Welcome, BSC Students! Welcome, Fall Semester!

The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. "Summer is over and gone," they sang. "Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying." The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into fall - the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.

Summer is coming to an end on the Hilltop - but a wonderful fall semester awaits. Those of us who work in the library look forward to seeing many new and returning students over the next few days. We invite our new students to participate in the Library / ARC / IT orientation sessions on Monday, August 29 at 12:30 and 1:30, and also to view the "Top 10 library questions" asked by new students at BSC.

To our returning students we can simply say: Welcome back! We've missed you! Please stop by and check out a book or two (perhaps even a copy of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, excerpted above).

See you soon!

~ your BSC library staff

August awaits!

At the end of the day on August 1, the final exams for Birmingham-Southern's 2011 summer session will be over, and the college will enter a calm, quiet period... at least, on the surface! During this time, while faculty and staff prepare for the wave of incoming students, the library will be open Monday through Friday from 8 am to 5 pm. We will be closed on the weekends.

Have a warm, wonderful August!

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

The winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was announced last week. According to the contest website, entrants are challenged "to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels." The contest takes its name from the Victorian novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, famous for beginning his 1830 novel Paul Clifford with the line, "It was a dark and stormy night."

The winning entry, from Sue Fondrie of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, reads as follows:
Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

For runners-up and winners in specific categories, see http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2011.htm.

Student art in the BSC Library

Jenny Young was selected as this year's recipient of the Library Art Purchase Award. Her digital archival inkjet prints, "The Other Side of the Mirror" and "White Light" (pictured below) were acquired by the BSC Library in May. They are on display on the ground floor of the library.

The BSC Library Art Purchase Award is funded through our used book sales, which enable the library to purchase at least one outstanding piece of art from the Juried Student Art Exhibition each year. We congratulate Jenny and thank her for making the library a more interesting place with her art!

NetLibrary moving to EBSCO platform

BSC currently provides access to more than 50,000 e-books via NetLibrary. If you have used any of these books, you may be interested to learn that NetLibrary will be moving to a new platform later this week; it will soon look much like other EBSCO databases. Important: if you have a NetLibrary account, your existing preferences, notes, holds, etc. will not be transferred to the new site, so please save any of your account information somewhere safe at your earliest convenience. Additional information may be found here. You can preview the new platform here.

Dr. Andy Gannon's Provost's Forum podcast now available.

The BSC Library is pleased to present Dr. Andy Gannon’s Provost’s Forum “It’s a Hard Life: Giant Freshwater Prawns in Search of Calcium,” recorded March 3, 2011. This is an enjoyable presentation on the variations in the calcium levels in freshwater prawns as they molt. The study of calcium levels in prawns has relevance to calcium levels in human bones. Dr. Gannon also offers insight into the trials and tribulations of a long term scientific study. We hope you enjoy the presentation.

The video/iPod version is Here, and the audio version is Here.

Steve Laughlin

Library closed for 4th of July weekend

The BSC Library will be closed on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (July 2, 3, and 4, 2011) for the 4th of July weekend. We will reopen on Tuesday, July 5, at 8 a.m.

Happy Independence Day!