Academic Libraries

Bomb Threat Closes Ohio State Library

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A bomb threat targeting Ohio State University was e-mailed to the FBI Tuesday morning, prompting the school to evacuate four academic buildings, including the main library. An initial search turned up nothing out of the ordinary, officials said.

The threat was in a message received Tuesday at FBI headquarters in Washington, said Paul Bresson, an agency spokesman based there. Campus police said they were alerted at 8:19 a.m. Tuesday that the threats involved the William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library and three laboratory buildings.

"This is still in our assessment a threat, and there have been no suspicious package or devices found at this time," university Police Chief Paul Denton said at a news conference.

Authorities did not identify the source of the bomb threats at Ohio State, one of the nation's largest universities, with more than 56,000 students at its main Columbus campus. The FBI's Bresson declined to provide information about where the e-mail appeared to come from or whether the bureau believed the threat was real.

More info & photos from the CBS local affiliate.

Police find man naked, wrecking bookshelves

Police find man naked, wrecking bookshelves
A freshman in management was charged with simple assault and indecent exposure Wednesday night after he was found naked and knocking books off the shelves on the ninth floor of D.H. Hill library.

According to Capt. Jon Barnwell, Campus Police found Seth Pace just after 11 p.m. without his clothes, "agitated and in an altered mental state."

Students Lack Basic Research Skills, Study Finds

Despite the wealth of information available on the Internet, a recent study suggests that many students lack basic research skills.

Full story:

Smith Professors Legacy Includes Donations to Libraries

NORTHAMPTON MA- A late Smith College professor has bequeathed $1 million each to Look Memorial Park and Forbes Library, the biggest donation either has ever received.

Dilman Doland, who taught psychology at Smith for 30 years, died on Sept. 8 of last year at the age of 88, leaving an estate in excess of $10 million. Doland, who had no children of his own, willed much of that to his surviving brothers and their children, but set a generous amount aside for some of his favorite institutions, including Smith.

Kathleen Doland worked as a reference librarian at Forbes from 1956-1962 and her husband remembered the library in his will, bequeathing it $1 million as well. Director Janet Moulding said Doland had already established a reference room in her wife’s memory some years ago. By the terms of the will, the gift must be put into a trust and its interest used only for the reference department. Moulding said the library’s trustees have appointed a committee to perform a needs assessment and determine how much interest they can expect to realize on an annual basis.

Doland received the Trustees’ Award in 1999, Moulding said and was a frequent patron, often stopping by her office to say hello. Moulding said she was astounded by the gift.

A Library Designed for the Post-Print Era

From Fast Company Design:

The defining decorative element of a library has always been the books themselves. But now that institutions ranging from the University of Texas at Austin to ultra-traditional Cushing Academy are tossing their stacks in favor of digital collections, the question arises: How do you design a library when print books are no longer its core business?

At the University of Amsterdam, Dutch designers Studio Roelof Mulder and Bureau Ira Koers converted an existing 27,000-square-foot library into a massive study hall -- without any visible books -- to accommodate the 1,500 to 2,000 students who visit daily.

It’s a clever way to adapt to the post-print era. Libraries are expensive to operate. As books increasingly go digital, it makes sense for libraries to either downsize or, in the case of the University of Amsterdam, shift the focus of operations from books to people.

Check out the link for photos.

Library Inc. The most commercialized academic area within universities?

Library Inc.
From industry-backed research to CEO-style executive salaries and perquisites, the influence of corporate America on universities has been the subject of much popular and scholarly scrutiny. University libraries have largely escaped that attention. Yet libraries, the intellectual heart of universities, have become perhaps the most commercialized academic area within universities, with troubling implications for the future of higher education.

"4 Very Different Futures Are Imagined for Research Libraries"

4 Very Different Futures Are Imagined for Research Libraries: The first scenario, "Research Entrepreneurs," Scenario No. 2, "Reuse and Recycle," The third scenario, "Disciplines in Charge," Scenario No. 4, "Global Followers,"
All four scenarios lay out conditions that research libraries—and their parent institutions, not to mention individual researchers—have little control over.

Care of the Soul

A marvelous paper by Dr. Stephen Ramsay given at Emory University Libraris on encouraging academic librarians to be scholars, not slaves.

http://lenz.unl.edu/wordpress/?p=266

EEOC Sues New York University for National Origin and Racial Harassment, Retaliation

EEOC Sues New York University for National Origin and Racial Harassment, Retaliation– New York University, the largest private university in the United States and one of New York City’s ten biggest employers, violated federal law by creating a hostile work environment for an African-born employee that included degrading verbal harassment based on national origin and race, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit it filed today.

What do you do with 8 million books?

If your answer was "SCAN THEM ALL!" you're wrong:
What do you do with 8 million books? Build a shelf 153 miles long
Viewed from the outside, it could be any old warehouse in the country. Inside, though, it has the equivalent of 153 miles of storage space to store more than eight million books which form the bulk of the stock of arguably the country's most famous library.
Welcome to the new home for books owned by Oxford University's Bodleian Library, which has found that its historic entitlement to a copy of every volume published in the UK had led to it running out of storage space.

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