May 4, 2007
Life on the Edge
When I was Head of the George B. Brain Education Library at Washington State, I inherited a cutely-titled newsletter dreamed up in the days before electronic discussion lists, the Brain Wave. Aimed at faculty and students in the College of Education, I quickly found that it and its electronic successors were equally important as a means of keeping my colleagues in a distributed library system aware of all the good work being done by the faculty and staff in my library.
I thought about the Brain Wave earlier this week when I saw the first issue of the Undergrad Edge, the new electronic newsletter of the UIUC Undergraduate Library. Like the Brain Wave, the Edge provides an easy way for faculty and staff of the University Library (all 500 of us!) to keep current on the evolving faces, spaces, and places that make up one of our biggest and busiest campus libraries. There isn't a department on campus whose students don't come through Undergrad on occasion, and, with campus-wide responsibilities for media circulation, reserve readings, and cash printing, it's fair to say that "The University Library Works Because the Undergraduate Library Does."
There are statistical tidbits sprinkled throughout the Edge that are likely to be more of interest to Library staff than classroom faculty, but there is also information on Undergraduate Library services that almost all of us will be able to re-purpose for our own work with campus faculty, staff, and students.
5,000 users walking through the doors each day, and close to 10,000 books circulating each month - that's what I call living on the edge!
Posted by swalter at May 4, 2007 9:31 PM
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