This week, the Library will launch its new website. Over the past few months, a team of Bilkent librarians have evaluated and revised our existing web pages, and then designed the new site. There are changes to not only the appearance but also the content of the website. We hope that the new library website will be more user-friendly and make access to library resources and services easier and faster than previously. The website will continue with the same URL as before. For the English version, please go to:
http://library.bilkent.edu.tr/
and for Turkish:
http://library.bilkent.edu.tr/tr/index.html
We welcome comments and feedback about the new site from all library users, and will attempt to incorporate as many improvements as possible. In order to send us your thoughts, you can complete this short online survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16nxpb3hPyiwgX0KdjkBtHDWJ794VanFKNxPopi3ZjUM/viewform
On November 20, the Library will host the second Lunchtime Lecture for this semester. The speaker will be Prof. Tuğrul Dayar (Department of Computer Engineering, and associate provost), and his talk is entitled “Markov and His Chains.” Markov chains (MCs) have been around for more than a century. Their treatment using square matrices, however, started becoming popular only about half a century later. The nice thing about Markov chains is that they can be specified using a state- and transition-based representation, stored as a sparse matrix and analyzed numerically for their behavior on the computer. With the advancement of technology, MCs can be used today to model and analyze a variety of discrete-event dynamic systems that have millions or even billions of states in areas ranging from queuing networks to chemical physics. This talk is about the man behind the chains, as well as some examples of the chains themselves, starting from a very small one, with only three states, about an absent-minded professor, followed by a queuing station with a waiting line, and then web page ranking. Prof. Dayar will conclude his lecture with a brief discussion on the Kronecker approach to modeling and analyzing multidimensional MCs. The talk will be in English, and will be held in the Main Campus Library Art Gallery, starting at 12:40 p.m. As usual, lunchtime refreshments will be provided.