Kindle E-Readers are Available at Sawyer Library

Sawyer Library has purchased Kindles for student and faculty use! Here's some quick Kindle facts:

* Sawyer Library has 12 circulating Kindles available.

* Each Kindle may circulate for 28 days, plus two renewals of the same amount of time (assuming there is no waiting list for Kindles).

* A Kindle user may download one ebook for free, as long as Sawyer Library does not already own a physical copy of the book.

* To check out a Kindle, visit the Circulation Desk in Sawyer Library.

Some New (& Relatively New) Books

The necessity of using a computer for school work is universal, however familiarity with the details of using that computer is not universal. Listed below are some recent additions to the Sawyer Library that might be of interest:

Computing for Ordinary Mortals by Robert St. Amant, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Master your Mac: Simple Ways to Tweak, Customize, and Secure OS X by Matt Cone, No Starch Press, c2013. (Access online from the online catalog, via eBrary.)

Exploring Windows 8 for Dummies by Galen Gruman John Wiley and Sons, 2012. (Access online from the online catalog, via eBrary.)

Operation Paper Cut

In case you haven't heard about the (University wide) changes in printing - the University has instituted "Operation Paper Cut."

This change impacts all print stations in the library.

It also requires both new and returning students to install the Paper Cut software, and (re-)install the wireless printers on to their own laptops.

Below is a link to instructions regarding the laptops. (Don't panic - Monday - Friday, during regular business hours, staff will be on hand to assist with this procedure.)

Connecting Wirelessly to the Library's Printers, Under the New Paper Cut System

Sawyer Library Hidden Treasure: Portrait of an Age

Re-discovered in the Sawyer Library 4th floor collection, Portrait of an Age contains a rich assemblage of un-posed and frequently un-authorized photographs taken by Erich Salomon from the late 1920s to the beginning of WWII. Pictorial historiographer, pioneer in the art of photojournalism, and master of the well-placed hidden camera, Salomon was known among politicians of Europe as “the king of the indiscrete” (66). This collection of Salomon’s candid photos, selected by Han de Vries and Peter Hunter-Salomon, shows political life in action at the League of Nations and throughout Europe, and highlights living scenes among royalty, well-known historical personages of Europe and America, and the every-day person of the era. Notable figures photographed by Salomon include: Albert Einstein, Igor Stravinsky, Arturo Toscanini, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Marlene Dietrich, Upton Sinclair, Duchess of York (Queen Mother Elizabeth) Winston S. Churchill, Benito Mussolini and Klara Zetkin. Check out this item to view through Erich Salomon’s lens the period style, the interactions among rulers and politicos, the action at exclusive royal banquets, and some of daily life during the years between World Wars I and II.

Table of Contents:

• Who was Erich Salomon?
• The epoch of the League of Nations
• Germany in 1930
• Europe and its conferences
• The year in Geneva
• Judges and courts
• Artists, intellectuals, and society
• America in 1930
• A look at France in 1935
• On the eve of World War II

Image credit: Ermanox_img_0794.jpg By Rama (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-2.0-fr (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Sharon Britton is the New Sawyer Library Director

On July 1^st, Sharon Britton became the Director of the Mildred F. Sawyer Library.  Previously, Sharon was Library Director at Bowling Green State University’s Firelands College Library in Huron, Ohio.   Prior to her directorship at Firelands, Sharon was Director of Public Services and Head of Reference at the Burke Library of Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. 

Sharon was selected after a lengthy search, and we are pleased that she has chosen to come to the Sawyer Library.  Throughout her career, she has shown an interest in reaching out to various campus groups/departments and aims to enhance the collegial atmosphere within the Library. In Sharon’s free time, she likes to hike, bike, read (of course), and travel to warm places. Please come to the Sawyer Library and introduce yourself to our new director, Sharon Britton.

We Wish Kathi Maio the Very Best on Her Retirement

“Let’s consult over books and a piece of paper,”  she earnestly said to a student. (1985)

It is not possible to adequately acknowledge a legacy of 29 years of dedicated service in single blog entry, however, that is what this posting aims to do. At the end of July, 2013, Kathi Maio will be retiring from Suffolk University's Sawyer Library.

Kathi has been instrumental to this Library, and by extension to Suffolk University, in more ways than it is possible to count. Her 29 years here have spanned the transition from dependence on print to dependence on electronic sources, and not surprisingly to those who know her, her knowledge of information sources - regardless of format, is not to be surpassed.

 Kathi's goal has always been to provide Suffolk students and faculty with the highest quality resources (while being ever mindful of the costs that a small university can afford to take on.) By virtue of her (nearly) 3 decades of service, a good portion of the print collection has been selected by Kathi. But it has been during her tenure as Assistant Director, beginning in 2000, that the Sawyer Library has seen a tremendous expansion of the electronic resources that are available to students and faculty.

A search of the Internet Archive (http://web.archive.org) for a list of the databases at Sawyer Library in 2001, yields a total of 37, as listed by publisher (Internet Archive: June 17, 2001, List of Databases: (http://web.archive.org/web/20010617223044/http://www.suffolk.edu/sawlib/oncampdb.htm). Currently, the library subscribes to over 150 periodical and reference databases. The success of this expansion, and the arduous negotiations which made it possible, are due to Kathi's efforts.

However, it is not enough to just have access to resources. Many of these sources are complicated, and Kathi has always taken (and created) opportunities to instruct library patrons on the best choice for their task, be it in a formal library instruction, at the Reference Desk, via email, via our LibAnswers page (http://suffolk.libanswers.com/), or through this blog for the Sawyer Library.

We wish Kathi all best of everything, and wish to thank her for her hard work, dedication, concern, and loyalty to her staff. We hope that she very much enjoys her new found free time to pursue and enjoy her wide ranging interests.

 The Staff of the Sawyer Library, July 2013.

UPDATE: Library Systems Down July 24th

UPDATE:  The Suffolk Universities Libraries (Sawyer, Law NESAD, Madrid) are migrating to a new automated platform on July 24^th.

Much of Sawyer Library’s online functionality (and the functionality of the Law, NESAD and Madrid Libraries) will be unavailable for most of the day on Wednesday, July 24, 2013.

The Library is migrating our Innovative Millennium System to the new Sierra platform, in order to establish improved functionality in library operations.

What does that mean to users?  The Library systems will be down from 4-6 hours.  This means the catalog will not be accessible.  You cannot look up books in the online catalog, look at your circulation record, or renew books online.   Checking-out a book at the Sawyer Library will be handled manually on the 24^th.  Since our off-campus authentication system, our proxy server, is also part of our Innovative Millennium System, you will not be able to access databases from off-campus on much of that day.  If you are ON campus, the database should pick up a Suffolk IP address and let you in, so if you can visit the Boston (or Madrid) Campus--and it doesn't have to be the Library itself--you should still be able to access the databases through non-proxyized links that you can find here. (Just click the tabs on the guide for the alphabetical lists of links to all our databases.)

And here is another work-around.  The free web version of WorldCat allows you to look up a print book and then set your zip code to pinpoint a library that owns it.  Set your zip code as 02108 and Sawyer or the Law Library should come up if we own it.  If you click the link for our book or library, you might get an error but if that happens, just click on a different library on the list and get the call number from their catalog.  Since most academic libraries use the same call number, you can take their call number to our stacks and probably find the book.  If you are ON campus, you can also use this version of WorldCat. Look for the green tag for "Sawyer Library" when you search.  The base call number will be listed in the "Class Descriptors" field following LC:

We are sorry for any inconvenience this service interruption will cause.  But we are doing this to provide a better, more flexible, and more secure library system that will make it easier for us to provide the best library service possible.

Updates will be provided via social media.  So, on the 24th, keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter feeds for when things are back to normal.