Banned Books Week

Sept. 27 - Oct. 4 is American Library Association's Banned Books Week. Video by ALA:



The most challenged books in 2007 were:

1. And Tango Makes Three
2. The Chocolate War
3. Olive's Ocean
4. The Golden Compass
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
6. The Color Purple
7. TTYL
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
9. It's Perfectly Normal
10. The Perks of Being A Wallflower

Legislation to change copyright - Please register your opposition by Sept. 24

Special interests are hard at work to reverse the NIH public access mandate which makes publications produced as a result of publicly funded research, available to the taxpayers. However, in addition to working to reverse the mandate, many additional copyright changes are being proposed. Please take a few minutes to read about the changes at the Scholarly Communication Blog as well as a well written summary at Duke which does an even better job outlining the impact on higher education. We are asking members of Macalester for your support in writing to express your opposition to this legislation. Please contact Keith Ellison, the Minnesota representative on the House Judiciary Committee and urge him not to support this legislation. His contact information is:

Minneapolis Office

2100 Plymouth Avenue N
Minneapolis, MN 55411

(612) 522-1212 Phone

Washington, D.C. Office

1130 Longworth Building
Washington, D.C. 20515

(202) 225-4755 Phone

Please be sure to refer to his role on the House Judiciary Committee. A sample letter is included below:
DRAFT TEXT:
Dear [Representative/Senator];
I am writing to strongly urge you to OPPOSE HR 6845, the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act, introduced to the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, on September 11, 2008. This bill would reverse the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy, prohibit American taxpayers from accessing any and all research funded by taxpayer dollars, and stifle critical advancements in lifesaving research and scientific discovery.
Because of the NIH Public Access Policy, millions of Americans now have access to vital health care information from the NIH’s PubMed Central database. Under the current policy, nearly 4,000 new crucial biomedical articles were deposited in the last month alone. HR6845 would prohibit the deposit of these articles so that, as a result, researchers, physicians, health care professionals, families and individuals will be seriously impeded in their ability to access NIH-funded, critical health-related information.
The NIH policy must be allowed to continue to ensure public access to the results of research funded by the agency with taxpayer dollars. Please OPPOSE HR6845.
Sincerely,

Please take action now as letters much reach Senators and Representatives no later than Sept. 24th.
Terri Fishel on behalf of the Members of the Library, Media, Web Services Advisory Committee

Honors Sessions - All students preparing to complete an Honors project this year are invited to a session in the library that will provide some information on resources and support available to you. Sessions will cover information on research assistance, interlibrary loan policies and procedures, copyright, RefWorks, and publishing your completed project in the Digital Commons. The Honors sessions this fall are scheduled for: Thursday, September 11, 5:00-6:00 in the Library Instruction Room, 2nd level
Tuesday, September 16, 5:00-6:00 in the Library Instruction Room, 2nd level
Please Register for one of the two sessions.

DeWitt Code Winners!Congratulations to the First Year Students in Leola Johnson's HMCS194 Critical Studies of Sports in the Media. They will be enjoying their Pizza party on Monday, Sept. 8th in the Harmon Room.

Constitution Day - Sept. 17th. Constitution Day, adesignated a federal holiday in 2004, is designated to celebrate the signing of the Constitution in 1787. Check out the library display on the first level, and take a look at the display of Presidential candidates who have been on the Mac campus.

Open Access Day - Oct. 14th. Mark your calendars now. There will be information on Macalester events coming soon. For more information on the day .

Student Prize Winners

Thanks to all first years who celebrated with President Rosenberg and library staff at Wednesday night’s First Year Night event. Many students took advantage of the root beer floats, Guitar Hero games, car races, and other festivities.

Tour DeWitt car race winners:
1st place – Ben Francis
2nd place – Nora Hencir
3rd place – Bailey Gucinski
4th place – Vien Chi O
5th place – Amelia Axness
6th place – Andrew Flynn

Guitar Hero participants were automatically entered into a random drawing for prizes. Winners include:
Pizza party (grand prize) - Amy Hillis
Amazon shopping trip – Emiliano Urbina
MacBear giant mascot – Lillie Jacobson

First Year Night, Wednesday, Aug. 27

First Year Night - 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
DeWitt Wallace Library
President Rosenberg and Library staff members invite all first year students to come to the library to celebrate completion of the first day of classes. Festivities include root beer floats with the President on the library plaza, Guitar Hero in the Harmon Room, mug pickup and mug shot photos, and car races. Additional qualifying heats for the Tour DeWitt remote control car race will be held from 7:00 - 8:00. First year car racers with the best race times from Friday and Wednesday will compete for prizes at 8:00 p.m. Guitar Hero participants will also be entered in a random drawing for prizes. Prize winners will be announced in the Library News on the Library home page and will be notified by email. Rain location for root beer floats will be inside the library.

Welcome to Class of 2012 and their Families

• DeWitt Code Online Game for First Year Students - students should have received an announcement in their email announcing the start of the game. Please join your team to help solve the mystery while learning about the library and it's services.
• Friday Events for Parents and Family of First Year Students
  • Coffee and treats in the Harmon Room beginning at 10 a.m.
  • Parents - please join us anytime between 2:30 and 4:00 to meet the liaison librarian for your son or daughter's' first year course
  • Root Beer Floats from 1:30 to 4:00
  • 2nd Annual Tour deWitt: test your race car driving skills as we lay out a competive course on the first level of the library. Winners of each individual race will receive small prizes. Family, friends, as well as first year students are eligible to race.

Library Makes New WorldCat Discovery Tool Available to Macalester Users: Tell us what you think!

The DeWitt Wallace Library is excited to join a select group of libraries across the country making available the new WorldCat Local discovery tool. This library service will help Macalester students, faculty and staff more easily locate and obtain library items needed for their research - not only within our local collections and those of other CLIC libraries, but also thousands of libraries around the world. Macalester is joining such libraries as the University of Washington, Cornell University, the University of California libraries and Ohio State University in piloting this new service.

Macalester WorldCat allows us to offer customizations that will help further enhance OCLC's popular WorldCat service specifically for Macalester users. These customizations include providing tiered search results with locally-owned materials displayed first followed by the holdings of other libraries within the region and worldwide.
It will also provide real time availability status of materials through a connection to CLICnet, informing users as to whether locally-owned materials are checked in and available and, if not, allowing users to easily place a hold or an interlibrary loan request for the item.

Users can seamlessly connect to many of the other resources and services that the library makes available to our users using Macalester WorldCat. The inclusion of the MacLinks/SFX button allows users to access full-text articles when available through resources to which we subscribe. The “Cite this Resource” feature connects directly with RefWorks.

With Macalester WorldCat, our library users will be able to access library materials easily through a new search box that will display on the library Web site. For those that want to search CLICnet or MnCat directly, links to these catalogs will be available immediately below the main search box.

The library is very interested in getting comments from the campus community as we work with OCLC in impacting the further development of this product. A comment form is available both on the library's web page and also from within Macalester WorldCat.