Tag Archives: Top News

Important Announcement – Health Science Kresge Library Closes Wed. June 17 – New Facility Opens Fri. June 19

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This Friday, June 19th, the new Simmy and Harry Ginsburg Health Sciences Library will open its doors to the health sciences community at Temple. Located in the New Medical Education and Research Building, this stunning new facility offers a centralized location for the resources and services formerly found at the Kresge and South Branch Libraries. The process of closing our old facilities and opening a new one has been complex, and we must truncate services for this week only.

Please keep in mind the following while accessing library services and resources over the course of this week:

  • Kresge Library is closing as of Wednesday, June 17th.
  • The only library facility that will be open on Wednesday, June 17th and Thursday, June 18th, is the South Branch Library, which will offer the following services:
    • Book Requests and Paging: requested materials will be acquired from any point in the relocation path. Once the material is retrieved, patrons will be contacted by telephone or email. If, for some reason, the material cannot be found quickly, library staff will request it on interlibrary loan
    • Reference services
    • Thirteen computer workstations for patron use
  • The Simmy and Harry Ginsburg Health Sciences Library and South Branch Library will be open concurrently from June 19th through June 26th.
  • As of Friday, June 26th, South Library will be closed and all health sciences services and resources will be available at the Simmy and Harry Ginsburg Health Science Library, located at Broad and Tioga Streets.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and we look forward to seeing you in our new library. If you have any concerns about the move of the Health Sciences Libraries or need special assistance during the move please contact either Mark Allen Taylor, Library Director, at ext. 2-2402 or any member of the Health Sciences Library staff at ext. 2-book.

Krystal Lewis is new Coordinator of Information Literacy and Reference

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I am delighted to welcome Krystal Lewis to Temple University Libraries. Krystal joined us as the Coordinator of Information Literacy and Reference on June 8. In this new position, Krystal will coordinate the Libraries’ various information literacy initiatives and the broad array of virtual and in-person reference services based at Paley Library.

Krystal comes to us from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she served as an Assistant Librarian and Assistant Professor in the Reference Department of the Richard J. Daley Library. Prior to that, she was an Acting Assistant Special Collections Librarian and Academic Resident Librarian and Instructor at the Library of the Health Sciences-Chicago.

Krystal earned a B.A. in History and her MLS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition to her extensive reference experience, Krystal also has also worked with special collections and archives at the Library of the Health Sciences-Chicago. Please join me again in welcoming Krystal Lewis to Temple University Libraries.

With warm wishes,

Larry P. Alford

Vampire Huntress Interview

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Leslie Banks appeared at the Temple Book Club on March 4, 2009 to talk about her new book, The Thirteenth, and her new projects including a forthcoming graphic novel. In an engaging presentation with many fans in the audience, she discussed the final book of her Vampire Huntress series, as well as her journey to becoming a writer, the publishing industry, and the challenge of writing as a career. Afterward, she kindly agreed to an interview with librarian Fred Rowland, who engaged her on many of these same issues.  Take some time to listen to this interesting interview.

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

Subscribe to this podcast series

 

Interviews: Library Prize Winners 2009

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The interviews with the winners of the 2009 Library Prize for Undergraduate Research are now available for download. Take some time and listen to these engaging young scholars.

Interview (mp3, 13:06): Danielle Country and Faculty Sponsor Laura Samponaro

[ensemblevideo contentid=BQDifhIa_USuPl2dU8J-yA audio=true]

iTunes U link (for downloads)

Interview (mp3, 21:36): George Keddie and Faculty Sponsor Vasiliki Limberis

[ensemblevideo contentid=i_qCykNno0e-wA9NXjLS3w audio=true]

iTunes U link (for downloads)

Interview (mp3, 15:05): Cara Shay and Faculty Sponsor Diana Woodruff-Pak

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iTunes U link (for downloads)

 

For more information on this year’s winners and honorable mentions, go to the Winners page.

Temple University Libraries Announce 2009 Library Prize Winners

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Update: A ceremony to award the prize’s was held in Paley Library’s Lecture Hall at 4:00pm on Thursday April 30th, 2009. Temple University Libraries have announced the winners of the fifth annual Library Prize for Undergraduate Research. As this prestigious award entered its fourth year, 60 outstanding applications were received. Applications represented disciplines, schools and colleges across Temple’s campus. Congratulations to our winners (in alphabetical order):

Danielle Country – “Girl, Translated”- (Latin 4082) Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Laura M. Samponaro

George A. Keddie – “Catholic Eucharistic Theology and the Gospel of Judas: Exposing the Formative Value of Sethian Criticism” (Religion 4882) Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Vasiliki M. Limberis

Cara Shay – “The Neurobiology and Development of Compulsive Hoarding and Its Relationship to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” (Psychology 3306) Faculty Sponsors: Dr. Diana S. Woodruff-Pak (primary) and Dr. Ingrid Olson And our honorable mentions (in alphabetical order)

James H. Baraldi – “Gangliosidosis” – (Psychology 3306) Faculty Sponsors: Dr. Diana S. Woodruff-Pak (primary), Dr. Luis Del Valle, and Dr. George P. Tuszynski

Megan Donnelly – “More than Whores and Housewives: Reconsidering Judith Leyster’s The Proposition” – (Art History 2197) Faculty Sponsors: Dr. Jonathan Kline

The complete papers are available to download and interviews with the winners will be soon posted to the Library Prize site.

Articles in Audio

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Audio versions are now available on selected articles in Wilson OmniFile, a full-text bibliographic database from H.W. Wilson, and Library PressDisplay, a database that provides the most recent sixty-day coverage of newspapers from around the world. In the case of Wilson OmniFile, the audio files are downloadable into iTunes and other portable audio players.

Wilson OmniFile

In Wilson OmniFile, just click on links to “Full Text HTML”. Then click on Listen or Download Audio.  The sound quality is surprisingly good.

Wilson OmniFile also provides translations of articles into ten different languages.

 

 

Library PressDisplay

In Library PressDisplay, just select a newspaper or an article and look for the Interactive Radio icon. Not limited to English, audio is available for numerous languages including French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese.

 

 

—Fred Rowland

 

 

 

Have A Suggestion? Use Our Newest Blog to Share It

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Everybody who uses the Temple University Libraries has at some point probably thought of something that could be improved, done better or made more efficient. If you have an idea for improving the library we want to hear from you – or even if you have a general complaint.

That’s why we recently upgraded our old virtual suggestion box to a brand new suggestion blog called What’s Your Suggestion. We found ourselves answering the same questions repeatedly for different individuals. We believe the blog will help to make your suggestions and our responses more transparent to the Temple University community. All suggestion blog postings will be stripped of personal information to ensure confidentiality. There is a link to the suggestion blog on the Libaries’ home page. Just look for the “Suggestions” link.

You can submit to the suggestion blog anonymously or include an email address if you prefer a personal response. Submissions to the blog are first reviewed by a staff member so any request to refrain from posting the suggestion to the blog will be honored, and a personal response will be made instead. We hope you will use “What’s Your Suggestion” to let us know how we can improve the library and better serve the Temple University community. For more information about the suggestion blog please contact Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian.

Libraries Conduct Survey To Get Your Opinion

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To continuously improve library services for the Temple University community we need to hear from our students, faculty and staff. Many of our service improvements come directly from comments and suggestions from the community. To facilitate this process the Temple University Libraries are currently conducting a campus-wide satisfaction survey. LibQual + is a standardized survey used globally by all types of academic libraries. LibQual+ differs from standard satisfaction surveys that use a Likert scale to measure satisfaction on a range from 1 to 5 or some point between “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree”. Instead LibQual+ seeks to determine someone’s minimum expectation for services, their desired level of services and then asks them to identify at what level they currently perceive the quality of the service. The other advantage of LibQual+ is that it is a standardized, national survey which makes it possible for the Temple Libraries to compare their findings to peer institutions.

As with most surveys LibQual+ is a randomized survey instrument. Therefore only certain members of the Temple University community will receive the e-mail message asking you to take the survey. However LibQual+ is being conducted on the main campus, at all the health sciences-related locations, the law school and the Ambler campus. Any member of our community at any of these Temple locations may be randomly invited to complete the survey. If you are one of those who does receive the invitation please take some time to complete the survey. Since we launched the survey on Wednesday, March 18 several hundred individuals have responded but we would greatly appreciate your response. The average time to complete the survey so far ranges between 9 and 12 minutes – so it takes very little time to complete.

LibQual+ is scheduled to end on April 2. We hope those who received the invitation will take the survey. Everyone who does is entered into a random drawing to receive some great prizes. For more information about the LibQual+ survey please contact Steven Bell.

Text Message Feature Added to Library Catalog

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You finally found that book you’ve been wanting to read or that DVD that the rental shops don’t stock right here in your library…and it’s available! All you have to do now is find a piece of scrap paper, hunt down a pen that has ink, and write down the call number to take with you to the book stacks or Media Services desk. Or, you could text it to your phone!

Save yourself time and be green with the latest feature in Diamond: the library catalog. While viewing any item, just click the “Send via Text Message” button. A new screen will appear – see the example below. Just enter your mobile phone information, and click “Send.” In seconds, you’ll get a text message with the location, call number, and title of the item. Normal carrier charges may apply.

We hope you enjoy this new feature in our library catalog. Please share any comments or concerns with Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian for Research & Instruction.

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New! Cell Phone Audio Tour of Paley Library

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New! Cell Phone Audio Tour of Paley Library

You can now use your cell phone to get information about Paley Library departments and services. Call 215-525- 1543, and enter a tour stop number (listed below), followed by the # key.

There is no charge for the call, just your cell minutes.

This service also features a Call Number Locator to help you locate Paley books! Enter 0, the keypad number corresponding to the first letter of the call number, and then the # key.

Tour Stops are posted throughout the library and a List of Stops and Floor Plan is available at the Circulation/Reserve Desk, the Reference Desk and from the Information rack at the Bell Tower entrance.

These are the current stops:

  1. Dean’s Welcome
  2. Paley First Floor
  3. Reference Services
  4. Circulation/Reserve Desk
  5. Computer Workstations in Paley
  6. Special Collections
  7. Paley Second Floor
  8. Paley Third Floor
  9. Media Services
  10. Urban Archives

You can leave us your feedback about the tour by pressing 0, followed by the # key. For more information about the new cell phone audio tour of Paley Library, you can contact Gretchen Sneff.