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Staley Library Newsletter September 2006
Welcome (back) to the new semester! During the summer months 2006, one of the main activities of the librarians has been to completely re-design the library’s 2,000+ page web site. Some pages have been either updated or deleted, other pages have been either consolidated or divided, while still others have been deemed still effective just as they are. At the same time, most of the library’s pages have been moved to the uniform Millikin University web site look and feel. This transition to the university’s cascading style sheet template has proven more labor intensive than expected. The result, however, we hope will be an even more helpful and consistent research tool for Millikin University students, faculty and staff. New features in this enhanced library web site will include a federated search engine (enabling database searching across multiple databases at once) with a search box on the library’s home page [coming soon], and a link to Google Scholar, a specialized sub-set of the Google search engine that focuses on scholarly resources. Amanda Pippitt and Joe Hardenbrook did the lion's share of the transition work on this new web site, though the other three librarians also contributed significantly. The overall design was a collaborative effort among the five of us. We do want to thank the University's Web Master, Casey Reid, for being a patient and kind resource for us in all aspects of this transition. Please let us know what you think, including any broken links or other glitches you find - we want to keep perfecting the site! The librarians will offer sessions during Faculty Workshop Day (August 22) to familiarize new and continuing faculty with the library’s new and continuing services, including this new web site and the new databases (listed on right).
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Other library updates While the broad strokes of the library’s research instruction program remain unchanged, some enhancements were designed over the summer, including a more up-to-date set of online tutorials. The pre- and post-test sequence to measure student information literacy skills in the Critical Writing, Research and Reading (CWRR) sequence, piloted in the Spring 2006 semester, will be fully implemented in the fall. The new or enhanced research databases that were selected for the new academic year have been implemented, and are now available through the library’s web site across campus and, in most instances, also off-campus. Try them!
Also during the summer months, some of the librarians participated intensively in various accreditation activities (committees etc.) and in other planning and administrative activities across campus. It has been an unusually Millikin-busy summer for all of us!
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