Ex Libris: News from the Library

Last semester, the Library conducted a general User Satisfaction Survey to gather feedback about our services, resources and other facilities. The results of this survey are now available online through the Library's website. The survey was conducted in both English and Turkish, and both online and in print. We received a total of 576 responses, mostly from members of the Bilkent community, with about 10 percent coming from non-Bilkent users. About 75 percent of respondents were students, with just under 20 percent of responses coming from academics. The Library had conducted a similar survey in 2008, though the new survey was shorter and, hopefully, more straightforward than its predecessor. The two surveys can be compared on our website to see whether we have improved over the past three years. A full analysis of this year's survey will be posted soon on the Library's blog. To see the results of the survey, please go to:

http://library.bilkent.edu.tr/survey.html

Last week, on Wednesday, December 14, Prof. Fazlı Can of the Department of Computer Engineering gave the third and final Library Lunchtime Lecture for this semester, entitled "Nothing Can Be More Surprising Than Life: Mobile Information Retrieval, or Memex on the Move." In a highly visual and entertaining presentation delivered to a mixed audience of students and faculty members, Prof. Can traced the history of computing since the 1940s, with special reference to the retrieval of information from digital documents, and the development of mobile systems in recent years. Prof. Can used many personal anecdotes to outline the various applications of mobile information retrieval technology in our professional and daily lives. The lecture, which was prefaced with a personal introduction by Prof. Can's friend and colleague from METU, Prof. Asuman Doğaç, concluded by describing some of the projects currently being undertaken by CS research groups at Bilkent. Our Lunchtime Lecture series will continue next semester with another set of three talks by Bilkenters.