JOHN MEIER: August 2007 Archives

This is the start of my first full regular semester here at Penn State. There are a whole lot of new students around. So far I have met around 50 of them, the new graduate students in the Math and Statistics departments. I am looking forward to meeting more students and faculty as the days go on. One unique opportunity I plan to attend this week is "Tea" with the Mathematics department. Every day at 3:15pm they have tea (and coffee) in their newly refurbished building, McAllister.

I am very excited for the Library's Open House, an annual event here at Penn State where we try to get as many new students as possible into the library buildings for games, prized, and a little edu-tainment. The theme this year is pirates! The Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library will even have it's own special "treasure hunt". Unfortunately I couldn't locate a giant astrolabe for pirate navigation, apologies to our astronomers.

We recently had a full day's worth of reference services discussion and learning here at the Penn State Libraries including the College Campus Libraries. We had as a guest the esteemed Marie Radford, who is still doing Chat Reference research but also talked about face to face interaction. She said one thing I agree with wholeheartedly, that chat and Facebook and phone (etc) are all just different modes of accessibility to our users. We need to provide the same professional and friendly service in all of these; that flexibility is a requirement of modern communications.

I have to say again, maybe for the first time here, that I am impressed by my colleagues here. They are always pushing for innovative approaches, some not any more technological than a hotdog cart (okay, a laptop enabled hotdog cart).