More Medical Schools Going Bookless

AILEEN MCCRILLIS

NYU health sciences library

The Association of American Medical Colleges predicted that by 2030, the United States would have a shortage of up to 104,900 physicians. To try to curb this impending crisis, a wave of new medical schools have opened in the last decade. Eleven schools have been accredited by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education in the last five years, and eight more are currently under consideration.

As a condition of accreditation, these new schools must provide access to “well-maintained library resources sufficient in breadth of holdings and technology” to support the school’s educational mission, however, many medical schools are deciding that large print collections are no longer a vital component of those resources.

Paperless Libraries

Charles Stewart, associate dean and chief librarian of City College of New York, of the City University of New York system, said that his institution chose to go a paperless route for the newly opened CUNY School of Medicine on the City College campus for much the same reason — 24-7 access. “Stewart says they chose the all-electronic option since their medical school clearly wanted instant e-access to all their resources.

 

The Frank H. Netter School of Medicine at Quinnipiac University, which accepted its first students in 2013, is designed as a paperless institution. The school has a library space where students can read and study, but the vast majority of the library’s resources are online. Bruce Koeppen, dean of the school, said that by making most of the library’s holdings electronic, it ensured that students and faculty could access information “anywhere and anytime, even when the library is closed.”

Hybrid Approach

The Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, opened in 2010, with just 50 books on its shelves, however, the students quickly pushed to expand this collection to 4,000 books, saying that they preferred to use physical materials for studying. The school noted, however, that it did not want to increase its print collection beyond the current level.

Fay Towell, director of libraries at the Greenville Hospital System, said that it was interesting that students at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, which opened in 2012, frequently requested access to both print and electronic resources. Given the small size of the library, and the prohibitive cost of providing both print and online versions of texts, Towell said the library had to be selective. She noted that often journals might cost more electronically than in print — “if a journal cost is $4,000 electronically and $400 in print, then the library makes space for print,” she said.

Roger Schonfeld, director of the Library and Scholarly Communication Program for Ithaka S+R, pointed out that when medical libraries thin their print collections, it does not necessarily mean that the campus loses access to those physical materials. “Whether the collections are moved to an off-site facility, or the library participates in a shared print program, it is almost always still possible to provide access to a print version on those occasions when it is necessary to do so.” The trend for thinning print collections is not unique to medical libraries, said Schonfeld — many science and engineering libraries have done the same.

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Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel prize in literature 2017 Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Kazuo Ishiguro’s new book features an American woman who claims to be a virtuoso on the cello. She befriends and tutors a young Hungarian cellist earning his living playing in cafes. she tells him “you have it, most definitely you have … potential.” As the days turn into weeks, he wonders why she does not appear to own a cello herself, and eventually, as summer draws to a close, he discovers why. She cannot actually play the instrument at all. So convinced was she of her own musical genius, no teacher ever seemed equal to it, and so rather than tarnish her gift with imperfection, she chose never to realize it at all. “At least I haven’t damaged what I was born with,” she says.

Ishiguro’s fiction is acclaimed for the spare elegance of the writing, a testament to the power of what is left unsaid.

Kazuo was born in Japan, but moved with his parents and two sisters to Surrey when he was five, and has lived here ever since. His parents found British culture quite bewildering, and Ishiguro was inevitably cast in the role of anthropological go-between, but this left him with a fascination with the minutiae of class rather than any wound of dislocation

Google’s New Added Feature: Searching For eBooks At Your Local Library

Google has rolled out a new feature in Search that allows users to check if an e-book is available to borrow from the local library. When searching for a book, the “Get Book” tab shows a “Borrow ebook” section, which lists public library systems nearby with a link to open the webpage and borrow. If you search for the title of a book, you’ll see one of two things. On desktop search, there’s an additional heading in the detailed results/information card on the right. But on mobile, it’s buried in the Get Book tab. There is some inconsistency with this feature.

Better off visiting your local library’s website not only for ebooks but for print  and the library programs they have to offer.

Andrew Carnegie & His Libraries

Andrew Carngie libraries brought a world of books to many towns and opened a broader world to those who read.

When Andrew began thinking of what to do with the vast wealth he had accumulated, his thoughts turned to the libraries that had given him his self-education and helped make him the man he became. He decided that to give that same opportunities to others was the best use of his money.

He began by funding libraries in the two locations he had grown up in: Dunfermline, Scotland, and the Allegheny/Pittsburgh area in Pennsylvania. The first of the Carnegie libraries was the one in Dunfermline and it opened in 1883.

The first library he commissioned in the U.S. was at Allegheny, Pennsylvania. The grand opening was in 1890, but although it was the first one he commissioned, a second one in Braddock, Pennsylvania, was the first to open in the states in 1889.

In 1892, he granted the funds for a library in Fairfield, Iowa, the first outside Pennsylvania.

By 1899, his Carnegie Libraries were springing up across the nation.

Because of segregation, black people were not allowed to use libraries, so Andrew also funded libraries strictly for them. He founded Colored Carnegie Libraries in Houston, Texas, and Savannah, Georgia, among other cities.

 

Andrew set up his library grants so that small towns could receive $10,000 to build a library, which was a substantial amount in those days. In order to receive that grant, the town’s elected officials had to demonstrate the need for a public library, provide the building site, pay to staff and maintain the library by committing public funds for that purpose in the amount of 10 percent of the construction cost per year and to provide free access to its patrons.

When Andrew began funding library construction, the policy of existing U.S. libraries was to operate with “closed stacks,” which meant that patrons requested a book from a staff member and that person would bring the book from the off-limit shelves of books. No browsing allowed.

 

The first five libraries he funded operated in this fashion, but Andrew soon realized this required more staff, so he came up with an “open stacks” form of operation where patrons could browse the collection of the library and decide which books they wanted to check out. He was then able to have the libraries he funded designed so that just one librarian could staff the library.

This new policy caught on quickly and soon most other public libraries were adopting this form of operating system.

In Missouri, the earliest Carnegie Library was built in 1899 and the last one in 1921. His donations for the 35 Carnegie Libraries in Missouri totaled over $1.5 million during that 22-year period.

The Carnegie Library at Bolivar was constructed in 1915 with a grant from Andrew for $8,000. It was the first public library in Bolivar and remained a public library until 2000. The building now serves as the home of the Polk County Genealogical Society.

The Carnegie Library at Marshfield is claimed to be the one granted by Andrew to the smallest community west of the Mississippi to receive such a grant. It was constructed in 1911 with that $5,000 grant and operated as a public library until 1995. It now houses the Webster County Historical Museum.

 

At the turn of the last century, Springfield residents began negotiating with Andrew Carnegie to acquire funds for a library and he granted them $50,000.

They then raised $3,250 to purchase the site for the library and it was constructed and then opened in March of 1905. At the time it opened, Springfield’s Carnegie Library housed 700 books. That building still serves as a library today and is part of the Springfield/Greene County Library System.

By the time Andrew Carnegie died on Aug. 11, 1919, he had given away over $350 million, which would equate to over $80 billion in today’s dollars.

 

Moreover, he endowed the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, founded the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust.

He contributed a substantial amount of money to construct the Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson in 1911 to study the planets and stars. He built and owned the famous Carnegie Hall in New York City. He was one of the contributors to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, and help Washington found the National Negro Business League.

Andrew also started the Carnegie Hero Fund for the United States and Canada to recognize deeds of heroism. In 1903, he contributed $1.5 million to build the Peace Palace at The Hague and in 1914 he founded the Church Peace Union comprised of world leaders in politics, academia and religion in the hopes of heading off World War I.

There are two towns in the U.S., one in Pennsylvania and one in Oklahoma that bear his last name.

Department Of Motor Vehicles (DMV) Coming To Virginia’s Local Libraries

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is bringing its DMV Connect program to select branches of Central Rappahannock Regional Library.

DMV Connect was developed to serve Virginians who may not be able to travel to a DMV office. Customers will be able to get and renew ID cards, licenses and learners’ permits. Customers can also take care of titles, vehicle registrations, transfers and plate returns. DMV Connect is not able to perform any testing or provide birth, death or marriage certificates.

On Friday, DMV Connect will be at Snow Branch from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It will return to Snow Branch on Dec. 1, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

On Nov. 20, Fredericksburg Branch will host DMV Connect, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., in the Library Theater. It will be back at Fredericksburg Branch on Dec. 15 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Meeting Room 1.

Libraries Lacking In Diversity

 

A report was research and generated by Ithaka S+R saying there are too many white Librarians.

As a group, librarians “are over three quarters white and nearly 90 percent white in leadership roles,” the Ithaka S+R report reveals.

The lack of “library employees of color” is a “shortcoming” in the academic library industry, the report also says. Skin color is a critically important characteristic for library employees.

“The library community considers diversity to be a core value. But the academic library sector has struggled with addressing equity, diversity and inclusion.”

Academic libraries have struggled with an excess of white employees for decades, notes Inside Higher Ed.

The Report

 

 

Textual Analysis Of More Than 1 million Books By Scholars: Reveals A Growth Of Cursing In Books Since the 1950’s

The study found that “motherF………” was used 678 times more often in the mid-2000s than the early 1950s, occurrences of “s..t” multiplied 69 times, and “f..k” was 168 times more frequent.

Led by Jean Twenge, author and psychology professor at San Diego State University, the team analysed the titles making up the Google Books corpus of American English books published between 1950 and 2008, looking for uses of the words “s..t”, “”, “f..k”, “c..t”, “c……r”, “motherfr”, and other curse words”.

Overall, they found that writers were “significantly more likely to use swearwords in the years since 1950”, with books published in 2005-2008 28 times more likely to include swearwords than books published in the early 1950s. The paper that was publishefd“American culture increasingly values individual self-expression and weaker social taboos, and these trends are manifested in the increasing use of swearwords.”

Twenge and her fellow authors, graduate student Hannah Van Landingham and University of Georgia psychology professor W Keith Campbell, link the rise of profanities in US literature to the increasingly individualistic nature of the country’s culture, as well as the relaxation of societal taboos.