You can also renew most items with the SelfCheck. This is really fun. You don’t have to have the books with you, just your Loyola ID and library barcode. Press Renew (instead of Checkout). If the item doesn’t renew, it maybe be that it’s already over the due date, or someone else has requested it.

The SelfCheck is located near the Learning Commons desk and the Common Grounds cafe. Stop by and give the SelfCheck (self-renewer!) a try! If you’d like a demonstration or if you have any questions, please stop by the LC desk and we’ll show you how it works.

So even if you’re trying to cram three online classes into your summer schedule, try to find some time to relax and pick up some non-required reading before the fall semester begins. The regular semester doesn’t begin until August 31st, so no excuses!

–Beth

-Aimee

As we are all aware (or should be), most universities use the Library of Congress system to classify books with each call number beginning in a letter or pair of letters that designates a general subject. So you can be fairly certain that you’ll find most of the books in a subject under one letter. American history? That’s E. Buddhism? BQ. Easy enough, right? Well, not when it comes to graphic novels. It seems that the powers-that-be at the LC have had something of a hard time classifying graphic novels. Are they art? Are they literature? WHERE DO WE PUT THEM?

Well, it seems that there is no one good answer to this because graphic novels can be found in several places in the Monroe Library:

Many of them are in PN 6727, like Charles Burns’ horror novel Black Hole:

or Art Spiegelman’s autobiographical account of September 11th, In the Shadow of No Towers:

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However, if you are looking for Spiegelman’s biographical telling of his father’s experiences in Auschwitz in World War II, you’ll need to look in D where the other Holocaust books are.

Besides PN and subject classification, graphic novels could also be in the art section, such as Summer Blonde: Four Stories by Adrian Tomine:

So what’s a graphic novel reader to do? Well, you can always ask a librarian! Barring that, learn your subject headings for graphic novels and search by those (Hint: graphic novels OR comic books, strips, etc.).

Happy reading!

-Beth

1. A Loyola ID is required to use the library during the extended study period.
2. Users must present their valid Loyola ID to enter and remain the library at 9pm Sunday through Thursday, and after 6pm on Friday and Saturday.
   
3. Only members of the Loyola community, with a valid Loyola ID, will be permitted to use the library during extended study hours.
4. The 2nd and 3rd floors are reserved for quiet study.
5. Group study rooms are available for group-use only on a first come, first serve basis. Two LU IDs are required to check out a room. Groups can also work together in the Learning Common on the first floor.
6. Help us, and our terrific WFF staff, keep the library clean and free of litter.
7. Please, do not leave your valuables unattended.
8. University Police has added additional patrols during this period. Please report any problems to our dedicated student assistants, or to University Police at x3434.
9. Free coffee and tea will be available after midnight.

The Monroe Library is dedicated to providing our students a safe, productive, and pleasant study environment.

Good luck on your exams!

We’re gathering ideas. Here’s what we have so far. Do you have suggestions, ideas, tips?

1. Raise awareness about the costs of printing to the library among your students and colleagues. We currently do not charge for printing and the technology fee does not cover the cost of the amount of printing that goes on.

2. Duplex printing: Accept homework and reports from students that are printed on both sides (duplex). The library printers’ default setting is duplex to save paper, users can change the setting to single sided if necessary.

3. PowerPoint presentations. Create print-friendly versions of your colorful classroom PowerPoint presentations for printing. Slides using black text on a white background not only print quickly; the slides require a lot less toner.

4. PowerPoint presentations: Encourage your students who print PowerPoint presentations in Blackboard to print using the multiple slides per page option.

5. PowerPoint presentations: It’s always possible to change the color scheme of a PowerPoint presentation to black and white right before you print.

6. Color printing: The library offers color printing to students and faculty who need color for a course-specific project, for example a graph for psychology, charts for business, an illustration for biology, or a project for graphic design. Users should print out test pages out in black and white first. Print only the color pages of a report to the color printer, all other pages can easily be directed to the black and white laser printer.

7. Handouts and multiple copies: Encourage students to share digital versions of handouts with you and their classmates.

8. Handouts and multiple copies: Encourage your colleagues, department and committees to share and post documents to Blackboard or to an Intranet rather than printing off multiple copies in advance. Encourage colleagues to bring along their laptop to review digital versions of documents and skip the need to print.

9. Assignments: Please don’t make assignments that require students to printout multiple copies of articles to distribute to the class. Students can share articles and documents through email and Blackboard. Brief articles and papers can easily be read online.

10. Assignments: Please don’t ask students to use the library to print out large documents such as company financials, annual reports, court cases, or entire books (even if the work is in the public domain).

Friday, April 10, marked the 34th anniversary of the death of photographer Walker Evans (okay, it’s not as bad in writing as it was in my head). Evans’ is probably best known for his photographic contribution to James Agee’s book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which documented 3 families in rural Alabama in the 1930’s. The series was photographed by Evans during a leave from his work documenting rural life in the United States for the Farm Security Administration . Later in life, Evans worked for Time Magazine, and taught at the Yale School of Art and Architecture. Encyclopedia Britannica Online writes about this far more eloquently than I do. And yes, to mark the anniversary of Evans’ death, we’ve created a book display on the new book shelf, outside of the Living Room in the Learning Commons. Come by and check it out. You can also check out a list of books on Evans, including some Special Collections titles that aren’t on display, here.

-Aimee

1. Read my review of H.D: Selected Poems on the Monroe Library’s “We Recommend…” Blog.

2. Search the Literary Reference Center for the full text of thousands of poems.

3. Listen to this absolutely amazing recording of Langston Hughes reading his poem “The Weary Blues” from the The Voice of Langston Hughes, which can be accessed through out Smithsonian Global Sound Databases. (You may be asked to sign in using your Loyola username and password.)

4. Create some really awful poetry through the Rhyme Generator. Here’s one that I generated from a New York Times headline:

Democrats unveil ambitious global warming bill

so even the fact you can wiggle your ears

due to his lawyer I get nothing from his will

its the most wonderful time of the year

–Beth