Hi all,
In support of the UBC Orientation for Mature and Transfer Students which is to take place on Sunday, September 2nd, I will be offering the following session in place of the August 20th Back to Basics class which, as of this morning, had no registrants:

Introduction to UBC Library for Mature and Transfer Students 05 Sep 2007 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM.
Please recommend this session to anyone whom you feel might benefit.
Thanks very much,
Tara

Leonora’s email about upcoming changes in DocDel policy:
Starting Sep. 4, we’ll be changing our document delivery pricing model so that campus-to-campus delivery becomes free, for both books and articles, for our core users.
This is a change from the current model where branch-to-branch book document deliveries are free on the Point Grey campus. The current model (offered as a pilot) is no longer sustainable due to significant and growing workload involved. We’ve also had continuing requests from users at Robson Square and the hospitals for free article delivery from Point Grey. We’re eliminating the non-pickup fee as part of this change.
A link alerting users to the new policy will go onto the doc del order page next week.
See: http://www.library.ubc.ca/rss/docdel/fee_policies.html (page still under revision)
As always if you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact
me, David Winter, Liz Whittam or Katherine Hill.

Courtesy of James Clay’s e-learning blog comes news of Wellcome Trust’s Creative Commons Image project that provides free access to two thousand years of images on the subject of mankind and medecine: Wellcome Images. In a word: awesome.
Tara

From Leonora Crema:
Hello everyone,
Just letting you know about a few policy changes that are happening for community borrowers starting August 1st:
– prices for community cards will increase
– new limit of 50 items that can be borrowed at one time
– BC college students and staff will become eligible for free UBC community cards (5-item limit). This is a result of UBC’s joining the BC Council of Post-Secondary Library Directors reciprocal borrorwing agreement. UBC students will also be able to borrow at most post-secondary libraries in BC.
If you have any questions, please contact me or Jocelyn Byfield.
Thanks,
Leonora

We’re getting a lot of questions at the desk from incoming students starting in September as to whether or not they can get their UBC Card right now so they can access the library workstations.
The answer is yes, as long as they are:
1) registered in courses for September
2) have a student ID
3) have a piece of gov’t isssued ID.
The carding office number is 7-5903.

. . . and is now part of http://www.abbreviations.com, which is worth a look in its own regard. It aims to be the “largest human-edited abbreviations directory of the web.” Where an abbreviation has more than one source, the results display with the “most common” at the top. Have a look at MM, for example.

Rare Books and Special Collections (RBSC) at UBC Library’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre (IKBLC) will be closed from the 3rd of August until the 4th of September 2007. The closure is required to allow the joining of the Phase I and Phase II buildings of the IKBLC to take place. A long temporary wall must be removed and the lighting, suspended ceiling, piping, data, and electrical systems of the two phases joined. RBSC staff will occupy temporary quarters in room 2:27 of the IKBLC in August.
There will be reduced telephone and computing capacity in the temporary space. Staff will be working to clear processing backlogs but will not be able to provide public service since the reading room of RBSC will be at the centre of the construction. The RBSC reading room will reopen on September 5.
The Library regrets any inconvenience this closure may cause. According to the present construction schedule Rare Books and Special Collections will take possession of its final and much expanded reading room at the end of November 2007.

This is old news, but those of who are beginning to play with Second Life, or are interested in finding out how libraries are using it, may find it interesting to visit the Library of Congress site in Second Life
Tara.

Hello all,
Some of you may already be aware of this, but I just found out that a number of photo archive collections from the Library of Congress is available on Flickr. To find these, go to www.flickr.com and type “library of congress” in the search box. Neat!
Tara

This map puts things into an interesting perspective.
If you’re a bit foggy about which state is which (Delaware?) here’s a topographical map of the US.
Scroll down strangemaps blog: it’s worth a look.