Where have all the womb chairs gone?

Today all of the Mudd womb chairs were loaded on a truck to be carted up to Michigan for a complete refurbishment. When they come back in August or September, they'll be good as new! Want your own womb chair? Learn more at Questions That Never Die #4.

Welcome American Democratic Culture Partnerships!

This week and next, the Academic Commons in Mudd Library is the academic home for 35 students participating in this year's "American Democratic Culture" summer seminar, a collaboration between Oberlin College, Al-Quds University (Palestine), and Tel Aviv University. Students from Israel, Palestine, and the United States are working closely together on intensive team research projects related to American democracy, history, and culture. If you're in Mudd, don't be surprised to see the entire Academic Commons bustling with students in the program.

OhioLINK Central Catalog down Thur. July 7

OhioLINK will take the Central Catalog offline around noon on Thursday, July 7 for scheduled maintenance. It should be back online by that evening. This means you won't be able to request (or renew, either, probably) OhioLINK books.

Whew! ILL is back in business ...

All should be well when you login to ILLiad; if you encounter problems let us know at ill@oberlin.edu.

Update on ILL service

We have made great progress on upgrading our ILL software, but continue to have a problem with one significant element -- the web pages on which users can make requests! These remain unavailable, but please contact the ILL staff directly (55039 or ill@oberlin.edu) if you have immediate needs. We're so sorry for the inconvenience.

ILL requesting service ILLiad down again Thursday

As is so often the way with software upgrades, we hit a snag. We have had to take the requesting web pages down again. We don't know how long we'll be working on it and apologize greatly for the inconvenience. Please contact us at dill@oberlin.edu if you have specific needs.

ILL requesting service ILLiad down Tuesday morning

We are replacing the ILLiad server Tuesday morning and the requesting web pages will be down starting around 9 am. We don't know how long we'll be working on it, but expect the downtime to be no more than a few hours. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact us at dill@oberlin.edu if you have specific needs.

HathiTrust -- the Librarians' Digital Library

A partnership of major libraries around the world -- and more specifically, dedicated librarians at those libraries -- has committed to preserving and enhancing access to the cultural output held in those libraries through digital preservation. While most of the holdings in the HathiTrust Digital Library are not accessible to the general public because of copyright restrictions, the collection is full-text searchable and can uncover treasures in our own library through this powerful feature.

For example, search "Oberlin College" AND anti-slavery in the full-text search. The first page of results reveals the book

Fettered freedom; civil liberties and the slavery controversy, 1830-1860.

by Nye, Russel Blaine, 1913- ,Published 1949

This book is not viewable, but a quick search of OBIS reveals that we own it. The Oberlin content in that book would be unknown to us without the full-text searching available in HathiTrust.

Enjoy and explore this labor of love. You can read more about this massive collaboration in this interview with two of the major players.

Summer Reading, Viewing, and Listening!

Get a jump on your cultural consumption for the summer -- check out the books, videos, recordings (and more!) added to the Library collections in May.