EX LIBRIS: News from the Library
Happy 2011 to all Bilkenters! This semester, the Library has many exciting projects designed to improve its services for the Bilkent community. You will see some important physical renovations and changes to the library buildings during the following months, as well as some further improvements and additions to our automated services. The Library will also be working collaboratively with various departments and academic units this semester to promote our resources and develop students' information skills. We will be administering a user satisfaction survey in April in order to collect your feedback about these changes as well as your thoughts on the Library in general.
During the next month or so, we will be constructing a new branch library on East Campus, to replace the existing library there. The new East Campus Library, which will be located on the basement floor of N-building (BUSEL), will house a smaller, more focused collection, designed for the specific needs of students and faculty who are based on East Campus. It will hopefully open its doors at the end of February or very early March.
As many of you will know, the Library's homepage has a general search tool called "Quick Search" that allows you to search most of our electronic resources with a single mouse-click. With the help of library representatives from the departments, we assessed Quick Search last semester and have decided to make some significant improvements to this service. Quick Search now works with a different search engine, which is much faster than its predecessor and is also able to search our library catalog as well as the databases. Please make use of the new Quick Search for your studies, research and teaching, and let us know what you think.
The Library Lunchtime Lecture series will continue this semester with another three interesting talks by Bilkent faculty members. On Thursday, March 3, Prof. Tayfun Özçelik and Dr Katja Dörschner will give a joint presentation about a collaborative project involving the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and the Department of Psychology, entitled "Anna Karenina and the Collaborative Aspects of Cognitive Neurogenomics Studies at Bilkent." Our next speaker will be Dr. Ted Kohn, chair of the Department of American Culture and Literature, who will give a talk on Wednesday, March 23, about his recent book Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt, which was published last year and has received a lot of favorable publicity. And, in late April, Prof. Tekin Akıllıoğlu of the Law Faculty will speak on Cyprus and the European Convention on Human Rights. You will be informed again about these lectures nearer the time.
Please remember to become a "fan" of our Facebook page in order to keep up-to-date with all developments at the Library, and use our new web-based reference service "Ask Online" if you have any immediate queries about the Library and its resources. We wish you all a pleasant and productive spring semester.