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The fourth wall in theater or film is the one that separates the actors or characters from us. Actors in modern realistic theater ignore the audience, focusing their attention solely on the dramatic world. Disengaged from the audience, they are, for all intensive purposes, “...

During the Fall 2016 semester, library staff completed a significant number of service transactions in the following categories: Research librarians and Services Associates answered a total of 1,717 in-person and phone reference [caption id="attachment_26111" align="alignright" width="200"]

Last Spring was a great time to visit the Library, construction notwithstanding. Once again we were able to provide space for a ton of events. In our twelve available classrooms, 1009 patrons booked 5,933 events with enough space for 41,528 participants to get their study on for 12,369 hours. Those hours were full of 1,460 study sessions, 590 course sessions, 136 dissertation preps and defenses, 261 interviews and telecons, and 425 technology setups by our Service Team. Students once again made 57% of our room reservations by volume (thank you again, students!). This semester it w...

A significant part of our work in library services involves helping users navigate the oceans of information they find themselves confronting in their academic lives.  Through in-person consultations, in-class instruction sessions, blog posts, and resource guides, our objective is to suggest ways that students can manage what is essentially the unmanageable proliferation of material potentially relevant to their research.  I suspect that many of our patrons find the plethora of resources and approaches so daunting that they reflexively turn to search engines like Google Scholar (actually an es...

Even before we set out on our family field trip, I am asked about "The Chair", whose lucky sitter can rock from side to side, or spin around in a complete circle – reminiscent of a top twirling off its axis to slow down. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick and distributed by Herman Miller, the

This remarkable video was created by Kate Robinson, sculptor, visual artist, and Renaissance scholar, who describes it as "an imagined model of Renaissance philosopher Giulio Camillo's idea for a theatre. His book, 'L'idea del teatro' (Florence 1550) describes hundreds of images, the position of which in the theatre itself determined the meaning of the image. Al...

The library is moving steadily towards opening day for the Learning Theater, the facility that will occupy the entirety of the fourth floor of Russell Hall.   The space has been totally gutted, and construction of a fully functioning, high-tech venue for presentation,...

Last fall, the Gottesman Libraries was honored to host to a lot of events organized by our students, faculty, and staff. In total, 897 patrons booked 4,974 rooms on behalf of 26,471 participants for a total of 12,167.5 hours. Those hours were full of 1,514 study sessions, 41 tutoring meetups, 77 dissertation preps and defenses, 106 interviews, 45 conference calls, and 1 viewing of a VHS tape. Students made 57% of our room reservations (thank you, students!).