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Ode to a required reading list

oh, how you dishearten me
to see such a long list of
texts to be bought, shipped, read.

there is no hope for my wallet
nor is there hope for my social life
which will ultimately whither away
having been replaced by endless reading.

lest we not forget I am but a college student
bound by ever-expanding tuition rates and
my ever-shrinking savings fund.

what is a girl to do?
how can one remedy this injustice
and find a more sound, economic solution?

just when all seemed futile,
I found the answer in a likely
yet unlikely place.

a simple search within the catalog revealed
each and every reading required was
but a mouse-click away!

whether on closed or open reserves,
in the UWB stacks or in a land far away,
my books were waiting.

Hark! my wallet has been spared!
as for my social life however,
we are still waiting for a pulse.

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Getting Acquainted With the Library!

Welcome Fall 2014 students!

At the UWB/CCC Campus Library, our friendly staff and librarians are ready to help you have a great start to the 2014-2015 school year! The Library is a shared space located between UW Bothell and Cascadia College. Regardless if you are new to campus or a graduate student, here are some (hopefully) helpful tips to maneuvering your way around the library.

Library Organization and Art

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The library has three floors, each serving slightly different purposes. All levels include tables and chairs for studying, restrooms, and water fountains. Artwork specific to PNW and Alaskan Natives (titled the “Rose Collection”) is also scattered amongst the different floors. More information about this intricate collection can be found at: http://library.uwb.edu/arttour/about.html.

First Floor

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On the first floor you will find our library’s media collection, which consists of DVDs, VHSs, CDs, and video games. This floor is also the home to special collections and/or displays such as new books, faculty publications, career/writing/topic books, Reference, as well as Reserves. Upon entering the library, you might notice the long line of three different yet interconnected desks. The area closest to the entrance is the Circulation Desk. If you need to check out or look up any materials, reserve a study room, or ask any general direction questions, circulation is the place to go! Further down in the center of the desk you will find the Technology Consultants. This is an area where students can check out laptops, as well as receive assistance in the library’s large Information Commons space. The Technology Consultants also assist students with printing, adding money to Husky Cards, scanning, and making change. At the far end of the desk are the wonderful Reference Librarians! They are available to help with research questions, accessing and utilizing online databases, and so much more. Each librarian has her/his own field of expertise, ranging from chemistry to art, so if the librarian at the desk is unfamiliar with a particular assignment, you can set up an appointment to meet with your course’s specific librarian.

 

Second Floor

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The second floor of the library mainly houses offices, classrooms, and UWB’s IT Helpdesk. If you happen to look at your schedule and notice that one of your class is scheduled in the library, there is  a very high chance that you will be able to find that room on the second floor. There is also ample study space on the second floor. From the peaceful atmosphere of the skybridge to the open tables and chairs at both ends, this floor is a great space to work freely without needing to remain completely silent. Down the hall to the left of the lobby, you will find the Viewing and Listening Stations. These four carrels are equipped with DVD/VHS players and large monitors for watching films.  (Great for screening media reserves that have to stay in the library!)  They require headphones for audio, and those can be checked out on the first floor at the Circulation Desk or borrowed from Technology Consultants. Talking is allowed on the second floor but because the rooms lack soundproof walls, the noise should be kept at an adequate level as to not disturb classroom sessions.  Circulation student employees also create a special Children’s Literature display each month, located next to the skybridge off of the main lobby. You should check it out!

Third Floor

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The third floor of the library is the quiet floor, where group work and cellphone use is not allowed unless it takes place in a study room. On this floor you will find the library stacks, the largest collection of books. These items tend to have the longest loan period (4 weeks for undergraduate students).  Along with the stacks are four other collections of books: Curriculum, Children’s Literature, ESL, and Folio. If you are looking for a quiet place to study on the third floor, but find it difficult to concentrate, check out the Reading Room located across the skybridge just off of the main lobby area. Aside from this room’s great atmosphere and view of the wetlands, it is so quiet that you can hear a pin drop. It is not advised to study in the Reading Room if your activities require making any noise. Other study area options include the seventeen group study rooms, all of which include whiteboards and are equipped with televisions/DVD/VHS players and monitors for laptop plug-ins. For those students looking for a small room to study in alone, there are two individual study rooms just outside of the Reading Room. Please note that all other study rooms require groups of two or more in order to be reserved! To find out more information on how to reserve a study room or review the policies, please visit: http://libguides.uwb.edu/rooms. Computers can be found scattered throughout all areas of the third floor, and can be used on a first come-first serve basis.

Accessing Materials

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All books in the library are shelved using the LC (Library of Congress) Call Number system. After looking up a book’s call number and verifying which collection it is in, locating the book should then be a very quick and easy process. In any case where you are unable to find a book or other item, come see the staff at the Circulation Desk. We would love to help you search or troubleshoot the problem. Because the UWB/CCC Campus Library is one of many libraries in the UW system, students and faculty alike have the option to place holds and have items of all kinds sent between libraries… for free! An item traveling to UWB from another UW library usually takes 2-3 days to arrive, and will sit on the hold shelf behind the Circulation Desk for up to seven days. Many items available for checkout are renewable, and that process can be done over the phone, online, or in person, either with or without the item present (Reserve and ILL/Summit items are the exception).

Next time you are looking for a place to study, head on over to the UWB/CCC Campus Library. For any additional information, please visit the library website (http://library.uwb.edu/) or call any one of our desks. Best of luck getting started with Fall Quarter!

Contact us!

Circulation: 425-352-5340
Technology: 425-352-3145
Reference: 425-352-3146
UW Library Account Services (Seattle): 206-543-1174

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Study Tips for the Book Defiler

Library books: for reading not writing.
Library books: for reading not writing.

Sometimes the glamorous life of the Circulation Assistant demands certain less-than-thrilling tasks, including having to erase penciled lines and scribbles in our library books. Recently, as I blew the shavings of a rubbed-out polymer eraser off another freshly defiled tome, I realized that there was a better way. To nip this issue in the bud, students need to know a study alternative to vandalizing our books (and possibly getting a fine as a result).

I do sympathize with the scribblers and margin-note-takers of the world. Underlining and circling key sentences and words can be a helpful way of lodging things into your memory. At once visual and tactile—without the tedious and time-consuming reiteration that traditional handwritten note-taking requires—it makes it easy to seek out what is important within the text when revisited and avoid rereading the same useless sentence before nodding off mid-review session.

Having said this, if you want to write in a book, please write in your own book! When using a library book, remember these steps to help your study experience:

Sticky notes are your friends! Please do not earmark pages. When you come across information that you need to remember, use a sticky note to mark the page.  Maybe write a quote or a quick sum-up of the passage on the post-it while you’re at it. If you don’t have any of those thin ones great for marking specific passages, you can cut regular-sized ones into strips to achieve the same effect.

Scan the pages!  Once these are bookmarked to your heart’s content–and you’re itchy for scribbling, underlining, and circling–scan the necessary pages. We have five scanners in the library, four of which are attached to computers in our information commons. The last one is our new book scanner which may seem large and imposing but is surprisingly simple to work, especially with one of our savvy tech consultants providing instruction. Scanning the pages you need and printing them out not only keeps our books clean and safe, but gives you physical, lighter pages to carry around as notes and refer to wherever your travels may take you. [A note for Cascadia students: Remember that you don’t have to pay for printing when using Cascadia printers; it’s part of your tuition! Once you’ve scanned your pages, email them to yourself or save them on a thumb drive and print them out in one of the CC buildings to avoid a Dawg Prints charge!  UWB students: use your Husky Cards to pay for printing.  More information can be found here.]

Once you’ve printed your desired pages, have at it. Scribble with zeal!

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Rescued Reads

Out with the old and in with the new…at least sometimes. Last month, many of our less-popular Recreational Reading books were pulled from the shelves to be “voted off the island,” so to speak. There is only so much room on those little shelves!  However, Library staff were given the opportunity to advocate for holding onto volumes of their choosing.

Among those saved is In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, reviewed by our Director, Sarah Leadley:
“Michael Ondaatje—a gifted poet and novelist—tells the story of working-class immigrants living in Toronto in the early 20th century. The writing is truly astonishing, lyric, and inventive. It’s about history, love, loss, and work. There are extraordinary descriptions of labor conditions in the 1920’s—sometimes tragic, sometimes beautiful, always heroic. The main character, Patrick Lewis, is introduced as a child, living in rural Canada with his logger/dynamiter father. Patrick leaves for Toronto, where he works as a laborer, becomes a searcher for a missing billionaire, and falls in love. The Novel’s title is taken from the Epic of Gilgamesh: “The joyful will stoop to sorrow, and when you have gone to the earth I will let my hair grow long for your sake, I will wander through the wilderness in the skin of a lion.”

Now that the rest are back home on the shelves, you can see for yourself which ones were rescued! For the next month, these books will have green slips in them to indicate they were saved by staff—and possibly you!

Fiction
So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish by Douglas Adams (“the fourth in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy”)
Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams (the fifth)
Imajica by Clive Barker (which, although I haven’t read it yet, was my personal choice)
England, England by Julian Barnes
Jane and the Unpleasantness of Scargrave Manor by Stephanie Barron (being the first Jane Austen Mystery)
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg (adapted into the award-winning movie Fried Green Tomatoes)
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris (the seventh in The Southern Vampire Mysteries, the series hit HBO show True Blood is based on)
Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (the ninth)
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (the tenth)
Island by Aldous Huxley
Crooked Little Heart by Anne Lamott
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi (sequel to Old Man’s War)
The Last Colony by John Scalzi (sequel to The Ghost Brigades)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (adapted into a movie)
Otherland by Tad Williams
Old School by Tobias Wolff

Non-fiction
Cash by Johnny Cash with Patrick Carr
How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life by His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Women Who Eat: A New Generation on the Glory of Food edited by Leslie Miller
The Beluga Cafe: My Strange Adventure with Art, Music, and Whales in the Far North by Jim Nollman
The Hot Zone by Richard Preston
Olympic Peninsula: The Grace & Grandeur by Mike Sedam
Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man’s Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson (also a documentary)

Of the saved ones, some are to be relocated in the stacks, but are still being processed (look for these in the online catalog):
The Darling by Russell Banks
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason
Harriet and Isabella by Patricia O’Brien
Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

Feel free to browse around, see what catches your eye!

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12 Ways to Use the Study Room Collaboration Monitors

Have you noticed a change in the Campus Library study rooms?

Most rooms are now equipped with monitors that can be used to enhance your study experience! Just think of how productive your group will be when you can all collaborate on the same screen. All you need is a laptop, so bring your own or check one out at the Campus Library front desk. The monitors are HDMI, VGA, and a few are DVI compatible. Here are some examples of what you can do with this great technology:

Hook up your laptop and…

  1. Watch a documentary for your Women, Culture and Development class.
  2. Skype with an absent group member.
  3. Browse the UW Library’s catalog.
  4. Pull up a relaxing slideshow of nature pictures for your study session.
  5. Open a word document for your whole group to view.
  6. Search for articles for your project in the library databases.
  7. Lead a tutorial for your group on how to use Google Docs.
  8. Practice your PowerPoint presentation, or if you’re feeling bold, use Prezi.
  9. View materials from Electronic Reserves as a group.
  10. Collaborate with fellow students on building a resume or application for scholarships and jobs.
  11. Schedule phone or Skype interviews.
  12. Record your narration for an audio or video project.