News & Updates

One of the largest student employers on campus, LITS employs well over 100 students. They perform tasks such as processing and shelving library materials, staffing service desks, maintaining computer labs and providing audiovisual services. While we rely on our student assistants to ensure smooth LITS operations, we also take part in their education.

With the holidays fast approaching, it’s also time to be aware that the bad guys are out there in full force too.  As is usual for this time of year, people are shopping online, trying to avoid the bad weather and get the best deals.  The bad guys know this and are taking steps to separate you from your money. This leads to a big uptick in phishing emails purporting to be from Amazon and Ebay.

With the addition of YouTube to our Google Apps suite, we will also be able to make use of the “Record from Webcam” tool in Blackboard.

Purchasing a new car can be an overwhelming and unpleasant experience. According to a recent survey by Edmunds.com, one in five people said they'd willingly give up sex for a month rather than haggle for a new car. One in three said they'd rather do taxes, go to the DMV, or sit in an airplane's middle seat. This was the challenge I faced when I wanted to replace my ten year old car.

It might seem as though the library began purchasing electronic books only just recently, when, in reality, it’s been acquiring digital forms of books since the 1990s.

Our collecting began by supporting some of the first scholarly digital text initiatives like the University of Chicago’s ARTFL (a collection of nearly 3,000 classic works of French literature and historical texts) and Brown University’s Women Writers Project (nearly 350 early texts written by women from the 16th through 19th centuries). Since then, we’ve been actively purchasing and subscribing to important historical digital text collections and electronic versions of classic reference works such as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and the Grove art and music encyclopedias. More recently we’ve expanded the collection to include current scholarly books along with recently published books written and edited by Hamilton faculty.

Library and IT organizations have a number of ways to obtain feedback about our existing services, including national surveys such as MISO (www.misosurvey.org).  But gaining insight into new ways we might help faculty and students be more successful is a bigger challenge. 

A few years ago, at a conference on digital scholarship, Doran Larson, Professor of English and Creative Writing, indicated that when IT organizations organize events to tell about the services they offer he sometimes attends.  He said that while he may appear to be listening to the presentations, in fact, he is thinking about some problem he faces with his research (or teaching).

This article is the first in a series devoted to the topic of e-books. The first part of this conversation focuses on the how e-books are acquired by the library, some common features of e-books, and how to find them.

Teaching outside can stimulate a completely new learning process in your students. Participants will learn some great tips on how to locate, orient and conduct classroom teaching outdoors. Rain or shine!

Director of Outdoor Leadership, Andrew Jillings, has been an outdoor educator for 25 years and has worked at Hamilton as Director of adventure programs since 1997.

Historical geographer Professor Haim Goren of Israel will present the Couper Phi Beta Kappa Library Lecture at Hamilton College on Wednesday, Sept. 24, at 4:10 p.m., in the Red Pit, KJ.  Goren will speak on “Edward Robinson: ‘Father of the Scientific Study of the Holy Land.’”  Robinson is an alumnus of Hamilton’s class of 1816. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Apple & Quill, the creative arts series sponsored by Library and Information Technology Services, announces an exciting fall line-up of events.  The fall schedule includes readings and a writing workshop at the Wellin Art Museum.  We hope you can join us!  For additional information, please contact Lisa Forrest, Director of Research and Instruction Services, lforrest@hamilton.edu.