EX LIBRIS: News from the Library
Bilkent University Library would like to say "hoşgeldiniz" all new students and staff, and to welcome back those returning for the academic year 2011-12. We wish you a productive fall semester! The librarians have in fact met most new undergraduate students already, as over 90 percent of newcomers participated successfully in the library component of the GE100 program. We hope you all found this session to be useful and enjoyable. In addition to a brief outline of the role of the library in university life, participating students were also introduced to the library catalog, and then had to search for, locate and borrow one book from our collection.
As usual, Bilkent librarians have not been lazy during the summer vacation, but have been actively seeking to improve our resources and services in various ways. As part of our ongoing improvement of the library buildings and facilities, the Art Room in Main Campus Library has been renovated during the past month and will be open to users this week. We hope the improved Art Room will be a more comfortable and pleasant studying environment for students and faculty, and we welcome any feedback.
Last semester, Bilkent reference librarians worked closely with graduate students from the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture to write and record a series of five instructional videos about the library. These videos, which are in Turkish with English subtitles, provide a humorous look at the library rules and resources. One of these videos was shown to students during GE100, and all of them can now be viewed on YouTube via our website. We plan to make more such videos in the future and, again, welcome all comments and suggestions.
In addition to our existing Facebook page, which we encourage you all to "like," we have also created a new library blog and have set up a Flickr account. The purpose of the blog, which will include entries in English and/or Turkish, is to describe in detail the activities of the library and librarians after they occur, and to provide a forum for discussing library-related topics and information literacy in general. We look forward to reading your comments and replies to our blog entries.
During this semester the library will continue to develop its resources and services. You can look forward to important updates to our online catalog and our website, including improved general searching functionality. We will continue to collaborate closely with the School of English Language, as well as with individual academic departments, to develop the research and information-finding/using skills of all students at Bilkent University. Finally, the lunchtime lecture series will kick off this semester on October 5, when Prof. Ali Doğramacı, president of the Board of Trustees, will deliver a talk entitled "Pre-University Education: the Bilkent Experience." We will also have lectures by Assoc. Prof. Pınar Bilgin about international relations in a changing world on November 16, and by Prof. Fazlı Can of the computer science department about mobile information retrieval on December 14. Please mark your calendars for these three talks, and watch for further announcements nearer the scheduled dates.