Welcome to the newest library addition, Silas Goodrich Pitcher

Congratulations to Collection Development Librarian, Kate Pitcher, and her husband Jeff on the new arrival of Griffin's younger brother, Silas Goodrich. With impeccable timing (and even a day early!), Silas was born on January 27 at 8:06 am, weighing 9 lbs 4 oz and measuring 20 inches. The entire Pitcher family is doing well - resting up and enjoying every minute with their beautiful baby boy.

Writing Learning Center to Open January 31

The Writing Learning Centers will open for the Spring 2010 semester on Sunday, January 31.

There are two centers to serve students on campus:

Milne 222 (to the right of main entrance)
Walk-ins only (no appointments)
Sundays 3pm - 9pm
Monday - Thursday 8pm - 11pm

Welles 217
By appointment only
Monday-Thursday 1pm-5pm

To make an appointment, students should email the Writing Learning Center or call 245-5273.

Peer tutors are not available for proofreading or writing your assignments. However, they can provide advice on writing assignments in any academic course and at any stage of the writing process. The goal
is to assist students with finding their own solutions.

For more information please visit The Writing Learning Center webpage or Milne Library resources for Writing Help

New Research Guides for Classes and Subjects

Our research guides are now easier to use, with more resources and multimedia content.

Milne librarians have been working over the intersession to implement a new system for connecting users to important resources: LibGuides. The new system allows for easy creation of subject and class-related guides. It also allows librarians to incorporate a wider array of content than our previous system, including images, video and RSS feeds to provide subject-specific news and research headlines.

LibGuides pages replace the Resources by Subject pages previously used to help identify scholarly materials.

Users can browse the guides by subject or guide title, or search the guides for specific resources.

On some pages, users can provide feedback or suggest possible links for inclusion into guides.

Importantly, the system allows the librarians check links and to track which guides and links are being used. This helps us keep the guides up to date with content that users actually need.

Have a look at our new guides for Citing Sources and the topical guide about Haiti and the recent earthquake.

Does the library own my course texts?

For a few semesters now, Milne Library's staff has updated students on the availability and access options of their required course readings through blog posts. This semester, a new guide has been created to help students navigate the different methods of acquiring course texts, either freely at Milne Library or through IDS requests or for a reduced cost through a long list of commercial entities.

To find out if Milne Library can access your required readings for free, see Milne Library's guide to textbooks.

Access to ScienceDirect and Scopus databases will be unavailable on Saturday, Jan. 23rd.

Due to scheduled maintenance, library users will not have access to our the ScienceDirect and Scopus databases from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, January 23rd. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Alternative databases for each subject can be found in the library's new Subject Guides.

Haiti Earthquake Disaster Resources and Information

On January 12, 2010 Haiti experienced a devastating earthquake which has been a subject of interest in the news. Milne Library has created a new guide to make it easier keeping up on events as well as researching its people, its long, complex history, and its geology.

It is located in our Resources by Subject under News and Contemporary Issues.

Our New Beta Catalog Launches with Improved Features

The main search box on the library homepage has been updated to make use of a new Beta Catalog developed by libraries in the IDS project.

This search engine allows users to search for books and media here in Milne, in IDS Project libraries (these items can be delivered in less than 3 days) or in libraries around the world (these books may take 7 to 10 business days to arrive).

New and improved features include:

• Spell checking for misspelled search terms
• Estimated time of arrival for items not held in Milne Library
• RSS feeds for searches
• The ability to export items to citation software (like EndNote or Zotero)
• A quick link to create citations for each record.
  

Our new Catalog is still in a Beta testing phase, so please provide us with any feedback about your searches.