
• Suskind, Ron - A hope in the unseen : an American odyssey from the inner city to the Ivy League
• Tedlock, Dennis - Popol vuh : the Mayan book of the dawn of life
• Thorn, Craig - A Very good place to start : approaches to teaching writing and literature in secondary school
• Van der Post, Laurens - The lost world of the Kalahari
• Walls, Jeannette - The glass castle : a memoir
• Weisman, Alan - The world without us
• Williams, John Edward - Augustus
• Wilson, August - August Wilson Century cycle

What now? Is the Netlibrary eBook of the Month for June

Bestselling author Ann Patchett offers an essay on hope and inspiration for graduates and anyone at a crossroads.   Based on her lauded commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College, this stirring essay by bestselling author Ann Patchett offers hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads, whether graduating, changing careers, or transitioning from one life stage to another. With wit and candor, Patchett tells her own story of attending college, graduating, and struggling with the inevitable question, What now?

During the month of June, this ebook is free to all members of the community.  Check it out here

The OWHL is pleased to announce the availability of a new version of the catalog, with some updated screens and a few helpful new features.   The most important change is that the keyword search results now default to relevance ranking.  (Previously, the display was random.)  The system sorts the results into three groups based on relevance, and shows each group with the most recent titles first.  On the first page of the search results, you can change the sort order to date or title. [Read more →]

Times Topics, a free service of the New York Times, provides organized collections of materials including “news, reference and archival information, photos, graphics, audio and video files published on topics ranging from Madonna to Myanmar” from the archives back to 1981.   Instead of searching the Times database, users can simply browse alphabetically to identify a topic of interest, and quickly obtain associated material in multiple media.  A list is provided of the “Most Popular Topics” ( number one is currently Sichuan Earthquake. You can also “Browse by Category” (People, Subjects, Organizations, and Places) consider “Topics for Discussion,” or explore content in one of the “Ongoing Series.” The series includes:

• The Food Chain
• Generation Faithful
• Global Classrooms
• American Exception
• The Energy Challenge

Check it out!

On the evening of Monday, May 26th, the library hosted a poster session for Dr. Johnson’s Biology 610 class. The poster session allowed the students to display their research, findings and conclusions to their fellow students and the community at large. This is a great event celebrating the dedication and hard work each student pursued in this class. The library is proud to host such events. If you are interested in using the library space for something like this, please contact Jeffrey Marzluft.

Students:

All library materials are due back TOMORROW, May 28th.   Please be sure to check all the places books and DVD’s go missing in your dorm during the semester, under your bed, the common rooms, in your closet, behind the toilet in the 3rd stall in the girls bathroom…etc.  (NOTE:  We understand that some students may still be using their books for assignments and exam preparation.  You MAY keep your books as long as you need them, and you will not be assessed fines.)

Thanks!