What's New @ Conant Library 

Director Nominated for Award
Annual Graveyard Tales, Oct. 19
IT Evening Help Desk
What's New (Group Study Rooms, Large Monitors, Coffee, E-Reserves)

Fall 2008

 Director Nominated for 'I Love My Librarian' Award

Jim Douglas, Director of the Library, has been nominated for the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award! Up to ten librarians will be honored. Each will receive $5,000 and be recognized at an awards ceremony hosted by The New York Times at TheTimesCenter in December 2008. If you would like to add your support please go to http://www.ilovelibraries.org/lovemylibrarian/cccu.cfm

Graveyard Tales, Oct. 19, 9:00 PM

The Library will host ‘Graveyard Tales,’ its annual ‘fright night’ of tales of the supernatural on Sunday, October 19. This year we have three well-known members of the New England storytelling community, Marge Bruchac, Angela Klinger, and Libby Franck. This event is co-sponsored and funded by the Fischer Institute.

IT Evening Help Desk in Library

Earlier this semester the college's IT department offered support services at the Circulation Desk during the evening. Trained library evening student workers will be continuing this service. They will be able to provide some basic assistance and if unable to solve your problem help you open a ticket for IT assistance. Come on by or call them at 2006.

What's New? Lots!

Hope you all have had a great summer. While you were away we've been busy and we're pleased to announce the following new services and additions to the Library:

1. Two new group study rooms on the Library's lower floor along with new furniture on the Lower and Main Library floors.

2. Each group study room is now equipped with large 37" monitors and new keyboards with multiple USB ports for thumbdrives to make collaboration easier. Evening student Sheri Beicke, a resident of Palmer, Mass., enjoys using the new rooms for her online music class. "The rooms are awesome," says Beicke. "I couldn't believe my good luck at having access to this technology."

3. An online Electronic Reserve system. Many articles, worksheets, etc. placed on Reserve will now be available online. From the Library's online catalog, click on the Course Reserve tab. You can then search for items either by your instructor's last name or by course name/number. (We'll also keep the original hardcopies on file in the Reserve area behind the Circulation Desk.)

4. Cups of coffee, tea, and/or hot chocolate will now be available for purchase at the Circulation Desk. As many of you know, food and drink has long been allowed in the Library. Now you don't have to go to Davis or the Snack Bar for a little caffeine or do without when they close for the evening. Enjoy!

5. Thanks to the Central Massachusetts Regional Library System (CMRLS) Conant Library will now receive deliveries of requested books, articles  and videos twice a week so you get what you need faster.  Our book and full-text article database collections can usually provide what you need just when you need it. Ocassionally, however, we may not own or be able to provide access to a specific book or article. Whenever you find yourself in this situation ask us to get it for you! We'll find libraries that have what you want and ask them to send it to us; it's not unusual for another library to fax us an article within an hour! But sometimes the lending library has to put the book or article you want on a delivery shuttle. Previously, we received deliveries just once a week on Wednesday mornings. Starting this fall we'll be getting deliveries twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, cutting your waiting time in half!