The Rawles Hall Yellowood is Blooming

Every other year the prized Yellowood (Cladrastis kentukea) blooms. One of the largest Yellowood trees in Indiana is right here on campus on the south side of the Mathematics department. If you have a chance, walk by and have a look. It seems to be peaking this week. Rumor is that the fragrance from the Yellowood blossoms promotes clarity of thought.

Books on Games, Game Design, and More in Swain Hall Library

If you're looking for books on computer games, game design, programming for games, stop by Swain Hall Library and browse the QA76.76 .C672 area. There are also going to be books on games in the GV call number range, and a few in Technology (Ts). Don't forget there are several e-books on games and gaming offered through Books 24X7 and other e-book packages. Log in to IUCAT to track down some of this material, and to find links to the e-books on this campus.

New Statistics on Display

We already had copies of the Ross, 9th edition, Intro to Probability Models, but it's so heavily used by a variety of people I ordered another copy.

Personal copies of books returned to library drop box

Great minds, preoccupied with topics such as the Higgs boson, the Poincaré Conjecture, and what to do about print junk-mail, often can't be bothered to glance at the books they're returning at the end of the semester. Without fail, personal copies and departmental copies of books end up in the Swain Hall drop box at the end of the semester. Some with names written inside have already been returned, but the following Studies in Logic remains unclaimed. An interesting inscription, inside front page...I ran it by a couple of people in Rawles, but still don't know who this is. Please comment if you know who owns this book.

Pulling down new books today, not Monday

We're going to be short-staffed a little bit for the next few days, so I'm pulling down new books today. If you didn't go on hold for anything and were just waiting until Monday, check the shelving cart, that's where they are.

Junk Mail

In January, 2008, I filled out a web form on a publisher page asking to be removed from their print mailing list. I didn't get a response, so in April, I filled out the form again and asked for all the addresses associated with this single library (former librarians, the library itself, etc.) to be removed, and this time they confirmed that those would be removed. From the January date on, I decided to save all the junk mail from this single publisher. In a 4 month time frame slightly over a foot of junk mail arrived here that was never opened from one publisher...not even a large publisher. Oh, postage PAID - oh, well hell then, no big deal! Maybe if this publisher mails out 9 cubic feet of printed new book announcements in one month, this library will buy 7 of their books instead of 6. It's really worth it, isn't it? Gotta sell!! What doesn't get recycled ends up in land fills. Bloomington Indiana doesn't even have a functional land fill anymore. You know what we do with our garbage? We put it in trucks and drive it to Terre Haute, Indiana, 61 miles away. So don't talk to me about low cost marketing and postage paid - postage ISN'T friggin paid (or rather, let me be fair, you haven't FINISHED paying for postage...I have your fine pieces of paper in my hand, you generated this, now kindly dispose of it. Oh, this mail comes from New York - why, New York and New Jersey have terrific records and experience dealing with garbage...this should be no problem!) How do I know it's not all paid for? Because every week I hand over cash at the grocery store in order to obtain little rectangular yellow stickers...but why would I want to do that? Because without putting these yellow stickers on my garbage can, nobody's taking away my garbage.
Publishers, let's try to get on the same page in terms of how you alert people to your fabulous new books, and librarians, particularly new librarians attending conferences this summer: please take an interest in what you allow to be mailed to you as you talk with our friends in the publishing world. Blindly mailing out paper advertisements (probably quite often to dead people, and people no longer at the target address) is really stupid - it's like flicking boogers at the prospect of establishing an advanced civilization.