The Center for Research Libraries

Hope College is now a member of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), a partnership of more than 240 university, college, and independent research libraries. The consortium acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. These resources are then made available to member institutions cooperatively, through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. The Center’s mission is to support advanced research and teaching in the humanities, sciences and social, sciences by ensuring the survival and availability of the knowledge resources vital to these disciplines.

This new membership is a big deal. CRL collections are diverse and highly developed, including:

• 6,500 international newspapers
• 2,500 U.S. newspapers, many dating to the colonial era
• 2,000 U.S. ethnic titles
• More than 38,000 foreign journals that are rarely held in U.S. Libraries
• More than 800,000 foreign dissertations - mostly from European institutions
• Major microform and paper collections from Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Europe, Asia, Southeast Asia, and more

For researchers at member institutions CRL functions as an axillary library of extraordinary resources with user-focused policies including project-length loan privileges and three-day delivery on most interlibrary loans. Faculty also are eligible to participate in a demand purchase program whereby purchases of up to $2,000 annually for foreign dissertations, newspapers, and archival material may be requested.

Access to the CRL collections is available immediately. The library staff will be working on adding links and other access points to the CRL collections. If you are interested in learning more about how CRL may support your research, contact your librarian.

Finals Week at Hope - How Students Work

At lunch today I came across some statistics in a publication called NextSpace (By the Numbers: statistics to think about).

• 278 photo uploads per second to Facebook
• 10 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
• 2,000,000 e-mails sent per second
• 100,000,000,000 clicks per day on the web
• 1,000,000 instant messages sent per second
• 55,000,000,000,000 links between all web pages

Then, I did a walk around the library to see what was happening during finals week. The photos tell an interesting story.

Why the Library?

The Library recently finished a light and informative video aimed at first-year students. The purpose of the video is to introduce you to an academic library, to show you how using the library can positively influence your academic experience. We know that for many of you entering Hope College this fall, using a library is not part of your past experience. And in the age of Google, Yahoo, Del.icio.us, and facebook we have a pretty good idea why this is so. So what can we offer you when you ask "Why the Library?"


When you find yourself finally settled into some corner of a library, as you begin to engage with the ideas flowing from a book, a journal, or from your own pen, you will find that your mind clears. Surrounded by quiet, you find that the atmosphere in a library gives you permission to shut out worries and demands of your daily life, and that you can think. You find that you are able to concentrate in a way that you cannot in other places. You have permission to engage fully with the ideas in front of you and you find more clarity in your own thoughts.

When you walk between the book stacks in the library, you are walking among conversations handed down over centuries. Conversations of great men and women, and also those of misguided purpose, sit together on shelves in constant discussion. Conversations of those with whom you agree and those with whom you disagree await your examination. Sitting amongst this noisy conversation, you have the opportunity to discern your own truth, perhaps a truth that did not previously exist for you. Creative expression, that which makes us most human, is preserved among the shelves; literature, poetry, dance, visual arts and music are there to be experienced and explored. The greatest scientific discoveries, emerging from the sweat of years of research, building upon trial and error of those who have gone before them, live in the texts of scholarly journals.

We all recognize that libraries now exist in two realms, the physical and the virtual. The virtual library - electronic books, journals, reference sources, and databases of digital print, audio and image files - make library research efficient, convenient and, in some ways, easier than in the past. The materials found in virtual libraries, however, are just beginning to become visible through search engines like Google. Most virtual library material is concealed within library electronic collections. Research shows that young adults "do not find library-sponsored resources intuitive and therefore prefer to use Google and Yahoo instead: these offer a familiar, if simplistic solution, for their study needs." What the library can offer then, is a guiding hand through the maze. Research also shows that users of digital libraries spend more time "clicking around," figuring out how to navigate the site, and bouncing from one link to another as they "skim" for information. Librarians teach people which electronic resources will be best for a particular need, how to navigate the interface, how to think about search results, and how to get to the content.

Just as the technology of finding information has changed, so have the ways in which students learn. We now know that learning happens in community. In addition to reading, students spend much of their time creating, exploring, communicating and collaborating. Libraries are responding to these shifts by providing a supportive environment that nurtures these activities, integrating content with technology and services. Going beyond what is learned in a classroom by further exploring, internalizing and challenging, requires curiosity, a thirst to know more. The best library cannot instill that in our students alone. But we hope when that thirst appears, what we provide will satisfy.

Over time the ways in which scholarly information is communicated and how and where it is accessed will evolve. Libraries will adapt and provide new tools, methods and services for our users. Perhaps some day soon everything truly will be available on Google. Until that time however, we need to continue to explain to our students, "why the library."

-- Kelly Jacobsma
Director of Libraries

Music in the Catalog

It's Sir George Grove's 188th birthday! This English music historian lends his name to one of the premier reference sources in music: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Even better, we have online access to Grove Music Online, a compilation of several music dictionaries. Not only can you read about music from your college computer, or when logged into your library account, you can now listen to music directly from the catalog using one of our music databases. Next time you find a music title followed by the words "electronic resource" click through to the sample. Sir George would be thrilled, I'm sure.

The Olympics

For the next few days world attention will be turned to the business of the Olympic games. They are not only a series of sporting events, they are also political and historical in nature. To supplement your television viewing I recommend the following: Triumph: The Untold Story of Jesse Owens and Hitler's Olympics by Jeremy Schaap; Munich on dvd, and When the Girls Came Out to Play: The Birth of American Sportswear by Patricia Warner. When it comes to sports, we have something for everyone.

The Pope

Pope Benedict I died on this date in 579. Today's Pope Benedict XVI is not only a much studied Pope, he is a prolific author himself. Co-Workers for the Truth is a book of his daily meditations, God and the World is a more theological discussion of Catholicism. Between the collections of the college and the seminary we can learn much about today's Benedict.

Connection: CIS 2007 meets CIS 2008

Last week, the United States Senate passed the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, part of which lifts current restrictions that prevent HIV-positive individuals from immigrating to the United States. Read about this developing news story in a July 21st Africa News Service article. Curious to know more about connections between global health and immigration? Visit the Reference Desk for more reading ideas.

Road Trip

On this date in 1903 the Ford Motor Company sold its first car. 105 years ago tomorrow some dad somewhere said "road trip!" and 30 minutes later the phrase "don't make me stop this car" was uttered for the first time. We have some travel guides available electronically which might help you start planning your own road trip. They cover Wisconsin, Michigan, and at least 14 other states. We acquired them as part of a large package of electronic titles and they are readable from a campus computer or from home if you use your library account. I'm not saying they are the ultimate source for travel planning, but they might provide a starting point if you are still dreaming of a family vacation.

Fun Films

Disneyland Park opened 53 years ago today. You might be surprised to discover that we have many animated and children's films in the Van Wylen collection, including favorites from the Disney Studios. If summer is getting a little long and boredom is setting in, check out our free rentals!

Connection: How much does Google know?

Advocates of privacy rights are leery of Google's presence in our lives. Lots of news sources are covering this topic; national news outlets, sources in the information industry, business news analysts, politicians, academics, health professionals, and many, many more. PC Magazine Online published a summary article in 2007 that continues to encapsulate issues of concern. The launch of a Google project to help patients archive their medical records has unearthed another wave of concern as expressed in this USA Today article. Curious to learn more? Ask for sources at the Reference Desk and consider setting a search alert to maintain your awareness of this leading news story.