The Library’s Blog

The next time you’re in the library, stop by the Leisure Reading Collection on 2nd floor next to the elevators. You’ll notice that we are expanding the collection to include a greater variety of books — nonfiction, memoirs, science fiction, biography, self-help, and more. This expansion is in response to many of you requesting it! Last year we distributed a Library Satisfaction Survey and several respondents asked us to consider purchasing more titles in Leisure reading. We are pleased to announce that we are aiming to increase the number of titles in this collection from 250 to 400.

We’d also like your input about what books you’d like to see in this collection. If there is a newly published hardback book that you’d like us to consider purchasing, please go to http://www.augustana.edu/library/about/leisure.html and fill out the request form.

Thanks, and happy reading!

It’s April, spring, and National Poetry Month when all good souls turn to thoughts of love, birdsong, and writing. Channel your springtime impulse to write, if not the great American novel, a few words of poetry or just words that sound nice, that record your thoughts, feelings, appreciation, wonder, etc. and write those words on catalog cards. Yes, catalog cards. The old, beautiful, weathered wooden card catalog is going to rest at Augustana and the cards are going to be recycled. Well, let’s honor the cards by writing/drawing/glueing on them. We have loads of them in the library–on the puzzle table. Pick up one or two and let your imagination go to work. We’ll be displaying the cards in the library during the month. Happy writing!!

Wednesday, April 16th, Tredway Library (2nd floor, south end)

3:45-5:00 p.m.

Naked Came the Librarian: Chapter 7

By Christine Aden, Head of Circulation

It was the end of a long, stressful day, and Ethan Frost felt like someone had dragged him through the mud.  The computer clock switched to 10 pm, so he scanned the library’s main floor and reference collection from his seat at the reference desk.  Everyone seemed well occupied, and no one was approaching the desk, so he decided he could safely call it a night.

Click below to keep reading:

naked-chapter-7-final.pdf

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World is the inspirational story of John Wood, a Microsoft executive who took a trek through Nepal that changed his life.  This book is part autobiography, part business lesson, and all heart. 

You see, while on vacation, John met children hungry for education, who had few resources and little opportunity for more.  An email to friends and family, requesting books, yielded a harvest he’d never expected (more than 3,000 books).  Since its inception in 2000, Room to Read, the non-profit organization he founded, has established more than 5,100 libraries in the developing world … and then there are the schools they’ve built and the scholarships they’ve granted!

When I first picked this book up on Sunday, I expected an interesting story.  I didn’t expect to completely phase out everything else until 2 am.  Read this book!