Many Library locations are offering extended opening hours during the exam period. Stauffer Library is open 24 hours a day until April 27. To see the hours and real-time opening status for all Library facilities, check the Hours page.

A set of proposed key principles and ideas to guide the development of the libraries and archives has been drafted by the Library and Archives Master Plan (LAMP) team. As well, high level drawings of Stauffer and Douglas libraries provide a first iteration of the emerging planning concepts that the LAMP team is considering. “I hope that these drawings and the key concepts that inform them will generate ideas and feedback from across the university,” says Martha Whitehead, University Librarian. “They are the result of our extensive consultation and information gathering process.” The planning team is focusing first on Stauffer and Douglas libraries and from the wealth of information gathered thus far, a number of key concepts have emerged. The LAMP drawings and key concepts, along with information boards about the campus master plan, are now on display on the first floor of Stauffer library. Everyone is encouraged to view them at the library or online, and to visit the LAMP website to submit your feedback. Over the course of April Ms. Whitehead and the other members of the LAMP project team will continue the consultation process as they meet with several student, faculty and staff groups. Everyone is invited to attend and ask questions at an upcoming information session on the LAMP project on Friday, April 26 from 11-11:45 am in Robert Sutherland Hall, room 202.

An accessibility café will take place on April 10 from 11:30 to 12:30 in Speaker’s Corner, Queen’s Learning Commons, Stauffer Library. The event will consider the accessibility barriers Queen’s students might face during their time at the university and feature a panel of students, faculty and representatives from university service departments in a discussion entitled “Creating an inclusive environment for students with disabilities: from application to graduation.” The accessibility café is hosted jointly by the Senate Library Committee and the accessibility framework’s Information & Communications Working Group. Martha Whitehead, University Librarian, sees this partnership as representative of the increased awareness of accessibility issues at Queen’s. She notes that “members of the Senate Library Committee were eager to participate in this café. There is recognition across campus that we all must actively ensure the work we do and the services we provide are accessible for everyone.” Heidi Penning, an Equity Advisor at Queen’s who is working with departments across the university to raise awareness and find solutions to accessibility issues states “We want to engage people in a discussion about how the university can better enable the success of all of its students. Queen’s academic programs, and the many other services the university offers, should be accessible to all students.”

Queen’s University Library is one of 10 early-adopting university libraries in Ontario to acquire a new ebook collection of books published by Canada’s university presses, including McGill-Queen’s University Press. Thanks to a partnership between the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) and eBOUND, and in conjunction with the Association of Canadian University Presses, over 3,000 ebooks will be available online through OCUL’s Scholars Portal platform. Jane Philipps, Coordinator of Collection Development, notes that Queen’s Library does not currently own the majority of these books and that “this agreement will give our users much greater access to recent Canadian scholarship.” For more information, see the Queen’s University press release.

A special issue of Nature looks at the transformation taking place in scientific publishing. Available at:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/scipublishing/index.html

Many thanks to everyone who participated in the Library Service Quality Survey, LibQUAL+. Your responses will help us to ensure that we are meeting your expectations of library service. Results will be analyzed and shared soon. Congratulations to Kory Sutton, winner of the GoPro Camera!

The library now has access to the Springer 2013 E-Books for the following subject areas:
Behavioral Science
Biomedical and Life Science
Business and Economics
Chemistry and Materials Science
Computer Science
Earth and Environmental Science
Engineering
Humanities, Social Science & Law
Mathematics and Statistics
Medicine
Physics and Astronomy
Professional and Applied Computing

The agreement also includes access back to 1997 for the following series:
Advances in Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology
Advances in Polymer Science
Progress in Colloid and Polymer Science
Structure & Bonding
Topics in Current Chemistry
Topics in Heterocyclic Chemistry
Topics in Organometallic Chemistry
IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences
The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry
Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences
Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics
Studies in Computational Intelligence
Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing
Lecture Notes in Mathematics
Advances in Solid State Physics
Lecture Notes in Physics
Springer Series in Optical Sciences
Springer Tracts in Modern Physics
Understanding Complex Systems
NATO Science for Peace and Security

Morgan and Claypool invited Aaron Swartz to contribute a short work to their series on Web Engineering (now The Semantic Web: Theory and Technology). He produced a draft of about 40 pages — a “first version” to be extended later — but unfortunately died before the work was finished. The paper included his ideas about programming the Web, his ambivalence about different aspects of Semantic Web technology, his thoughts on Openness, and more.

As a tribute to Aaron, Morag and Claypool have posted his work on their site as a free PDF download. It is licensed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA-NC) license. The work stands as originally written, with only a few typographical errors corrected to improve readability.

Stephen A. Cook, a Toronto researcher who has dedicated his career to proving whether certain types of problems are solvable by computers, has won this year’s Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering. CBC News, Feb 27th, 2013

On Tuesday, February 26, join us in Speaker’s Corner, Stauffer Library, to celebrate our Freedom to Read. Public readings drawn from a wide variety of works in a range of disciplines and formats will take place each day between noon and 1pm.

The readings represent material that is inspiring, provocative, sometimes enjoyable and sometimes challenging. Many readings represent challenged and banned works.

Recognizing the nature of academic inquiry and scholarship, please note that the reading selections do not necessarily reflect the views or values of the readers, the Library or the University.

An assistive listening device is available from the Circulation Desk in Stauffer Library for persons who are hard of hearing.

Additional information on intellectual freedom, censorship issues and the Freedom to Read is available from the following websites:

Freedom to Read Week (Book and Periodical Council, Canada Council for the Arts)
PEN Canada
Canadian Library Association Statement on Intellectual Freedom
American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom