Dartmouth College Library

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2. The Jones Media Center, on the second floor of Baker-Berry Library, lends digital cameras, camcorders and audio recorders for classroom and extracurricular projects. You can learn to use the multimedia hardware and software available in the Jones Center in the weekly workshops they offer.

3. The Tower Room is a great place to browse current bestsellers such as mysteries and thrillers.

4. The Library's print collections take up 62 miles of shelves.

5. We can help you cite sources and create bibliographies more easily -- try RefWorks, a Web-based personal database and bibliography creator, licensed by the library for use by Dartmouth students, faculty and staff.

6. The Library has a growing collection of graphic novels, browsable in the PN6710s on Stack Level 4.

7. You can learn letterpress printing and hand bookbinding in the Library's Book Arts Program on the ground floor of Baker Library.

8. The Berry “Main Street” was actually conceived by the architect as the "information superhighway." It signifies the merging of the computer help desk and store with the library in one space. Just note the broken highway marking along the middle of main street!

9. If a book you want is checked out or otherwise unavailable at Dartmouth, you can request it through Borrow Direct, which lets you directly request books from the combined library catalogs of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale.

10. The Library honors the service of its graduating student assistants by inviting them to select a book or other item to add to the Library's collection. Each item receives a bookplate that acknowledges the student's selection and honors the student's service to the Library.

11. View the library's latest acquisitions by subject/call number, by library, by material type, or by language. There are also RSS feeds so you can be notified of new acquisitions in your areas of interest.

12. The weathervane atop Baker Library was built from copper by A.N. Merryman. It is 8'9" long, 6'8" tall, weights 600 pounds, and stands 200 feet above campus. The architect, Jens Fredrick Larson, was busy with the rest of the Baker Library construction project, and so held a contest among his assistants for a weathervane design. The prize was a Dunhill pipe, brought to Hanover from Montreal.

13. In a given year, the Dartmouth College Library catalogs over 35,000 new items for the library collections. The library also maintains more than 300,000 records in the Library Catalog for e-books and e-journals on the web.

14. You can see a life-size papier-mâché Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the Rauner Special Collections Library. The character of Rudolph was created by Robert L. May '26.

15. Paddock Music Library offers patrons a media room that includes an acoustic studio piano as well as surround sound audiovisual equipment.

16. Before the renovation and construction of Baker-Berry Library, the newly named Orozco Room on the lower level of Baker Library, a.k.a. "the Reserve Corridor," was the most popular place on campus to see and to be seen. Many students called the space "The Observe Corridor."

17. During the month of February 2009, there were over 18,000 unique visitors to the Dartmouth College Library Catalog, creating over 56,000 visits and resulting in over 360,000 page views.

18. Every weekday at 4:00 p.m., tea is served in Sanborn Library. A work-study student has the job of serving tea and cookies.

19. The oldest object owned by the Dartmouth College Library is a cone-shaped clay tablet with Babylonian inscriptions that dates to the 20th century B.C.E.

20. The Dartmouth College Library Catalog includes records for Daniel Webster's Franklin stove, his phaeton, and his silk socks.

21. Through the Random Acts of Art program, the Library invites student musicians, singers, and artists to perform during lunchtime. These 15-20 minute performances allow students to reach a broader audience, perform in a different setting, and promote upcoming concerts and events. In return, the performances provide a study break for people working in the Library.

22. Every weekday in April, to celebrate National Poetry Month, the Library posts a Poem of the Day on its homepage.

23. Paddock Music Library in the Hopkins Center regularly displays "favorite picks" of music books, journals, scores, DVDs, LPs and CDs selected by students and staff. Come see what kind of music your friends recommend!

24. You can request that a song be played on the Baker Tower bells by blitzing "Bells." Songs can be scheduled for any time except on the hour. Dartmouth College is one of the last few places that still use real bells instead of recordings or synthesizers.

25. The Library offers a wide range of workshops to help you find, manage, and use information effectively.