One million served?

Steve Sawyer, a senior library specialist who works at the circulation desk sent the following message to library staff this morning,

"Thought everyone would be (mildly) interested in the fact that somewhere between yesterday morning and this morning, the counter on the north-end security gate rolled over one million.

We now have proof that the renovated library IS popular and people DO like us.

(never mind the fact that this number includes those of us who work here and counts people leaving as well as coming)"

Open Access Week

Open Access Day expanded to Open Access Week this year. The big news in Open Access this year is the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA, which unfortunately sounds like FERPA). FRPAA is still in committee in the Senate. If enacted, it would require researchers receiving grants from the major federal funding sources to supply their manuscripts that have been accepted for publiction to the funding agency and would require free, online access to the manuscripts six months after publication. Similar requirements already apply to NIH grantees, but FRPAA would expand the requirements to include NSF, DOE, DOD, HHS, and NASA grantees, among others. Chief academic officers at many universities, including SIUC have expressed their support for FRPAA.

The other local news regarding Open Access is that there will be a forum on open access in Morris Library's auditorium at 3 PM on Thursday, November 19. The working title for the event is "Tollway or freeway: Which road leads to your research?" David Shulenberger will give a keynote presentation, followed by a panel of SIUC faculty discussing their experiences with open access.

Outstanding Teacher Lecture Oct. 26 at 3:30 PM

The Outstanding Teacher Lecture has been rescheduled. It will be held on Monday, Oct. 26 from 3:30 - 4:30 PM in the library's auditorium, followed by a reception. Kim Harris will present "What Works at Work: Six Lessons for the Classroom."

Another Morris Library Blog

The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at Morris Library has begun a blog to note interesting items that SCRC staff find while processing or cataloging materials held in SCRC.

The blog is called Raiders of the Lost Archives: Behind the stacks at the Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, SIUC. I can only speculate that the rare book librarian's visit to Petra, Jordan during her summer vacation helped to inspire the title.

Morris Library at Homecoming

Congratulations to the Morris Library Precision Book Cart Drill Team for taking first place out of twelve groups in the marching unit division of the SIUC homecoming parade competition.

Table of Contents for New Issues of Favorite Journals Delivered to You

If you have a favorite journal that you want to see as soon as a new issue comes out, you probably can have its table of contents emailed to you, even if you aren't a subscriber. This service is standard for the major publishers and are available for many smaller publishers too.
The publishers want to get as much traffic to their articles as they can, so they usually allow tables of contents to be sent regardless of whether you or Morris Library subscribes to the journal.

Typically the email will have a list of articles in the latest issue with a hyperlink to the journal's site for the abstract and article. Many also can send the alerts as RSS feeds instead of email messages.

For some of the major publishers, the links to set up alerts can currently be found on the following locations:
Elsevier ScienceDirect: Alert me to new Volumes / Issues near the top center of the page;
IEEE Xplore: on the "Alerts" link in the top banner on the right;
Springer (SpringerLink): In the toolbar on the left at the "Alerts" link under My Menu;
Wiley InterScience: on the Web page for an individual journal, on the Set E-Mail Alert link next to the image of the cover of the journal.