Watch Your Laptop March 18, 2008
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library, Tips for students , add a commentYesterday there were two laptop thefts reported in Perkins-Bostock in the course of the morning. The police officer who responded walked around the building and noted that he could have taken three more laptops that he saw unattended. Please do not leave your laptop alone, even if you just plan to run to the Perk or to the stacks for 2 minutes!
Laptop thefts are a financial blow to students, but they often cause academic harm as well. Many students do not regularly back up their files, so the loss of a laptop can mean the loss of projects and papers you haven’t turned in yet.
Sometimes it feels like we’ve seen it all at the Reference Desk (there was the squirrel living in a trash can on Perkins 4 one spring), but we never get used to the heartbreak of seeing students who have lost significant work. I’d estimate that laptop theft is the number 2 cause of loss of student work; the number one cause we see is saving to the desktop of a public computer, then getting logged out (which wipes the desktop of all files). Take the time to back up your files, and keep your belongings with you. It’s worth it.
Working over Spring Break? We are. March 6, 2008
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library, Research Help, Tips for students , add a commentFor those of you who are working hard instead of (or in addition to) playing hard this spring break, here are some tips for using the library remotely:
You have automatic access to all the library’s article databases and other resources while you are home (or in Myrtle Beach.) Use the “database search” box on the library home page to find the resource you need, and when you click through to it you will be prompted for your NetID and password. More information on remote access is here.
We’re here for questions via email, IM, and phone. We’ll be keeping short hours during the week, but if you email overnight we’ll get back to you first thing in the morning.
For those staying in town, come on by! We’re only open days, but we’d love to see you.
(Photo of Myrtle Beach taken by Curtis and Eric, found at Flickr, and used under a Creative Commons license.)
More Study Seating in Perkins-Bostock February 28, 2008
Posted by Phoebe in : Life in the library , add a commentIn response to student requests, we are adding temporary tables and chairs to provide more seating for study on the first floors of Perkins and Bostock. As midterms are upon us and spring semester starts to rush to its end, we know that demand is at its greatest.
Can’t find a seat in the Carpenter Reading Room or The Perk at the Pavilion? Try one of these more out-of-the-way study spots:
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Lower Level 2 Perkins, with soft seating and wooden tables
Lower Level 1, the connector between Perkins and Bostock, has a computer cluster and a few tables
Bostock 4 has open carrels along the windows facing the Fitzpatrick center and some of the less-used group study rooms
The Old Perk, located outside the Gothic Reading Room, is a great space for groups to meet and talk
Tower Room 201 on Perkins 2 opens to evening student use towards the end of the semester, and is available during the day if not booked for library meetings
When the upper floors of Perkins open this coming summer, there will be an increase in study seating and group study rooms. If you’ll be here next fall, come by and stretch out.
Live @ the RefDesk February 12, 2008
Posted by Catherine in : Duke researchers, Librarians, Life in the library , 2commentsToday in Perkins we are testing some software for keeping Reference statistics. Why? It’s helpful to plan for staffing–how many questions, from which kinds of patrons, what types of questions (from staplerology to ‘jumpstart my thesis’).
But what I really want to get at is the human element. There is talk of the future irrelevance of a Reference Desk, if not the actual Reference librarians, whose minds presumably will be accessible in other modes and places. Here’s an excerpt from the TAIGA Forum Provocative Statements:
Within the next five years…There will no longer be reference desks or reference offices in the library. Instead, public services staff offices will be located outside the physical library.
Or, to expand on this line of reasoning:
If the truth be known, as a place to get help in finding information, the reference desk was never a good idea. A reference librarian standing behind a desk waiting for someone to say, “I can’t find what I’m looking for; can you help?” might be justifiable if, as is the case with other service professionals, that librarian was the reason the person came to the building to begin with. But reference librarians have not served so central a function. They have stood ready to help “just in case”-just in case navigating the building isn’t clear, just in case the catalog doesn’t produce wanted results, just in case the collections seem not to contain the desired material or information. In short, reference service-in particular point-of-need reference service-has been an afterthought, something to be considered after the building’s signage or the finding aids or the collections fail the user.
(Anne G. Lipow, “Point of Need Reference Service: no longer an afterthought,” in ALA-RUSA The Future of Reference Services Papers)
Do you come to the Reference Desk for f2f consultation with a librarian? Why or why not?
Cell Phones for Citation December 20, 2007
Posted by Phoebe in : Cool tools, Life in the library, Tips for students , 3commentsA colleague in the library recently observed a student using a cell phone camera to make a quick “note” of the title page of a book, and the call number label. What a great idea! Very useful for people who are in a big hurry, but want to make sure they capture the full bibliographic citation of something they checked, and also want a reminder of the call number so they can come back for it. Much better than a scribbled post-it note that can be lost or undecipherable.
Photo by absent.canadian from the Photo Scavenger Hunt - any interest in doing a new hunt in the new semester?
