Category: research help

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!