Dreams & Swords
March 2009 issue
Back Issues
Dreams & Swords
All books are either dreams or swords,
You can cut, or you can drug, with words.
- Amy Lowell (Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds)
For the April issue of the Gargoyle, we've been asked if we could remind readers about some of the Library's basic policies and procedures, so here we go:
Students can have up to 10 items checked out at any given time. Books check out for 28 days and films check out for 3 days (you can only have 2 films checked out at a time). Faculty can have up to 30 items checked out at a time, but they are also limited to the 2-films-for-3-days policy. The faculty check-out period is by semester.
Students need to remember that for any items not returned to the Library at the end of the semester a $100 fee per item will be assessed to the student's college account. Yes, this is a high fee, but its purpose is to get a student's attention … and believe us, if it doesn't get a student's attention it certainly gets the attention of the student's parents when they get the bill from the business office. We really don't want your money, what we want is the items brought back to the Library. We have some very old and rare items in our collections, some of which would be very difficult to replace if they could be replaced at all (apparently, we have titles that are rare enough that even Harvard doesn't own, which they have borrowed from us). And every item we have to replace is one less new item we can buy. So, at the end of the semester, just make sure you have thoroughly checked under you bed, car seats, behind the sofa, in your refrigerator - wherever -- to make sure you have returned everything you need to return to the Library.
Huntingdon students, faculty and staff also have check-out privileges at those area college and university libraries that belong to the Montgomery Higher Education Consortium. In addition to Huntingdon, members include AUM, ASU, Troy Montgomery, and Faulkner. You can check out up to 5 items from each of these libraries. To do so you must have a small, gold consortium sticker on the back of your Huntingdon photo ID, and you get this sticker from our circulation desk (the sticker just verifies for the other libraries that you are a currently enrolled student or currently employed faculty or staff member at Huntingdon).
You can access the holdings of the consortium libraries online by using the MALCat catalogue. You will find the link on our web site underneath the link to our online catalogue (Countess). When you do a search in MALCat, if the item is held by any of the five consortium libraries your search results will tell you.
Whether you are a student, faculty or staff member it is important that you have an account (e.g. a "library card") with our library. The reason for this is that you will not be able to access our databases from off campus otherwise. Establishing an account is easy - just come to the circulation desk and complete an information card. We will then enter you into the system and give you a key fob that will serve as your library card. On the back of the key fob will be a bar code. When you are away from campus and need to use the databases, you will be prompted to enter your last name and the bar code on your key fob (with no spaces). So, it is important to keep up with your key fob.
And speaking of databases, some of you may be use to needing your own AVL card to gain entry to the Alabama Virtual Library. As long as you are a student, faculty or staff member at Huntingdon you can access the AVL without needing your own login and password - as long as you do so by going through our library's web site. On the AVL main page, rather than click on "Home Access" you will click on "Campus & Library Access."
Also on our web site you can find the hours the Library is open and contact information for members of the library faculty and staff. Additionally, there is a link to the web page for the Archives. A quick reminder: The Archives, while housed in the Library, is administered as a separate entity, and its hours of operation are not the same as those of the Library (e.g. no evening and weekend hours). The staff of the Archives are not employees of the College, but are actually employees of the Methodist conference.
And lastly, we all have experienced the frustration of dealing with an organization that acts as if all its policies are carved in stone and to diverge from a single one would result in an immediate and fiery end to the world. We aren't like that. Yes, we do have some policies that are firmly set (such as no tobacco use in the Library), but we also have some that we are willing to bend when need warrants. So, if you find that you need to have a film out longer than 3 days because you are using it for a class presentation, or you need books out over the Christmas holiday because you have a professor who has given you an extension on a paper, then come talk to us and we'll do what we can to make life a little easier for you.
Eric A. Kidwell
Director of the Library