Author: nancyfalcianiwhite@rmc.edu

Director’s Welcome, Fall 2017

Nancy Falciani-White image

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Randolph-Macon College for the Fall 2017 semester. Some of you are returning after a fun/ productive/ boring summer, while for others, this is your first semester at R-MC. This is not my first semester, but it is my first fall semester in this community. I am looking forward to experiencing autumn in Virginia this year.

In the library we often talk about what we really want people to know about the library. It tends to come down to the nouns for us: People, Places, and Things, in that order. Or, if you prefer alliteration: Staff, Spaces, and Stuff.

  • The librarians and staff at the library can answer your questions, and make your search for information more efficient and effective. Whether you are a freshman or a professor who has been teaching and researching for thirty years, we want you to succeed. Resources and tools change frequently, and our friendly staff can connect you to the most current information available. If you aren’t sure who to ask, start at the Information Desk, and they can connect you to the person who can best answer your question.
  • The study and social spaces in the library have been designed and arranged with you in mind. The library tries to provide a space for everyone, so that you can study with: background noise, silence, friends, alone, in a comfortable chair, spread out at a table, at a desk, or standing up. If we don’t have what you like, let us know, as we plan on renovating our spaces in the next several years.
  • The stuff, or resources, that we provide include research databases, print books, ebooks, software, media equipment, and much more. Our electronic resources can be accessed anywhere you have internet access. If we don’t have what you need, we can connect you to it through local college and university libraries, or interlibrary loan.

What’s new?

  • Look for this button in our databases: . This button connects you to all the library subscription holdings, our print holdings, and interlibrary loan options, all with the click of a button. A librarian can help connect you, if you have any questions.
  • VIVA Cooperative Borrowing Program allows faculty, students, and staff of Randolph-Macon College to borrow from participating college and university libraries in Virginia. If you need a resource immediately, a university in Richmond might be able to lend it to you.
  • More tables in a popular location. Because of some online resources that we recently acquired, we were able to consolidate our microfilm and microfiche into smaller cabinets. This freed up space for an additional table in a popular study area near the DVD collection, and allowed more space between them.

Study tables in library

What will we be doing this fall?

  • Working on a strategic plan for the library, to determine where we want to be in 5-10 years, and how we can get there.
  • Planning and preparing for our upcoming renovation.
  • Continuing to adjust our collections and services to the continually changing needs of our campus.

Stay connected!

We want to hear from you. If you have suggestions for resources we should acquire, spaces we should reconfigure, events we should hold, or anything else, we would love to hear them! We don’t have an unlimited budget, but there are often creative ways to get things that we do with a little bit of planning.

 

R-MC now participating in the VIVA Cooperative Borrowing Program

VIVA consortium logo

Randolph-Macon College is now participating in the VIVA Cooperative Borrowing Program, which allows our faculty, students, and staff to travel to participating Virginia college and university libraries and borrow materials directly from them. Some participating institutions include Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Richmond, the College of William & Mary, Washington and Lee University, and the University of Virginia. The complete list is available at the VIVA website.

When members of the R-MC community travel to any of these institutions, they will need to verify your affiliation to the college by looking you up in a faculty/staff directory, or asking you to login to MyMaconWeb. Then you will need to follow their guidelines for borrowing, which determine how many items you can check out concurrently and how long you can keep them. Each institution provides its borrowing guidelines on the website above. Items you borrow should be returned directly to the library from which you borrowed them.

Participation in this program expands access that faculty have had through the Richmond Academic Library Consortium (RALC), and makes getting materials from other libraries significantly easier for students and staff.

Taylor Anderson Memorial Collection added to Special Collections

Taylor Anderson
Taylor Anderson ’08

The McGraw-Page Library recently added the Taylor Anderson Memorial Collection to its Archives and Special Collections. Taylor Anderson graduated from Randolph-Macon College in 2008 with a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies and minors both in Asian Studies and Political Science. She was teaching English in Ishinomaki, Japan when she was killed in the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster in March 2011. Her memory has been honored by The Japan Foundation, Ishinomaki Senshu University, and the U.S. Japan Council’s TOMODACHI Initiative.

This collection contains ephemeral and published materials relating to Ishinomaki City, Ishinomaki High School, the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami Disaster of March 2011, and Ishinomaki Senshu University. Materials include books, newspapers, pamphlets, computer printouts, and ticket stubs collected during a summer exchange program between Randolph-Macon College and Ishinomaki Senshu University in 2016.

Live your dream book coverBook covers in JapaneseSpecial Collection item

Ishinomaki Senshu University is located in the Miyagi Prefecture in the Tohoku region of northern Japan, which was greatly affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011.

Screen capture of map of Japan
Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan

Some items in the collection have especially significant meaning.

Live Your Dream: The Taylor Anderson Story: and Stories of Courage and Sacrifice during the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, is a documentary on DVD that examines the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami through Taylor Anderson’s life.

The book Teira san kara no okurimono: Tsunami no gisei ni natta amerika no sensei: Shinsai no ishinomaki: Taiyaku (A Gift from Taylor: The story of an American teacher who was lost in the Tsunami) by Naomi Chiba is in both Japanese and English and also tells Taylor’s story. The copy in our Taylor Anderson Memorial Collection was signed and donated by the author in Taylor’s memory.

Live your Dream book cover
A Gift from Taylor and Live your Dreams

The POP[ular] reading section on the first floor of the library is also dedicated to Taylor’s memory. She was one of two students who began the Randolph Readers book club, which met monthly in the library beginning in 2006.

We are glad to be able to honor Taylor’s memory and the relationship between Randolph-Macon College and Ishinomaki Senshu University through this collection, and hope its resources will inspire current and future R-MC students to use their liberal arts education to explore their passions and prepare to follow their dreams.

You can read more about Taylor’s life and Randolph-Macon College’s Japanese Studies program here.

Introducing Nancy Falciani-White, Library Director

 

Nancy Falciani-White image

“Information is the raw material of knowledge: used effectively it can lead to wisdom. It is the intellectual equivalent of our food. And just as our eating habits and nutritional intake can be good or bad, with concomitant good and bad effects on our physical health, so can the quality of information we acquire, and the effectiveness with which we process it, affect the quality and effectiveness of our intellectual health.”[1]

My name is Nancy Falciani-White, and I am pleased to introduce myself to you as the new director of Randolph-Macon’s McGraw-Page Library. I have a bachelor’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies (English, Education, and Music) from Wheaton College in Illinois, and a Master of Science degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. I obtained my Doctorate in Education in Instructional Technology from Northern Illinois University in 2013. My husband and I have two children. In my free time I enjoy genealogy, reading, bookmaking, and gardening. As a family, we enjoy watching movies, biking, and martial arts. I began as Library Director on December 1, and am excited to be joining Randolph-Macon College.  Continue reading “Introducing Nancy Falciani-White, Library Director”