Because of excessive shipping delays, increased risk of losing items in the mail, staffing shortages when students leave for the holidays, and the timing of work flow in the OCLC ILL system, most lending libraries will NOT fill interlibrary loan requests from mid-December through the first week or two of January. Some will stop lending as early as the first week of December. Therefore, we will stop most interlibrary borrowing during the Winter Break.

Mergent Corporate Manual Search  is a database of digitized versions of eight corporate manuals issued by Moody's and Mergent from 1909 to the present. Searchable by company name, manual, and year.

Extended campus users are those who reside outside the New River Valley counties of Montgomery, Giles and Pulaski. Those users can request books be mailed to their home address through ILLiad, our interlibrary loan service. (ILLiad is also used to obtain materials not owned by the Virginia Tech Libraries; this same service is also available to local customers.) A link that now appears in Addison makes it much easier for extended campus users to request books from the Virginia Tech Libraries' collection.

The Virginia Tech Libraries' SciTech Team has developed a number of research guides for topics within the concept of sustainability. Each guide focuses on resources available through the library as well as sources freely available online. In each case you may need to use a more general subject guide to gather background information about your topic. For instance, when researching green buildings, you will probably need to consult the Architecture and Building Construction subject guides for general information on these topics in addition to the specific information supplied on the green building guide.

Photos shot during Gobblerfest of carnival-style cutouts are now available for download from Flickr. Photos from Gobblerfest in 2008 are also online.

Many in the university community participated in the review of library serials earlier this year. A message from the Dean of Libraries about the results of the review is now posted online.

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is the National Library of Medicine's controlled vocabulary thesaurus used to describe and index books and articles in the life sciences, much like Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) describe and index works. MeSH terms are used extensively in databases like MEDLINE. You can now search MeSH from Addison's subject search screen in addition to the LCSH terms that have always been searchable. Also, like LCSH terms, records with MeSH terms will have those terms linked to MeSH searches.

The Virginia Tech Libraries is one of 230 members of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). CRL acquires and preserves newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. These resources are then made available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. Use Interlibrary Loan (ILLiad) to submit requests.

The main library website was changed August 14, 2009, to use the university's standard look and feel template. As a part of this transition, changes have been made to the website to make it easier to use, to expose more useful content, and to make navigation among the pages more clear. Consistency with other university websites will make using the library's website a better experience. Your feedback on these changes is appreciated.

Shakespeare Survey Online from Cambridge is the electronic version of the annual yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production, which has been published since 1948. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of that year's textual and critical studies, and of the year's major British performances. The virtues of accessible scholarship and a keen interest in performance, from Shakespeare's time to our own, have characterized the journal from the start.

World Book Advanced Encyclopedia is now available online. With VIVA (the Virtual Library of Virginia) recently ending its subscription to the Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book Advanced is now our primary source for background research and basic reference. Access includes a built-in dictionary, atlas, reference sources and ebooks.

The Iter Bibliography includes literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for books, journal material (articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies) are included, as are citations for dissertation abstracts, and essays in books (including entries in conference proceedings, festschriften, encyclopedias and exhibition catalogues).

Starting Monday, May 18, 2009, access to Newman Library through the Torgersen Bridge will be limited to 8:00am to 5:00pm Monday through Friday only. While the Torgersen Bridge and the rest of Torgersen may be open outside of these hours, access from the 4th floor of Newman will be restricted. Access to the library after 5pm and during the weekend will only be through the main entrance on the 2nd floor.

Newman Library has a collection of over a thousand music CDs, including classical, jazz, and rock music. We also have a number of foreign language instruction CDs from Pimsleur. Here are the top 20 circulating CDs since July 2008:

Here are the top 20 circulating books (that are not on Reserve) since July 2008:

Newman Library has a collection of over 2800 DVDs, including educational as well as popular titles. Here are the top 20 circulating DVDs since July 2008:

Beginning Tuesday, April 14, 2009, and in keeping with this week's commemoration events, Special Collections will display artifacts of condolence from the Virginia Tech 4/16 Archives in the exhibit cases in the Reading Room. You are invited to come to the first floor of Newman Library to view these items and to take a moment to reflect on the occasion. The exhibit will be available through early the following week.

  Reader's Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982 from EBSCOhost allows searching of more than 3 million articles from nearly 400 magazines using keyword, subject heading, publication, dates, journal, author, article title, ISSN, or article type.

Many of you have read the good news from Mark McNamee, Senior Vice President and Provost, and Dwight Shelton, Vice President for Finance and Chief Financial Officer about the decision of the university administration to make increased funding available for library support in 2010. This decision follows several months of listening by the administration to the VT community via councils, meetings, forums and letters, as faculty and students talked about their needs and how the Library supports them.

The University Libraries are currently inviting comment from the VT community to assist with a reduction in our serial subscriptions that could reach $900,000, depending on budget. Subject specialists have reviewed their collection areas and have identified approximately 700 journals and other ongoing resources for possible elimination. Nearly 2,000 electronic journals from John Wiley and Springer-Verlag are also at risk as we consider terminating existing agreements due to cost. Please take the time to review the potential cancellations list and send us your comments by March 31, 2009, at the latest. Your input will help us to retain those resources that best support the university's missions.

New books in Newman Library are displayed on a bookshelf located between the circulation and reference desk on the second floor. (Branches handle new books separately.) New books had been displayed there for a week, but will now be displayed for up to a month. The location of these new books will now be indicated more clearly in Addison.

Virginia Tech has prepared an archive of documents related to the April 16 shootings as agreed to within the Settlement Agreement approved by the Richmond Circuit Court June 17, 2008. The commonwealth negotiated agreements with families of victims or victims of April 16. The agreements included a provision to "maintain one or more electronic archive(s) of its written records, in whatever form, related to the Tragedy…." On Monday, February 9, 2009, the university will make available public access terminals in Virginia Tech's Newman Library in Blacksburg and also in the Library of Virginia in Richmond. All public documents within the archive will be accessible except those unique to a victim and that which would otherwise be private. (e.g. financial aid records, transcripts, applications, etc.) Any record relating to Seung-Hui Cho, except medical records, will be public.

Images from the Special Collections and Digital Library and Archives Departments at the University Libraries will be featured during the documentary The Polio Crusade, to air as part of the PBS American Experience series on February 2, 2009.

The University Libraries, in partnership with the Provost's Office and the Office of the Vice President for Research is co-sponsoring and coordinating the fourth annual Virginia Tech Authors Day to acknowledge and honor their academic contributions to the university. The occasion will be marked by an introduction of the authors, a display of a number of representative books, and a short program to be followed by a reception. The event is scheduled for Tuesday, February 24, 2009, at 4:30pm in Newman Library.