Emma Bull Joins NIU SFWA Archives

We are deeply pleased to announce that Emma Bull has made an initial deposit of her papers to the SFWA Collection here in Rare Books and Special Collections.

Emma is probably best known for her novel War for the Oaks, which pioneered the urban fantasy subgenre of SF/F. Emma was nominated for the Nebula, the Hugo, and the World Fantasy Awards for her novel Bone Dance. She is also an accomplished musician, having played with the bands Cats Laughing and The Flash Girls.

A member of the Scribblies writing group, Emma is also one of the executive producers and writers for Shadow Unit, an online fiction experience for a television show that never existed.

We are deeply pleased to add Emma's work  to our collections.

Welcome, Emma!

Proposed congressional bills that scare me as a librarian who uses the Internet

[Crossposted from lynnemthomas.com ]

I've been retweeting a lot about these over on my twitter, but I thought I'd put up some links for posterity. These bits of legislation are related to these-here internets, too, so they really affect everyone.

SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act; its House counterpart is called PROTECT-IP). This proposed bill is baaad news. TL;DR: It basically allows the takedown of any website that is even suspected of piracy, proof or no. Or websites that might link to those sites. Jessamyn has a great summary of information and where to find it, and what librarians can do to fight this bill. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, is owned by Elsevier, who supports SOPA. One thing to consider as suggested by LibraryLoon is no longer submitting to that journal, and to write to the editorial board of the journal to ask why they are willing to continue providing free labor to a company that directly works against their professional interests. (I will note that Elsevier is not always a favorite company of librarians in general, since they tend to have the most expensive, prohibitive pricing and sharing models for the works they own. And they tend to own the journals that get our faculty tenure. A bad combination, that.) I'm working on moving away from GoDaddy as my provider as soon as I can, because they supported SOPA as well (then they weaseled out, but really). Interestingly, as ReadWriteWeb notes, news outlets that support SOPA are not reporting upon it.

The Research Works Act. Another disturbing proposed piece of proposed legislation is the Research Works Act (HR 3699), which would remove the requirement that publicly funded research (i.e. through federal grants like the National Insitutes of Health) be made available to the public within a certain time frame after its publication. Articles drawn from NIH-funded research on colon cancer, for instance, would no longer be required to be posted to PubMed after six months. Instead, private companies that vend research to libraries (like Elsevier) could hold onto it much longer. So the research that has been paid for with your tax dollars would no longer be available to everyone for the public good; instead, it would only be available to the libraries that can afford to pay for it (which is a consistently dwindling number of libraries, I might add). Right now the White House is doing a Request for Information (RFI) about this bill. Please go forth and let them know that you think the public should have direct, free access to the research that they funded, if you feel strongly about it.

Michael Z. Williamson Papers added to NIU SFWA Archives

I'm pleased to announce that we have added the papers of Michael Z. Williamson to the SFWA Collection archives here at NIU. Mike is an Air Force veteran and weaponry expert who has published several fantasy and military SF novels, primarily with Baen Books.

Welcome, Mike!

Holiday Hiatus

So, this blog is officially going on hiatus for the holidays.

Since I'm currently in the process of setting up my own website (with WordPress and everything!), I haven't figured out what role this blog will play in that process. I'm taking the holidays to think about it. I may migrate some, all, or none of the content here over there.

In the meantime, please accept my warmest wishes for a pleasant holiday season.

(And don't forget that RBSC is closed from December 22, 2011-January 2, 2012.

We reopen on Tuesday, January 3, 2012.

Happy holidays!

RBSC Holiday Hours

This is a gentle reminder that Rare Books and Special Collections closes at 4:30 pm today, and will not reopen again until Monday, November 28 at 8:00 am.

Happy Thanksgiving, from us to you. :-)

[If you're looking for me, I can be sighted at Chicago TARDIS later this weekend]

What can we stop doing?

We're always looking for ways to streamline library services and do MORE MORE MORE, without taking anything away.

Unfortunately, time and staff and resources are finite. So one thing we've been trying to do, as part of managing space here in RBSC, is to collapse collections into one another where we can, particularly if there isn't a specific reason to be separate.

Thus, you will soon see the end of the Western Fiction Magazines collection. It's a small group of western magazines that are currently being cataloged for the first time, despite being on our shelves for a bit. Since we had an opportunity to do a small project with some extra cataloging help, I opted to get those titles cataloged (a finite project), and to have them added instead to our American Popular Literature collection [LibGuide in progress], where they still fit the collection guidelines quite nicely.

Of course, now I need to update our website and our collection development document, too. C'est la vie...

That brings us down to 40 special collections. In addition to our rare books.  One day I'll be able to simplify even more... but it is not this day.

Friends of NIU Libraries Event This Thursday!

This Thursday at 7:30 pm in the Founders' Library Staff Lounge (lower level)

Ross Powell, Board of Trustees Professor and Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences will present:

A tale of polar canaries, humanity's future and some NIU history

The world's polar regions are acting as the "canaries in a coal­mine" as our globe warms. Unfortunately these areas are "off the radar" for much of the US population as scientists (including us at NIU) are trying to convey the urgency to act to political leaders and the general public.  Warming and its effects can be controlled if we act now. This talk will cover aspects of these global warming issues and how they relate to this region. The role NIU's scientists play in this research will be highlighted and placed in perspective of NIU's 40 years of polar research tradition.

This event is FREE and OPEN to the PUBLIC. Please join us!