The 2010 Fall Book Sale

Frequent Questions

Can I renew my own library materials?

Yes, you are allowed to renew library materials one time.

4. If an item is overdue, you may renew it. You are, however, still responsible for fines accrued up until the point of renewal.

Should I tape torn materials myself?

NO!!! This will further damage library material.

Standard tape glue will corrode the pages of library items. Also, when you put tape on items, we can’t get it off again. The Allen Library uses specific adhesives and methods to restore damaged paper and bindings. Please bring torn or damaged library items to the circulation desk.

The Binding Blues - Do not tape pages into a score for the sake of an easier page turn. These pages are difficult to remove without damaging the original library item.

- You tore the pages of my library item just like you tore my heart

We Need Your Feedback!

Want to provide feedback to the University of Hartford Libraries to let us know how we're doing? We're running a survey right now to give you that opportunity. We're looking for information on what we're doing right, what we're doing wrong, and what services you would like to see us offer. If you are a student or faculty member at the University of Hartford, please consider taking this 10-15 minute survey to help us in our quest to continue meeting your needs.

Students Survey
Faculty Survey

Frequent Questions

If the Allen Library does not have an item that I think should be in its collection, can I request that it be purchased?

Yes, the Allen Library welcomes suggestions for purchase from patrons. Please stop by the circulation desk and ask for an acquisition request form. An online version of the form can be found at: http://library.hartford.edu/services/suggtitle.asp. You are also encouraged to bring suggestions to Tracey Rudnick, Allen Library Head Librarian. We try to fill requests that fall within curricular objectives whenever possible. If the item you suggest is not immediately on hand, we can assist you in borrowing it from another library through interlibrary loan.

Can I receive notification that my library items are coming due?

Yes, you may set a variety of message and notification settings by logging into the online library catalog (http://hartford.waldo.kohalibrary.com/). The library catalog log in can be found at the top of the catalog homepage. Enter your 8-digit ID as the login. Enter your surname (with capitalized first letter) as the password if you are logging in for the first time.

Before making any notification changes, please make sure you have an email listed that you check regularly in the contact information box found under the tab “My Personal Details” found on the left side of the page.

Under the tab “My Messaging,” you may set an advanced notice for upcoming due items. Select the number of days prior to an item’s due date, on which you would like to receive a notification from the drop-down menu to the right of “Advance Notice.” Next, check the box in the “Email” column. Finally, click on “Submit Changes” to activate this notification change.

In Summary the four steps:

What We Did This Summer

With the Fall semester underway, it's time to get the Allen Library blog back in gear. We took the summer off from blogging, holding onto all of our juicy information until everybody was back and ready to read it. Although it was fairly quiet in here this summer (except for when the summers-only music ed students were here), we were definitely not just sitting idly, waiting for the new semester to start. So here's just a tidbit of what we were up to this Summer:

• We went live with the Hartt Composers Database, a discovery tool for learning about scores we own of works by Hartt faculty composers. It's aimed at chamber works and is easily searchable by instrumentation, so it is very useful if you're looking for something to play. More on this in a future post.
  
  
• If you're an undergraduate student, you might remember taking HLM 020, the class that introduces you to the library and its resources. A good chunk of my summer was spent redesigning that from the ground up. My goal was to make it more user-friendly, more interactive, and, most importantly, more useful. We're halfway through the first assignment out of twelve, and it seems to be going smoothly, so it's been a success so far. Later in the year, I'll be working on working the new tutorials into the regular website.
  
  
• We reached the one year anniversary of Koha, our library catalog. In honor of this, we (Allen and Mortensen Libraries together) completely redesigned the look of the catalog. What used to be plain and generic is now much more visually appealing and unique. You won't find any other library catalog that looks like this!
  
  
• Both seminar rooms now have new whiteboards, both of which have music staves on them! They are much whiter than the old one, and we'll be working hard to keep them that way. We have a huge TV that is going in the large seminar room, so that will be going up sometime this semester. We also have a faster computer in the small seminar room now.
  
  
• In the "good for them, bad for us" category, both Jenny Crum (Public Services Coordinator) and Andrew King (Cataloging Coordinator) decided to leave the Allen Library in order to pursue more performing and teaching. Although it will be difficult to find replacements, we are in the process of doing that right now. I'll let you know when we have some good news.

This is just the tip of the iceberg (sorry for the cliché), but it should give you an idea of what we were up to. Future posts will give some more detail on some of these, and we have some other good blog posts in mind that should be coming soon. I hope everybody had a great summer and I look forward to seeing everybody again in the library!

Graduation Time! What you need to know about graduating and the library

Hello all! The sun is out, the flowers are blooming, finals are looming, it's that time of year.........graduation! But before you walk, receive your diploma, attend the requisite parties, and get on with the rest of your life, there are a few things you need to know about your library account in order for this process to go as smoothly as possible.

First, do you know if you have items that are checked out, overdue, or of you have fines? If not, you can find this information by logging into your account from our website. You can accomplish this by clicking on either 'My Account' or 'Go to Catalogue' and entering your ID Number as your login and your capitalized last name as your password (or whatever you've set it to if you've changed it). As long as you have given us a current e-mail address, you should also receive e-mails letting you know that you have library business to take care of. If you notice any problems, or things that don't look right, please come talk to us so we can resolve any issues!

Next, any fines you may have, or items you have checked out must be paid or returned on or before May 14th in order for you to receive your diploma. Please be aware that we are only open until 4:30pm on the 14th and will be closed the Saturday and Sunday of graduation weekend (the 15th and 16th), so you will need to take care of everything library related prior to this time.

Last, your library privileges don't end with graduation! All you will need is an alumni ID card, which you can obtain by a quick visit to the Office of Alumni Relations. With this card you will have many of the same borrowing privileges you had as a student. If you have any questions about how to obtain the alumni card, or about its associated benefits, you can call 888.UH.ALUMS or email alumni@hartford.edu.

Good luck on finals, and we wish you the very best in your post-University of Hartford adventures!

Allen Library's First Video Tutorial

We are always looking for new ways to help you find information, and today marks our first foray into video tutorials. Instead of just writing down instructions and adding in some screenshots, these video tutorials (okay, there's only one right now) actually show you the whole process and explain what is happening. Make sure you have your speakers on so you can hear the explanation. The first video tutorial is a quick one-minute presentation on how to find books in our catalog. I'll probably be adding some more complex ones, but this one should be a good start. You can find it here: http://library.hartford.edu/allenlibrary/findbook_video.asp. Please let me know what you think about it and feel free to send some suggestions as to what tutorials you would like to see in the future!

The Small Seminar Room Becomes Useful

Until recently, the Allen Library Small Seminar Room was just a room with a table. We've done quite a bit of work in there over the past few months, and I'm happy to report that it is much more useful now. There is now a very nice TV in this room that is connected to a computer, a DVD player (which can also play CDs), and a VCR. Instead of just being useful for sitting around a table and talking, the Small Seminar Room can now be used for most of your standard A/V needs. We even have a very easy to use wireless keyboard and mouse that you can check out from the circulation desk. This will make collaborative work much easier. As long as there is not a previously scheduled class or meeting taking place, anybody is free to use this room; you just need to check out the key from the circulation desk.

One small word of warning: The computer in the Small Seminar Room is not the best, so you may have difficulty using some programs or websites (Naxos Music Library doesn't seem to play well with this computer). We are working on upgrading to a faster computer, so I'm hoping that this won't be an issue for long. If you can think of anything else that would help improve the room, please let us know!

Scandinavian Music

Greetings,

Periodically the Allen Memorial Library receives gifts containing scores, recordings, and/or music or dance related books. And oftentimes these gifts contain items we hadn't thought to order, but add something really great to the collection nonetheless. A case in point is a recent gift of CDs we received that include a lot of Scandinavian music. Included among them are three CDs from a series entitled "Musica Sveciae." Musica Sveciae is a recorded anthology, financed by a government grant, of Swedish music from ancient times to the beginning of the 20th Century.

Then Svenska Messan [The Swedish Mass]/Johan Helmich Roman (1694-1758)
MD2010 R75 S9

Roman was an important early figure in Swedish music, who served to innovate and reform Swedish church music.


Wilhelm Peterson-Berger (1867-1942)
MD3.1 P47

This disc includes the composer's Third Symphony, Romance for Violin and Orchestra in d minor, and the song cycle "Gullebarn's Lullabies."


Stenhammar Sanger [Songs]
MD1620 S82 S2

Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927) was a great admirer of both Carl Nielsen and Jean Sibelius, and looked to their music to develop his own Nordic style. The 30 songs on this disc encompass a wide variety of moods, and draw from the literary works of many contemporary Swedish writers, including Bo Bergman (1869-1967).


Also part of the gift is a disc of string quartets by the Swedish composer Hilding Rosenberg:

Hilding Rosenberg String Quartets 2,5, & 8.
MD452 R81 Q2

Rosenberg (1892-1985) was a prolific composer who wrote 14 string quartets, spread over the course of his long life. No. 5 is dedicated to Jean Sibelius.


And finally, we now have the Jean Sibelius Quartet performing string quartets written by contemporary Finnish composers:

MD452 R24 Q2

This disc features Einojuhani Rautavaara's (b. 1928) String Quartet no. 2, op. 12; Joonas Kokkonen's (1921-1996) String Quartet no. 1; and Jouni Kaipainen's (b. 1956) String Quartet no. 3, op. 25.

Please drop by and have a listen.

About the New Website

As you have probably noticed, there have been many changes on our website. While we are hoping to eventually change the look of the site to match up more closely with the University’s new website design (which should be up soon), there are several exciting new changes that we are sure you will like. Here are just a few of them:

1. That five-tabbed search box in the center of our homepage is a very valuable tool for searching a variety of our resources in order to find library materials, research assistance, articles, databases, and course reserves. Many of your searching needs will be met with this one box, so plan on becoming very familiar with it.
   
   
2. We changed the navigation to focus on tasks rather than resources. This means, for example, that you don’t need to know about eJournals AtoZ in order to find full-text articles online. You just need to click on the Find Articles, Journals, etc. link and the next page will point you in the right direction (you can also use the Articles & Journals tab in the abovementioned search box).
   
   
3. Once you figure out which resources you need, you can access the most commonly used ones in our Top Tools section, found in the left-side navigation bar. You’ll also find a lot of the important performing arts resources (Naxos Music Library, Oxford Music Online, etc.) underneath the large search box.
   

It may seem like an odd time to roll out a new website and I know it is very sudden, but for reasons out of our control we had to go live a little sooner than expected. So expect to see some more improvements in the next few months as we consult with you, our users, to see how we can make it even better. We’ll try to keep everybody informed on what is happening and I encourage you to let us know what you think of the changes!

Online Librarian Chat: That New Box on the Homepage

As you may have noticed, there is a new box on the Allen Library homepage. Look to the right of this text to see a picture of it (this one is just an image, so you have to go to the Allen homepage to actually use it). For those of you who were familiar with the box that used to be on our homepage, it still serves the same purpose. It allows you to chat with a library staff member online. You simply type a message in the bottom section of the box, press Enter on your keyboard, and wait for a reply. We didn't just change the look of the box, however; there are several new features that make this a huge improvement.

1) Multiple library staff members can receive your message at the same time, so it's much more likely that your question will be answered promptly.

2) Whoever answers your question can "transfer" the chat to another staff member if they decide that someone else is better suited to answer the question. This improves the chances of you receiving the best possible answer.

3) We can email the transcript of the chat to another staff member, so even if the best person to answer the question is not currently available, we can still send your question to them.

4) You can pop the chat out of your current browser window by clicking on the green arrow: This will allow you to continue navigating our website as we answer your question without worrying about losing the chat box.

You'll probably see this chat box appearing in other places on our website, and each one will be designed to send questions to those staff members who are best equipped to answer questions about the topic at hand. We expect this tool to be very valuable. I encourage you to try it out, even if it is to just say hi. Please let us know what you think about it!

New Releases

Greetings from the backroom, once again. As you probably know, the backroom is where new items come to get all the trappings of the Allen Library and be released. But since you aren't waiting on the shelving carts for Jen or me to bring these new items out for your perusal, I thought you might like to know what some of them are.


I.X.1905 "Sonata" / Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) M23 J33 S1

This is a beautiful Bärenreiter Urtext edition published in 2005. It features a lengthy introduction to the piece with bibliography. The Sonata itself is a devastating work, based on the unjust murder of a university student in Brno. If you haven't heard it yet, listen to Ivan Moravec's interpretation available on Naxos.


On An Overgrown Path / Leoš Janáček (1854-1928) M25 J33 O5

This is also a Bärenreiter Urtext edition with a rich and dark purple cover. The lengthy preface contains much valuable information, and again there is suggested reading. On An Overgrown Path is in two series, with an additional set entitled "Paralipomena." The first series is a collection of short pieces with descriptive titles (e.g. Words fail!, Unutterable anguish, The barn owl has not flown away!), but the remaining compositions only have tempo indications as identifiers. Janáček's piano music is extraordinary. Piquant, nervous, innocent, delicate, quiet. Do check it out.


Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora vol. 4 M21 A378 V4
Piano Music of Africa and the African Diaspora vol. 5 M21 A378 V5
Senku / William Chapman Nyaho MD21 C436 S4
Asa / William Chapman Nyaho MD21 C436 A8

William H. Chapman Nyaho, from Ghana, is an active international performer, scholar, teacher, and clinician. He compiled and edited these two volumes of piano music, both of which are classified as "Advanced." Much of the music features large spans for the hands and innovative rhythmic figures. The composers come from a wide variety of places: Nigeria, Jamaica, England, Egypt, and the U.S., among others. You may listen to many of the compositions on the two CDs as well. As Maya Angelou wrote in a review of Senku, "This CD will provide moments of discovery so delicious, that the listeners will be made to laugh out loud and to compliment not just Dr. Chapman Nyaho, but themselves at their good fortune in finding these composers and this pianist."


Piano Concerto No. 2, op. 18 / Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943) M1011 R11 C2
Romanian Folk Dances / Béla Bartók (1881-1945) M25 B29 R6

These two are replacement copies. Fortunately we had the funds available to buy new copies of these well worn compositions. The Rachmaninov is a Schirmer edition (apologies, but actually it doesn't have any unwanted editorializations!), and the Bartók is a Masters Music Publications edition.

If you aren't a pianist, don't worry. New items for all instruments are coming in all the time. Jen will let you know about some more of them soon...