Fall 2006 - Nicholls State University

Ce qui se passe...
The newsletter of
Ellender Memorial Library
Nicholls State University
volume 3 issue 1
Library Hours
Monday
7:30 am – 12:00 am*
Tuesday – Thursday
7:30 am – 11:00 pm
Friday
7:30 am – 4:30 pm
Saturday
12:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Sunday
4:00 pm – 12:00 am
*Reference/Circulation sections
only. Others close at 11:00 pm.
Note: For changes to schedule
due to holidays or emergency
closures, please see the library
website. All patrons are asked to
leave the library 15 minutes prior
to closing. The phone number for
library hours is 985-448-4660.
Drop-In Classes
We now offer Drop-In
Classes in Research Methods, Career Research, Computers and Technology Resources, Literature, Musicology, and Culinary Arts
Resources, among others!
Also, you can contact Tony
Fonseca at 448-4675 if you
have a group of three or
more students who would
like a session.
This semester we are offering a new class in Becoming a Power User. We encourage both students and
faculty to take advantage of
this and learn all about the
latest technology the library
has to offer.
www.nicholls.edu/library
Library Staffers Enjoy Interacting
with Students
I take pride in the fact that so many on the library staff take part in
university activities outside the Library. Recent examples of this include our participation in the Jamaican themed Welcome Back Day,
and in the annual creation of a homecoming display. Students had a
great time joining Cynthia Marchbanks, Daisy Guidroz, Benita Hebert,
Tony Fonseca, Van Viator, and myself for the “Library Limbo” contest,
where they had to go under the limbo stick while holding a (fake) library book in each hand (see photos at right and on pages 2 and 4).
Those who felt less adventurous enjoyed trying their luck at the Flamingo Ring Toss or testing their knowledge in the Jamaica Trivia competition. Quick, can you name the official language of Jamaica? The
famous Knick and the former Bush cabinet member who are both from
Jamaica?
Below: Limbo winners Jessica Williams, Yen Nguyen,
and Dwayne Fisher play
while being cheered on by
Cynthia Marchbanks, Daisy
Guidroz, and Carol Mathias.
In addition, the Library created a colorful display featuring maps, flags,
traditional drinks, and informational posters about Jamaica, while providing ongoing limbo music on one of our boom boxes. Currently, our
homecoming display—The Colonel on Safari—is located in the library
lobby stairwell.
Of course, as much fun as we have had and hope to continue to have
participating in such events, our main purpose is to support the academic programs at Nicholls. The Fall semester is well underway, and
we are excited about some of the new services we began offering over
the summer. Our meta-database, WebFeat (a federated search engine),
promises to make your search for information easier by making possible
a simultaneous search of all the Library’s holdings. New furniture in
Reference/Circulation makes the Library a more comfortable place to
visit. And we have added some friendly new faces to the library staff.
We look forward to an exciting academic year.
Left: Jamaican Library Staff
(Left to Right): Mathias,
Carol Mathias, Library Director
Viator, Guidroz, Fonseca,
Marchbanks.
Below: Jamaica Trivia winner
Katrina Carter.
Library Tip #1
The new Drop In Classes schedule
is online at the following url:
http://www.nicholls.edu/library/dro
pinclasses.htm
Fall 2006
The Library shows its safari spirit with its
homecoming display, on the first floor
VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1
www.nicholls.edu/library
PAGE 2
Former Night Shift Librarian Gets Permanent Position
She’s baaaack!
Perhaps catalogers do have nine lives
after all.
Sherrill Faucheaux, our former night
librarian, is once again a member of the
library staff, replacing long-time cataloger Alice Saltzman.
Faucheaux is a native of Thibodaux,
graduating from Thibodaux High and
going on to get an undergraduate degree
in Elementary Education, with a minor
in Library Science from right here at
Nicholls State University. In 1971 she
received her MLS from LSU.
With degrees in hand, Faucheaux left
the security of home and family to accept a position as Reference Librarian at
the University Center Library in Jackson, Mississippi. The Center enabled
students to take English classes, with
the credits being accepted at various
universities throughout the state. She
went on to become the director of the
center, which went through several
name changes before becoming affiliated
with Jackson State University.
Liaison for:
Psychology,
Counselor Education, Sociology
Currently reading: Billie Sue
Mosiman, various
cataloging manuals
She retired as director in 1995 and
returned to Thibodaux and Ellender
Library. After substituting in several
departments when people were on
extended sick leave, she settled in as
Adjunct Librarian in Reference. She
had a reputation for being one of the
favorite librarians of NSU students.
But what she really wanted was a permanent position as a Reference Librarian. When this did not look possible,
she took her knowledge to the Lafourche Parish Public Library system
in 1998. After serving in various capacities in the system and throughout
the parish, she decided it was time to
move on. How fortunate for us that her
moving on brought her back as Cataloging Librarian.
Although she still keeps in touch with
friends from Jackson on a regular basis,
Faucheaux keeps busy at home with her
hobbies of needlework, crocheting, knitting, and reading. She has aspirations of
sewing, but since she has to start from
scratch, her fall collection of Faucheaux
Couture has not come to fruition as of
press time. She is also an animal lover.
She shares her home with two cats,
Peaches and Boo. She hears no complaining unless the food bowls are empty, so
she likes this arrangement. After all, she
has all the free entertainment she wants.
When you come into Ellender Library, be
warned that you may see her smiling face
anywhere—perhaps on the Reference
Desk, or maybe in Cataloging. When you
do, give her a hearty welcome back. Library staffers are more than happy to
know that in the case of this recent hiring, everything old is indeed new again.
—Sandi Chauvin, Serials
Retired Teachers Join Library Staff
Sometimes word of mouth is the best
advertisement, even for an institution
like Ellender Library. If you ask Lady
Pierson, the new Library Specialist 2 in
Circulation, why she took a job here,
she’ll answer that it is because her
friend Debbie Adams (Multimedia)
found happiness here, so she figured she
would as well.
Ellender, however, is not the first library with which Pierson has been involved. As a child, she helped her father
set up small church libraries in impoverished areas, and later, as a middle
school and elementary teacher, she often
volunteered in school libraries. During
her tenure as teacher, Pierson taught
4th graders, as well as 7th and 8th
grade math and science. She spent the
bulk of her time however—17 of her 25
years in the field—teaching 3rd graders.
In some ways her teaching prepared
her for a stint in an academic library.
“When you’re dealing with little people,
needs are smaller,” she explains. “But
you treat all people the same way. You
try to treat any person, in any situation, the way you’d want to be treated
in that situation.” Perhaps it is her
positive attitude, but Pierson has found
job fulfillment at NSU. She uses the
term “coattail happiness” to describe
the sense she gets from being around
students who are interested in learning
and reading. She points out that in the
six weeks she has been here, she has
not had one unpleasant experience.
Louisiana documents selections list and
has helped inventory a collection of Wetlands materials (donated by the Grand
Terre Laboratory).
New in our Government Documents
Department is Lynette Tamplain,
Library Specialist 2. As a long-time
resident of Lafourche Parish, she is
well suited for her area of concentration—the Louisiana Collection. Since
beginning her job here in the Library,
Lynette has collaborated to revise the
This teacher, wife, mother, and grandmother has spent much of her life dealing
with the public. Now she is learning the
inner workings of a library. In her spare
time, Lynette enjoys gardening, saltwater
fishing, traveling, reading and having
stimulating conversations over dinner or
coffee. She hopes to go to Rome someday.
Tamplain first came to Nicholls as a
freshman in 1972. In 1977, she earned
her B.A. in Education degree. She also
attended graduate school at Nicholls,
concentrating her studies on educational
curriculum and instruction. After graduation, she took a job with the Lafourche
Parish School Board and began building
a life and a home in the area, teaching for
22 years in the public schools.
VOLUME 3 ISSUE 1
www.nicholls.edu/library
PAGE 3
The Relentless Pursuit of Information
If you’ve done any research at the university level, chances are you have run into
a database called Lexis-Nexis Academic.
It is one of the first databases recommended to researchers, usually mentioned in the same breath as the most
popular database, Academic Search Premier. But despite this, most use only a
small fraction of its potential.
To begin with, researchers often do not
realize that Lexis-Nexis is in actuality
five databases in one. You’ve probably
used it to find news articles, as it is the
best source of current publications in all
the major newspapers. However, if you
closely examine the left side of the LexisNexis screen, you’ll note that it easily
switches over to being a business, medical, legal, and reference database. In fact,
students taking pre-law and government
classes here at Nicholls use the legal research portion of Lexis-Nexis daily. It
allows for the searching of secondary literature, case law, codes and regulations,
and patent research.
Although much less used by students
(mainly because the Library databases
also include Business Source Premier
and The Million Dollar Database), LexisNexis’ business information section includes business articles from newspapers,
magazines, journals, wires, and transcripts; industry and market news from
over 25 industries; and accounting literature from professional journals; as well
as detailed financial reports, profiles, and
SEC filings.
Its medical section supplies researchers
with healthcare news, articles from various medical journals, and abstracts from
The National Library of Medicine’s Medline Database.
Finally, the reference portion of
Lexis-Nexis gives biographical information on politicians, business executives, and anyone else you can
think of. It also supplies country profiles (concise facts and statistics),
information from polls and surveys
from the Roper Center for Public
Opinion Research, bibliographic data
on famous quotations, state profiles
(more concise facts and statistics),
and quick almanac facts on any subject.
What began in 1973 as the first commercial, full-text legal information
service, has expanded. The company
goal may be to enrich research with
recent and archival news. Researchers may find their lives being enriched as well.
—Tony Fonseca, Serials
Your Reference Questions Are Music to Her Ears
Most of us in academe would like to think
that the more letters you can earn behind
your name, the better. Newly hired Reference Librarian Melissa Ursula Goldsmith is certainly proof of that axiom.
Goldsmith has a CLIS, MLIS, and PhD in
musicology from Louisiana State University and an MA in music and BA in music
and biochemistry from Smith College.
She is also known for being friendly,
helpful, and down to earth, personality
traits which make her well suited for
academic librarianship. She has very
quickly become one of our most approachable librarians overall, and with her
teaching experience in the LSU music
department, she almost instantly acclimated to the role of Librarian Instructor
for NSU’s University Studies classes.
Her offerings for the Library’s Drop-In
schedule attest to the wide variety of her
talents and interests. She created two
quirky sessions that should draw high
interest among both faculty and students.
For faculty, she will be offering a session
called Ego Searching for Experts, in
which she will explain both how to find
references to yourself on the web, and
how to make sure that people hit your
name more often. For students, she is
offering songwriting, guitar tabs, music
group, and recording resources advice
with the session So You Wanna Be a
Rock and Roll Star. Possessing a strong
work ethic and always willing to stay
after hours, Goldsmith decided to offer
these sessions at night, when faculty and
students might have more free time.
In her free time, Goldsmith attends to
her professional pursuits, such as article
writing. Her publications focus on film
and film music, modern and postmodern
aesthetics, and popular music. They include “Montage, Music, and Memory:
Remembering Deutschland im Herbst
(Germany in Autumn, 1978)” in Kinoeye,
“Lounge Caravan: A Selective Discography” in Notes (the journal of the Music
Library Association), “Context, Theme,
and Tone in Adorno’s Writings about
Mahler and His Music” in Naturlaut (the
journal of the Gustav Mahler Society of
Chicago), and “Film Music: Interdisciplinary Scholarship, Analysis, Criticism,
and Theory” in Choice. Her book reviews
appear in Choice, The Journal of Film
Music, and Screening the Past.
In addition, she has chaired panel sessions at Annual National Meetings of the
American Musicological Society and has
presented papers at the Annual National
Meetings of the AMS, the Music Library
Association, and the International Sym-
Liaison for:
Music, Chemistry, Physics,
Literature
Currently listening to: Dance
mixes of Lawrence Welk,
They Might Be
Giants
posium on Electronic Theses and
Dissertations.
Those of us who have been fortunate
to become her friends realize that
she has a punky, fun-loving side. She
has done a “Shatneresque” presentation where she compared musician/
poet Rod McKuen to Edith Piaf, has
a knowledge of and interest in underground newspapers and underground
books (such as those produced by
Loompanics International), and is
fond of leaving off-the-wall website
images for her colleagues on Reference to brighten their days. She can
often be found in her office in Ellender, working while listening to a pop
CD.
—Tony Fonseca, Serials
VOUME 3 ISSUE 1
PAGE 4
www.nicholls.edu/library
One for the Records
Clifton Theriot, Ellender Library’s archivist and head of special collections, is
now recognized as a certified archivist by
the Academy of Certified Archivists
(ACA). Besides acting as an examination/
certification agency, the Academy is an
organization which defines standards for
the archival profession and promotes
education and leadership.
This year’s examination was given in
Washington, D.C. in conjunction with the
annual meeting of the ACA. Theriot now
joins library director Carol Mathias, as
well as approximately one thousand
other archivists throughout the nation, in
being certified by the Academy.
These archivists find themselves pursuing an interesting profession, for one can
find archivists working in The Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, at the
National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, the Smithsonian, the National Archives, and universities and
archives all over the world. Their job is
to assess, collect, process and make accessible historic materials in all formats.
At Nicholls Theriot not only works to
preserve the history of the bayou region,
but has also been appointed by President Hulbert to supervise the retention
of Nicholls State University records.
Library News
Cheryl Adams, Danny Gorr, Angela Graham, Lady Pierson, and Lynette Tamplain
attended the Louisiana Library Association—
Louisiana Support Staff Association of Libraries (LaSSAL) workshop on Sept. 22 in Baton
Rouge.
Tony Fonseca will have two lengthy entries
(“Psychics” and “Doppelgangers”) in publication this Fall, in Icons of the Supernatural. He
also had reviews of three horror novels and
one horror poetry audio CD in Necropsy
(www.lsu.edu/necrofile).
Library News
Melissa Goldsmith had two recent articles
published, one on Mahler in Naturlaut
(http://www.chicago-mahlerites.org/) and the
other on Film Music Scholarship in Choice.
Daisy Guidroz and Jeremy Landry attended the LOUIS System’s Administrators
Meeting at LSU, August 3-4.
Jeremy Landry, along with Carla Clark of
LSU-Shreveport, will be presenting a session
called “MARCEDIT Before You Regret It” at
the LOUIS Users Conference in October.
Clifton Theriot recently presented a paper
on the Lafourche Parish Historic Records Project at the 30th Annual History and Genealogy
Seminar, sponsored by the Lafourche Heritage
Society.
Library Tip # 2
While WebFeat, the most recent innovation
added to the Library’s arsenal of databases,
is a tremendous step forward in database
research in that it allows for simultaneous
searching of each and every Library database, it needs to go through an extensive
testing period like any new software product.
To keep abreast of the status of this new
software, just look for the informational link
in the Announcements section, located on the
Library’s page [www.nicholls.edu/library].
Our Books, Our Shelves
Melissa recommends some of her faves….
Congratulations goes out to Clifton
Theriot, now a Certified Archivist.
We’re in LUC
The Louisiana Library Consortium, or
LOUIS (a sub-entity of the Louisiana
Library Network Commission, under
The Board of Regents), will be hosting
its annual users Conference (LUC) on
October 5 - 6, at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine. Many members of
Ellender Library’s staff plan to attend.
With an upgrade coming soon to SIRSI
and Unicorn Workflows, the library’s
patron access and back-end software,
staffers will be particularly keyed in on
various sessions that discuss the new
Java client for the Acquisitions and Serials modules. However, other sessions
will include How College Students Perceive Libraries and Information Resources, the Uses of Google Scholar, Issues with Copyright in Digital Libraries,
Creating and Displaying RSS Feeds,
Starting a Friends Group, and Administering and Customizing WebFeat.
Newsletter staff: Tony Fonseca, Managing Editor; Sandi Chauvin, Editor; Danny Gorr, Editor, Jeremy
Landry, Consultant. Please e-mail comments and/or suggestions to Tony Fonseca (tony.fonseca@nicholls.edu).
The statements and opinions included in these pages are those of the newsletter staff only. Any statements and
opinions are not those of Nicholls State University or the University of Louisiana System.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Resistence to Civil Government 814 T391w7 1992
T.J. Anderson, Notes to Make the Sound
Come Right: Four Innovators of Jazz Poetry
811.09357 An24n
Christopher Gordon, Form and Content in
Commercial Music 781.07 G653f
Rod McKuen, Listen to the Warm 811 M219L
Tony says you can’t go wrong with….
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye 813 M834bXp
Kristina Börjesson, Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free
Press 323.4450973 In8b 2004
Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children 823
R895m
Glen Hirshberg, The Two Sams: Ghost Stories 813.081 H617t 2003
Jean-Mark suggests you look at…..
Ariel Dorfman, In Case of Fire in a Foreign
Land: New and Collected Poems 861 D732L
2002
Robert A. F. Thurman, Anger 179.8 T425a
Gerald M. Edelman, Wider than the Sky: The
Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness 612.82
Ed27w
David Middleton, The Habitual Peacefulness
of Gruchy: Poems after Pictures by JeanFrançois Millet 811 M584h