Colgate University Libraries News and Events

Happy New Year to you! Have you made any resolutions yet? I have a big list already and changing ALL of my passwords is definitely not on it. But after checking out this comic, I'm reconsidering. Not only is the idea that an eight letter password can be hacked in two hours a bit frightening, but the Daring Librarian gives some excellent suggestions for keeping track of all your passwords. Plus she recommends completely separate, not used anywhere else, passwords for Facebook and banking. I couldn't agree with that more.
 
New New Years Resolution? Password upgrade!

As you prepare for the inevitable end of the semester mad crush here at the library, maybe you would enjoy a few words from Mr. Rollins, blogging at LA Weekly about his visit to the National Archives and the Library of Congress. He got to peek at a few of our national treasures. As he says,

I know that collector types can be a pain in the neck and seem perpetually frozen in time -- or at least in their parents' basement -- but someone has to look out for the past, lest it slip away forever.

We may not have an early draft of the Bill of Rights at Colgate but we do have some treasures. A first edition of Darwin's On the Origin of Species and a copy of Dickens' A Christmas Carol illustrated by Arthur Rackham, for example.

The library website was down for a few hours this afternoon due to some unexpected server issues. We apologize for the inconvenience if you were trying to make use of our resources during that time. We believe that everything is back up now. Please let us know if you do experience any additional oddities in the site.
The links below might be useful to you if there is ever another unexpected outage as they will lead you directly to some of our resources.
Articles
Ask a Librarian (email)
Colgate University Library Catalog (Encore)
ConnectNY
Databases A-Z
Digital Collections
Interlibrary Loan
My Library Account
Refworks (choose Login)

We've added a mobile interface the library website and catalog this year. If you are trying to access our site from your iPhone, Android, Blackberry, tin can (well, maybe not that last one), you'll get a pop-up message asking if you want the mobile site. If you say no, you'll go to the full site. If you say yes, you'll be redirected to the new mobile site.
We've kept the mobile site pretty simple. You can look up hours, search the catalog, renew items you've checked out, text, email, or call us. Plus you can always get back to the full site if you need more.
You can also download an app that will get you to the mobile version of our site if you'd like. Depending on your mobile device, the app is called LibAnywhere (iTunes Store) or LibraryAnywhere (Android Market). Once you've loaded the app, search for "Colgate University Libraries" to make it your default search page.
For any web-enabled device (including Blackberry), you can go directly to the mobile site with this URL: http://www.libanywhere.com/la/298
One little bit of advice: if you're using a tablet and get prompted to the mobile site, we'd suggest you decline and use the full library site.

Tis the season for bbq, beaches, and hopefully some fireworks. In addition, it might be your moment to take some time and read for pleasure. Do you do this anymore? If so, where? I've been experimenting with reading on the iPad, and it's not so bad. It's unlikely to ever replace the tactile sensation of print for me, but during this season of travel, it's convenience wins. How about you? Where do you do your reading these days? Does it depend on what you're reading?
If you're looking for some suggestions as to what to read, you could start with the New York Public Library's Summer Reading Program. They've put out a list for adults. We've got several of the titles at Case-Geyer, including The Bad Girl and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Nancy Pearl, of the Seattle Public Library and library figurine (with shushing action) fame, also has a list of 10 Terrific Summer Reads up on NPR. She's included a set of graphic novels, Castle Waiting I and II. We've got the first. Did you know that we have graphic novels? Castle Waiting I is not alone on the shelf.
If we haven't got something you're looking for, Connect NY might have it.
I'll be reading Bossypants and listening to The Harrow and the Harvest, Gillian Welch's first new album in almost 10 years. What about you?
 

If the return to campus life after a few days away (hopefully someplace sunny) are getting you down, may we suggest the Special Collections exhibit as a potential cure, or at least a temporary lift. This spring we're showcasing some images from our collection of the 25 volume set, A Monograph of the Trochilida, or Family of Hummingbirds. John Gould, the naturalist who compiled this set, worked in the 19th century, around the same time as John James Audubon. In this set, his most reknowned, he captured images of hummingbirds from around the world. The images are on display in the cases around the central staircase on Level 2 of Case-Geyer. These little creatures, bright and light, are a sweet reminder that there's hope for warmth and sunshine yet to come! We hope you enjoy them.

Special Collections at Case-Geyer will be open by appointment only Monday through Friday at noon, March 14-18, 2011.
To make an appointment please email Sarah Keen (skeenATcolgateDOTedu) and Francesca Livermore (flivermoreATcolgateDOTedu) or call Sarah Keen at (315) 228-7305 or Francesca Livermore at (315) 228-6579.
Enjoy your break!
 

Welcome to the month of March! While we here in Central New York might still be waiting for the weather to warm up, there are a few things to look forward to, for example, Spring Break, March Madness, and Women's History Month. Originally a weeklong event held in Sonoma County, CA to coincide with International Women's Day (March 8th), it wasn't nationally recognized until 1981. And it was 1987 before the week was expanded to what we currently know to be Women's History Month. This year's theme is "Our History is Our Strength", described by the National Women's History Project like this:

The stories of women’s achievements are integral to the fabric our history.  Learning about women’s tenacity, courage, and creativity throughout the centuries is a tremendous source of strength.  Until relatively recently, this sphere of women's history was overlooked and undervalued. Women’s achievements were often distorted, disdained, and denied.  But, knowing women’s stories provides essential role models for everyone. And role models are genuinely needed to face the extraordinary changes and unrelenting challenges of the 21st century.

If you would like to learn a little bit more about the role women have played in shaping our world, here are some places to get started.
 
Encyclopedias

• Encyclopedia of Gender and Society
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History

Newspapers

•  GenderWatch (including a full archive of Ms. from 1988 to present)

Scholarly Articles

•  Women's Studies International

Primary Sources

• Women Working, 1870-1930
• Women Writers Project
• American Memory Project: Women's History

 Many other resources are available from the Libraries' Womens Studies page or by searching in the Library Catalog.
*The image is from the Library of Congress flickr stream, available here.

This fall Special Collections has prepared an exhibit of our high-quality facsimile productions of several Mexican codices. The codices are early books from around the time of the Spanish conquest. They document the daily life, religious beliefs, year cycles, and, in some cases, the astronomical maps to the skies of the native peoples through pictograms and hieroglyphs. They are stunning and colorful and in some cases, gory (can you find the image of the guy being knifed in one of the codices?).

The page shown here and on the exhibit posters, from the Codex Mendoza, depicts the founding of the Aztec city, Tenochtitlan (the ruins of which lie at the center of present-day Mexico City).  The hieroglyph in the center - of a stone with a prickly pear cactus perched on top - represents the name of the city. The eagle signifies the prophecy that the Aztecs (a wandering tribe up to that point) would build a great city in the place where they found an eagle devouring a snake while perched atop a cactus. The eagle perched on a cactus later became a part of Mexico’s official seal.
 
The exhibition is located on Level 2 of Case-Geyer, in the cases near the central stair. Please stop by and visit.
 

If you didn't get a chance to attend and are interested - you can watch the video of Glenn Platt's noon seminar on the inverted classroom, along with other talks at:
http://moodle.colgate.edu/course/view.php?id=2259&edit=off&sesskey=nCCmKkSy2U
This is part of a new initiative that Digital Media Services is implementing this semester is to stream lectures that have occurred on Colgate's campus within a Moodle Site. The site is available to everyone with a Colgate network account. You will have to log into Moodle and click a "Yes" button to enroll in the course site.