Random Thoughts of the Day

It is July 31 already which means that the semester will begin in about a month.  Time really flies. I was able to spend sometime this summer catching up with projects.  I was able to weed older materials from the astronomy, physics and chemistry sections of the stacks.  It was so depressing to see so many old and outdated books. 

This summer we received several large donations.  As I have said before in this blog the people who donate books have the best intentions.  They don't want their materials to be placed in the trash.  Most of the materials from donations are given away to students.

Here at NJIT as in most academic libraries, we are getting more electronic books.  I had an experience with a professor who was quite frustrated since he could print out only a small number of pages from an electronic book.

That's it for now.

Returning from Vacation

This blog has not been very active lately.  I haven't had anything new to write about since library usage over the summer is very slow.  I promised myself that I would not look at my work e-mail while on vacation.  When I returned there were 233 new e-mails.  There was nothing earth shattering to report.  I deleted 160 out of the 233 without looking at them.

I did receive a request for a cited reference search.  We get these all the time, but it is unusual to do one over the summer.  The candidate had a very common name, so I had to do each paper in both Scopus and Web of Science.  Cited reference searches are pretty much routine, but very tedious and time consuming.

Today I am attending a mini-course in project management at METRO.

Remembering Joan Dunlop of the New York Public Library

Yesterday I was browsing through the obituary page of the New York Times and noted an article about Joan Dunlop , an advocate for women's health rights.  The name sounded familiar, but at first I just couldn't place her.  The article stated she was an assistant to Vartan Gregorian of the New York Public Library.

I then remembered serving on a committee with her about the external noise from street musicians on 42nd Street near 5th Avenue.  That location was in "the middle of everywhere" so the street musicians who were trying to make a living couldn't care less about the readers in the library.  In an academic library the noise is from the loud conversations of students.  Most researchers at NYPL came by themselves and didn't generate much noise.  I remember the committee made a trip to the Midtown South precinct of the NYPD to complain about the noise.  The police had much more serious concerns.

I last saw Ms. Dunlop at a farewell party for her.  Her short tenure at NYPL was not her claim to fame. In any event I send my condolences to her family.