Heros of Dead Week

Dead week, the period of quiet and calm before finals week, is almost over. It seems fitting to identify and recognize the heros of dead week. Is it Arlen Specter, for leaving the Republican Party to become a Democrat? No, it doesn't matter what party he's in, he ought to simply do his homework, think long term when it comes to his state and country, and lead responsibly (Mr. Specter has nothing to do with this topic, but I kept hearing his name all day yesterday.)
Is it Jimbo Wales, co-founder and promoter of Wikipedia, and currently President of Wikia, Inc., is he a dead week hero? No, though he's done, and is doing very interesting things.
The Heros of Dead Week are really two groups of people: the Monroe County Public Librarians who offer and teach free courses on MS Word 2007 and Excel. These classes are often superior to fee-based courses, and help lots of people struggling in a difficult economy learn things, better themselves, and become more efficient, adept computer users. We're all stuck using computers, we may as well use them efficiently so we can walk away from them and do something that's actually meaningful, and an entire day isn't wasted.

The second group of heros are the UITS employed undergraduates working for close to minimum wage in the Wells Library Information Commons and campus clusters; they're often self-taught experts, helping their peers with spreadsheets, web-work, Acrobat, and offering short-cuts and advice to thousands of students trying to finish assignments and semester-end projects.

Hats off to these Heros of Dead Week, the Swain Hall Library salutes you. (Above, this is a World War I poster from Artstor...I added some text to it, so I guess I'm citing this as an Artstor resource, and you're able to view because Artstor makes this available to us. But when I think about it, is it really Artstor that provided this image? Apparently this image is from a University of Minnesota repository. Ok, well who deposited there? I don't know.)

Handbook of Mathematical Functions

For almost a half century Milton Abramowitz's Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables has been poured over by physicists, engineers, and other scientists across the globe. Full-text now available, no fee.

http://tinyurl.com/bp7xof

Trends in Mathematics Exchange Programs

For decades university libraries here and abroad have been exchanging scholarly journals - trading them, not paying for them; it's been a successful alternative model to building libraries without paying institutional subscriptions to various titles. Recently exchange partners are beginning to back away from this in part because "just in case" collecting of print material is valued less today than previously. Click on this image to view the Japan Academy's letter to the Indiana University Mathematics Journal.

Using Facebook to track down the disorganized

Just this morning an Enrico Fermi dover book, Thermodynamics, was returned to Swain Hall Library after we tracked down the former summer REU student (research experience for undergraduates) on facebook. He's currently doing graduate work at Bryn Mawr...he wasn't really stealing it, he just sort of found that he forgot to get this back to us in 2007. Alright, well whatever. Fortunately his name was somewhat unusual, so we didn't need to explore dozens of "Johnson"s or Smiths.

Lost Swain Hall book found in Atlanta at Georgia Tech Library

Thanks to Gladys T. at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Swain Hall Library has a book back that's been lost for the past 7 years. If you click on this image, you'll notice a little water mark in the upper left and right hand corners. This may be an accident, but I think what's likely is someone took water and attempted to fade out the SWAIN HALL LIBRARY stamp. You'll notice also that someone, probably a student in Georgia, wrote his/her name on the inside.

I think it's unlikely this is the person that took the book, but I suppose it could be, I don't know. [April 1, 2009 update, no, it's not the person who wrote her name on the inside cover 简体中文版, I sent her an e-mail asking about this book, and she actually still had the receipt from the Amazon transaction, so she e-mailed that back. (airbrushed out her name at her request) She purchased it online from Pro Quo Books...I'm not very impressed with Pro Quo Books. Here's a relatively new, high demand book that they've acquired, clearly a library book with all the markings and an intact call number still on the spine...they somehow acquired it, turned a blind eye to the fact that it was and remains a library book, and resold it to a Georgia Tech student for $10.94. Here's a little free advice Pro Quo Books - why don't you schedule a staff meeting and say to everyone "Look, don't buy and then turn around and resell stolen books. It's illegal, ok?" There were no "withdrawn" stamps on that book and no indication that it had been legitimately removed from the collection. How hard is that? You appear to be a big online book dealer operation on the web...show a little responsibility and respect for the law. ]

This book is associated with a different person, a former IU student, an undergrad that graduated probably around 2002. She was barred from the IU Libraries because we couldn't get a current address for her, but she still has four science books checked out that are 7 years overdue. More on this when I follow-up. It looks to me like she has a facebook page...