Due to thunderstorm predictions for Thursday, September 27, the President’s Town Gown Reception which was originally scheduled to be held under a tent at Kingman Farm has been moved to the 5th Floor Reading Room in Dimond Library. The room will be unavailable all day tomorrow. The reception will be held from 5pm to 7pm.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

The University of New Hampshire Library, though its membership in the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), will aid efforts to build a freely accessible library of digital materials. The BLC is partnering with the Open Content Alliance to build the digital library with materials from all its 19 member institutions. The BLC is the first large-scale consortium to embark on such a self-funded digitization project with the Open Content Alliance.

The Consortium will offer high-resolution, downloadable, reusable files of public domain materials. Using Internet Archive technology, books from all 19 libraries will be scanned at a cost of just 10 cents per page. Collectively, the BLC member libraries, including the University of New Hampshire Library, provide access to over 34 million volumes. The BLC’s digitization efforts will be based in a new scanning center, the Northeast Regional Scanning Center, located at the Boston Public Library.

The BLC is an association of academic and research libraries located in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Founded in 1970, the Consortium supports resource sharing and enhancement of services to users through programs in cooperative collecting, access to electronic resources and physical collections, and enhanced interlibrary loan and document delivery.

Read the full press release at BLC.org.

The library now offers online access to the Chicago Manual of Style.

The online edition of the Chicago Manual of Style includes the fully-searchable text of the 15th edition with added features such as tools for editors, a quick citation guide, and searchable access to the Chicago Style Q&A, a feature popular with copy editors and grammar aficionados, wherein University of Chicago Press manuscript editors answer readers’ editorial style questions.

A new, self-service scanner is now available in Dimond Library, located next to the photocopier outside the Addison Reading Room on the Main Level. It is easy to use, and is completely free.

The scanner uses a touchscreen to allow users to change scan settings like contrast, resolution, and image format. Users can save the file to a USB flash drive or have the scanned document emailed to them. For help with the scanner, stop by the new IT Support Center, part of the Dimond Academic Commons.

Funding for the new scanner was provided by the Information Technology Committee, part of the University System of New Hampshire.

The Courtyard Reading Room on Level Five will be unavailable Tuesday, September 18, from 12:30 to 2pm, in order to host the Academic Convocation. The event will feature a panel discussion with this year’s Discovery Program authors.