Welcome To Our Library

A few years ago I lamented about my students’ disinclination to look for any resources online; more recently, I’ve had to cajole students to bestir themselves to find research material in the physical library. I don’t deprecate the value of research material just because it’s found online, but I wish for my students the opportunity to learn not only from people so forward-thinking as to publish their work online, but also from some of the scholarship that has not yet appeared in digital form.

So I spent a fair amount of time this past weekend with the wonderful application Comic Life* writing/illustrating a guide for finding the relevant reference sources in Seabury’s United Library. I tried to include establishing shots so that people could orient themselves, images of specific books and periodicals (along with catalogue numbers) so that people could recognize them when they saw them on the shelf, and some miscellaneous observations about where to find pointers to pertinent books and articles. (The guide should also help fend off the tendency to rely on some sources that I don’t illustrate.)

My Trip to the United Library

I printed a couple of copies for the class and the librarian, and posted the pages to the Disseminary Flickr site in a set (and linked to it from the course website). But if you didn’’t see me this weekend, that’s what I was doing — and now you can find the New Testament reference material in the United Library, too.


* Comic Life could be improved in a variety of ways, but on most fronts it’s an exemplary program; it demonstrates the power of computers to make complicated special tasks into simple drag-and-drop errands. They advertise “zero learning curve,” and although that’s a marketing overstatement, it’amazingly close to being true. I recommend it strongly. Still, they should include or permit one to import some vector objects (such as arrows and explosion shapes), and manipulating styles of “POW!” text involves some frustrating idiosyncrasies.

3 thoughts on “Welcome To Our Library

  1. Talk about bringing back memories–I wondered if the rolling shelves were going to make an appearance–“BS” indeed!

    It wasn’t your purpose but I enjoyed the proverbial stroll down memory lane! (You did leave out dodging the traffic on Sheridan Rd., though).

  2. This brings back the sad memories of the day they merged the two libaries; we got magazines and they got NT, and we lost our study carrels.

  3. Ah yes . . . the United Library. I’m with Emily on both counts: 1) The memories, oh the memories, such sweet scents recalled and passions revived . . . okay, well maybe not. But the memories abounded.

    And 2) Why no pictures of students sprinting across Sheridan Rd? Or standing seemingly for hours in the rain waiting for a small break? Or, my personal favorite, slipping through a break in northbound traffic and waiting in the “safe space” of the yellow line for southbound traffic to abate.

    Oh well, you can’t please everybody.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *