New Saturday Library hours

The Samuel C. Williams Library has extended its Saturday evening hours so that the Library now closes at 9:00 p.m. Please see the Library hours schedule for full information.

Job opening for graduate student worker

- NOT ACCEPTING ANY MORE APPLICATIONS AT THIS TIME -

A graduate student position is available in the library’s collection development and special collections departments. The job is for 20 hours/week. Ten hours are in the collection development department, and 10 are in the special collections department. Some heavy lifting of material up to 50 pounds will be required on occasion, and some carrying of material up and down stairs will also be required.

Collection development responsibilities:

• re-shelving books and maintaining the appearance of the reference, new books, and 2^nd floor collection
• shelf reading
• relocating new books to the second floor collection
• helping with book sale
• other duties as assigned

Special collection responsibilities:

• photocopying of fragile material
• processing thesis & Ph.D.s for binding and microfilming
• assisting with complex research questions
• updating databases
• scanning
• filing and organizing
• miscellaneous errands

Preferred qualities

• strong attention to detail
• familiarity with Library of Congress classification system
• graduating no earlier than January 2010
• ability to work independently

Interested students should fill out a job application and submit it to the circulation services desk in the library. Please circle “special collections” and “shelving” on the application. Deadline for applications is Tuesday, February 10.

Work Study Position available at Library

- NOT ACCEPTING ANY MORE APPLICATIONS AT THIS TIME -

Work study position available for The Stute digitization project at the Samuel C. Williams Library at Stevens Institute of Technology. Candidates must be very detail-oriented, responsible, and Federal Work Study Eligible. Students will be required to work 10 to 15 hours per week. Responsibilities will include: checking the quality of digital scans, proofreading, uploading finished files into an archive management system, and keeping files & work organized. Please fill out a job application and submit it to the Circulation Services Desk at the Library. In the upper-right corner of your application, please write “Stute Digitization Project job applicant”. Deadline for applications is Tuesday, February 17th. Job applications are available at the Library Circulation Services Desk or on the Library website at: http://www.stevens.edu/library/fileadmin/library/forms/employment.pdf

*Important information for off-campus users connecting via VPN*

A heads-up from the IT department regarding off-campus users who connect to online library resources through VPN:

Information Technology is replacing the two VPN (Virtual Private Network) servers with a new server, which is installed and ready for use.  If don't use VPN services this announcement does not pertain to you.  If you use VPN services, or have them configured on a Stevens issued notebook and/or individually owned computer that is used off-campus, you are required to change your VPN configuration.

Links to instructions on how and why to use a VPN connection are below.  The old VPN servers will be removed from the network on January 24, 2009.  ALL users must remove their old profiles and create new ones to connect to the new VPN server.

The old VPN servers, vpn02.cc.stevens-tech.edu and vpn01.cc.stevens-tech.edu are being replaced by the new VPN server vpn.stevens.edu.  Since the configuration of the VPN client has changed attempts to update your old VPN profile with the new VPN server name will not work.  Creating a new profile, and removing the old one is easy, and only takes a few steps to complete.  The new VPN connection method is more secure than the previous.  The most notable change will be that the old vpn02 connection used the PIPELINE password while the new vpn.stevens.edu connection uses the CAMPUS Domain password.

Set up instructions for Windows XP, Vista, MAC OS X including  iPhone and iTouch and Linux are available at http://www.stevens.edu/itwiki/cgi-bin/wiki/index.php/VPN.

Some Campus Domain Users do not have the rights to make this change.  If you try to make this change and access is denied contact the Information Technology Help Desk at 201.216.5500.  Even if you do not use the VPN connection regularly, now is the time to add the new VPN configuration to your system and test the connection.  Remember to use your CAMPUS Domain password when using the connection.

If you have not changed your Domain password recently now is a good time to do it.  Your domain password should be unique to this account, not used anywhere else and a password only you know.  Information on changing your domain password can be found at:  http://www.stevens.edu/itwiki/cgi-bin/wiki/index.php/Campus_Domain_Account#Changing_your_Password.

If you need assistance or a password reset, contact the Information Technology Helpdesk at 201.216.5500 or www.stevens.edu/helpdesk.  Please remember to remove your old VPN profile after you have installed the new one.

2008 World's Most Ethical Companies

In the spirit of the holidays, and in this rough economic patch we're going through, it's nice to highlight some businesses who are not just about the almighty dollar (especially seeing what irresponsible business practices have done to the banking/auto/credit industries, helping push us into this rough patch in the first place...)

Ethisphere magazine lists 2008's most ethical companies, along with their methodology for choosing them. From the article:

"The World’s Most Ethical Companies are the ones that go above and beyond legal minimums, bring about innovative new ideas to expand the public well being, work on reducing their carbon footprint rather than contributing to green washing and won’t be found next to the words “Billion Dollar Fine” in newspaper headlines any time in the near future. These are the companies that stand out among the competition in their industry." Read more...>>

On that note, we at SC Williams Library wish you a very safe and happy holiday. The library will return to its regularly scheduled programming (aka reopen) on January 5th, 2009 at 9:00am.

Interlibrary Loan Holiday Schedule

Due to the potential for delayed delivery or lost packages during the holiday mail rush, ILL will not process new book requests from Dec. 5th, 2008 to Jan. 4th, 2009.
The last day to guarantee Regular Delivery document requests arrive before the start of Winter Break is December 5th.
The last day to guarantee Rush Delivery document requests arrive before the start of Winter Break is December 16th.
Please note: ILL will not process new document requests from Dec. 16th, 2008 to Jan. 4th, 2009.
The ILL Department and the Library will be closed from Dec. 19 through Jan. 4th. We will process any book or document requests in the order they were received when we reopen January 5th, 2009. Please understand that turn around time for these requests may be a bit longer than our usual turn around time.
Thank you.

JoVE: the Journal of Visualized Experiments

We just stumbled upon a great resource, a scholarly journal that Nature calls the "YouTube for test tubes". It's actually an all video format journal, something you don't see very often in the halls of academia. So, by JoVE, what is it exactly? (I'm sure I'm the first person to make that joke about this journal...) Well, from their website:

"Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) is a peer reviewed, free access, online journal devoted to the publication of biological research in a video format. JoVE was established as a new tool in life science publication and communication, with participation of scientists from leading research institutions. Visualization greatly facilitates the understanding and efficient reproduction of both basic and complex experimental techniques, thereby addressing two of the biggest challenges faced by today’s life science research community: i) low transparency and poor reproducibility of biological experiments and ii) time and labor-intensive nature of learning new experimental techniques."

You can check out their website at http://www.jove.com/ or you can find them indexed in the PubMed database.