Welcome (back), Bonnie and George!

It’s been a busy year in the Library, with two important Library staff transitions. You may recall that last year at this time, we bid a fond farewell to Katie Duke, Coordinator of Information Literacy, and welcomed George Aulisio as our new Part-Time Reference Librarian. This year saw us searching for a Librarian to take Katie’s place, and our very own Bonnie Oldham turned out to be the best candidate for the job! This meant Bonnie’s position as Distance Learning Library Services Coordinator became vacant, and after yet another search (this time with one of the largest applicant pools ever seen at the Library), our joy was doubled when George emerged as the top candidate for this position. And so, we welcome (back) Bonnie and George, each in a new job role — Bonnie as Information Literacy Coordinator and George as Distance Learning Library Services Coordinator!

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Bonnie and George in their 2nd floor office in the Weinberg Memorial Library

Bonnie was born in Harrisburg, PA, and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She has lived in Georgia and New Jersey, and twenty years ago she returned to Pennsylvania, where she has remained ever since. She currently resides in Shavertown. She received her undergraduate degree (A.B.) in History from Chestnut Hill College, her Master of Library Science degree from Kutztown University, and her Master of Science in Organizational Management degree from Misericordia University. Bonnie brings 19 total years of experience in academic libraries to her new role as Information Literacy Coordinator.

George grew up in Old Forge, PA, and still calls Old Forge his home. George received his Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy degree from Bloomsburg University, his Master of Library Science degree from Drexel University, and is currently pursuing his Master of Liberal Arts degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

If you are a student or faculty member in the Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Exercise Science and Sport, or Nursing Departments, then Bonnie is the Librarian you will want to get to know. She is the collection development and information literacy liaison to these departments, just as George is the liaison to the Philosophy, Communication, Mathematics and Computer Science Departments. Both are especially looking forward to working more with faculty and students in their collection development areas.

In her free time, Bonnie enjoys cooking and doing crafts – for example, five years ago she made her daughter’s wedding dress. George, who has a deep thirst for knowledge, spends much of his free time pursuing his studies; however, he also enjoys yard work, including cutting the grass and trimming the trees. Both enjoy reading (what librarian doesn’t?), and both can be found sharing the same 2nd floor office in the Weinberg Memorial Library. George can be found in the Library most evenings of the week, Sunday through Thursday, while Bonnie is easiest to find during the day, Monday through Friday. Feel free to stop by and say hello to them – they both welcome visitors!

eBooks, in case of emergency

iTablet
iTablet

I’m somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to reading, that is to say, I prefer paper and ink over plastic and electrons. However, I’m always open-minded and willing to try new things; so, a couple years back, I decided to read Aristophanes’s The Clouds entirely on my desktop computer. Sadly, I couldn’t make it all the way through and eventually ended up taking the book out of the library.

However, I did learn something from my experience, namely that it is possible to read large amounts of text entirely online. Personally, I read online all the time, but usually in the form of newspaper/journal articles and other short passages, though occasionally I have pulled-up a couple chapters from a book, in order to get by for the time being.

So if you left your book on the bus, or the library doesn’t have it (highly unlikely), or your shipment hasn’t come in from Amazon yet and you need to have a chapter read by tomorrow, then I suggest giving some of the following resources a try. Keep in mind, you don’t need an iPhone or iTablet to read most eBooks, usually you can open them up right from your desktop/laptop, or even on most SmartPhones and PDAs.

Here are the top 5 FREE eBook sites, in my humble opinion:

1.) The Online Books Page – An Index of eTexts brought to us free of charge by the University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

2.) Project Gutenberg – There are over 25,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog. A grand total of over 100,000 titles are available at Project Gutenberg Partners, Affiliates and Resources.

3.) Bookyards.com – Bookyards has a total of 16,045 books, 41,384 external web links, 4,197 news & blogs links, 384 videos, 32,787 Ebook links and access to hundreds of online libraries (800,000 Ebooks) for your reading pleasure.

4.) JustFreeBooks – This website is actually a specialized search engine (similar to Google, except only searches eBook sites). Use the search box to find exactly what you are looking for.

5.) MemoWare.com – Contains over 18,000 “premium” titles. I can’t vouch for exactly what they mean by premium titles, but there are some excellent Literature selections and even some Reference texts.