Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Reading for Kicks this Holiday Season

This semester is almost over and you've earned a break -- why not enjoy it by curling up with a novel and a mug of hot cocoa?

In anticipation of our imminent Current & Popular leisure reading collection (debuting in mid-January!), we've filled up two bookcases in the lobby of Arrendale Library with some recent fiction and nonfiction titles from our circulating collection. Both adult and young adult books are on display and available for check-out. Featured authors include Cormac McCarthy, Sherman Alexie, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith, Peter Carey, Ian McEwan, and many others. Come by and browse the shelves before taking off for winter break!

No Country For Old Men  The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian True History of the Kelly Gang

December is also "Best of the Year" season for many literary publications. It's a great opportunity to catch up on notable books you might have missed the first time around. The New York Times has published two major lists recently which might spark your interest: The 10 Best Books of 2011 and 100 Notable Books of 2011. Goodreads, the popular social networking site for bookworms, just unveiled their 2011 Choice Awards (the overall winner for Favorite Book of the Year was the YA dystopian tale Divergent by Veronica Ruth; the winner for Fiction was Haruki Murakami's 1Q84; and the top slot for nonfiction went to Alexandra Robbins' The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth). Esquire weighed in with their ten favorite, NPR goes down the list genre by genre, and if you're curious about what the editors at Amazon liked best, well, here you go: The Best Books of 2011.

Want access to all of them and more? The EarlyWord blog is an excellent resource. You can find links to more Best-of lists than you could ever read in the menu on the right side of the page.

Of course, we don't actually have all these books -- but Barnes & Noble probably does! And now that we have a Current & Popular collection in the works, we encourage you to request the titles you're interested in. This collection needs your feedback to be successful!

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Welcome to the Library's Blog!

Piedmont College's first library was established in 1899. This semester, 112 years later, we are proud to present Piedmont College's first library blog, The PCL Pilot!

The PCL Pilot is the first of many new developments to come during the 2011/2012 academic year. We hope it will be an effective way to share information about new resources and services with students and faculty at both Piedmont College campuses.

Of course, Finals Week is now upon us and it's a busy time for everyone, so we'll be holding off on all major developments until the beginning of spring semester, 2012. At that time, you can look forward to the unveiling of our new Current & Popular leisure reading collection. You deserve more out of your library than a place to sit and study, and to that end, we're bringing in lots of new fiction and nonfiction titles for your reading pleasure. Feel free to contact us (or comment on this blog) if you have any suggestions or requests and stay tuned for more information!

Other new services on the horizon include real-time chat reference through the library website, an improved interlibrary loan system, and upgraded media technology in the group study rooms. We've also created a PC Library twitter feed this semester and have been filling it with all manner of news tidbits, both local and national. You can check that out here: http://twitter.com/PCLibraries. Be sure and follow us!

Also, please note that we'll be open until midnight on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of finals week. We close at 8 on Wednesday, and after that, the Winter Intersession schedule begins:


Don't miss out! Subscribe to this blog feed (RSS or email) to get all the latest information. And feel free to comment on posts here or send me an email at dgibbs@piedmont.edu with any questions or comments. We hope to hear from you soon!