Maroon Opinions

Books as Monitor Stands?

At a computer on the second floor in Regenstein,  I noticed a book is placed under the base of the monitor to adjust the height. I wonder if the book is still part of the collection, and if so, it should be put back to the shelf.

Indeed, the book still forms part of the Library's collections, and readers of Geografía de la provincia de San Luis will be happy to know volume 2 is on its way back to the F's.

Readers: while the Suggestions Office appreciates the utility of the codex format (can your Kindle do this? We didn't think so!), we ask that patrons using books as monitor stands, mousepads, etc. kindly return them to the pickup shelves after use.

Please return reserve books where you borrowed them...

I was wondering if there was any way of requiring that course reserve materials checked out from the Reg should have to be returned at the Reg? It seems like the purpose of a short loan period is to make the material available to as many students in the course as possible, and having a book unavailable for anyone while it is "in transit" between libraries does not really support that goal. I understand that all students are busy, but I think requiring students to take an extra ten minute walk to return a book so that another student can use it makes more sense than having a book in transit between locations for 3 hours or more. I don't know if this is feasible, but it seems really reasonable!

We couldn't have said it better ourselves, and do ask that patrons return reserve materials to the locations where they checked the material out. (see:  http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/using/borrow/).

Admittedly, the problem is enforcement. We usually don't levy fines for materials returned to the wrong location, because our system is programmed to stop the fine clock (so to speak) once a book is checked in at any library. Transit time, if any, back to the shelf isn't counted against the patron.

This being said, we could certainly fine people for the time a reserve book spends in transit. (3 hours would be on the fast side -- sometimes we can't ship books immediately.) Another option would be to notify the instructor, especially if the "stuck in transit" problem occurs frequently with a specific book.

Both of these options, however, are rather big guns to fire: overdue fines -- $1/hour -- would rack up quickly, and instructors often come down pretty hard on students who appear to be obstructing use of reserve materials. If you notice a specific reserve title frequently "in transit" please tell us, but otherwise we're inclined to assume that someone just made an honest mistake. 

Free Books and Book Crafting

I love the free book rack! I have found so many books that I want to read. With others of them, I do arts and crafts projects! So two related questions:

1. Do you think it would be possible to have a permanent free/sale book rack in the new Mansueto cafe? and
2. I know the university does a lot of free "take a break" activities during midterms/finals week. Could there ever be a crafts workshop with old books? I know some people cry at the idea of cutting them up (I cry a little inside, too!), but I love their second lives as secret boxes, lampshades, picture frames, etc!

Well, a  book rack in the new cafe space (NE corner of the first floor) makes us a little wary, because patrons might confuse a rack with our reshelving racks elsewhere on the first floor. Especially because much of our "free" stock is discards from the general collection and (when looking only at the spines) are hard to distinguish from actual Library books. 

Crafting with old books sounds like an interesting idea, although the old-timers in the Suggestions Office almost keeled over at the suggestion of cutting up books. An actual workshop might be hard to pull off, but the Suggestions Office invites submissions  for a potential crafting exhibit...

Free Books: a nice gesture or act of desperation?

Yesterday I saw a rack of free books sitting in the Reg's foyer. Although I gladly grabbed some of these books for my own personal enjoyment, I was quite saddened to see that the library was actually giving up the opportunity to keep/add books in its collection! It's almost as if the library was surrendering its own lifeblood, which is depressing... May I ask why the library chooses to give away certain books?

While sometimes we have to make difficult choices about where books live in the Library system -- Eckhart, for example, used to be so full that we had to regularly transfer books to Crerar -- we try hard not to discard materials if we think they have scholarly value.

Instead, the books on the "Free Books" cart are items that library staff have reviewed and decided we don't want to keep anymore. We have an ongoing weeding project where bibliographers review the bookstacks for "dead wood" (so to speak): duplicate copies, superseded editions, and the like.

The cart is somewhat analogous to a garage sale. These books have limited value for us and are taking up space we need, but we thought somebody else might enjoy them. We're glad to see them disappear.

Update on the NYT Digital Subscriptions

The New York Times posted the following FAQ (#22) about its new digital subscription plan:

"I am affiliated with a college or university. Can I get a digital subscription discount?

Soon we will announce a discounted digital subscription option for current faculty, students, administrators and staff at eligible colleges and universities. Eligible colleges will be those that purchase a qualifying number of copies of The New York Times as part of their newspaper readership programs. Restrictions will apply. In the meantime, we encourage you to take advantage of the general promotional offer."

Commenter Melissa asks if the U of C will qualify for a digital subscription. We note that there's an (empty) NYT rack in the lobby of the Reg, and that Student Government has extended the University's participation in the Readership Program -- which seem to be positive signs.

However, we haven't heard any details yet (e.g., how many papers the University has to purchase, or the price of the "discounted" institutional subscription). For the moment, we're still waiting to see how things develop.

Spring Break at the Reg

Things have been a little quiet around the Suggestions Office recently, but it's been a big week for other Library departments:

That's the NE corner of the Reg's first floor, which used to house the General Reference collection. This week we moved the books to prepare for construction of a brand new Library cafe(!) and some other renovations of the first floor.

The orange strips are left over from the previous iteration of carpeting. The old-timers in the Office recall when you used to be able to tell your (Reg) floor by the color of the carpet.

Some essential reference books were left on the first floor, in the half-height shelving behind the reference desk. However, the majority of the books (and all of the bookshelves) are now on the A-Level:

Most of these reference books will eventually make their way up to the second and third floor, where we have grand plans for a new Reference collection. (The remaining reference books will migrate into the bookstacks.)

Feel free to browse the reference collection (WARNING: Excessive time in the reference collection may lead you to becoming a librarian) and use the books anywhere in the library. However, unlike the Harper books and dissertations, the reference books can't be checked out.

Speaking of the Harper books: regular habitues of the A-Level will notice the Harper collection now jumps from P to U. We moved the science books (LC classes Q, R, S, T) over to Crerar, where they are being integrated into the Crerar bookstacks.

New York Times and Digital Subscriptions

With regards to the New York Time's announcement of digital subscriptions, will the library be subscribing to the NYT as an institution (like it does with the New York Review of Books)?

The more jaded and cynical members of the Suggestions Office wonder how long the NYT will offer digital subscriptions (their past attempt at charging didn't work out so well), and that perhaps we shouldn't send them any money just yet.

In any case, it's a moot point: the new digital subscriptions announced by the New York Times aren't available to institutional subscribers (i.e., libraries). In contrast, the New York Review of Books does offer an instutitional subscription, which we have purchased.

The NYT is available online -- search our EJournals list for "New York Times" -- via ProQuest Newsstand, Factiva, and LexisNexis. ProQuest also offers online access to the historical New York Times (back to 1857). The Office prefers ProQuest for browsing and Factiva for searching, but that's just us.

For the sake of completeness, we also note the Library has the NYT on microfilm (1851-2009) and takes a daily print subscription. The paper is available each morning in the New Periodicals section of the Reg. Older issues are available for a couple of months or so, until the shelf fills up.

E-Books for the Nook?

Just a few days ago, a librarian told me through the Ask a Librarian service that I cannot download ebooks onto my Nook. I'm just wondering whether the library plans to acquire ebooks that are compatible with ereaders in the near future.

Probably not "in the near future:" most of our e-books are licensed from publishers (or in some cases, third-party vendors) who have constructed a special e-book interface. Sometimes downloading into PDF is permitted, but most of the time you have to read the book via the vendor's interface.

Given the variety of computing hardware we see being used in the Library, we prefer e-books that can be used on a variety of different hardware platforms. Making our patrons go to a publisher website may not be ideal, but is better than requiring patrons to have a specific e-book reader or us having to purchase a e-book in multiple versions (Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc).

Further, we're a little concerned that buying actual files would leave us in proprietary formats that could go obsolete quickly. (We've had several bad experiences with CD-ROMs that are unusable now because they require programs that have disappeared.) By purchasing access via a website, we put this burden on the vendor to keep their files up to date.

Now, taking up the Suggestions Office crystal ball -- we could see the industry standardizing on one file format (EPUB, maybe?) and (if our vendors offered it) the Library purchasing downloadable EPUB books. Another scenario would be if the University made a commitment to supporting a specific model of laptop/reader -- if every student got an iPad, for example -- which might cause us to look at buying downloadable e-books compatible with that device.

Until then, however, we're probably going to stick with the current model of going to a vendor/publisher website and reading the book at that site. This isn't as elegant a reading experience as on the Nook or Kindle, but has the advantage of being accessible from almost any computer on- or off-campus.

Free the Travel Guides!

I'd like to suggest you release from their prison the travel guides currently marked Reference in the map room.

• These books would be incredibly useful to take on trips, or even to take home overnight.
• They are mostly small, so photocopying isn't an enticing option (if that's even fair use).
• They aren't especially valuable, so even if left abroad, I assume the policy is that the borrower pays to replace them. This has an added bonus of possibly speeding up the replacement cycle on someone else's dime.
• This will lead to more wear and tear, but they're going unused as they sit and, like I said, they aren't especially valuable/rare.

I did find a few guides from 2002 in the general population, but they're old and not exactly what I'm looking for. I'm not, and I doubt many other people are, likely to sit down for hours in the map room to plan out a (rare!) vacation when that sort of activity necessitates interaction with other people and the internet.

I'll even help you move the books if I get first dibs :)

Historically, the travel guides in the Map Collection were used as ready reference resources -- guides were an easy place to quickly look up country information. However, the Internet has somewhat ameliorated this need, and our colleagues upstairs are reviewing the travel guides' status. 

Even if the guides are "freed" they probably won't be available in time for summer trips...but we may have positive news to report in the future. We'll see.

(PS.  Good guess about replacement copies: we charge $100 for any lost book from the Reg, but also will accept a suitable replacement copy + $25 for processing.)

New ways to search for new acquisitions

I have an idea about the way we search library's new acquisition. For example, if now I want to know how many new books in English that the library has purchased in sociology from Jan. 2009 to Apr. 2010, I have to go through every month looking at new books in all languages under the HM. This is quite inconvenient and time-consumed. I hope in the future the web-page of new acquisition may be designed with many options, such as languages, period ranges, subjects, etc. Then by choosing the options, with one click, the user can immediately get what he/she wants to know.

You can also search for new acquisitions in Lens, which may provide some of the functionality you would like.

For example, searching for "sociology" as keyword returns 54,684 titles. However, under the "Refine" options on the right-hand side is "Recently Added" (in the past six months). You may then want to limit by publication date (to, say, last year) because "Recently Added" includes cataloging updates as well as new books.

Additionally, if you use an RSS reader you can save Lens search queries as an RSS feed, and have new items automatically show up in your reader. After you have refined the search the way you want, click the RSS button in the upper-right -- you will get a link that you can copy and paste into your RSS reader.