Please note that the library will be closed on January 19, Monday, in celebration of the Martin Luther King holiday. Our full spring hours are now available for your planning.

The software upgrade to the Illinet Online catalog planned for January 2004 has been postponed due to persistent bugs in the new version. As Kristine Hammerstrand, Director of the Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization (ILCSO) explains, "[Although the new software version] offers us some nice enhancements, the enhancements will primarily be seen by library staff, while the new bugs will primarily impact our library user community, and would diminish service in resource sharing which is a core value of the ILCSO consortium." We are still going to create new colors in Millinet immediately, but functional changes will not happen until summer 2004.

Meanwhile, ILCSO announces that nine institutions have been accepted for membership in the ILCSO consortium. The new ILCSO member institutions are:

Eureka College, Eureka
Heartland Community College, Normal
Illinois Central College, East Peoria
John Wood Community College, Quincy
Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Lombard
Parkland College, Champaign
Quincy University, Quincy
Sauk Valley Community College, Dixon
William Rainey Harper College, Palatine

The nine new members will bring the ILCSO consortium's membership to 65 institutions. It is expected that the new members will be fully integrated in ILLINET Online by September 2004.

It was only a year ago that ILCSO announced the addition of 12 other new members; and the over 3 million volumes in those libraries became accessible through ILLINET Online in the summer of 2003.

Amanda Pippitt has accepted our invitation to become our new Access Services Coordinator & Research/Instruction Librarian, concluding another search with an excellent candidate pool. Amanda's first day here will be Jan. 12.

Amanda comes to us with a range of relevant experiences, including most recently as a graduate assistant to the Biotechnology Librarian at UIUC and as a Reference Assistant at Parkland College Library.  Her Masters degree in Library and Information Science is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and she has an additional master's degree (M.A.) in Anthropology, concentrating on physical anthropology, from Northern Illinois University. Amanda's undergraduate degree is from Beloit College where she majored in anthropology. 

On our student staff, three from Fall 2003 have moved on to other things (Andy Beals has graduated, Racheal Kauffold is student teaching, and Kristy Topalovich has an internship). We are welcoming one new student for Spring 2004, Aaron Denk.

The list of new books received in December 2003 has been added to our monthly inventory of acquisitions. As always on these lists, clicking on a book jacket picture in the left-hand column will bring you to the bibliographic information about that title. Remember, though, to look first on the New Books shelf before going up into the stacks to a given call number location for the most recent lists! 

Earlier newsletters