Summer brings new and exciting things: warm weather, trips to the beach, and most importantly new color copiers/scanners at the Lincoln Park and Loop campus libraries and a study room at the Loop library! 

The student copiers deduct $0.40 a page for color copies from your Demon Express account. Bring a flash drive to save your black and white and color scans for free.  Scanning is only available for flat sheets of paper inserted into the copier's document feeder.  For this reason, books cannot be scanned directly from the glass; you must first make photocopies and scan them through the feeder.  If you need to scan a high resolution image or photograph, the Campus Copy Center is a good, local option.    

After you're done using the color copier, head on over to the new study room at the Loop Library (located to the immediate left of the Bloomberg workstation and Career Information Collection).  Enjoy your new quiet study area.

We hope you like these new additions and keep checking the blog for additional services and collection updates.  Enjoy your summer and don't hesistate to ask whenever you have questions.  We're here to help!  

ProQuest has announced a 12 hour downtime for the ProQuest and CSA Illumina Platforms beginning on Saturday, June 27, 2009, at 9:00pm. The following databases will be unavailable during this downtime:

ProQuest Platform:
•    ABI/Inform
•    Dissertations & Theses
•    Ethnic NewsWatch
•    Genderwatch
•    ProQuest Education Journals
•    Wall Street Journal
•    Chicago Tribune
•    ProQuest Telecom

CSA Illumina Platform:
•    Social Services Abstracts
•    Sociological Abstracts
•    PAIS
•    Communication Abstracts

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.  

The Ravinia Festival season is underway with concerts and performances nearly every night of the week through mid-September. One of the oldest outdoor music festivals in America and the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Ravinia's season includes classical music, jazz, rock and pop bands, world music, and dance. Performances can be enjoyed from pavilion seating or from the lawn, where the music is broadcast and picnicking is encouraged! Metra helps make getting to Highland Park easier with "Ravinia Special" train schedules and fares.

And the best part is that college students are eligible for free lawn passes to Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts and Martin Theatre events. Just present your current DePaul student ID at the box office on the evening of the performance to receive one free lawn pass. Your student ID will also score you a reserved seat on the night of these performances for only $10, pending availability.

So start packing your picnic basket, and check out Ravinia's season calendar to plan your trip! And for more free concerts this summer, also check out Millennium Park's music schedule, which includes mariachi to opera to reggae.

photo provided courtesy of Ravinia Festival

June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, a celebration and recognition of contributions made by LGBT Americans. In 2000, President Bill Clinton first designated the month of June as Gay and Lesbian Pride month, and earlier this month President Barack Obama issued a proclamation to reinstate this designation. 

Along with many other cities around the world, Chicago hosts an annual gay pride parade, PRIDEChicago, which will step off from Belmont and Halsted at 12 p.m. on Sunday, June 28th. This year's parade commemorates the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, a landmark event in LGBT history that is often cited as the birth of the gay rights movement. In the wake of a routine police raid at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969, a spontaneous and violent resistance by gay clientele spilled out onto the street and resulted in a dozen arrests and injuries. As news of the riot spread, thousands of LGBT people reconvened over the next several nights to demonstrate and protest harassment. The meetings and community discussions that grew out these demonstrations led to the establishment of hundreds of gay and lesbian organizations by the mid-1970s and thousands by the end of that decade.

To learn more about the Stonewall riots and the gay rights movement, check out these books and videos available at the library. Throughout the month, the Lincoln Park campus library will also feature a display of selected new LGBT books on the hallway bulletin board just outside the library.

Sources:
Wasserman, Fred. "Stonewall Riots." LGBT: Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America. 2004.
Kocurek, Carly A. "Stonewall Rebellion." Encyclopedia of Activism and Social Justice. Accessed from Sage Reference Online on 17 June 2009.

Congrats on completing yet another quarter!  The DePaul Libraries will be closed on Saturday June 13 and Sunday June 14.  We'll reopen at 8:00am Monday.  We look foward to seeing you then.  Have a great summer everyone!

If you need to return books, use the book drops.  There is one on the outside of the library at the quad-side entrance and another inside the building on the Kenmore side.   

As the academic year winds down, you might be looking forward to getting back to your recreational reading list; or maybe you’ve been looking for a few good books to take along on summer travels. If summer reading is on your agenda, you'll find plenty of fiction on the shelves at DePaul Libraries to keep you busy!

Like many university libraries, DePaul doesn't have a separate fiction section, and you're not likely to find pop fiction like the Harry Potter or Twilight series. But you will find new books by contemporary literary writers such as Louise Erdrich, T.C. Boyle, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Michael Chabon and Joyce Carol Oates. DePaul also has a great selection of contemporary international fiction; a few recent favorites include After Dark by Haruki Murakami, Confessions of Noa Weber by Gayil Har'even and Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan. And, of course, summer is a great time to revisit literary classics like The Grapes of Wrath, Pride and Prejudice or Invisible Man.

All fiction is listed in the library catalog; here's a quick, although certainly not comprehensive, way to search: use the Advanced Search screen of the library catalog to search for "fiction" as a Subject Word (“short stories” also works). You'll get a lot of results, but they'll be sorted by date making it easier to browse for recent fiction. The Lincoln Park campus library's new books display on the first floor also features new fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

And if DePaul doesn't have the books on your summer reading list, don't forget to check the I-share catalog to place a request for another library to send the book to DePaul for pickup. The Chicago Public Libraries, or your local public library, are also great places to find recreational reading.

Happy reading this summer!

Congratulations graduating seniors!!!  We often get questions about alumni library privileges so here's a quick rundown of the services and access to the collection you can expect.  You will be able to: 

• Check out books from DePaul (4 week checkout) 

• Check out videos and cds from DePaul (2 items for 7 days)

• Enjoy on campus access to computers and most article databases through the labs in the Richardson Library and Loop Library with an alumni i.d.

• Receive the same friendly service and help with research questions

For a full list of alumni privileges, visit the alumni privileges page on the library's website. If you’ll be relocating to another city, most public libraries provide remote access to library databases. Also, bear in mind that many public universities allow on-site public access to online resources, since they are funded by taxpayers.

Congrats again and we hope to see you back here soon! 

Looking for a quiet place to study for finals in the wee hours of the morning? The Richardson Library has you covered! The Library will be open for DePaul students 24 hours a day from 10:00am Sunday June 7th through 6:00pm Friday June 12th.

The entrance of the library will be locked at 11:00pm and library access will be restricted to the DePaul community at this time.  Students can enter the library by swiping their DePaul i.d.s through the card reader located to the left of the main entrance. Later, during the hours of 1:00am-7:00am, the outer doors of the building will be locked and students may enter the building using the cardswipe entrance on the west (Quad side) doors only. DePaul security will be patrolling the library throughout the night to ensure safety.

For study breaks, DePaul Dining Services will be offering coffee, tea, and other beverages, as well as a variety of snacks, for purchase in Kelly Hall (outside the main entrance to the Library) from 10:00pm until 7:00am.

Good luck, students!