Ex Libris: News from the Library

03 February 2014 Comments Off on Ex Libris: News from the Library

The Library would like to welcome everyone back from the semester break, and to greet any new students and faculty! During the break, the Library opened a Twitter account to improve communication with our users. Last semester, we administered a short survey about Bilkent students’ use of social media tools, and many said that they use Twitter and would like the Library to do so too. To see our tweets and keep up to date with Library activities and announcements, please go to https://twitter.com/KutphaneBilkent and start following us! Alternatively, go to our website and click on the Twitter icon.

Speaking of surveys, the Library will be running two surveys this semester. Every three years we administer a “user satisfaction survey” to collect general feedback from students, faculty and other users, and determine how we can improve library services. It is now time for this survey, and we will send out an announcement in April. In addition, the Library will soon be surveying non-Turkish students and faculty about the problems of communicating in English in the Library.

Our Lunchtime Lecture series will continue this semester with three varied talks by Bilkent faculty members. To start us off, on Wednesday, March 5, Dr. Louisa Buckingham (TEFL and BilWrite) will discuss the use of English as a lingua franca in commercial signage, with special reference to the Arabian Gulf. Later, on April 2, Prof. Carnot Nelson, acting chair of Psychology, will talk on typical Turkish leadership style, and will examine “paternalistic” leadership both within Turkey and cross-nationally. And finally, on May 7, Dr. Ulrike Salzner (CHEM) will deliver a tasty lecture entitled “Well-Done: On Chemistry and Cooking”! Please mark your calendars for these dates and look out for later announcements.

We wish all students and faculty a productive and pleasant spring semester!