Instructing the Academic Search Service User: the Faculty Connection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro

In order to improve faculty understanding of the library-based computer searching service at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the Reference Department decided to organize a series of informational workshops. Open to both faculty and graduate assistants, the seminars had a dual purpose: first, to explain how computer searching could improve the quality of research and/or classroom instruction, and second, to provide more complete and accurate information about computer searching to pass on to their students. By reaching a group of instructors who in turn could reach hundreds of our potential computer search patrons, the department hoped they could work in partnership with the faculty to increase knowledge campus-wide of the library's searching services. Bibliographic instruction is almost always thought of in terms of students, undergraduate or graduate. However, the teaching faculty, who are in constant contact with those students, can serve as the librarian's allies in the effort to impart knowledge about the library, its resources and its services. To that end, bibliographic instruction for targeted or self-selected groups of faculty can enhance an already active BI program aimed at students

Wassily Kandinsky

Biography and bibliography of Wassily Kandinsky, Russian painter of the late 19th - early 20th centuries

Transdisciplinarity Revealed: What Librarians Need to Know [book review]

As modes of research in the academic world evolve, and new transdisciplinary approaches to more questions grow in importance, librarians will need to understand the basic tenets of the transdisciplinary approach to exploring diverse topics. It should be said that this is a challenging volume in terms of understanding the development of the concept of transdisciplinary, the various implementations of the approach, and the role of librarians in a changing academic world that increasingly uses transdisciplinarity as an approach to solving the world’s problems

Andre-Paul-Guillaume Gide

Biography and bibliography of Andre-Paul-Guillaume Gide, writer, France, early 20th century

The “second lives” of three Amy Sacker bookplates, and a postscript

Boston artist, illustrator and book cover designer Amy Sacker (1872-1965) created about two dozen known bookplates during her career [see http://www.amysacker.net/documents/sackerbookplates.htm ]. Two of the twelve bookplates that appeared in the 1903 publication by Boston bookseller Charles Goodspeed, “The Book Plates of Amy Sacker”, actually had a second usage in a different setting. The Boston artist modified her work and employed it to serve new, quite different purposes

An Unexpected Bookplate Discovery

Mark Schumacher shares a bookplate of interest found by happenstance

Virginia Dare: our first librarian

Satirical humor piece based on the premise that "Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America, was among the first librarians in the American colonies, and probably the first public librarian in North Carolina.

Girls’ Series Books: A View of Times Past

The Girls' Books in Series collection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Jackson Library contains over 1850 volumes, with publication dates ranging from the mid-1800s to the 1980s. The library's list currently contains approximately 511 different series. The library owns all the titles for 85 of the series. For 167 of the series, the library does not have any titles, and for the remaining 259, the library owns at least one (and sometimes most) of the titles. The volumes in these series depict a wide range of settings, environments, and situations in which the young heroines act. These books, aimed at a pre-teen and teen audience, both reflected and perhaps molded the lives of girls over the course of a century. They serve as either descriptive or prescriptive views of behaviors deemed normal, exceptional, or acceptable. An area of possible interest concerns images of college life, particularly the freshman year experience. By linking fictional accounts of what it meant to be a female freshman to the actual and evolving status of young women in higher education, it might be possible to ascertain a relationship between teenagers' reading materials and their aspirations to higher education. Another question concerns the quality of children's book series and their role in, and effect on, children's reading behavior

Honore De Balzac

Biography and bibliography of Honore De Balzac, French writer of the 19th century

Bib Data Shocks: An Introduction to Big Data for Librarians and Information Professionals [book review]

This book is approximately the 40th volume in the LITA (Library Information Technology Association) Guides series which dates back to 2007. The author, a digital services librarian at California State University, Northridge, explains the diverse elements of “big data” and the roles that libraries can play as the use of such data evolves