Category: general news

ESOL Center & Writing Center are Here to Lend a Helping Hand

Lisa

Our good friends at the ESOL Center and the Writing Center want you to know that they are open for business this summer and are ready to lend you a helping hand!  Summer session students are encouraged to make an appointment or drop by for assistance.  Both centers are located on the lower level of the library. See below for detailed information and instructions.

The ESOL Center [open through August 3]

Hours: Monday –  Wednesday, 3:00pm – 6:00pm

Bentley University students whose home language is not English are invited to take advantage of the free tutorial services offered by Bentley’s ESOL Center.  All students (including graduate students) can schedule an appointment online using the undergraduate scheduling database link located on the English & Media Studies Department web page, call 781.891.2021 to make an appointment, or drop in to see if a faculty tutor is available.

The Writing Center [open through August 12]

Hours: Monday – Thursday, 11:00am to 5:00pm

Writing Center staff are available to provide one-to-one assistance with writing skills. Students can either drop in during open hours, schedule an appointment online via the Writing Center web page, or call 781.891.3173 to make an appointment.

Congrats to Our Graduating Student Assistants! We Dedicate These Books & Films to You…

Lisa

Commencement is just around the corner, making it time for the library staff to bid farewell to our graduating student assistants – Megan Callahan, Nicholas Chitopoulos, Mark DiMaggio, Matthew Gillen, Julia Guilger, Michael Johnson, Ryan Miranda, Lauren Paglierani, Kelly Peterson, Anika Sutty, Kimberly Waldbillig and Steven Zhen. Congratulations and best wishes for a happy and successful future!

It’s a Bentley Library tradition to dedicate a book to each of our graduating student employees in appreciation for their service.  This year, the students were invited to choose either a book or a film to be dedicated on their behalf.   We enjoyed seeing the diversity of their picks, which range from Ayn Rand to Cormac McCarthy to Harry Potter! We will be displaying all of their individual selections in the New Books area for the next few weeks – stop by and take a look.

Thanks goes out to all of our student employees for their hard work and commitment throughout the past year! Have a wonderful summer break, and we look forward to your return next year.

Our Top 10 Most Circulated Books, DVDs & Audiobooks!

Lisa

Once again, it’s time to announce the Bentley Library Top 10!  Each May we query our database to find out which books, audiobooks and DVDs have circulated the most times during the academic year (excluding any items placed on reserve for a class).

So, what were this year’s trends? In non-fiction, books about the financial crisis and negotiating proved to be very popular. Financial journalist Michael Lewis scored two slots in the top 10 with books that took a revealing look at Wall Street – his 1989 bestseller Liar’s Poker and its 2010 sequel The Big Short. Over on the fiction side, two trilogies were huge hits – The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins and the Millennium series (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, et al.) by Stieg Larsson. Not surprisingly, both series are bound for the big screen.  Maybe next year we’ll see them on our Top 10 DVDs list?!

Below you’ll find the BENTLEY LIBRARY TOP 10 lists for academic year 2010-2011 in the categories of POPULAR READING, STACKS (regular book collection), AUDIOBOOKS and POPULAR DVDs. Drumroll, please…

Top 10 Most Circulated Books from the Popular Reading Collection

  1. OUTLIERS: THE STORY OF SUCCESS by Malcom Gladwell [check availability]
  2. THE BIG SHORT: INSIDE THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE by Michael Lewis [check availability]
  3. FREEDOM: A NOVEL by Jonathan Franzen [check availability]
  4. CATCHING FIRE by Suzanne Collins [check availability]
  5. EAT, PRAY, LOVE by Elizabeth Gilbert [check availability]
  6. THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett [check availability]
  7. INNOCENT by Scott Turow [check availability]
  8. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST by Stieg Larsson [check availability]
  9. THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE by Stieg Larsson [check availability]
  10. PRIVATE by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro [check availability]

Top 10 Most Circulated Books from the Stacks (regular book collection)

  1. LIAR’S POKER: RISING THROUGH THE WRECKAGE ON WALL STREET by Michael Lewis [check availability]
  2. PRINCIPLES OF CORPORATE FINANCE by R. A. Brealey, S. C. Myers & F. Allen [check availability]
  3. THE BIG SHORT: INSIDE THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE by Michael Lewis [check availability]
  4. PEOPLE SKILLS: HOW TO ASSERT YOURSELF, LISTEN TO OTHERS AND RESOLVE CONFLICTS  by Robert Bolton [check availability]
  5. THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins [check availability]
  6. THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE by Stephen Covey [check availability]
  7. BARGAINING FOR ADVANTAGE: NEGOTIATION STRATEGIES FOR REASONABLE PEOPLE by G. Richard Shell [check availability]
  8. THE SNOWBALL: WARREN BUFFET AND THE BUSINESS OF LIFE by Alice Schroeder [check availability]
  9. BLINK: THE POWER OF THINKING WITHOUT THINKING by Malcolm Gladwell [check availability]
  10. GETTING TO YES: NEGOTIATING AGREEMENT WITHOUT GIVING IN by Roger Fisher [check availability]

Top 10 Most Circulated Audiobooks

  1. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen [check availability]
  2. EARTH (THE AUDIOBOOK) by Jon Stewart [check availability]
  3. FREAKONOMICS: A ROGUE ECONOMIST EXPLORES THE HIDDEN SIDE OF EVERYTHING by Steven Levitt [check availability]
  4. NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH AND HAPPINESS by Richard Thaler & Cass Sunstein [check availability]
  5. THE 4-HOUR WORKWEEK: ESCAPE 9-5, LIVE ANYWHERE, AND JOIN THE NEW RICH by Timothy Ferriss [check availability]
  6. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST by Stieg Larsson [check availability]
  7. ROOM: A NOVEL by Emma Donoghue [check availability]
  8. BLACK HILLS by Nora Roberts [check availability]
  9. SUPERFREAKONOMICS by Steven Levitt [check availability]
  10. THE BIG SHORT: INSIDE THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE by Michael Lewis [check availability]

Top 10 Most Circulated Popular DVDs

  1. THE HURT LOCKER [check availability]
  2. SHUTTER ISLAND [check availability]
  3. SHERLOCK HOLMES [check availability]
  4. THE BLIND SIDE [check availability]
  5. ALICE IN WONDERLAND [check availability]
  6. V FOR VENDETTA [check availability]
  7. (500) DAYS OF SUMMER [check availability]
  8. UP [check availability]
  9. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS [check availability]
  10. THE HANGOVER [check availability]

Preliminary Findings from our Research Journals Project

Liz

This semester, the library asked 15 students to keep journals for a week (February 24 – March 2, 2011), recording every time they engaged in an information-seeking activity related to their academic lives. We also interviewed the students afterward to ask them about their research habits. We learned a lot from this window on students’ real-life research – this is just the tip of the iceberg! We’ll share more information in the fall.

Our student participants included:

  • 6 grad students and 9 undergrads (1 freshman, 4 sophomores, 2 juniors, and 2 seniors)
  • a range of majors, including 4 LSM students

The most frequent tasks students engaged in were:

  • searching for information on a topic, like “college students’ behaviors” or “freedom of speech” (31 searches)
  • searching for a known item, like a particular book, article, or video (27 searches)

The most frequent methods students used to complete their tasks were:

  • searching Google (42 searches)
  • searching a specific library database (17 searches)

The most popular databases students used were ProQuest, Academic Search Premier, and CCH IntelliConnect. The most popular websites they searched were Wikipedia and specific companies’ home pages.

Students most often did research during the afternoon (12:00 to 5:00), and most often in their dorm room (if they lived on campus). The students in our study generally said that the part of research they find the most difficult is coming up with the right search terms – both in online search engines and library databases – to get “the right information the first time.”

Stay tuned later this fall for more of what we learned about how students use information, the library, and other campus resources. We have a lot of data to analyze!

78 (and counting!) Things You Didn’t Know About the Bentley Library

Katy 2 Comments

Whether you’re a heavy user of the library or only have a vague idea of our existence, there’s probably a lot you didn’t know about the way this place works. We polled the staff and came up with 78 things you might not know about the library. Can you think of any others? Something you were surprised to learn that you suspect your fellow Falcons don’t know about? Tell us in the comments, and we’ll add it to the list.

78 Things You Didn’t Know About the Bentley Library

 

  1. The library has more than 6,000 DVDs—from The Sopranos to Inside Job to Casablanca—and you can borrow them for free.
  2. Everyone at Bentley has an online library account. You can log in through the library’s catalog to place holds and renew items.
  3. Each academic year, around 260 classes come to the library’s Research Instruction Center for personalized instruction sessions with our reference librarians.
  4. During the academic year, the library is open 110.5 hours per week.
  5. Through the library, Bentley affiliates have access to the full text of more than 35,000 magazines, journals, and newspapers.
  6. The Bentley School of Accounting and Finance was established in 1917, but the first Bentley library was not founded until 1958. Professor James Boudreau was the first director.
  7. The Baker Library Collection is named after Solomon R. Baker ’24, who donated $250,000 to Bentley when it broke ground in Waltham.
  8. The library’s clock tower was built in 1973, five years after the rest of the building was completed.
  9. The library has lockers downstairs where you can stash your stuff for the day. Check out a key at the Library Services Desk!
  10. Never attended an opening reception at the art gallery in the library? You’re missing out on free food and a chance to talk to the artist.
  11. The library has a collection of online research guides assembling the best resources for different subject areas and courses. Our most popular subject guide is Accountancy, and the most popular class guides are for GB301.
  12. The library’s Bowles Room is named for Edward L. Bowles, former Trustee Emeritus and world-renowned scientist who donated his personal library to Bentley College in the early 1980s.
  13. The library’s Bowles Room has six DVD players so you can watch movies that have been placed on reserve.
  14. There are two public scanners in Computing Services on the lower level of the library building.
  15. There is a fax machine on the lower level of the library where you can send documents anywhere in the world free of charge.
  16. The library has eight regular printers and one color printer. You can print to them from any campus computer.
  17. Cell phone dead? Use one of the library’s old-school pay phones, located at the bottom of the front staircase. On-campus calls are free.
  18. The Careers Collection on the second floor of the library contains hundreds of career guides and job search skills books.
  19. Time to kill between classes? Sit and enjoy a magazine in the Current Periodicals section on the main floor of the library. Yes, you could read them online, but isn’t it more relaxing to flip through the glossy pages of People or Rolling Stone while you enjoy your latte?
  20. The library’s vending machines not only dispense Pepsi, Cheetos, and M&Ms, but also index cards, highlighters, and Tylenol.
  21. Reference librarians love nothing more than to help you with your research. They’ll answer your questions in person at the Reference Desk or via email, IM, and phone.
  22. Large, colorful building directories on the wall near all the library staircases can help you locate your study room, that certain section of the stacks, or the nearest restroom.
  23. To ensure that we always have the most popular bestsellers on the shelf, the library leases—not buys—all of our popular reading books. Books that aren’t as popular anymore are returned to make room for new items.
  24. The library has more than 600 audiobooks. They come in two formats—CD and Playaways, pre-loaded MP3 players.
  25. Laptop being fixed? There are 120 public computers in the library.
  26. Beware—laptop batteries get very hot! Protect yourself by using a lap desk. The library has them on hand in the main floor reading room.
  27. Looking for a super-quiet place to study? Try a study carrel on the top floor of the library.
  28. The library subscribes to more than 80 research databases that give you access to hundreds of thousands of articles and reports.
  29. The library has passes for free or reduced admission at area museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Science, the New England Aquarium, and the Franklin Park and Stone Zoos.
  30. Members of the Bentley community are welcome to borrow books from the Brandeis library. Cards are available at the Library Services Desk.
  31. The library offers workshops on conducting research and citing sources throughout the school year. We advertise them in our monthly email newsletter, on Facebook and Twitter, and in the library’s In the Know blog.
  32. Each library group study room has its own thermostat. You can control the temperature within the range of 68 to 72 degrees.
  33. If you access Google Scholar through the library’s databases page, it will recognize you as a Bentley user and link you to articles in many of our databases.
  34. The full text of the Wall Street Journal going back to 1889 is available through ProQuest. Factiva has it too, from 1979 to the present.
  35. Looking for the full text of the New York Times? You can find it in ProQuest going back to 1857.
  36. The library has an archive of school newspapers going back to 1959.
  37. The library’s reference collection is a trove of information you won’t find anywhere else—including statistics, historical information, and well-researched overviews of topics. Our expert reference librarians can help you find anything you’re looking for, too.
  38. Save time formatting your Google Scholar citations! You can export them to your RefWorks account to cite later.
  39. Faculty videos can be checked out by any Bentley community member for three days (unless, of course, a video is on reserve for a class).
  40. ProQuest is the library’s most-searched database, averaging 25,000 searches per month.
  41. Bentley has won several awards in the Business School Beanpot Case Analysis competition. The library houses the plaques—you can find them near the Current Periodicals section.
  42. The library has more than 7,000 autobiographies and biographies on people ranging from Jackie Robinson to Sarah Palin.
  43. The chimes you hear coming from the clock tower are not actually bells. It’s a recording!
  44. The library’s self-checkout station is a quick and easy way to check out your books and DVDs.
  45. On average, the library adds 1,000 new e-books per month to the collection.
  46. The library employs more than 30 students who perform work vital to our operation, from processing new books to checking out DVDs and delivering the mail.
  47. The Opposing Viewpoints book series can help you prepare for a paper, presentation, or speech. The library has 237 of these titles on topics from cyber crime to illegal immigration to teen drug abuse.
  48. The library receives nearly 10,000 new physical books per year..
  49. Reference librarians with specialized knowledge of particular subject areas read hundreds of reviews and scour catalogs to select books for the library’s collection.
  50. Each year, all 10,000 new books are ordered by just two people from the library’s technical services staff.
  51. The library has digital voice recorders that you can check out to record interviews or lectures.
  52. Anyone can submit a review to the library’s book review blog, Book Buzz.
  53. The library is open 24 hours during finals.
  54. The library was entirely renovated in 2006 for $17 million. During the renovation our collection of 200,000+ books and DVDs was packed up and sent to a storage unit.
  55. The library has a small but growing collection of graphic novels, including classics like Watchmen and Ghost World.
  56. You can suggest books and DVDs for us to add to the library’s collection. If we purchase the item, we’ll let you know. Submit your requests via the Suggest a Purchase form on our web page.
  57. You can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and check in at the library on Foursquare.
  58. Look out for the big jar of free highlighters that appears periodically at the library’s Reference Desk!
  59. You can check out headphones to use in the library at the Library Services Desk.
  60. The library has guides for many popular standardized tests, including the LSAT, GMAT, GRE, CPA, CFA, CISA, and CIFM exams.
  61. Two Bentley reference librarians have appeared on the quiz show Jeopardy!.
  62. Holding a conference call in a library group study room? You can borrow a conference phone from the Library Services Desk.
  63. The library’s catalog includes not only the collections housed in the library building, but also materials in the Center for Business Ethics and Women’s Center libraries.
  64. Wondering where the Dewey Decimal call numbers are? Like most academic libraries, Bentley uses the Library of Congress classification system—based on the books held by the Library of Congress—to organize and shelve books according to subject.
  65. The library owns copies of books written—and owned!—by Harry Bentley.
  66. Since 2004, the interlibrary loan staff has processed more than 50,000 requests.
  67. The library borrows and loans materials worldwide through interlibrary loan. Our books have travelled to Denmark, South Africa and Brazil.
  68. The Bentley book that has been requested the most through interlibrary loan is The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life.
  69. The journal held by the Bentley Library that has been requested most often by other libraries, with more than 500 requests for articles, is the International Journal of Mobile Communications.
  70. Because some library materials are only available on microfilm, we have a microfilm reader in the Bowles Room. You can scan and save articles to a PDF or JPG file.
  71. Interlibrary loan isn’t just for books! You can request articles, DVDs, CDs, and audio books—all for free.
  72. All current Bentley students can get a library card at the Waltham Public Library.
  73. In 2010, 705,308 people walked in or out the doors of the library (did you know the security gates measure that?). That’s an average of 58,000 people per month!
  74. Bentley Library patrons checked out 53,605 items in 2010. That’s an average of 4,400 books, DVDs, and other items a month.
  75. On average, the reference librarians answer 6,000 questions a year—in person, over the phone, and through IM and email.
  76. For the 2009-2010 school year, the most circulated popular reading title was The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. From the stacks, the book that circulated the most was Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
  77. The library has 24 group study rooms. On a busy day in April 2011, there were 353 individual reservations for those rooms.
  78. The library has 19 staff members who do everything from answering reference questions to ordering and processing books to managing course reserves and keeping the building running smoothly. Eleven members of the staff have a master’s degree in library science, and two are Bentley alums!

Library Snapshot Day

Katy 1 Comment

On Wednesday, April 13, the library participated in Library Snapshot Day, a statewide event scheduled to coincide with the American Library Association’s National Library Week. On Snapshot Day, libraries throughout Massachusetts collect statistics and other information to illustrate a typical day in the life of the library—a snapshot, as the name implies. Snapshot Day shows the value and contributions of libraries to communities around the commonwealth, whether the community is a school, a town or city, or a college campus.

For this year’s Snapshot Day, the Bentley Library’s first, we compiled statistics about library use on Wednesday, April 13. Like most other libraries, we collect these numbers every day, but they’re mostly for internal use. Last week they were meant to be shared.

Here’s a picture of April 13, a typical Wednesday at the Bentley Library, according to our usage statistics:

  • More than four thousand people visited the library—4,495, to be exact.
  • It’s late in the semester, so our group study rooms were busy with students working on projects and, well, studying in groups. We had a total of 353 reservations throughout the day.
  • The circulation desk processed 490 items: 294 items borrowed and 196 items returned, including course reserves.
  • The interlibrary loan department received 70 requests for materials from Bentley patrons and those at other libraries, including 34 borrowing requests and 36 lending requests.
  • The reference staff fielded 37 questions, including 26 questions about research or academic help and reference sources. The total of 37 includes questions asked in person and those that came in over the phone and through instant messages or email.

We also asked patrons using the circulation and reference desks to complete a short survey telling us how they were using the library that day. Without knowing what people are doing here, we can’t interpret the usage data.

Here’s what a small, unscientific sample of 72 Bentley Library patrons had to say about what they were doing at the library last Wednesday.

What did you do at the Bentley Library today?

  • Check out an item: 32
  • Class visit: 2*
  • Homework: 39
  • Research: 24
  • Quiet place to study: 25
  • Read: 23
  • Use the Internet: 22
  • Attend a meeting: 16
  • Attend a program: 2
  • Other: 9

*This number would often be higher, but we didn’t have any formally scheduled class instruction sessions last Wednesday.

We’re here to serve the entire Bentley community, so we also wanted to know who was using the library on Snapshot Day.

What is your role at Bentley?

  • Undergraduate student: 52
  • Graduate student: 14
  • Faculty: 4
  • Staff: 2
  • Waltham resident (includes those who selected other options): 2

We also asked about how the library helps patrons with their academic work, research, and teaching. Two of the major themes in your responses were quiet study space and access to resources such as books and databases, but that wasn’t all. Here are some representative highlights.

“Provides a space away from my room to get work done.” –Undergraduate student

“Place to study and collaborate.” –Graduate student

“Provides newspapers, resources, and a quiet place to study.” –Undergraduate student

“Self-advancement.” –Faculty member

“Quiet, printer.” –Graduate student

“I like to take the reserve books out.” –Undergraduate student

“The databases are great.” –Undergraduate student

“I get a great amount of help from the reference librarians.” –Faculty member

“Research guides are great! Make more!” –Undergraduate student

“[Reference] librarians help find useful resources.” –Undergraduate student

“Great resources and books for papers.” –Undergraduate student

“Headphones when I forget mine.” –Undergraduate student

“Great books, nice people.” –Staff member

The library staff would like to extend a big thank-you to everyone who helped out with Snapshot Day. We look forward to a bigger and better event next year.

Do you have ideas for ways we could make Snapshot Day more fun and more interactive? Please tell us, and know that your comments and suggestions about how you use the library are always welcome—on Snapshot Day and throughout the year.

April is National Poetry Month

Liz 2 Comments

Since 1996, the Academy of American Poets has been celebrating April as National Poetry Month. And while poetry probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you think about the Bentley Library’s collections, the library does own plenty of books of and about poetry; a recent catalog search for the word “poems” yielded almost 1500 results. Almost all of those books can be found on the second floor, from our most recent acquisitions — St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott’s latest book White Egrets and a new definitive edition of Massachusetts native Elizabeth Bishop’s collected poems — to classic favorites like Shakespeare’s sonnets and the complete poems of Emily Dickinson.

Don’t know where to start? Try the Poetry Foundation’s website, where you can explore poems by topics like friendship or pets, or read their Poem of the Day. If you’re new to poetry, you might also be interested in Emily Gould’s short article “Independent Study,” which details one poetry newbie’s foray into the genre. Or check out the official National Poetry Month website, which includes a national Poetry Map of Events for April.

And for the moment, enjoy the beginning of a poem from the new Elizabeth Bishop book mentioned above. The poem’s title is, sadly, appropriate for this particular April: “A Cold Spring.”

“A cold spring:
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.”

(In Bishop, Elizabeth. Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011, page 55).

Don’t Miss Out on the Conversation – Follow Us on Facebook & Twitter

Lisa

In between news updates on this blog, we are busy chatting away about the library, books, movies, business, current events and other intriguing things on Twitter (@BentleyLibrary) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/bentleylibrary).  Our interests are varied – covering everything from the Google Books settlement to new research resources to the @BronxZoosCobra – and we want to know what interests you. So, what are you waiting for?  Follow us today!