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Halloween

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Don’t want to go out on Wednesday night through fear of being attacked by the un-dead rising again….the Wicked Witch of the West casting a spell on you…or being killed by a monster you have created through unethical scientific experiments?

Then stay in and entertain yourself with items from the library.

DVDs

The Classics: Halloween (Directed by John Carpenter) 791.43714 HAL

A nightmare on Elm street (Directed by Wes Craven) 791.43714 NIG

The Shining (Directed by Stanley Kubrick) 791.43714 SHI

The Blair Witch Project (Directed by Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez) 791.43714 BLA

The Modern Classics : Drag me to Hell (Directed by Sam Raimi) 791.43714 DRA

The Woman in Black (Directed by James Watkins) 791.43714 WOM

Thirst (Directed by Chan-wook Park) 791.437519 THI

Let the right one in (Directed by Tomas Alfredson) 791.43748 LET

The Comedies : Shaun of the Dead (Directed by Edgar Wright) 791.43724 SHA

Young Frankenstein (Directed by Mel Brooks) 791.43724 YOU

Ghostbusters (Directed by Ivan Reitman) 791.43724 GHO

Gremlins (Directed by Joe Dante) 791.43724 GRE

Books

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 823.79 Sh

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 813.46

Dracula by Bram Stoker 823.89 St

Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allen Poe 811.32

Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu 823.89 Le

The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 823.89 St

The Witches by Roald Dahl  (School Practice) JFIC DAH

The Vampire Diaries by L.J. Smith  (School Practice) SFIC SMI

The Babysitter I, II and III by R.L Stine  (School Practice) SFIC STI

CDs

Themes of horror –  CD 6809

At the movies; 3: Horror and fantasy at the movies – CD 1551

Essential death and horror sound effects. vol.1 – CD 1158

Essential death and horror sound effects. vol.2 – CD 1157

The raven and selected short stories / Edgar Allan Poe – CD 7611

Baby it’s cold outside…and inside!

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We are sorry to announce that from this afternoon (26th October 2012), the heating system will be turned off in the Rutherford Building (that means the library and the IT areas). The heating is also being turned off in Warmington Tower and the Education Building. This is to allow estates to carry out essential work on the heating system ready for Winter. The heating should be turned back on Monday (29th October 2012).

The Library will still be open this weekend, but it may be worth bringing and extra jumper to keep yourself warm.

Renewing your loans

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Renewing your loans (including books, DVDs, CDs etc) is a sensible, easy way to avoid fines during your time here at Goldsmiths College. We try to make it as simple as possible for you to renew your loans, so here is a run down of the different ways to renew.

1. Renew at the self-service machines.

  • Choose Borrow and Account on the screen.
  • Scan the barcode on your Goldsmiths card to bring up your account.
  • Select Account on the left hand side of the screen.
  • A record of your loans should appear on screen. Simply press Renew All at the bottom of this screen to renew your loans.
  • If there are any problems with the renewal then the items will  be highlighted in red. The most likely reason for a failed renewal is that the item has a hold placed on it by another user but you can go to the help desk for further information.
  • Press Print to get a print out with the new return dates.

2. Renew in person at the help desk.

  • Queue up on the library side of the help desk and talk to a friendly member of staff who can renew loans for you.

3. Renew online.

  • Access the Library catalogue (found via the Library home page) and log in to Your Library Record using your library number (the number under the barcode) and your pin, which is usually your date of birth (DDMMYY).
  • A summary of your account will appear. Click on the number of loans and it will bring you through to a detailed summary of your items. Click on Renew All to renew all your loans.

Take a quick look at this video which shows you the step-by-step process.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/Lq1CwK7GEjQ]

4. Renew by phone.

If all else fails give us a call on 020 7919 7150 and talk to a member of staff. Have your library account number ready and we will renew the items for you over the phone.

Please be aware that at peak times we may not be able to answer your call straight away so it might be quicker to renew online.

Remember:

  • Short loan books (7 day loans and 3 day loans) can be renewed.
  • If your fines total more than £10, you will not be able to renew your books until you have paid some of the fine.
  • You cannot renew books that have been requested by other users.

For more information about loans periods and fines see the Borrowing Information on the library web pages.

The DVD and Video collection at Goldsmiths

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DVDs

Goldsmiths Library has a vast collection of over 10,000 DVDs. Feature films range from Hollywood blockbusters to world cinema to art house.  We also have documentaries for every subject, recordings of plays, operas and musicals, lots of TV series and many more gems.

DVDs are free to borrow – undergraduates can take out 4 at a time, and postgraduates even more. Remember that DVDs are for 7 day loan, and must be renewed or returned on time otherwise you have late fines of £1 per day.

The DVD collection can be found on the 2nd floor and is shelved by Dewey Decimal Classification, just like the print books. This means that documentaries are arranged by subject, making them easy to browse. It’s also easy to browse films by country of origin.

Make sure you look on the catalogue for the exact class mark if you are looking for a particular film. The easiest way to search for DVDs is to chose the videos/DVDs search to narrow down your results. For special edition films or TV series with multiple disks, we separate each disk into its own box – make sure you chose the right disk.

When a DVD is required for a course, the library will often put one or two copies aside at the help desk for use in the library. This ensures there’s always a copy of the DVD in the library for students to watch. The location will look something like this:

  • 791.437  CRO Course Reference DVD [Helpdesk]

These DVDs can only be viewed in the library.  We have DVD players for students to use with headphones, and group viewings rooms that you do not need to book, so small groups can watch DVDs together.

There are other DVDs kept at the help desk which are borrowable, but that we need to keep a closer eye on, usually because they are imported or hard to come by. These will have a location that looks like this:

  • 791.437 CRO DVD [Helpdesk]

Videos

The library also has an impressive collection of over 12,500 videos, many of which contain rare recordings that are difficult to find in DVD format. The collection is housed in a separate room next to the DVD collection and viewing rooms. Videos are arranged by individual number (rather than Dewey class mark) and therefore need to be looked up on the catalogue first. On the catalogue, video locations look like this:

  • 4471 Video [2nd Floor]

There are video/VHS players to watch videos in the library, or they can be borrowed as normal for 7 day loan. Videos will need to be brought to the help desk for borrowing and returning.

Check out the audio-visual collection web page for more information and links to online resources.

Happy viewing!
 

Congratulations to our Systems Librarian

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 The lovely lady looking fabulous above is Craigie-Lee Paterson,  she is Goldsmiths’ Assistant Librarian for systems. This means she looks after the various systems in the library including the library management system, the library webpage, and Findit@Gold. She also has responsibility for our staff development budget and organizes monthly training sessions for all the staff in the library.

On Tuesday (9th October), at a memorable evening at Lord’s Cricket Ground special awards were made to some of the individuals and organisations who made particularly significant contributions to the London Youth Games.  Craigie-Lee won Volunteer of the Year!! We are all very proud of her. The picture shows her receiving her award from Richard Hounslow. He won a silver medal at the 2012 Olympics in the C-2 Slalom Canoe.

Craigie-Lee has a long history of volunteering, she took her first steps into basketball officiating through the London Youth Games in 2010. Then at London 2012 she operated the results board at the Olympic finals and was also the team attaché for China’s wheelchair team in the Paraolympics.

Dewey Decimal Classification at Goldsmiths

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Ever wondered what those numbers on the spines of the books mean? Like browsing the shelves but don’t know where to start? Here’s our quick guide to Dewey Decimal Classification, the classification system used at Goldsmiths to organise books, journals, and DVDs on the shelves.

Dewey Decimal Classification is a very popular system used throughout the world (in America they even have a rap about it). It was invented by Melvil Dewey, a man so dedicated to efficiency that he simplified the spelling of his own name from Melville to Melvil.

The classification system divides topics and disciplines into 10 main sections:

000 Computer science, information & general works
100 Philosophy & psychology
200 Religion
300 Social sciences
400 Language
500 Science
600 Technology
700 Arts & recreation
800 Literature
900 History & geography

After the main 10 sections, topics are split into more sections using numbers and decimal points. So books on general topics have nice short numbers, while books on very specific topics, or a combination of different topics, will have a long number.

At Goldsmiths Library, the collections are arranged in Dewey and in numerical order on the shelves. This means that the classmark 599.096897 will be shelved before the number 599.17 – keep an eye on the numbers after the decimal point. The books at Goldsmiths are split like so:

  • 000-699 First floor (plus 000-699 periodicals, in their own section)
  • 700-999 Second floor (plus 700-999 periodicals, in their own section)

DVDs are also arranged by Dewey Decimal but are shelved together on the 2nd floor (except where they are part of a book).

The Dewey Decimal number is the number listed under ‘Location’ in the catalogue and is sometimes referred to as a class number. The three letters after the Dewey Decimal number help you find the book on the shelf, so make sure you write it all down.

The location number is the Dewey Decimal class number

If you want to get to know the numbers relevant for your subject, have a look at your subject guide on the library website (normally in a PDF file for you to print out), or you can see a summary of the whole thing. With lots of interdisciplinary courses at Goldsmiths, you might find yourself in different sections during your study – why not explore the shelves?

Top tips for using Dewey:

  1. If you find a book you want on the catalogue, try looking around on the shelf at books with the same or similar Dewey Decimal numbers. That way you can find books on a similar topic.
  2. Or you can browse by Dewey Decimal numbers on the catalogue. Simply chose ‘Browse A-Z Lists’ in the top menu, change the ‘Select index to browse’ to ‘class number’, and type in your Dewey Decimal number.

Browsing by Dewey Decimal class number

Welcome Week Success

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Hello everyone, I hope you all enjoyed your first week at Goldsmiths University. This year was the first year we had a Welcome Week rather than the Freshers. This was also the first time that we had a welcome desk in the library to greet you all as you came in.
Last week at the Welcome Desk we dealt with over 1117 inquiries. These ranged from asking when the next tour was to what the Dewey Decimal number was for Media Studies.

We ran tours every half an hour from 10am, with the last one going at 4pm. During the five days we gave tours to 905 students. To those of you who came on the tours – I hope you all found it useful. If you missed the tours last week, for the rest of this week (until Friday 5th October) we will be giving library tours at 10am, 12 midday and 4pm.

We had a desk in the Marquee on the College Green on the Monday and Tuesday. At times it was manned by Sally (pictured above)  the Subject Librarian for Anthropology, Politics and Psychology.  During those two days we interacted with 214 students, giving them information on what the library was offering during the week and the best way to get in contact with the library.

One final number for you, during the first two days we gave away £15.00 worth of chewy sweets and lollies!