Gender Neutral Restrooms

As some of you may have noticed McIntyre Library now has gender neutral restrooms located on the second floor right next to the elevators. These restrooms are designed to be private personal. Just remember to lock the doors when you use them.

For news on other campus gender neutral restroom locations, see http://www.uwec.edu/newsreleases/09/june/0604GenderNeutral.htm

John

Schedule a research consultation

For students, faculty, and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, the library has a new service available: Research Consultations. You can schedule to meet with a library staff member at your convenience using this online form.

What can you expect from a research consultation?

• assistance in selecting the best resources for your subject area
• strategies for searching specific databases
• help identifying and locating primary source materials
• developing research strategies
• help searching the web for relevant and reliable information
• explanations on how to gain access to materials held in other libraries

This service is available during normal business hours. Keep in mind that many research questions can be effectively answered at the McIntyre Library reference desk seven days a week without an appointment.

We look forward to working with you!

New Room Key and Equipment Checkout System

Last week we implemented a new and improved system for checking out study rooms, laptops, cameras and other equipment.

To reserve equipment and group study room keys go to the library website and click on "equipment checkout" on the left hand side of the page. This takes you to the Equipment Checkout page. Once there, click on new system. That will take you to our new Voyager reservation system. Remember, you will need your private id to reserve the equipment.

The reservation system is new and with all software changes problems surface. Please be patient with us as we learn how to make this work better for you. We are confident that soon you will see improvements and the process will work much smoother. One of the improvements that you will see immediately is that the checkout period for laptops is now one week. This was something students were asking for and now we can provide.

The history behind implementing the new system

The primary reason is that the old system was software that was created here years ago. It had become very difficult to work with and impossible to enhance. The current system has undergone so many small tweeks and changes that it would need an entire rewriting to fix many of its problems. Here is a good example of the problem that we experience. Because the software was created before the government changed the dates when we switch from Standard Time to Daylight Savings time, for the past two years every time this happens hundreds of students get overdue fines and notices that are not their fault. Another problem in the software was that we could not easily control how it registered and held group study rooms open. I’ll bet that you have been in the situation where a room was unoccupied that you could have used for just a short time, maybe half an hour. Well the old software would hold rooms open for about an hour prior to a reservation (I’m not sure of the time but I have seen this happen) and we could not over-ride that setting to let someone in to use the room until the people who made the reservation came to use the room. Finally, another reason we went with this system is because it is part of our circulation system and it brings all of our information together. You should be able to go into your library records and see what you have reservations for.

John Pollitz

It's National Library Week!

Check out local book groups:

•L.E. Phillips Public Library
Mystery, children’s, evening, morning, progressive, online, etc…

•Crossroad Books
Chapter & Verse—adults discuss children’s & YA books

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Taxes, Taxes, Taxes!

U.S., WI, and MN tax forms are available at McIntyre Library.

They are located on the 1st floor near the DVDs and music CDs.

Tax materials are for personal use only, as supplies are limited.

Forms may be downloaded from Web sites using these URLs:

www.irs.ustreas.gov/

www.dor.state.wi.us/
www.taxes.state.mn.us/

National Bike to Work Week

May 14 is Ride Your Bike to Work Day. Get ready to come on over to the library using pedal power on Thursday--or, better yet, all week.

Library Extends Hours and FREE Coffee!

McIntyre Library will be open 24 hours the week before and of finals. After Library Grounds closes free coffee will be served to students studying in the library finals week. For more information visit http://www.uwec.edu/newsreleases/09/may/0506LibraryHours.htm