We’re back for Spring 2016 with a whole new look for our newsletter to match our whole new outlook for the year. We plan to spend a lot of 2016 digging into what Downtown Campus needs from us and how we can best meet those needs, so be prepared for us to pepper you with questions. In fact, beginning February 1st we’ll be willing to trade chocolates for a little feedback, so be sure to stay tuned for updates there.

It’s with both sadness and excitement that we report that one of our fabulous Library Assistants, Angela, will be moving on to another position with the College at a different campus. We’ll miss Angela’s creative spirit, though she has promised to leave us Library Groot to remember her by.

Our focus for the rest of this month is helping students get acclimated to Accudemia, the Library and Learning Commons’ check-in system. Students now swipe their student IDs when entering the LLC, which helps give us a better idea of what our traffic patterns are like and what our staffing needs may be. The data we gather is part of our big plans to improve our services, so please help us by encouraging students to swipe in!

February will see us celebrating Chinese New Year as well as asking you to break our hearts, so be sure to check back then. But until then, we’ll see you in the stacks!

We’re in the final stretch of the Fall 2016 term, and things are winding down for the year here in the Library. Generally this is the time of year we use to do a little housekeeping, and part of that effort this year involves making plans for how awesome we’re going to be in 2016. We already have a few ideas, but if you’re interested in seeing us tackle anything in particular, please let us know, either by commenting here or by emailing us at downtowncampuslibrary@fscj.edu.

For those of you who may be feeling the stress of finals, feel free to join us Monday, December 7th-Thursday, December 10th from 10:00AM to 2:00PM for a stress-free zone featuring coloring and soothing music.

The college closes for the holidays on December 23rd, and will remain closed until January 4th – which means you should definitely swing by and check out a few good things to read to keep you occupied. We look forward to serving you in the next year. Until then, we’ll see you in the stacks!

Dinovember returns!

In honor of International Education Week, which falls during this month, the Library dinosaurs will be reading their way around the world to highlight items in our collection written by international authors. They’ll be visiting Chile, France, Iran, and many, many other countries, so be sure to follow their progress on our Facebook page. You can also stop by the Library to check out our reading map highlighting many of the different titles we own and where they originated. We encourage you to find a book from you country. If we don’t have one, please suggest one you think we should carry!

Meanwhile, if you’re feeling stressed by the end of the term, you can stop by A2102Q on November 9th, 10th, and 12th between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. and take a coloring break. Colored pencils and coloring sheets will be provided, as well as classical music intended to soothe the savage study-related headache.

Until next month, we’ll see you in the stacks!

The beginning of October marked the end of Banned Books Week, and we’d like to thank everyone who went on a date with a banned book and let us take their photos for our very own READstricted poster. We’re pretty happy with how it turned out:

But now that that’s out of the way…it’s time for:

In addition to our month-long online celebration of all things scary, we’ll also be hosting a ghost hunt. Patrons who visit the Library between October 19th and October 31st and use the catalog to locate a book with the word GHOST in the title and then bring it to the desk will get a treat (no tricks!).

We hope to see you for our ghost hunt. While you’re here, be sure to ask us about the spooky things we’re reading this month.

Next month we’ll be kicking off the return of Dinovember, but until then we’ll see you in the stacks!

In September we celebrate Banned Books Week, which runs this year from September 27th-October 3rd. Throughout the month we offer you the chance to go on a date with a banned book by picking one of the wrapped titles off our Banned Books display. Only the complaint lodged made against the book when it was banned or challenged appears on the wrapping, so you can either be surprised by the title at check-out or peek and see just how random and strange some of the objections made to classic books have been.

Stop by the front desk to have your photo taken with our READstricted mask and your favorite banned book and we’ll include you in our home-made Banned Books Week Poster!

As we look toward October, we’ll be prepping for Horroween, and then after that it will be time for the return of Dinovember. That’s all in the future, though. So for now, remember: don’t let other people make decisions about what you can read, and we’ll see you in the stacks!

August in the Library is pretty much the calm before the storm that is Fall Term. Though it may look quiet in here, we’re hard at work making sure we’re ready to knock your socks off beginning August 24th.

Part of that prep work was completed at this beginning of this month as we concluded our annual inventory process. Once a year we physically scan every item in the collection to make sure our records are as accurate as possible and that we haven’t accidentally acquired items that belong to the other campuses. This year we finished in a record two days, and (since we have to do part of it while we’re open) we’d like to thank the handful of students who cheerfully put up with all the beeping noises we made scanning the books.

Another part of the process is our soft roll-out of the Accudemia check-in system, which will allow us to understand better the needs of students and staff accordingly. Be sure to have your student ID handy to swipe in and (just as importantly!) swipe out when you use the Library and Learning Commons.

September is coming up fast, and with it Banned Books week. If you or your class would be interested in participating in our reading of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, please contact Library Manager Jennifer Grey and let her know.

That’s it for now. Until next month, see you in the stacks!

So far July has gone swimmingly as the Library celebrates Shark Week by showcasing our collection of sharks’ teeth and a display of books and movies related to those oh-so-awesome denizens of the deep. Shark Week ends this Saturday, but you can check out the display through the end of the month.

July also marks the long-awaited arrival of Harper Lee’s “new” book, Go Set a Watchman. While we likely won’t be able to purchase a copy of the novel until August, we’re still celebrating the publication all month on our Facebook page with a selection of trivia and facts about Harper Lee and her work.

At the tail end of this month, the Library will be performing our annual inventory. So if you start hearing beeping around the 31st, it’s not your ears, it’s just us. We do a complete check of our collection once a year to ensure our records are as up to date as possible so that we’re better able to serve you.

We don’t currently have anything planned for August (other than preparing for Fall!), but keep an eye on our Facebook page just in case we decide to squeeze in something.

Until next month, see you in the stacks!

June is all about new things for us. Mostly that means new books and DVDs, but in this case it also means new events – in particular our The Fedora is a Lie: What the Indiana Jones Movies Got Right (and Wrong) About the Study of Archaeology, which is coming up next week!

UNF’s Dr. Keith Ashley will join us at 6:00pm on Tuesday, June 16th in A1058 for a presentation on the finer points of how not to be an archaeologist (as demonstrated by the unforgettable Dr. Jones), followed by a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Seating will start at 5:30pm, so be sure to arrive early and get your seat. If you can’t make it, don’t worry – we’ll be hosting the best in archaeological facts and trivia all month long on our Facebook page.

If excavating isn’t your thing, then we suggest you hang on until July, when the Library will celebrate Shark Week and the publication of Go Tell a Watchman, the sequel to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

See you on the 16th – and, as always – in the stacks!

As expected, May in the Library is a bit on the quiet side…at least on the surface. We’re busily spending the last of our budget, which means May is a great time for those of you who like to peruse our New Arrivals shelves. We’ve also added a bunch of new DVDs who like their summer with a side of cinema.

In addition, we’ve got a lot of plans for the not-too-distant future. We’ll keep you spoiler-free on most of them for now, but we are happy to announce our June event, hosted in conjunction with Student Activities: The Fedora is a Lie: What the Indiana Jones Movies Got Right (and Wrong) About the Study of Archaeology.

UNF’s Dr. Keith Ashley will join us at 6:00pm on Tuesday, June 16th in A1058 for a presentation on the finer points of how not to be an archaeologist (as demonstrated by the unforgettable Dr. Jones), followed by a screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Seating will start at 5:30pm, so be sure to arrive early and get your seat.

In support of this event, we’ll be hosting Indiana Junes on our Facebook page, and featuring daily posts about history and archaeology that are guaranteed to make you want to slap on a fedora.

We hope you’ll join us on the 16th. Until next month, see you in the stacks!

For us, April is all about the Poetry.

This month we celebrate National Poetry Month, which means that each day we’ll be featuring a new poem both on our Facebook page and on a whiteboard immediately outside the front door of A2102 (for all of your drive-by poetry needs). In addition, we’ll be sharing interesting tidbits about poetry, including features on poems, poets, and the unexpected places poetry makes itself known.

We’re also collecting submissions from students, faculty, and staff of their favorite poems. If you submit, not only will we illustrate and feature your poem, we’ll enter you to win a $25 Amazon.com gift card! Submissions are due by 4/23.

As part of our submission process, we’ve visited a few classrooms and recorded students reading their favorite poems (or song lyrics, which count, too). You can check those out on our Facebook page, or by visiting our SoundCloud.

In other news, our FSCJ Urban Garden Club event with Donald Justice went fabulously. Also, you’ve still got a couple of days to get in your submissions for National Library Week (see below post in March for details).

We expect May to be a little bit of a slow month here in the Library, but we’ve got some plans for June and July that we think you’ll really love.

Until then, hope to see you in the stacks!