TC Boyle at the Library

Every year, Champlain selects a Community Book for the campus to read and come together to discuss. This year we read T.C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain.

Boyle was here for two and 1/2 days. The big bang of those two days is his book talk. Andy Burkhardt, the Library's Emerging Technologies librarian, showed his emerging technologies stuff by live-twittering it. Thanks Andy! The talk was amazing: Boyle read a short story, talked about his writing process, read an excerpt from the Tortilla Curtain, and then answered questions. He was very funny but also gave a lot of insight into how he writes. My favorite part was when he wouldn't answer a question about the book's interpretation. Essentially, he believes that the writer must leave issues of interpretation up to the reader. That is our job. If he told us it was just one way, what fun would that be? YES!

One of the more quiet but wonderful parts to the Community Book author's visit is their seeing our GGD students' renditions of the bookjacket. Here's Professor David Lustgarten's announcement of the project:

Students in Graphic Design and Illustration classes have produced their own interpretation of T.C. Boyle's "The Tortilla Curtain" in the form of new book jackets. Their varied, imaginative, and highly professional work can be
viewed in the Miller Information Commons magazine area on the first floor, where new acquisitions are normally displayed. The show will be up for about three weeks.

TC Boyle seemed to really enjoy the bookjackets, as these picture show:


It’s always wonderful to have student art work at the Library, but even better to have authors and students mingling, discussing the importance of the students’ choices in their work, and students getting the real world perspective of book art in the eyes of an acclaimed author.

Yup, it was pretty awesome.

Kyle Dodson's Meaningful Books

Kyle Dodson, our new Director of the Center for Service and Civic Engagement, was truly engaging on Monday during his Meaningful Books talk. The conversation branched over a lot of topics: race, media, accountability, politics, elections, youth, the individual v. the society...I could go on. Needless to say, it was wonderful.

In case you haven't made it over to look at the display of Kyle's books on the Main level of the MIC (come on over!), here is the list of books that he discussed:
NVISIBLE MAN-Ralph Ellison
NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME-James Baldwin
FOUNTAINHEAD-Ayn Rand
THE ORDEAL OF INTEGRATION-Orlando Patterson
CATCHER IN THE RYE-J.D. Salinger
A SEPARATE PEACE-John Knowles
THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD-Zora Neale Hurston
CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES-John Kennedy Toole
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD-Harper Lee
AMAZING GRACE-Jonathan Kozol
THE SNOW LEOPARD-Peter Matthiessen
THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD-Ray Suarez
DON QUIXOTE-Miguel de Cervantes
LOVESONG: Becoming a Jew-Julius Lester
MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL-John Berendt
ALL SOULS: A FAMILY STORY FROM SOUTHIE-Michael Patrick MacDonald
LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET-Rainer Marie Rilke
FREAKONOMICS-Stephen Dubner and Steven Levit

Many thanks to Kyle for an excellent hour of conversation and welcome to Champlain!

Shiver Me Timbers!!!!

Happy International Talk like a Pirate Day! I almost forgot, but luckily I was reminded by one of my friends online. So I exhort the faculty, staff, and students of Champlain to shove off and start talking like ye be pirates. I would really like to hear about an entire class conducted in piratese, but that may be wishful thinking.

I may try to take a reference session today so I can throw at least some pirating talk into the questions I get. Maybe I'll make an eye patch, or at least draw an anchor tattoo on my arm.

If you arRRRR not sure how to talk tlike a pirate here is an instructional video:



Good luck me hearties!

Grockit and learning in gaming

Here at the library we have been involved with two separate groups who are designing games for us. These games are meant to teach information literacy. We are not quite sure how we are ultimately going to use them, but that may be easier once we see the finished projects. From the meetings I have been to, the games are looking pretty solid and I can't wait to play them.

In addition, a number of students recently got a grant from the UN to design a game that combats violence against women. They traveled to South Africa and from their blog posts clearly had an amazing and moving experience. Learning in gaming is clearly a trend around here, and an awesome one from my perspective. I love fooling people into learning.

This trend is not limited to Champlain College though. The startup company Grockit took home a Jury Selection award at this year's TechCrunch50. From what I have read it is “Massively Multi Player Online Learning Game” in which you are a student in a classroom and you get questions that you can discuss and debate and ultimately decide on. You award "Grockit points" to other students that increase or decrease their ranking. It sounds like an online study session but funner. The article talks about using it to study for things like the SATs, but I could see this product used in a lot of interesting ways, especially in the classroom. They have been very secretive about it for the past year and only now are they opening it up to the light of day. I am excited to learn more about it and see where this game goes.

Who knows, maybe some of our graduates will go on to work on this game or something even better.

ArtStor Workshops

This fall, the Library will be offereing workshops to help students and faculty get the knack for ArtStor & Naxos. Artstor offers over 750,000 images from artistic traditions across many times and cultures, including painting, architecture, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design. Naxos, gives online access to classical, jazz, folk, blues, world, and other music genres. It includes over 16,000 CDs, plus liner notes, libretti, biographies, and more.

Workshops will cover:

ArtStor Level 1: Explore ArtStor, navigate the collections, search images, look at individual images, look at details of an image. Create an account and start a folder. (30 minutes)

ArtStor Level 2: Use an account, offline image viewer, and slide sorter. Make notes. The last 20 minutes will cover user privileges, accessing class folders, instructor privileges. (30 minutes)

ArtStor More: Please contact a librarian for a private consultation

Or, check out ArtStor on Youtube.
1. Register for an Artstor Account
2. Making an Image Group
3. Downloading Images to Powerpoint


Naxos: General exploration of the music database. Search for artists, pieces of music, era, or instrument. Create a playlist. (30 minutes)

Join us at a workshop!
Artstor, Level 1
• 9/10/08—noon (30 min.)—MIC G08
• 9/18/08—12:30 pm (30 min.)—Foster 104
• 9/22/08—3:30 pm (30 min.)—MIC 308
• 9/29/08—5:00 pm (30 min.)—Foster 100

Artstor, Level 2
• 9/29/08—3:30 (30 min.)—MIC G08
• 10/1/08—5:00 pm (30 min.)—Wick 101

Naxos
• 9/16/08—noon (30 min.)—Foster 104
• 10/8/08—12:30 pm (30 min.)—MIC 308

Workshops are interactive and for faculty and students. If you plan on requiring attendance for students, please let us know!

New librarian joining the team

Hi! I have been here three whole weeks now, so I figure that I should formally introduce myself. My name is Andy Burkhardt, and I am the new Emerging Technologies Librarian at Champlain College. I am very excited to be working here. Burlington seems like a very lively, effervescent city. I am originally from Minnesota so I am no stranger to cold and snow. I also recently got my Masters in Library and Information Science from UW-Madison in Wisconsin, so I am no stranger to local cheeses either.

As an Emerging Technologies Librarian I plan on finding creative ways to use new and existing technologies to make using the library easier and hopefully more fun. An example of something I am going to be working on is making the instant messaging reference service we provide more visible and available longer hours. Another technology I plan on employing is screen-casting software. This is software that is used to capture movements, mouse-clicks and pretty much anything else that goes happens on a computer screen. I plan on making easy to understand tutorials that explain things like how to do research and how to find books and articles. These are just a couple examples of the ideas that I have swimming around in my brain. There are all sorts of interweb technologies that I would like to try out here at Champlain. But there is probably a lot of stuff that I haven’t even thought of that may work great at the library. If you have any great ideas for technologies that you’d like to see used in the library or know more about, I would love to hear about them. You can get a hold of me here, or my screen name on AIM is andyatmic.

I won’t be hidden away in my office behind the warm glow of the computer screen all the time. I’ll be out at the reference desk answering questions. I also look forward to a heavy instruction schedule, assisting in the new information literacy initiative for which we are busily preparing. I look forward to meeting a lot of new people, making new friends and becoming a part of the community here at Champlain College.

P.S. These “Read” posters are kinda cool. You can make your own here at the ALA website.

So much blogging going on

The Faculty Internationalization Initiative is well underway at Champlain. How do I know? Because there's a whole lot of blogging going on. Some faculty are on their way, some are out in the world right now, and some are already back in the States. But no matter where in the world they are, you can read about their adventures, observations, and experiences on their blogs. Professors David Kite, Bob Mayer, Richard Hunt, and of course Gary Scudder are full of interesting tales. I know Prof. Scudder heads out this weekend so add their blogs to you RSS for updates.