The Library has added a web page listing our new acquisitions from the previous month. The list includes regular books, children's literature, teaching materials, reference books, bestsellers, and multimedia items. There will be a new list each month at the same location on the website. It's a very nice way to get a sense of what we are buying to support the University's needs.
The new issue of the UMD Library Connection newsletter is out. It includes items on the upcoming Northeast Minnesota Book Awards (NEMBA), the kids from the Children's Place who come in and use the library on Tuesdays, the new statewide 24-hour online reference service AskMN, profiles of three of our student employees, and other interesting news.
This semester we created a new way to find plays in the library catalog.
Actually, we have a mini catalog for plays:
http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/coll/playsearch.htm
The plays themselves are not all in one physical location in the library; they are mixed throughout the P's on the fourth floor, separated according to nation of origin, time period, and other factors. But the play catalog can give you a call number that lets you go right to it. It also has ways of browsing the collection, letting you see a list of all of our plays.
The new issue of the UMD Library's Newsletter, the Library Connection, is out. It's out in print and online as well. This issue has items about this semester's Student Video Contest, the transfer of the Media Hub to the library, the call for nominations for next year's Northeast Minnesota Book Awards, an article on the David Berman exhibit and event, and other news.
The library website has an updated section about the various collections in the library. There is a page for each collection, and the majority of these collections can be searched separately from those pages.
The collections you'll find there include:
Archives
Audiobooks
Bestsellers
Books
Center for Economic Development
Children's Literature
DVD/Video
E-Books
Government Documents
Microform
Music Recordings
NRRI
Northeast Minnesota Historical Center
Plays
Ramseyer-Northern Bible Society Museum
Reference Collection
Special Collections
Teaching Materials
Tweed Museum Library
Voyageur Collection
The reference department has set up a "chat widget," which allows anyone to chat with a librarian at the reference desk by going to the "Ask Us" page. This chat doesn't require the user to have any kind of account with any instant messaging service. I think this is pretty nifty.
Additionally, I offer chat service from my office to students and faculty in my subject areas. My IM accounts:
I hope some folks find these services useful.
Here is an Excel file listing all of the books we acquired for the Theatre Department last year.
The Spring issue of The Library Connection, the UMD Library's newsletter, has been sent out in print form and uploaded to the web. Enjoy the news from the library....
I have created an automatic catalog search for videos and DVDs of musical theatre, including stage productions broadcast on TV and movie musicals as well. Click to try it! You can find this link down the page with some other links to pre-composed searches on the Resources for Theatre & Dance page.
Great news.
It is now possible to search the catalog just for plays, or to get a list of just plays. This is because we have done some new magic in the library catalog, thanks to Shixing Wen, our new head of Technical Services in the library.
The page of resources for theatre and dance now has the search interface for searching just for plays right near the top. It also has links to an automatically updated list of all of the plays that we have, in print, on video, or both.
We do have some plays that have yet to show up with this method, and we're working to get them all included. Contact me if you find any plays that don't show up in this search.
You can also search for plays directly in the main library catalog for doing an "all subject" keyword search (lower search box) for the subject keyword "plays." It works if you use it in the Advanced Search, too.
I think this makes our collection of plays, which is spread throughout the Ps on the fourth floor, along with other literature, much more accessible.
UMD Library Newsletter Fall 2006: The Library Connection: A Newsletter for Friends of the UMD Library.
Lately we've been building our collection of DVDs of musical theatre productions. Some of these are stage productions, and some movies. Here is a list of the musical theatre DVDs we have acquired so far this fiscal year:
Stagecoach
Guys and Dolls
Damn Yankees
My Fair Lady
The Fantasticks
Bye Bye Birdie
Fiddler on the Roof
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Chicago
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
The Producers
Jesus Christ Superstar
Cats
Les Miserables
Twist
Showboat
42nd Street
The Sound of Music
South Pacific
The King and I
Oklahoma!
Carousel
State Fair
Cabaret
Pippin
Phantom of the Opera
Rent
Pal Joey
Cradle Will Rock
Kiss Me Kate
Note that this isn't a complete list of all the musicals we have on DVD, just the ones we have purchased since mid-summer of this year.
I want to just mention a little-known service of the library website: the Citation Linker. This allows you to put in a citation to an article, and the system will attempt to link you directly to that article in one of our databases. Take it for a spin...
We now have Google Scholar working with our Find-It system, which is very very nice!
Google Scholar is Google's effort to provide access to scholarly resources of the kind needed in college. It's searchable like regular Google, but what it comes up with is (mainly) all scholarly and reliable.
Among the results in Google Scholar are a lot of things that we only have access to through our subscription databases. But in order to get from Google Scholar to the full text of these articles via our databases, you have to set up some settings in Google Scholar to connect it with us. This page explains the steps, but I will repeat them here:
1. Go to http://scholar.google.com/
2. Click on Scholar Preferencesto the right of the search box.
3. In the Library Links field type in UMD.
4. Click on Find Library.
5. Put a check next to the University of Minnesota Duluth.
6. Click on Save Preferences.
Once you have done that, when you search Google Scholar you will often see a Find-It link next to a citation. If the link is in large type, it will lead you directly to the full text of that article in one of our databases. If it's in small type, it will lead you to the other steps you can take for getting the article (e-journal locator, library catalog, ILL form).
In mid-April we announced an instant-messaging IM service, where you can chat with the librarian who is working at the reference desk during the times that the desk is staffed.
I have decided to offer research help by instant messaging from my office as well. So if you are working on something in Theatre or Dance that requires some kind of research, or if you want to recommend a book or a database or ask a question that I might know the answer to, you can IM me in my office as long as I'm here.
My IM screennames at work are:
AIM: umdlibraryrory
MSN: umdlibraryrory
YM: umdlibraryrory
GTalk: rlitwin@gmail.com
Pop me a message just to let me know you are reading this.... I don't know if anybody is reading this blog at this point....