The Gardner-Harvey Library has just purchased, and placed on library reserve, textbooks for 24 Miami Plan or other introductory courses offered at MUM. Our aim is to assist students who may not be able to afford the textbooks, and to give all students in the courses an opportunity to make use of their required textbook while on campus. Given the rising costs of textbooks, this pilot project is aimed at making these materials for learning as widely available as possible, which is certainly a part of the Library's mission.
A full list of the courses and their textbooks is available at http://www.mid.muohio.edu/library/textbooks.cfm The estimated enrollment among the courses is 1968 students. The average cost of the textbooks purchased is $87.00. For most courses, there is just a single copy of each textbook on reserve. Each textbook may be checked out for two hours at one time. Again, this is a pilot project and we hope to assess the use of the current group of textbooks to guide future selections and usage guidelines.
Courses and textbooks were chosen based on the following factors:
- the nature of the course (in terms of its status as a Miami Plan or introductory course)
- the enrollment of a significant number of students in the course
- the use of a single textbook for all or most of the course's sections
- the nature of the textbook (only required textbooks were purchased; no study guides, lab manuals, workbooks, or other related materials, except where noted)
Please note that the textbooks for MTH007E and SPN201/202 are not yet available (although a copy of the MTH007E textbook is already on reserve thanks to a course instructor). Let me also thank Daphne Eldridge of the MUM Bookstore for her superb assistance in helping us choose and acquire the textbooks. I would also like to thank the many instructors who regularly place textbooks on reserve for their courses (the current group of these reserve items are also listed at the link above). One way that we could continue to build this collection would be through instructor or student donations of used texts, so if you have a current text you could part with, please let us know.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Friday, September 01, 2006
GHL requests, Chronicle updates, and thanks!
Hello!
I just wanted to make you aware of two library services that you may wish to take advantage of, and pass along a little joy.
First, any Middletown campus patron (students, faculty, staff, or community borrowers) may use the "request item" feature in the catalog to request that a book owned in our collection be held at our circulation desk for pickup. We are happy to retrieve items from our shelves and save your time in this way. You may notice that the libraries at Oxford are offering this service as a pilot program for faculty, and I just wanted to clarify that we have been offering, and will continue to offer, this service to all Middletown patrons.
Second, along with the library's subscription to the paper Chronicle of Higher Education, we also receive a daily email summary of stories in the Chronicle, along with links to those stories on the Chronicle web site. If you would like to receive this email summary, you may either subscribe to the "midchronicle" list yourself at
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/midchronicle.html (choose "join or leave the list"), or email me. It is a quick scan of the Chronicle contents, and is sent out every morning.
We are extremely grateful to have the Gardner-Harvey Library back up and operating in our newly renovated building. With some work still to be done, we are enjoying our new roof, ceiling, and perhaps most of all, our entirely new HVAC system. I'd like to thank Chuck Mack and the Physical Facilities crew, Lee Back and the Technology Services staff, and our contractors and subcontractors from Empire for getting us through two moves, our provision of services this summer in temporary quarters in the Computer Center, and a challenging amount of work in the library itself. And thanks to all of you for putting up with major alterations in your library routine. It's good to be back!
I just wanted to make you aware of two library services that you may wish to take advantage of, and pass along a little joy.
First, any Middletown campus patron (students, faculty, staff, or community borrowers) may use the "request item" feature in the catalog to request that a book owned in our collection be held at our circulation desk for pickup. We are happy to retrieve items from our shelves and save your time in this way. You may notice that the libraries at Oxford are offering this service as a pilot program for faculty, and I just wanted to clarify that we have been offering, and will continue to offer, this service to all Middletown patrons.
Second, along with the library's subscription to the paper Chronicle of Higher Education, we also receive a daily email summary of stories in the Chronicle, along with links to those stories on the Chronicle web site. If you would like to receive this email summary, you may either subscribe to the "midchronicle" list yourself at
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/midchronicle.html (choose "join or leave the list"), or email me. It is a quick scan of the Chronicle contents, and is sent out every morning.
We are extremely grateful to have the Gardner-Harvey Library back up and operating in our newly renovated building. With some work still to be done, we are enjoying our new roof, ceiling, and perhaps most of all, our entirely new HVAC system. I'd like to thank Chuck Mack and the Physical Facilities crew, Lee Back and the Technology Services staff, and our contractors and subcontractors from Empire for getting us through two moves, our provision of services this summer in temporary quarters in the Computer Center, and a challenging amount of work in the library itself. And thanks to all of you for putting up with major alterations in your library routine. It's good to be back!
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