Crows recognize, and remember, human faces
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder on 8/26/08
Yoder says: “University of Washington scientists have shown that crows recognize individual human faces, and hold grudges against people who have been mean to them in the past.”
To test the birds’ recognition of faces separately from that of clothing, gait and other individual human characteristics, Dr. Marzluff and two students wore rubber masks. He designated a caveman mask as “dangerous” and, in a deliberate gesture of civic generosity, a Dick Cheney mask as “neutral.” Researchers in the dangerous mask then trapped and banded seven crows on the university’s campus in Seattle.
In the months that followed, the researchers and volunteers donned the masks on campus, this time walking prescribed routes and not bothering crows.
The crows had not forgotten. They scolded people in the dangerous mask significantly more than they did before they were trapped, even when the mask was disguised with a hat or worn upside down. The neutral mask provoked little reaction.
Friend or Foe? Crows Never Forget a Face, It Seems (New York Times)

Just to let ref. staff know that the HSS Map & Atlas Collection has very good map and atlas coverage for many African countries and for the continent as a whole. These resources may assist students in Ethnology, Geography, History, Linguistics and Political Science.
– Tim

Hi all,
Here’s the latest collection of websites added to GovInfo. They’ve been briefly annotated and organized into categories so you can browse the entire document or just go to the section you are interested in. **Note, somehow some unauthorized spaces have crept into the link to the first featured site – Govt of India, making it unclickable and non-copy & pastable. Here’s the address without spaces if you are interested: Government of India. Here’s the link to the entire newsletter: GovInfo Newsletter July/August –
Shawnna

Now you can eat without moving your arms!

From the Systems Help Desk:
Effective immediately, patrons will be able to print from their own Windows XP/Vista laptops, via the wireless network, to our public printers. We are also working on including late model MacBooks on board – instructions should be available shortly.
The procedure, in a nutshell, is as follows:
[1] Have the laptop connect either to “UBC VPN” or “UBCSecure” wireless network
[2] Add a printer according to instructions within our “HowTo” webpage, “Printing” section
http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/about/instruct/htprint.html
[3] Print to the newly installed printer
[4] Approach our Print Release Station with a copy card to release the job:
– on the “Workstation ID” prompt, type “GUEST” instead
– choose the appropriate print job according to timestamp or content descriptions
Patrons can keep the installed library printer(s) on their laptops, in doing so they can skip step 2 if they need to re-use the same printer(s) at a later date.
Please note this service is currently offered on a “pilot/trial” basis, therefore we may have to make procedural changes or withdraw the service if we encounter performance or security issues.

From David Winter:
In order to improve security on the library’s system, the following measures are being taken:
1. New UBCcards and community cards
7 days after a new UBCcard or community card is issued and if the pin
number is still the default pin, an email asking the user to change the
pin number for security reasons. If, after 14 days, the pin number
remains the default, we will change the pin number and send the user an
email with the new pin number.
Note – New cards will still have the default pin. This process is to get
the users to change their default pin.
2. Old Library Records with Default PINs
There are approximately 47,000 active cards still using the default pin
number. Starting on Monday, we will be changing the pin numbers and
sending the users an email with the new pin numbers.
3. Forgot Your PIN? page
On Monday, users can have a new pin number sent via email.
The user will enter their library barcode and email address into a form.
If the email address matches the email address in the Voyager patron
record, a new pin number will be sent to the user.
Links to the form will by located on the My Account page, Contact the
Library and wherever we prompt for a library barcode and pin.
If users are having problems with their pin numbers, please direct them
to the Forgot Your PIN? page. If they are still having problems with
their pin numbers, they can go to the nearest branch library or phone
UBC Vancouver 604-822-2406/9692
UBC Okanagan 250-807-9107
UBC Systems Help Desk 604-822-6725
If you have any questions, please contact me.
Thanks David
—
David Winter
Borrower Services Librarian
Koerner Library
Email: david.winter@ubc.ca Phone: 604-822-6721 Fax: 604-6465
Koerner Library – Interlibrary Loans
University of British Columbia Library
1958 Main Mall
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z2

A number of us attended Crit Stuart’s talk on “Creating User-Influenced Learning Spaces in Research Libraries” this afternoon and for my part I thought it was very inspiring. Anyone looking for a little light reading on the subject may be interested in reading this paper from Crit Stuart and Richard Meyer about the space planning experience at Georgie Tech–I think they did some fantastic things with obtaining user feedback that seem easy enough to adapt/adopt
Evaluating Physical and Virtual Space to Support Teaching and Learning
Tara

I had a patron the other day with an assignment that required her to find out how many times a certain book had been cited. I showed her google scholar and Web of Science, but authomatically assumed that WOS did not track book citations since it doesn’t offer “monograph” as a material type or suggest anywhere obvious that it tracks anything other than journal articles. I’ve since discovered that many monographs are tracked after all, but getting at the citations is tricky since WOS has abbreviated monograph titles in the same obscure manner that it abbreviates journal titles….That being said – after I read the following help page – I did manage to find citations for 3 or 4 randomly selected books: http://images.isiknowledge.com/help/WOS/hcr_citedbks.html Since this is apparently for a class assignment maybe it will come up again.

New job perk–summer hours! Read all about it here.
Tara

Take a gander at the great book reviews your colleagues (including yours truly) have composed as a Non-Required Summer Reading List for incoming students: Leap: Read Any Good Books Lately?. All I can say is, ‘Thank God I work in a library’, otherwise I would go bankrupt buying books because all of these titles sound pretty darn good.
Tara