UCSC employee payroll data

There has been recent interest in employee payroll data for UC and UCSC.  As a reminder, this information is available on disc and kept in Reserves at McHenry.  To locate the call number, search for "UCSC" as the course name on the Course Reserves search page.  Items are listed alphabetically. The relevant title is "UC Employee Payroll Data Disc." Discs are available for 2005 - 2009.  The call number for the most recent data, 2009, is UCSC.1056.

Online versions of both system-wide and UCSC data are also available from the Sacramento Bee and the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

System-wide - Sacramento Bee
UCSC - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Coca cola taste tests

Some students from a psych class at Cabrillo college have come in looking for articles about taste test experiments involving colas (coke and pepsi). PsycInfo had a number of articles, including experiments from 1948.

They are working in groups of 4, and there are 6 or 7 groups. Their paper is due Wednesday.

In PsycInfo use the descriptor "Taste Perception" and KW cola to find 18 relevant scholarly articles. They need to pick the best five for the assignment.

Laura also discovered 14 articles in ASC using SU cola and SU evaluation

Language dictionaries

Hi Deskers,

Here is s quick reference list for language dictionaries and their call number sections in the Ref Stacks:

Arabic PJ6640
Chinese PL1455
English PE1628
French PC2640
Gaelic PB1591
German PF3640
Greek PA445
Hebrew PJ483
Hindi PK1936
Italian PC1640
Japanese PL679
Korean PL936
Latin PA2365
Persian PK6379
Portuguese PC5333
Russian PG2640
Spanish PC4640
Swahili PL8703

Hope this is helpful.

Best,

Laura

BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill resource

In case people are still getting questions about the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, I wanted to let you know that we recently received the official report to the president: Deep Water: The Gulf Oil Disaster and the Future of Offshore Drilling (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b3539867~S5) and the accompanying recommendations (http://cruzcat.ucsc.edu/record=b3539868~S5).

I also wanted to share this Deepwater subject guide created by the Gov Docs librarian at MSU: http://guides.library.msstate.edu/content.php?pid=136282&sid=1167503

And a reminder about the bibliography link that Cynthia sent out back in May:
http://www.southalabama.edu/univlib/govdocs/gd/oilspill2010.html

--Jess

Cruznet issues

If you have a patron who cannot connect to Cruznet wireless (no page will load, they cannot get an IP address) and/or they are getting logged off repeatedly please put in a ticket.

-Include the person's name and their MAC address. Here is a website on how to find the mac address of common operating systems, http://www.wikihow.com/Find-the-MAC-Address-of-Your-Computer, and Apple iOS devices http://osxdaily.com/2010/08/05/find-iphone-mac-address/.
-The CNS help desk can also put in the ticket and has information on how to get the MAC address.

Thanks,
Frank Dang

Student survey publicity

You may notice small thin strips attached to our public stations on the 2nd floor at McH publicizing a student survey. The survey is sponsored by UCSC office of Institutional Research and is part of a statewide survey of students regarding class and lecture size. The survey closes on Feb 10th, at which time these strips will be removed.

The strips say: "Get heard. Take the class and lecture availability student survey @ www.uc-class.org. For a chance to win Nite Owl cookies"

Thanks,

Lucia

Math placement exam study guide questions

If students come to the McHenry Ref Desk asking for the math placement exam study guide, you can refer to this page on the Undergraduate Affairs site to explain what we have. Neither library has exactly that for this test, but S&E does have a textbook and an elementary algebra outline with some practice problems. McHenry has a set of videos put together by a UCSC professor that reviews pre-calculus. What seems to help them most is the bottom link for the practice exam.

Placing holds on Reserves material

A question that comes up often at the desk and on Ask A Librarian is how can a patron place a hold ahead of time on a book that is on Reserve. A patron can place a hold up to a day in advance on a Reserve item, but only in person. They can also take a Reserve item out overnight if they place a hold 2.5 hours before we close in person (so for example 9:30pm for M-Th) and then it has to be back 1 hour after we open the next day.

Grateful Dead Research Guide

There is a new guide to help students, or anyone, with questions about researching the Grateful Dead phenomenon. It is located both in the subject guide list and the how to list:

http://library.ucsc.edu/help/howto/grateful-dead-research-guide

The Grateful Dead Archive is being processed and will not be available for researchers until spring 2012.

Canon printer/copier in the Interlibrary Loan Student Room

Hi,
Toward the end of the day on Monday, 1/10/11, the color printer/copier in the ILL student room was having trouble. We have placed a service call and at this point have turned off the machine in anticipation of tomorrow morning's power outage. I will send a message when this machine is up and running again.

-Josh, ILL

Ref weeding project

I wanted to catch you up on a few things having to do with the McHenry Ref weeding project.

1. There are about 15 book trucks lined up along the back wall/fence labeled Ref Weeding Project Jan 2011. These are the trucks we'll be using for the pull
2. The two SAIV students (one of whom started working on it today) will be doing the pull (under my guidance) and the plan is to have this project done by the end of Jan of this year.

If you have any questions about how this is going please let me know.

Many thanks.

-- Molly

Special Collections NRLF request form link

This is the link for Special Collections NRLF requests:

http://library.ucsc.edu/speccoll/special-collections-nrlf-request-form

Gifts or donation requests until January 13th

While Paul Machlis is away (he'll be out January 3rd-January 12th), please refer any gifts or donation questions to Beth Remak, 459-2459 or remak@ucsc.edu.

Encore/Worldcat local update

I just wanted to let you all that I've had a few tweaks done to Encore.

The LOCATIONS facet now lists many more discreet locations . One of these locations that people may find particularly useful is the INTERNET location...this allows people to limit their search to items available online.

The other enhancement is the addition of the Worldcat Local database link on the right-hand side of the screen from the search results screen. Although not immediately apparent due to the generic Worldcat Local image, this is the link to Next Gen MELVYL. I would have liked to use an image that reflected this, but unfortunately, Encore doesn't support changing this image yet. :( You'll see once you've done a search in Encore, the Worldcat Local link appears on the right with the numbers of items that match your search. Clicking on that takes you to MELVYL's search results. This link only appears from the results list. It will not appear when you've clicked through to a specific title. This is an enhancement we are eagerly awaiting.

David

New music research guide

Many thanks to Paul Machlis for his new guide, How to Find Music in the Library.

It's a great review for helping patrons find music sources on the desk.

Phone books

Laura's recent post on pay phones pushed the notion of phones to the front of my reference brain so my attention was quickly captured by Leah Garchik's December 13th column in the San Francisco Chronicle highlighting a unique reference work:


In his new "The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads," historian Ammon Shea writes that for a few decades at the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, there was a hand-lettered Chinese phone book in San Francisco. This was for Chinese customers of Pacific Bell who used the only foreign-language phone exchange in the country.


Chinatown's first phone, in a Bush Street office, was in operation in the 1880s, and was much used by "farmers selling produce or looking for laborers." Beginning in 1890, residents had access to a public phone in the offices of a Chinese-language newspaper. By 1894, a Chinatown switchboard linked 37 phones; in 1898, they became part of Pacific Telephone and Telegraph.


Because Chinese characters are based on ideas rather than letters, the "directory" system was not alphabetic, and most operators would spend a great deal of their first months on the job trying to memorize phone numbers.

UCSC doesn't have The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book that Everyone Used but No One Reads, but the section describing this distinctive San Francisco phone directory in more detail is included in the Google Books preview here.

While Santa Cruz may not have such a distinctive history of telephone directories our Special Collections Department does have a small collection of phone directories from as far back as 1918. The collection is in NRLF and more details about its scope can be found here.

Other historical directories more readily available include Polk and Haines directories which can be found in Cruzcat.  A detailed list of historical collections of local telephone directories held in various repositories throughout the county can be found on page 65 of Every Structure Tells a Story: How to Research the History of a Property in Santa Cruz County.

Pay Phones at UCSC

We have a list of pay phones on campus, but it is dated 2007. They may still be there, but this is unverified. I will update this entry if I get around to them to see if they are still operational.

Two closest to McHenry Library: Bay Tree Bookstore and Theater Arts ticket booth
Closest to Science & Engineering Library: Health Center

Complete list (**with TDD):

Bay Tree Bookstore 831-425-9245**
Performing Arts (ticket booth, near bldg 3) 831-425-9877
Health Center (back lobby near rear door) 831-425-9241
Kresge Town Hall (in front of the coffee house) 831-425-9073
College 9/10 (under stairwell of College 9) 831-425-9320
College 8 (entry porch DL building) 831-425-9403
College 8 (apt bldg 6 outside) 831-425-9846
College 8 (apt bldg 2 outside) 831-425-9849
Crown College (admin bldg gatehouse) 831-425-9645
Porter College (bldg C, outside dining hall) 831-425-9295**

The map below does incorrectly say UCSF, but it isn't. ;)

International census questions

We've had several questions about census statistics and demographics for countries around the world. As a reminder the U.S. Census Dept. maintains a list of International Statistical Agencies here. Many of these agencies provide English language versions. For example, yesterday a patron and I were able to  find a report, in English, from the Swedish census bureau about the demographics of immigrants from Iraq to Sweden.

Ref College and Careers collection

Hi all,

As part of the reference reduction I'm planning to do some heavy weeding in the college and careers collection outside of the BI room. Much of the material can obviously be withdrawn or moved into the ref collection under its call number. If there is anything questionable I'll consult with the appropriate bibliographer, but if you have questions or concerns about this collection or the material in contains please let me know. Once I've cleared it I will ask cataloging to remove that location from Cruzcat.

thanks, Frank

My ILL Requests update

Hi All,
This is to inform you that a fix is being put in place that might affect patrons who are trying to access the 'My ILL Requests' service OR might affect when they go to place interlibrary loan requests. We are having CDL change the field where patrons enter their barcode in request and 'My ILL Requests' so that they will no longer be able to put hyphens or spaces between the numbers of their barcode. Patrons were supposed to be putting their barcodes in like this all along, however, the entry field would allow all sorts of variations which would go on to create a distinct account in the interlibrary loan system.

Basically, over the next few days/weeks/months, if you encounter a patron who is having difficulty logging into ILL services you may want to ask how they are going about entering their barcode.
Barcodes should be entered as one continuous string of numbers.
ie: 2210600642878X
AND NOT
22106-0064287-8X OR any other variation like this.

If the patron continues to have trouble please refer him directly to us (call, or e-mail ill@library.ucsc.edu). This fix should be in place sometime on Monday Nov. 15th.
Feel free to write back for any clarification!

-Josh, Interlibrary Loan