Welcome back!

Welcome to all of our new and returning students, staff and faculty.

The library is offering a series of workshops about library services and resources for all interested students in 2017.  Please see our website for more details and to register: http://library.concordia.ca/help/workshops/

There is help available at the Wesbter and Vanier reference desks and on ask-a-librarian live chat: http://library.concordia.ca/help/questions/

Please note, Webster’s LB4 is now closed and is set to reopen in Fall 2017.  The books from LB4 are being sent to offsite storage, from which faculty, staff and students can request their retrieval, starting Jan 12, 2017.  For more details about the LB4 book move and storage, please consult our website: http://library.concordia.ca/help/circulation/lb-4-book-move.php

A reminder that details about all library renovations are available on the Webster Library Transformation blog: http://library.concordia.ca/webster-transformation/ 

We hope you have a great winter semester!

Missing *Meaning of Style*

You wrote:

Hebdige *The Meaning of Style* HQ799 G7H4 is missing from Vanier stacks.

Thank you very much for reporting this.  I have asked the Circulation Department at the Vanier Library to indicate this in the Libraries’ catalogue.  By the way, we have an electronic copy of the book. You can see it here.

Renovations at the Vanier Library

You wrote:

What is going on to the Vanier Library 3rd floor and will study spaces be accessible any time soon?

The Library Administration replied:

Thank you for your question. Major renovations are underway at the Vanier Library. These renovations form an important part of the Libraries’ overall plan to improve the efficiency and quality of its spaces. The Vanier Library component is closely related to the plans recently unveiled for the Webster Library.

The Vanier Library will be the scene of construction throughout the remainder of the Winter semester continuing until June 2014. The construction work will be on the third floor. The work zone will soon be contained within a temporary wall, specially insulated to reduce noise. Emerging from this cocoon in early June will be new study facilities and office spaces.

These renovations will not decrease the number of study tables at the Vanier Library. Although the study tables on the third floor will be relocated (mostly to the second floor), all tables will remain accessible to students throughout the construction period. The renovation project will also provide two additional, new group study rooms. These rooms, plus two of the existing rooms, will be specially equipped with new technology to support collaborative learning.

The renovations will not affect students’ access to the stacks. Nor will this project reduce the library collections. Most books from the third floor have already been shifted to the second floor, thanks to space gains made by the compact automated shelving installed last year the ground floor of the Vanier Library.

An important feature of the Vanier Renovations is the creation of a new office area for the Libraries’ Collections Services Department. This department, responsible for ordering and cataloguing the Libraries’ electronic resources, books and journals, will move from the Webster Library to the Vanier Library in June, thus liberating a major area for redevelopment in the Webster Library. Focus of the Webster redevelopment will be the creation of expanded and enhanced study facilities for students.

Longer loan period for reserve textbooks

You wrote:

I would like to suggest that engineering textbooks on course reserves have at
least one copy available for more then 3hours, maybe a few days… because 3h
loans are simply not enough … and since the library no longer allows inter-library loan requests from other libraries for course reserved material, I think this would be a reasonable solution to this  problem
Thank you for your understanding.

Thank you for writing to the Suggestion Box.  We have received similar suggestions for business textbooks and I’m sure that other disciplines would like to have this option as well.  We are currently looking into whether what you suggest is feasible, but we want to ensure that everyone has fair access to the books. If you think your particular course does not have enough textbooks available, you may want to suggest the library purchase an additional copy on the following page: http://library.concordia.ca/services/collections/suggest.php

With a CREPUQ card, you may also borrow a textbook in person from another university library (see other library catalogues: http://library.concordia.ca/research/internet/otherlibraries.html ).

Newspapers of the day

You wrote:

Newspapers of the day
The new procedure of putting the newspapers of the present day out right near the entrance of the Webster Library isn’t working. In 3 of 5 recent afternoon tries, the newspaper had disappeared. This was not the case when those papers were kept on the 3rd floor along with papers of previous days. If the papers of the day were actually there, Concordia would be ahead of McGill, which doesn’t have them out. (I like to look at the culture reporting and reviews in Le Devoir, which is also a trial to come at online without a subscription.) 

Rajiv Johal, Interim Head, Information Services responds:

Thank you very much for your comments.  We appreciate all the input we get for this pilot project. The idea of moving the print newspapers to the main floor of the Webster library was to make the collection more visible and accessible to our Concordia community.  Unfortunately, the increased usage means that some newspapers may not always be available.  We remind students to return the paper when they are done and every day, the Webster staff does its best to ensure that all the newspapers are returned to the shelves where they belong.  We will continue to monitor the newspapers, and if you have any further feedback, we invite you to share it with us.

BTW, the Concordia Libraries pays for online access to Le Devoir and many other daily newspapers.  You can access Le Devoir here.  A listing of other online newspaper databases is here.

Popular finance textbook

You wrote:

The Introduction to Corporate Finance book by Booth/Cleary is a three hour course reserve. I understand this for the current third edition, however I feel that it is bizarre that the first and second editions are also only a three hour loan. Please consider making these a three day loan.

I asked Michael Groenendyk, our Business Librarian, for help on this suggestion.  Here’s what he wrote:

Introduction to Corporate Finance is the textbook for COMM 308 – Introduction to Finance – a core course in Concordia’s finance program. This course is extremely large with hundreds of students enrolled in it. As such, copies of the textbook for this course – in all its editions – are in very high demand. Based on the course reserve usage figures, at this point in time, we need at least six copies of the textbook in the course reserve room in order to satisfy the demand for it.

Thank you for writing to us.

List of new books

You wrote:

allo…
I would like to find out — the exact link where I can see the new books acquired by the library….
a. is there such a link….
b. how far new books are listed– monthly or yearly
c. is it by subject…
d. I am interested in history — subject matter…and quebec politics….
e. is there an automated email list I can subscribe…
thanks for the early answer

Thank you for your question.  There are two ways to go about getting a listing of newly acquired books.  If you are interested in very broad subject areas, such as history, you can take a look at our New Books page .  From there, you can subscribe to an RSS feed.  The feeds are updated every night and titles remain in the listing for sixty days.

Another way to get up-to-date information on recent books in a particular area, for example, Québec politics, is to set up a preferred search in MyCLUES.  We have a video that shows you how to do that.  This will allow you to set up a search in MyCLUES, for example Québec — politics and government.  Once that’s done, every time a new item is added to our collection that matches your search criteria, you will receive an email message.

Feel free to Ask a librarian if you need more help setting this up.

Sound problems on library computers

You wrote:

On the 3rd fl. Samsung SyncMaster 920wm – the sound system is not working at all. Please fix it.

Thank you.

and

I’m frustrated with the library facilities – getting from bad to worst. Now with W-325 on the 3rd fl of the Lib I can’t access the speakers. I am trying to
learn some Chinese pronunciation and there are no speakers!

and

On the 2nd fl MS-Office Internet W-235 the speakers are not working. I can’t hear a thing.
Please help!

Thank you for your emails.  All the computers in the Libraries (except the CLUES-only workstations) have sound capabilities.  However, patrons must use headphones, even if speakers are there.  If you do not have headphones, you may borrow a set at the Circulation desk.

Business newspapers at the Vanier Library

You wrote:

I would like to suggest that the Vanier library consider purchasing the National  Post newspaper (daily) publication. It is published by Post media which also prints the Gazette which you already receive in the Vanier library entrance periodical area. It could be added to the current Gazette subscription at nominal cost. The National Post includes the Financial Post section which contains valuable financial information that the Globe and Mail does not.

Thank you for your suggestion.  Unfortunately, adding the National Post to our current newspaper subscriptions at the Vanier Library would cost almost $700 per year.  Libraries do not benefit from the same special pricing that individuals do.  Since there are no business courses offered at the Loyola Campus, it is unlikely that we would start up a new subscription to this newspaper.  That said, for students that are interested in the National Post and the Financial Post at Loyola, there are other options available to you.

You can visit the freely-available Financial Post website, for stock, currency and basic commodities data.  For more detailed financial data, you can consult FP Advisor, a statistical database that the Concordia Libraries subscribe to.  Concordia users can access this free of charge.   Furthermore, the fulltext of articles from The National Post are available via Factiva and Canadian Newsstand.

You may also want to sign up with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BANQ) website.  As a resident of the province of Québec, you will have free access to databases, e-books and e-journals, including the Press Display database.  There, you will have access to the data as it appears in the National Post and Globe and Mail newspapers.

Many thanks to our Finance Librarian, Rajiv Johal, for sorting all this out for me!  🙂

Intro to ebooks

You wrote:

As a new student of Concordia, I was browsing the many services I could benefit from. Perhaps I overlooked some features, but I did not come across any online digital media distribution (ebooks and audiobooks). I was wondering if it would be possible for the University to partner with companies such as OverDrive which allow students to access content from virtually anywhere.

Congratulations on being accepted at Concordia!

It is true that we do not have access to OverDrive.  However, the Libraries have thousands of ebooks from other publishers and platforms.  You can browse our ebooks collection from this page:  http://library.concordia.ca/research/internet/ebooks.php?guid=browse .  You can also simply search our catalogue, CLUES, and if we have electronic books on your topic, they will come up in your results.

FYI, Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec  (BANQ) has Overdrive.  All residents of Québec have access to the BANQ’s physical and virtual collection.  If you are new to Montréal, take a look at their website as well!

Best wishes for a wonderful end-of-summer and a great start to the semester.