Peninsula College Library Biblio-Bits: Peninsula College Library

Showing posts with label Peninsula College Library. Show all posts

20071024

What Can An Excellent Library Do For Student Learning?

What Can An Excellent Library Do For Student Learning? notes key research findings from the DEEP (Documenting Effective Educational Practice) Project and NSSE (National Survey of Student Engagement) research.

Some ways to promote academic challenge and greater student engagement are also noted. Critical terminology relating to the Peninsula College Library Mission statement is defined (definitions are from ODLIS-Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science), and the Library mission is compared to that of museums and archives, in light of Ranganathan's Fifth Law of Library Science: "A Library is a growing organism."

20071019

Libraries, Archives, Museums, Ranganathan, and Me

Reading the book, Five Laws of Library Science (1931), by the father of Indian Library Science, S. R. Ranganathan, inspired me to become a librarian. Today, while thinking about the difference between libraries, museums, and archives, I recalled Ranganathan's Fifth Law of Library Science: A Library is a growing organism.

As we know, living organisms ingest, digest, and excrete. So do libraries. Acquisitions is ingestion, while information competency instruction is all about promoting good digestion. To remain responsive to curricular necessities a community college library is also constantly excreting, sanitarily called "deselection" (which used to be called "weeding"). Libraries are growing organisms.

Archives and museums ingest and digest but are less prone to excretion. According to ODLIS, the Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science, archives are about preservation. Archives preserve noncurrent records, usually in a repository like the photo of the Toronto archives above, in this post, for "their permanent historical, informational, evidential, legal, administrative, or monetary value." Museums are about "the preservation and display of collections of physical artifacts and specimens."

Archives and museums are needed and useful cultural institutions, but their emphasis on permanent preservation, as opposed to the Library's instrumental preservation, indicates they are serving an important purpose, but one different from the Library. Archives are not about circulating their collections to the public, to take home to further learning. Museums are not systematically organized to meet the information needs of a specific user population, the way academic libraries are.

The Peninsula College Library mission indicates a purpose more focused on intellectual digestion of information to promote student learning: "To serve the information needs of the students, faculty, staff and community in an environment that nurtures learning and fosters freedom of intellectual activity."

20070921

Online Resources (Library Databases) Now Arranged by Broad Subject Categories

The Peninsula College Library databases (also called "deep Web" subscription databases) are now arranged on the Online Resources page by broad subject categories, with the interdisciplinary databases at the top of the list:

ALL DISCIPLINES Peninsula College Library Catalog
ALL DISCIPLINES A-to-Z Index to Electronic Journals
ALL DISCIPLINES Academic Search Premier
ALL DISCIPLINES Ebrary Academic Complete
ALL DISCIPLINES ProQuest
ALL DISCIPLINES Reference Premium Online (Oxford)
BUSINESS ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry
BUSINESS Business & Management E-Book Collection
BUSINESS Small Business Resource Center
EDUCATION eLibrary
EDUCATION Teacher Reference Center
HISTORY History Resource Center: U.S.
HISTORY History Resource Center: World
INFORMATION STUDIES Library, Information Science, & Technology Abstracts
LITERATURE Literary Databases
LITERATURE Literary Index
LITERATURE Magill on Literature
NEWS Alt-Press Watch
NEWS Ethnic News Watch
NEWS New York Times
NEWS Wall Street Journal
SCIENCE Access Science
SCIENCE Environment Complete
SOCIAL SCIENCE CQ Researcher

20070730

The 15 Most Circulated Peninsula College Library Book Titles, 2006-2007

1. Cambridge ancient history. (12 volume set).

2. Capitalism and modern social theory : an analysis of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber / Anthony Giddens.

3. Democracy and social ethics / Jane Addams ; edited by Anne Firor Scott.

4. Brendan Prairie / Dan O'Brien.

5. Fundamentals of anatomy and physiology / Frederic H. Martini

6. Graphical approach to precalculus / John Hornsby, Margaret L. Lial.

7. Karl Marx, 1818-1968.

8. Marx's concept of man / Erich Fromm

9. Political analysis : technique and practice / Louise G. White.

10. Third wave / by Alvin Toffler.

11. Theory of social and economic organization. Translated by A.M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons.

12. Sociology of Max Weber. / Julien Freund ; translated from the French by Mary Ilford.

13. Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. With a foreword by R. H. Tawney.

14. On social evolution : selected writings / Herbert Spencer ; edited and with an introd. by J. D. Y. Peel.

15. Karl Marx, his life and teachings (Leben und Lehre) / by Ferdinand Tonnies

Faculty Reading Recommendations

ARANA, M. (2006). Cellophane: a novel. New York, Dial Press.
BERNSTEIN, C. (2007). A woman in charge: the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton. New York, Alfred A. Knopf.
BESCHLOSS, M. R. (2007). Presidential courage: brave leaders and how they changed America, 1789-1989. New York, Simon & Schuster.
FRIEDMAN, T. L. (2007). The world is flat: a brief history of the twenty-first century [version 3.0]. New York, Picador.
GORE, A. (2007). The assault on reason. New York, Penguin Press.
OBAMA, B. (2006). The audacity of hope: thoughts on reclaiming the American dream. New York, Crown Publishers.
RITTER, S. (2007). Waging peace: the art of war for the antiwar movement. New York, Nation Books.
WARD, P. D. (2007). Under a green sky: global warming, the mass extinctions of the past, and what they mean for our future. New York, Smithsonian Books/Collins.
WEINER, T. (2007). Legacy of ashes: the history of the CIA. New York, Doubleday.

Librarian's List: Selected Stage Conceptions

BECK, D. E., & COWAN, C. C. (2004). Spiral dynamics. Developmental management. Cambridge, Mass [etc.], Blackwell Business.
COMMONS, M. L. (1989). Adult development: comparisons and applications of developmental models. New York, Praeger.
FEUERSTEIN, G., & GEBSER, J. (1987). Structures of consciousness: the genius of Jean Gebser-- an introduction and critique. Lower Lake, Calif, Integral Pub.
GHOSE, A., & DALAL, A. S. (2001). A greater psychology: an introduction to Sri Aurobindo's psychological thought. New York, Jeremy P Tarcher/Putnam.
GILLIGAN, C. (1982). In a different voice: psychological theory and women's development. Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press.
KEGAN, R. (1982). The evolving self: problem and process in human development. Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press.
KOHLBERG, L. (1984). The psychology of moral development: the nature and validity of moral stages. San Francisco, Harper & Row.
LOEVINGER, J., & BLASI, A. (1976). Ego development: [conceptions and theories]. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers.
MILLER, M. E., & COOK-GREUTER, S. R. (1994). Transcendence and mature thought in adulthood: the further reaches of adult development. Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield.
PERRY, W. G., JR. (1999). Forms of Intellectual and Ethical Development in the College Years: A Scheme. Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education Series.
PIAGET, J., GRUBER, H. E., & VONÈCHE, J. J. (1977). The essential Piaget. New York, Basic Books.

Faculty Retreat Books for Discussion Groups (Fall 2007)

ANGIER, N. (2007). The canon: a whirligig tour of the beautiful basics of science. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company. (suggested by Dan Stengel)
DUMAS, F. (2003). Funny in Farsi: a memoir of growing up Iranian in America. New York, Villard. (suggested by Dan Yezbick)
GOLEMAN, D. (2007). Social Intelligence The New Science of Human Relationships. Bantam Dell Pub Group. (suggested by Aleilah Lawson)
LEDERMAN, L. M., & TERESI, D. (2006). The god particle: if the universe is the answer, what is the question? Boston, Houghton Mifflin. (suggested by Jeff Zirul)
MACMILLAN, M. (2007). Nixon and Mao: the week that changed the world. New York, Random House. (suggested by Steven Olson)
ROSE, M. (2005). Lives on the boundary: a moving account of the struggles and achievements of America's educationally underprepared. New York, N.Y., U.S.A., Penguin Books. (suggested by Janet Lucas)
SPENGLER, O., WERNER, H., HELPS, A., & ATKINSON, C. F. (1962). The decline of the West. New York, Knopf. (suggested by Wes Cecil)

Librarian's List: Social Epistemology

LACKEY, J., & SOSA, E. (2006). The epistemology of testimony. Oxford, Clarendon Press.
MCINNIS, R. G. (2001). Discourse synthesis: studies in historical and contemporary social epistemology. Westport, Conn, Praeger.
REMEDIOS, F. (2003). Legitimizing scientific knowledge: an introduction to Steve Fuller's social epistemology. Lanham, Md, Lexington Books.
SPINDEL CONFERENCE, HENDERSON, D. K., & TOLLEFSEN, D. (2006). Spindel Conference 2005. Social epistemology. Memphis, Tenn, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Memphis.

Librarian's List: Tat Tvam Asi and Potpourri

JACOBY, S. (2004). Freethinkers: a history of American secularism. New York, Metropolitan Books.
KELLY, E. F., & KELLY, E. W. (2007). Irreducible mind: toward a psychology for the 21st century. Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield.
KRIPAL, J. J. (2007). Esalen: America and the religion of no religion. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
MAXWELL, N. K. (2006). Sacred stacks: the higher purpose of libraries and librarianship. Chicago, American Library Association.
SCHROEDER, G. L. (2001). The hidden face of God: how science reveals the ultimate truth. New York, Free Press.
WILBER, K. (2007). The integral vision: a very short introduction to the revolutionary integral approach to life, God, the universe, and everything. Boston, Shambhala Publications.

Peninsula College Library Biblio-Bits