Access to Special Collections

Hello,

At this time Special Collections & Archives is hoping to open to the public beginning in early November 2011. We still do not have an exact date of when we will be open.

Although the reading room will be closed, we will be working in our offices and can be reached by phone or email. Although we are closed to the public, we would be happy to let our colleagues in -- so just phone or email, and we'll meet you at the door.

Thank you,

Special Collections & Archives

(corrected) Reference Desk Transactions Report, Summer Sessions 2010

During the two summer sessions of 2010 (21^st June–27^th August), the McHenry Library Reference Desk was open for four hours per day, Monday through Friday, from 1 till 5pm. This tallies to a total of twenty hours per week, or 200 hours for the entire ten-week period. In that period, 387 desk transactions were logged by Reference staff in SurveyMonkey (of which 379 included explanatory remarks). Since Reference staff have been logging desk queries through SurveyMonkey (from March 2010), 2501 transactions have been recorded:

March (includes Spring Break week)—144

April—685
May—927
June (prior to Summer Session)—738

The distribution of queries shows that the 1–2pm hour is most popular with 31.3 percent (121) of transactions, descending with each subsequent hour: 27.4 percent (106) from 2–3pm; 19.6 percent (76) from 3–4pm; and 19.4 percent (75) from 4–5pm. Additionally, 2.3 percent (9) of the questions were recorded at times when desk service was not available. While the majority of transactions were under five minutes (55.3% or 214), 29.2 percent (113) were five minutes or longer; directional questions were only 15.5 percent (60) of the total. Just over 3 percent (76) of the total came to us via telephone, and 2 percent (52) were printing or computing questions. (These transactions do not include off-desk, Ask A Librarian/QuestionPoint, or personal e-mail enquiries.)


Transaction Highlights

• Helped [emeritus librarian] determine the signature on an 1860 original letter he was transcribing from the Hihn-Younger Archive
• Recent UCSC graduate: advice on applying to master's degree v. doctoral programmes in pursuit of teaching at community-college level; Web site for faculty postings at California community colleges
• Emeritus-faculty proxy needed help with databases; also said that he has always received great service from our desk, and how much he appreciated that
• Assisted two lecturers working on a project which required analyzing the table of contents and physical layout/arrangement of a few journals. We only had electronic access to the journals they needed…. I suggested they contact an ENVS professor who I knew once used to edit the journal to see if he had a personal print subscription.
• Patron looking for data sets related to education from the perspective of population, transportation, health, environment, etc. Showed him ICPSR, several federal gov. sites, Rand California and our statistics guide. Also gave him contact info for [local ICPSR rep] and Lucia
• Books, articles, primary documents on Wilder Ranch, its history, and the Ohlone who lived in the area > extensive searching for, variously, Wilder Ranch, Rancho Refugio, Ohlone, Awaswas tribelet in local history titles in Reference Area, Cruzcat, SCPL, America: History & Life + advice on general Spain>Mexico>US California history and land grants
• Graduate student had ILL request for microfilm from New York State Archives denied as 'no lending library' although NYSA site states desired items 'available through ILL' > contacted our ILL, who will contact NYSA directly to enquire about item + found microfilm purchasing information on NYSA site to offer patron alternative if ILL unsuccessful
• 1970s-80s index for Santa Cruz Sentinel? > no such, but showed patron how to use SCPL Newspaper Clippings file along with microfilm
• Community member: reliable Web information/advice on home foreclosure options and alternatives > found relevant pages at HUD, FDIC, California Department of Real Estate
• UCSC staff member who is also a Cabrillo summer student needed help finding an expert from UCSC on global warming to interview for a project. Helped him find several names and printed contact info, primarily [Earth & Planetary Sciences faculty] who spoke on the topic for Synergy
• Historical information about the invention of the washing machine - found one book in Ref and several in stacks. Also wanted advertisements from different decades. Gave her call no. for All-American Ads by decades.
• Tutorial on finding popular articles reporting new scientific research then finding scholarly studies on which articles are based > New York Times and Academic Search Complete, then PubMed and PsycINFO
• [Community researcher] needed help finding and accessing a document on land use from 1878. It's an online document that Hastings owns in their Making of Modern Law database. He'll have to visit Hastings to access it. Also spent time telling him how to best approach access to these documents, when to use Cruzcat, limitations of Melvyl, and about Calcat. He was very appreciative!
• Former student doing an internship for [Politics faculty], researching mayors who are notable or “heroes”—Academic Search Complete, newspapers, how UC-eLinks works, ILL process, Cruzcat -- subject headings "mayors", Dictionary of National Biography, Gale Biographies database, ref book: Biographical Dictionary Of American Mayors, 1820-1980
• Staff member looking for FCC decision concerning wireless signal boosters > found public notices and comments in FCC Electronic Comment Filing System, eventually determined from listed proceedings that FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau had jurisdiction in matter, went to their separate site and found Headlines Archive lists all official public notices, news releases, and orders/decisions > determined no decision has yet been made in the case of signal boosters (as comment is still being collected)
• Researcher from UCSF called to verify a citation from Source: Encyclopedia of Drugs, Alcohol & Addictive Behavior. We have title electronically, and in print. Almost needed to use the print because the title search didn't return results. Determined there was a slight title change from what the researcher had vs. the title in the source.
• Advice on appropriate use, according to Chicago Manual of Style, of footnotes v. bibliography v. in-text notes v. reference list

Summer Emeriti library research class

Frank and Laura will be having a drop-in library research class for emeriti faculty and staff on Wednesday, August 25th from 2-3:30pm in the McHenry Library Classroom 2353 (2nd floor). They will give an overview of the library's current website and offer tips and strategies for successful online library research. There will be time throughout for questions. This is the second in a series of drop-in classes to support emeriti faculty and staff research needs. No need to sign-up.

Please this along to anyone you think may be interested.

For more information, please contact:
Laura McClanathan /
831-459-3096 / lauramcc@ucsc.edu

Summer dining on campus

Here is the link to the Summer Dining Services page. It includes links to the cafes, restaurants, and coffee carts as well. The dining halls do accept credit/debit cards.

http://housing.ucsc.edu/dining/summer-dining.html

Bon appetit!

CNS desk schedule 6/14-18

CNS students will be manning the desks from 9-5 at S&E and 12-8pm at McH from 6/14-6/28. I will have the remainder of the summer schedule published in the next few days.

Thanks,

Omar

Map Room hours this summer

Regular summer hours for Maps will be Tuesday-Thursday, 1pm-5pm.

These are the days that the Map Room at Science & Engineering will be closed this summer:

July 5th (holiday)-July 9th

August 2nd-6th

August 23rd-27th (open by appointment only**: 459-2364)

August 30th-September 3rd (open by appointment only**: 459-2364)

September 6th (holiday)-September 10th

September 13th-17th

**Appointments must be made 24 hours in advance.


For more info: http://library.ucsc.edu/maps