The UMass Amherst Library Celebrates Major Expansion of Learning Commons

The University of Massachusetts Amherst will hold an event celebrating the expansion of the Learning Commons at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, where students have access to research tools and assistance, academic advising, tutoring and writing assistance - all in a comfortable, high-tech environment that fosters small group interaction. The event will be held February 8, 2010, 2:00 p.m., Lower Level, Du Bois Library, UMass Amherst campus.

Among those attending the ceremony will include Robert C. Holub, UMass Amherst chancellor; James V. Staros, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, and Jay Schafer, director of Libraries.

The expansion of the acclaimed facility includes a 20-percent increase in the size of the Learning Commons, to about 30,000 square feet; a 60-percent boost in seating, from 250 to 450, and eight new group study rooms. Overall, the Learning Commons houses more than 200 multipurpose work stations equipped with PCs and Macs, and more than 400 ports for connecting to the campus network and the Internet.

Deadline to order 2010 "Go Green" Incentive Items from JanWay

Visit the JanWay website to order incentive items to compliment your 2010 Library Summer Reading Program ~ Deadline to order items is today!

Please note: All Massachusetts libraries that are a member of a regional library system are welcome to order these items – academic, public, school, and special libraries.

Western MA Library Club Gift to WMRLS

Last year the Western Massachusetts Library Club (WMLC) voted to donate any 2009 new member fees to WMRLS. This week WMRLS received a donation from the Club with a matching gift from an anonymous donor. The WMLC has a long history of supporting the Western Region through the Humphry Fund which provides an annual gift for the purchase of materials for the WMRLS Professional Collection. The Professional Collection holdings are available on the C/W MARS database; the collection includes materials on improving library skills. Thank you for your generosity Western MA Library Club!

~ N. Janeen Resnick, Assistant Regional Administrator

Springfield & Worcester Libraries offer "Chat with a Librarian"

The following message was posted to the WMRLS email discussion list on Wednesday, February 3:

Hello all,

I've already received some gratifying interest in the new Worcester/Springfield "chat with a librarian" service.

MBLC has asked me to remind everyone that if you have a link to the old MassAnswers service on your website, to please remove it. MassAnswers ended last December and the link is now dead -- you should also remove any MassAnswers logos still on your sites:

http://massanswers.org/  (the old, dead link)

You can determine pages that still have such links by using Google Advanced Search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=link:http://www.massanswers.org/&start=10&sa=N

Also, if you would like to use our chat with a librarian icon or our Springfield chat banner to market the service to your own patrons, please feel free to download them and add them to your website (thanks to Ping at Worcester for the design):

Chat icon: http://www.springfieldlibrary.org/icons/chat_sm.gif

Springfield chat banner: http://www.springfieldlibrary.org/images/sclqp.jpg

Again, if you would like the javascript to 'imbed' a chat Qwidget (chat box) on your website, please contact me.

The chat box (or Qwidget) is on our Reference page:

http://www.springfieldlibrary.org/ref/reference.html

And a larger chat box is available through our Question Point page:

http://www.questionpoint.org/crs/servlet/org.oclc.admin.BuildForm?&page=frame&institution=11073&type=2&language=1

Chat is live and available to the public Monday through Friday, 3 - 5:30 pm.

And thanks to everyone for your continued interest in this service!

Donna L. Goldthwaite

Regional Reference & Internet Services Librarian

Supervisor, Foundation Center Cooperating Collection

Springfield City Library

220 State St.

Springfield MA 01103

413-263-6828 x437

dgoldthwaite@springfieldlibrary.org

Web 2.0 Encore at WMRLS: Today Delicious

“Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.” (Wikipedia)

We are using it as a tool for staff to push out links to our patrons. Instead of a list of links on our website that is static, we can use tags and a link feed to push out new bookmarks to patrons. Also, the tools for link clean up make dead links easy to maintain.

~ Jennifer Hawkes, Electronic Reference Librarian, Chicopee Public Library

WMRLS Night at the MassMutual Center A Grand Success!

John Ramsay, Administrator of the Western Massachusetts Regional Library System (WMRLS) prepares to drop the ceremonial puck at the Springfield Falcons Game on January 23, 2010 at the MassMutual Center in Springfield. Accompanying him for the faceoff are Wally, The Green Monster (Red Sox Mascot) and opposing captains for the Falcons and the visiting Hartford Wolf Pack.

Some 150 WMRLS supporters, from all 4 western counties, attended the match, which was a fundraising benefit to honor WMRLS. During the puck drop, the announcer read off this message to the large, near-capacity crowd: “John and the Western MA Regional Library System want you to know that, in difficult economic times, people use their libraries more. Right now, and for the last 10 years, usage has risen to all-time highs. Please support your local libraries at town meetings, and encourage our legislators to support State funding of library services, especially the Regional Library Systems.”

To cap off a great evening, the home team tied the game in the third period and won it in a thrilling overtime.