Library News

Video Valentine: Why do you love the library?

bairdca — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:22:39 -0500

This Valentine's Day, the library is asking "Why do you love the library?" Watch our Video Valentine by clicking on the heart below and see the response.

p.s. if you know the student being interviewed in Mills Lobby who high fives the mascot, we'd love to be able to get in touch with him to thank him personally for being in our video. Email us!

Learning Commons Late Night Hours

moorer — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:55:14 -0500

Late Night Hours in the Mills Learning Commons has begun for the winter term. Beginning February 1st, students can study in the Mills Learning Commons until 2 am. Between midnight and 2 am, the Learning Commons can be accessed from the Tower Entrance doors (east side of the library).

Late Night Hours until 2 am will run from February 1st - April 8th. Beginning April 9th and for the duration of the exam period, the Learning Commons will be open 24/7.

LibQUAL+ Survey Launches

adling — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:46:49 -0500

During February, you may receive an invitation to participate in the LibQUAL+ survey which measures the quality of library services.

The goals of LibQUAL+ are to

Foster a culture of excellence in providing library service
Help libraries better understand user perceptions of library service quality
Collect and interpret library user feedback systematically over time
Provide libraries with comparable assessment information from peer institutions
Identify best practices in library service

McMaster has previously conducted this survey in 2006 and 2007. For 2010, we’re using the LibQUAL+ Lite version, with fewer questions and a shorter completion time. We have selected participants randomly, so only those contacted by email are eligible to fill out the survey.

Across Canada, the survey is being coordinated by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, and will be completed by students, faculty, and staff at many universities. Over 1000 libraries from various countries have participated in LibQUAL+ since 2000, when the instrument was developed by Texas A&M and the Association of Research Libraries.

We value the feedback we receive, and thank all participants. To learn more about LibQUAL+ at McMaster, and to view results from previous surveys, visit our LibQUAL+ page.

E-Books at Scholars Portal

adling — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:20:28 -0500

The Library is pleased to announce the availability of OCUL's new ebook platform, Books @ Scholars Portal, which provides nearly a quarter of a million e-books, including 40,000 recent titles from such major publishers as Springer, Oxford, Cambridge, and Elsevier, along with the Canadian Electronic Library collection. It also includes some 200,000 open access books from the Internet Archives, which incorporates material digitized by a number of schools as well as a collection of Ontario government documents.

Using Books @ Scholars Portal, you can

Search and access electronic books from commercial and open access publishers
Browse books by subject
Print or download parts of a book
Print, email and download records
Save citations to Refworks and other bibliographic management software

Journals @ Scholars Portal now suggests potentially relevant related books along with the articles.

Additional features are in development, and more content will be added: check back soon!

A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey to Safety in Buffalo

bairdca — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:32:23 -0500

It may seem strange to think of Buffalo in Upper State New York as a safe haven for refugees. But in war-torn Europe during the Nazi dictatorship, the city of Buffalo was a paradise.

During the 1930s, Sol Messinger and his family lived in Berlin. Like so many other persecuted Jews of this era, they experienced hardships and prejudice, but unlike the vast majority of Jews, they were extraordinarily lucky. Several of Sol’s extended family obtained travel visas. On 14 May 1939, they left from the city of Hamburg and set sail on the MS St. Louis for Cuba. It has been called the “Voyage of the Damned”. Not quite 7 years of age, Sol regarded the trip on the German ocean liner as a wonderful adventure. Behind the façade of a care-free, contented life on a cruise ship was the stark reality that no country in North America was willing to grant refugee status to the 900 Jews on board.

“None is too many,” was the haunting, unfeeling reply given by a Canadian immigration official when asked how many Jews would be allowed into Canada after the war. With the exception of 29 passengers who managed to disembark at Havana, the St. Louis returned to Europe with all of its passengers. Almost a third of these people were allowed entry into Great Britain. Of the remaining passengers of the St. Louis, almost half would be doomed to misery and murder in a concentration camp.

Sol and his family settled in Brussels. On the eve of Germany’s invasion of the Low Countries and France, they travelled by train to southern France near the Spanish border in the Pyrenees, living in relative obscurity in the town of Savignac. A few months later their luck appeared to have run its course when the French police arrested them and placed them in the Jewish detention camp of Agde. The Messinger family escaped the camp on Christmas 1940. Returning to Savignac, the family eventually obtained visas from the American Embassy in Marseilles in the spring of 1942. They travelled by train across Spain to Lisbon, and from there, they took a cargo ship to New York City. After a few months with relatives in the large metropolis, Sol’s family moved to Buffalo where his father found employment as a tailor.

Sol Messinger attended the University of Buffalo. He obtained his medical degree, and later served as a pathologist in the United States Army. He has recently retired as a physician.

Dr. Messinger has told his remarkable story on many occasions. Today, on the day of International Holocaust Remembrance, he was a guest of the city of Hamilton, visiting McMaster University Library. He examined documents of the period concerned with the occupation of France and Belgium and the French Resistance.

In sharing his story with us, Dr. Messinger remarked: "Simply the fact that this material exists - it's amazing. I think to myself that there were probably other such documents that were thrown out by relatives who didn't know their significance. It's invaluable to have these documents available - to have proof that these things happened."

by Carl Spadoni

See also the Daily News article and the article in the Hamilton Spectator.

View the 1996 interview with Sol Messinger on YouTube

Living in Mills Library – For a Good Cause

bairdca — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:40:05 -0500

While a common complaint of the 21st century university student is the lack of a social life due to schoolwork – leading to the unwelcome feeling that they “live” in their university library – only a select few students are honestly able to claim that they have lived in their library, and even fewer are able to say they did it by choice.

Starting at 12 noon on January 23^rd until 12 noon on January 30^th, PhD candidate Peter Jansen and second year student Alyson Lamanes have embarked upon the extreme task of camping out 24-7 in the lobby of Mills Memorial Library to support the 2010 Live-in for Literacy (LIL) campaign, raising money to help construct nine school libraries in India through a charity called “Room to Read”.

Jansen and Lamanes will spend every waking and sleeping hour in plain view of the crowds of library visitors that pass through the Mills’ lobby each day. Their entire lives will also be broadcast over the web 24 hours a day and they won’t leave their roped-off corner of the lobby except for the five minute break each of them is allowed each hour.

The “Live-in” event at McMaster University started last year and this year evolved into an MSU club. The McMaster Live-in for Literacy chapter aims to raise $2000 dollars this year through the “Live-in” at Mills Library. The event not only supports literacy, but also helps the campers explore their roles in society and the difference they can make.

Lamanes claims, “This has to be one of the craziest, yet meaningful experiences I have ever had at McMaster University. I think it is important to make a statement for literacy in other countries because we often take for granted that we have excellent public and university libraries.”

The Live-in, however, is not solely about raising money but as Jansen describes it, it is also a “really fun and exciting experience”. Last year’s camper, Shazeen Dhala was so inspired by the cause, that she co-founded McMaster University’s Live-in For Literacy club.

Dhala says, "LIL has definitely had a huge impact on me and is an experience that really opened my eyes in terms of the greater picture. I've learned so much not only about issues of literacy throughout the world, but also about just how much a few students can do to be a part of the solution. LIL has allowed me to challenge myself to do things I never imagined, and that alone is so inspiring when thinking about addressing concerns and bringing about changes."

In conjunction with the ‘live-in’, volunteers are also selling t-shirts for $15 a piece. The event is part of a larger campaign, with other students camping out at the libraries of Memorial University of Newfoundland, York University, University of Toronto, Concordia University, Queen's University, Laurentian University and the University of British Columbia. Together, they hope to raise $40,000.

Enter the Made by Mac Creative Challenge

bairdca — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:35:27 -0500

For the second year in a row, Titles Bookstore is running the Made by Mac Creative Challenge. Enter your original piece of digital art, rich media, podcasts, website, great pieces of writing or other creative outputs for your chance to win some great prizes including the grand prize, an Apple MacBook!

As an added bonus, students who incorporate any of the digital materials found on the Library's Historical Perspectives of Canadian Publishing website will be eligible to win an iPod Touch. For full details, see http://www.madebymac.com.

Students will have the opportunity to vote online starting January 18th to determine the five semi-finalists who will go head-to-head in front of a live panel of judges on March 4th in the student centre. The first runner up will be awarded a WII Fit Plus Bundle, and the second runner up will receive an Accessories Prize Pack.

For complete contest rules and more information, check out Made by Mac Creative Challenge.

Like the Popular Reading Collection? Help us refresh it!

bairdca — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:19:28 -0500

The Popular Reading Collection was born in August 2007, when the first 200 books were chosen and placed in the entry to the Mills Learning Commons. Almost immediately, half of the collection was checked out. Clearly, you liked what you found! Since then, the collection has grown considerably and now contains more than 600 titles. Some of those very first books are still with us—most looking pretty worn—and new books chosen from a variety of places have been added.

Popular Reading is one of the most heavily used collections in the Library, and we want it to stay, well, popular! So, we’re looking for ten adventurous Mac students who are ready to shop. One group of five will scour the shelves at Titles, the other will take a stroll through Westdale to visit Bryan Prince Bookseller. Your mission: find books that your fellow students will love.

Ready to sign up? Enter your name for your chance to be one of our shoppers! Ten names will be drawn randomly from all entries and those selected will be contacted to participate.

What Prohibition Does! A New Publication by Stephen Leacock

bairdca — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:55:07 -0500

It is the duty of a bibliographer to record and to describe all publications of an author’s canon or of a particular subject matter faithfully and accurately. When bibliographies are completed–whether they are mere checklists or grand-scale, descriptive bibliographies–we often hear the word “definitive”, suggesting that the compilation expresses the last word in capturing an author’s published record of achievement or the subject in question. Most bibliographers know that there is no such thing as a definitive bibliography. Completeness is a will o’ the wisp, especially with an author who is prolific and has published widely with many publishing houses and in countless periodicals in all the nooks and crannies of the world. Nonetheless, it is the bane of a bibliographer’s calling to hear the dreaded words, “Not in _”, expressed with delight by scholars and booksellers. In the introduction to my work, A Bibliography of Stephen Leacock (1998), I predicted: “A hundred years hence, bibliographers will be reporting newly discovered writings of Leacock.” Reviewers have been generally charitable in their scrutiny of my Leacock bibliography, although one reviewer pointed out that I don’t know the difference between “prostate” and “prostrate” and another reviewer suggested that I should take remedial classes in elementary arithmetic. In 2004 The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box (a bizarre but wonderful name for a publisher) re-issued my Leacock bibliography as an e-bibliography (a PDF version of the book on CD). I took the opportunity then to issue a pamphlet in which I appended a list of errata and changes and noted omissions and newly published posthumous publications. The pamphlet seemed to be a good stop-gap measure to silence the captious critics of my bibliography, but it has not stopped the appearance of newly discovered publications by Leacock.

A week before Christmas, I was contacted by Debbie Dearlove of David Mason Books. “We have acquired the following Leacock item which does not seem to be `in Spadoni’ although A36a & b [The Case Against Prohibition] are similar. Details are: LEACOCK, Stephen. What Prohibition Does! Leaflet, measuring 15 cm × 8 cm printed on recto only. (Toronto): J. Bowden Printer, 186 Parliament St, nd. Fine. I've attached a scan as that seemed the path of least resistance.” I phoned Debbie and ordered the leaflet for the University Library. “Where did you get this unique gem?,” I inquired. “We found it in a carton of paper that once belonged to a book collector,” she replied.

A bête noire of Leacock’s derision was the temperance movement. In 1919 the Americans passed the Eighteenth Amendment which prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for national consumption. It was a boon to Canadian bootleggers in spite of the fact that during the early 1920s, imports of alcohol from the outside of Canada were cut off by provincial referendum. Leacock never wavered in his opposition to the prohibitionists. In case of emergencies or for a quick pick-me-up, he kept a flask of whisky in his vest pocket. One of his books, entitled Wet Wit & Dry Humor (1931), was “compiled in friendly appreciation of Prohibition in the United States, the greatest thing that has ever happened−to Canada.” Leacock’s leaflet was issued by the Citizens’ Liberty League apparently in early April 1921 when he gave an address in Toronto on the subject. Newly discovered publications by Leacock will continue to appear. I don’t blame Leacock for this. He didn’t lie awake at night wondering about the vexatious problems of a future bibliographer. When not writing or fishing, he was sipping whisky with his pals at McGill’s University Club or at Old Brewery Bay in Orillia, ON. Here’s to you, Stephen Leacock. I raise my glass to your prodigious, satirical pen.

by Carl Spadoni

New Issue of Library Newsletter now Online

bairdca — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:26:28 -0500

Have a look at our latest edition of the McMaster Library News which we've just posted online or come to the library to pick up a print copy.