There's a different dynamic in the Easter term as students prepare for exams. Still busy, around 50 students in the Library, it's quieter, they're concentrating on revising. Some have packs of coloured pens in front of them and they're drawing mind maps, multi-coloured diagrams, to help them remember concepts. There's less activity at the Library Counter. Only 120 books borrowed yesterday but 366 renewed.
It allows us to get on with other projects. One of these is checking through the stock in the basement, checking whether the books have records, whether we have duplicate copies, checking borrowing figures since 1992, and whether they're available elsewhere. A huge job, we've split it into two projects. The first, checking the shelflist, we've checked almost 50 bays (200+ books a bay) with another 25 bays to go. The second, checking issue figures, availability elsewhere etc. The third phase of this will be to list all those titles which aren't used, are available elsewhere and which we can withdraw from stock. Lots! After going through the usual procedure of course. Thinking of using Zotero for this but would welcome alternatives.
Link to Statistical software manuals
We recently put a page on our website listing all the statistical software manuals in the Marshall's collection with clickable links to their catalogue records, to online support sites and and to other resources.
http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/marshlib/guide/software_support.html
Lots more ideas and projects in the pipeline for this term and we can really get stuck in over the summer vacation.
The Marshall Library Blog explores our collections and their stories
