As another academic year comes to a close and the library staff are trying to keep up with the flood of returned books, spring is in full swing on Potash Hill. The blueberry bushes planted by staff and students during workday in Fall 2010 are blooming and the young apple tree planted in memory of the life of student David Pierce has some promising blossoms this year.

Our lovely irises are growing quickly (no flowers yet) and many of the other fruit trees on campus are in full bloom. This is the time of year when cheers regularly erupt on library hill as seniors complete their orals. Students float through the library on air after handing in their Plan or final paper of the semester. So much to celebrate. It’s been another great year.

Whether you are looking for some great books to read this summer or just a really fun way to pass an hour after classes end, come to Rapid Reviews where students Evan Sachs, Kate Roché-Sudar, Hannah Cummins along with faculty member Michael Huffmaster and staff member Philip Johansson will talk about their all-time favorite books, reviewing each one in a minute or less.

In 47 minutes you will hear about 47 books that our reviewers consider must-reads.  They include National Book Award winners Just Kids by Patti Smith and The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx, along with the final book written by the renowned evolutionary biologist and paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, The Hedgehog, The Fox, and the Magister’s Pox and the first novel of Flavia Bujor, The Prophecy of the Stones, written when she was just 14 years old.

Milk and homemade chocolate chip cookies, as well as vegan and gluten free goodies, will be served.

All the books you hear about at Rapid Reviews will be at the event for you to check out at the event. Here’s a sample:

See you there!!

The end draws near…please note the following dates, which are important for all library users (and especially important for graduating seniors).

Wednesday, May 9: Due date for all library items.

• Graduating seniors: please return all library items by May 9 so that we can clear your library accounts before Commencement.
• Everyone: All Interlibrary Loans must be returned by May 9.
• Everyone: Please return all library DVDs before leaving for summer.
• If you are returning in the fall, you can borrow/renew Marlboro College library books over the summer. See our full circulation policies.
• Please, please, please do not leave library items in storage over the summer.
• Not using them over the summer? Return them before you leave.
• Using them over the summer, and coming back in the fall? Renew them and bring them with you!

Thursday, May 10, 9:00 am: The big clean-up. Please remove all personal items from the library by 9:00 Thursday morning, at which point:

• All library books left around the building will be picked up, checked in, and reshelved.
• Personal items will be moved to the lost and found (Recycling Room, middle floor); anything left there on June 1 will be donated/discarded.

Sunday, May 13 (Commencement): Building closes at 5:30 pm.

• A return bin will be placed outside the entrance near the Service Desk; please leave items there if the library building is not open.

Have a wonderful summer! Congratulations, graduates!

Emily Alling
Library Director

If you’ve dropped by the reference room this semester, you may have noticed that a number of items had pink dots on their spines.

The pink dots were affixed to titles scheduled to be moved to the periodicals room.

During yesterday’s work day, an intrepid band of students, faculty, and staff assembled together on the ground floor of the library to shift items from the reference room to the periodicals room.  Carts were loaded up and wheeled to the periodicals room.

The items were then shelved, and periodicals were shifted to make room for the new arrivals.

Due to everyone’s hard work, an impressive number of items were moved and shelved.  It was a very successful work day at the library.  Our thanks to everyone who participated.

This semester’s Finding Stuff: Research Methods in the Humanities class is gearing up for our final two class sessions and it’s all about annotated bibliographies.

The first step was a group bibliography. Students chose the research topic gender in manga. The topic ended being a gold mine of information and would certainly need to be narrowed to one of the several subtopics that emerged during our research. During class, we all worked to find relevant sources and used a shared folder in Zotero to collect citations. If you haven’t heard, Zotero is an open-source citation management tool that helps you collect, organize and eventually cite sources. It’s a fantastic tool for personal research, but proves even more helpful for collaborative research. All your sources can live in one online place. You can make as many folders as you require and can even include notes or annotations. If you want to get started using Zotero, check out Georgia State University librarian Jason Puckett’s excellent guide.

The final assignment for the class is an individual annotated bibliography with a twist. The annotations must include how and where the source was found and why it it was selected. We also ask students to pick the most wacky citation style they can find in Zotero. It can be fun entertainment for both student and teacher. As I look today, Zotero has 2,001 citations style available in their Style Repository. Wow. Many of the styles are for specific academic journals. Did you know that some journals have a citation style all their own? That makes MLA or Chicago seem like small hurdles. But if your sources are all in Zotero, you can fairly quickly format them for the British Journal of Pain citation style in one moment and, with a few a clicks, the Chicago Manual of Style (with 15 different variations to chose from) the next.

Zotero is both a time-saver when creating footnotes and bibliographies and a helpful organization tool. If used properly, it can leave you more time to focus on the task of research and writing. Contact us in the library if you want help getting started!

In addition to  visiting people throughout Vermont, I have traveled to nine states in two years, and have had invitations to travel to many others.  Currently I am in Texas, but hope to return to Marlboro within the month.  Who am I?  I am the book in the Rice-Aron Library that is the most frequently requested through interlibrary loan by other libraries : Gut and Psychology Syndrome.  I have been requested 145 times since January 2010.

Yes, while you have been busy requesting books and articles through interlibrary loan from other libraries, the Rice-Aron library has been doing their part by lending our resources to library patrons around the country.  So far this semester we have lent over 200 books, DVDs, CD’s and articles to other libraries.

So, right up to the deadline of Monday, April 23rd, keep the ILL book requests coming!  You can keep requesting articles right up to the end of the semester.

This book has traveled to: Maryland, Kentucky, Oregon (twice!), Missouri, Michigan and Georgia as well as around New England.

The book displays in the library entrance area are usually united by some sort of common thematic content.

This month, we’ve taken a slightly different approach: we’re displaying some of our collection’s biggest books and some of our smallest ones.

Did you know…?

• The size of a item is usually recorded in its catalog record. If you look at the catalog record for a book, its height in centimeters is included under “Description.” For the hardcore library geeks among you, that’s the 300 field, subfield c of the MARC record.
• The word “libretto” literally means “little book.”
• None of our little books on display are libretti as most people think of them.
• The Ancient Greeks had a saying: μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν (roughly, “Big book = big evil”).
• The big books in our display take exception to that characterization. They think of themselves as forces for good.

Little book with penny for scale.

Big book with penny for scale

Many thanks to Tobias Gelston for the inspiration for this month’s display, and to Amber Hunt for figuring out how to pull lists of big and little books out of the library catalog. (Otherwise, we’d still be upstairs browsing.)