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Mann Library

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Year: 2019

Fledgling alert! Turning a blind window for young hawk survival

If you find yourself on Tower Rd, watch out as the red hawk fledglings learn to fly!
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Big Red and Arthur’s baby hawks above the Athletic Field on Tower Road have fledged and are busy testing their wings around the Ag Quad. During this time, large window areas pose a particular risk to their survival as inexperienced flyers are unfortunately prone to mistaking any reflection (of trees, sky, etc.) they may see in large exterior windows for the real thing.

 

What can we do to help these vulnerable teenagers avoid catastrophic collision? Keeping the blinds lowered in the large windows in Mann’s various individual and group study spaces is one good strategy. Mann staff will be lowering the window blinds each morning for the rest of the summer. We are hoping that our study room users will help us in this effort by keeping the blinds down while using these rooms. Or, if you find it necessary to raise the blinds, we ask that you be sure to lower them again when leaving the space. We thank you for your help getting these young birds through their risky teenage years!

It’s a Women’s World Cup Soccer Summer!

These passionate fans are gathered to watch the games in the Mann Lobby
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The summer soccer thrill has started. While only one national women’s soccer team will win the World Cup title on July 7, between now and then the whole world will share in the excitement, glories and, yes, agonies, of the tournament, played on a global stage. You in? Following our usual tradition when it comes to this world sport, in the Mann Lobby we will be streaming almost all matches that fall during our summer hours of operation—that means all games between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday and between 8:00 a.m. through 5:00 p.m. Friday, and generally most games that fall on Saturday afternoon between 1:00 though 5:00 p.m. We’re hoping that we’ll see many of you soccer lovers in the lobby in the next few weeks—and that we’ll catch at least some of you wearing your favorite national team colors. Let’s hear it for the beautiful game!

 

View the full World Cup tournament schedule.

Earth Week @ Mann Library & Manndible Café

Original artwork by Daisy Wiley
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For Earth Week celebrations at Cornell this year, Mann Library and Manndible Café have teamed up to turn you on to some fun ways to help shrink the Big Red environmental paw print on campus. Join us for any (or all!) of the events we’re holding in and around the library between April 22 and April 26.

 

You’ll notice that we’ve settled on a “Go Reusable” theme for the week, mainly in an effort to help us cut down on the amount of waste, particularly plastic and plastic-coated materials, that we do see pile up in the trash bins around the library in the course of any given day. As the feature movie that we’ll be screening on Thursday (4/25) points out, growing piles of throw-away plastics are having a worrisome effect on the health of our oceans and landscapes. But, as we hope our Earth Week events will show you, cutting down on the use of throw-away materials isn’t so very hard—and can be pretty fun. An all-around win-win. Hope you can join us!

All week:

Monday, 4/22, 5:00 – 7:00 pm:

Tuesday, 4/23, 4:30 – 5:30 pm

Wednesday, 4/24

Thursday, 4/25

Friday, 4/26 2:00 – 4:00 pm:

  • Look for the Mann & Manndible Café table at CALS Day. Info, tips and prizes to help you shrink your pawprint on the Big Red campus.

Downsizing the Big Red Pawprint @ Mann

Original artwork by Daisy Wiley
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Drawing of bear wavingRecycling Rules​April is around the corner, and with that comes the prospect of all the great Earth Day celebrations that happen at Cornell each spring (which, after all, was named one of the top 20 “Coolest Schools,” by none other than the Sierra Club in 2018!). For the spring semester, Mann is getting an early start on celebrating green-minded thinking with a series of special activities focused on reducing the waste “pawprint” made here at the Library.

 

Why the waste focus? Most members of the Cornell community have probably heard: A decades-long boom in the market for recyclable paper, cardboard, glass, plastic and metals—driven by the flow of over 40% of American recyclables to China just a few years ago—took a sudden nosedive as China announced its 2017 decision to stop taking recyclable materials from the U.S.. The key reason for the new policy: The problem of contamination (food residue, wax, often also hazardous substances) plaguing American recyclables, which seriously gummed up the recycling process in China and in some cases made it dangerous. The key impact: A steep drop in the market for American recyclables and a corresponding hike in the cost of recycling for U.S. towns and cities. Where towns like Ithaca may have once actually seen an income stream from the recyclables gathered by their residents, in many cases they are now facing growing net costs. Faced with a 50% drop in the price it can garner for recycling materials, the Tompkins County Recycling and Materials Management Center has issued some new guidelines for our area.

 

So what’s the implication for us here at Mann Library, where a considerable amount of trash piles up in both the recycling and the trash bins located on all floors of the library? The way we see it, it’s an opportunity for us to work with our library users to do better—both in terms of recycling correctly and, even more importantly, reducing what gets thrown away in the first place.

 

With that in mind, here’s what we’ve been up to and what we have in store for the weeks ahead:

  1. New reusable mugs (covered ones, so they’re OK to use in the Library) have gone on sale at the Mann Service Desk—Between their low cost ($10 a piece) and the discount you get at Manndible Café for bringing your own mug, you’ll very likely recoup the full cost of one of these beauties within the year!
  2. A display of interactive booths in the Top Shelf Gallery through 3/23, created by Ecology House, Student Assembly Dining, the Cornell Society for Natural Resource Conservation (SNRC), Epsilon Eta and Cornell Sustainability Consultants to raise awareness about about how waste can be more sustainably managed on the Cornell campus;
  3. New signage all around the library is guiding our users in proper recycling practices to minimize contamination;
  4. Earth Week program activities to include:
  • Monday 4/22 & Thursday 4/25: Reusable snack bag making sessions in the mannUfactory makerspace
  • Wednesday 4/24: A one-day-only fire sale of reusable Mann mugs ($5 per mug–get ’em while they last!)
  • Thursday, 4/25: A fun craft activity re-using old glassware to create some very cool drink-&-lunch jars, in collaboration with Manndible Cafe and the mannUfactory makerspace (all children and parents on campus for Bring a Child to Work Day welcome to join us for that activity too);
  • Friday, 4/26: Look for our table at CALS Day on the Ag Quad–for tips and prizes to promote recycling awareness.

With these initiatives, Mann hopes to do our part towards a smaller waste stream on our beloved Cornell campus—and we hope to have a little fun doing it. We’re pretty sure good old Touchdown is game. Are you?

Go Reusable! New Mann Mugs Now Available

Teal-colored versions of these now available for purchase at the Mann Service Desk--while supplies last!
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Back of Mann reusable mugMann Library is pleased to announce that new Mann Library mugs are now available for purchase at the Mann Service Desk. Every year, mountains (truly!–you’d be shocked at the number!) of disposable coffee and other beverage cups make their way into the Cornell campus waste stream. Wondering how you can do your part to reduce that serious landfill load? Going reusable is a great way to start! Our classy new (now teal-colored) porcelain mugs—they come with a cover, so you can also use them IN the Library—are available at $10 / piece, while supplies last.

 

And don’t forget: Cornell’s Recyclemania contest is on through March 30th this year. In the spirit of helping to shrink the waste stream at Cornell Mann Library will be focusing on some reduce-reuse-recycle programming over the next couple of months. Stay tuned for more info, fun challenges, and hands-on activities coming up!

Mann’s Digital Collections Get an Upgrade

CHLA is one of the largest digital collections of printed works at CUL
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Dig deeper into agricultural history with Mann’s Digital Collections, which were recently given a makeover and migrated to CUL’s Digital Collections Portal. The Core Historical Literature of Agriculture (CHLA) is primarily a collection of landmark agricultural texts published between the early 19th century and the late 20th century. These full-text materials cover agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, animal science, crops and their protection, food science, forestry, human nutrition, rural sociology, and soil science. With more than 2000 books and 36 journals together comprising over a million pages CHLA is one of the largest digital collections of printed works at CUL.

 

Also newly updated, The Hive and the Honeybee showcases selections from the E. F. Phillips Beekeeping Collection, one of the largest and most complete apiculture libraries in the world. Initially begun with just ten historically significant books in the Phillips library, the collection has since grown to include over thirty key monographs as well as the first forty volumes of the landmark publication, American Bee Journal, covering 1861 through 1900. Each volume of this growing digital collection is available in full text format and is fully searchable.

 

For more information about the E. F. Phillips Beekeeping Collection at Mann Library, please visit our virtual exhibit

Give Our Gates a Yarnover

Photo by Jenny Leijonhufvud
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Yarn on Mann Gates
Mann Library gates on January 10, 2019. What will these look like on February 8?

No matter the gray, cold, rainy, snow, sleet and ice outside, collective creativity will win the day inside.

For the start of the spring 2019 semester, Mann Library cordially invites our community of students, faculty and staff to help us cover the security gates at our front doors with some knitting and crocheting fun. Bring us any swatches you’ve come up with and we’ll add them to an evolving sweater that’s already starting to make our gates look cheerfully cozy against the Ithaca winter. Or, just pick up knitting needles, crochet hook and yarn at the station we’ve set up inside our doors to start working on your patch right here in the Library. (Life sciences and human ecology motifs particularly welcome!)

Don’t know how to knit or crochet? No problem! Here are three ways we can help you get into the yarn-bombing knitting groove fast:

  • Check out some of the books and how-to manuals in our special book display by the knitting station
  • Join us for either (or both) of the knitting sprints we’ll be holding in the mannUfactory makerspace on Friday, January 25 and Friday, February 1, 12:00 – 1:00 pm to catch some basic in-person pointers from resident Mann staff knitting aficionados (Loosely defined! But with enough skill to at least help you cast on.)
  • Or, check out the online tutorials we’ve gathered for you on our yarn bombing lib guide

We’ll be celebrating the final installation with free hot cocoa in the Mann Library lobby on Friday, February 8, 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., generously donated by Manndible Café. We’ll also be featuring a fire sale of our new Mann Library mugs to kick off our “Reduce, Reuse & Recycle” campaign @ Mann for the rest of the spring semester. Mugs will be on sale for $5 a piece on this day only–be sure to drop by and get yours so you too can GO REUSABLE!

Have a question? Contact us at mann-public-ed-prog@cornell.edu, and one way or the other do come join us for some yarn-bombing fun!

ESMIS: New and Improved Agricultural Information Service

The upgraded ESMIS website is easier to navigate
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Mann Library is pleased to announce a major new upgrade of the Economics, Statistics and Market Information System (ESMIS), a heavily used public archive containing thousands of federal agriculture and commodity reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Undertaken by a team of Mann librarians and web developers to better accommodate the needs of a growing user base, the upgrade has made the ESMIS website significantly easier to use. Notable improvements include:

  • A better user interface that makes reports more easily and more efficiently discoverable
  • An API for faster access to the ESMIS / USDA publication and release data
  • The ability to download multiple files at once to help support data synthesis.

ESMIS represents a decades-long agreement between Mann Library and the USDA. Over the years, this collaboration has grown to involve the participation of five USDA agencies, including the National Agricultural Statistics Service, the Economic Research Service, the Agricultural Marketing Service, the Foreign Agricultural Service and the World Agricultural Outlook Board. Providing free access to historical reports and current agricultural data for thousands of users worldwide, ESMIS is unique among other agricultural data repositories in the scope and depth of USDA-published information offered. Some of the more popular reports—such as the monthly World Agricultural Supply & Demand Estimates report—receive more than 1 million page views. Given such reach and traffic volume, our recent enhancement of this online information service is poised to benefit many users. We invite all members of the public—whether you’re a power user of agricultural data, a citizen-scientist or a even just a data novice interested in learning where you can get reliable info about trends in agricultural development—to visit the new site and take it for a spin!

New(ish) Faces at Mann — Spring 2019 Edition

Here are some staff you should know who have joined the library since last summer.
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Allegra GiovineAllegra Giovine joined the TEEAL Project at Mann Library as the new TEEAL Production Coordinator. Allegra is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of History and Sociology of Science. She has extensive familiarity with scholarly publishing, citation management, and experience leading teams to publication goals. Allegra has a M.A. in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley and she completed her B.A. at Cornell University in the College Scholar Program. Allegra also currently serves as an editor of the History of Anthropology Newsletter and of H-SEAsia, a H-Net listserv that serves the community of scholars working on Southeast Asia.

 

 

Matt KibbeeMatt Kibbee is a new reference assistant at Mann Library. He has a BA in English from Tufts University, Masters Degrees in both English and Humanities, and a PhD in English Language and Literature with a secondary focus on cognitive sciences from Cornell University. Matt rejoins Mann after spending time here as a student supervisor in 2015. He has also worked on campus as a graduate research assistant and a writing instructor.

 

 

 

Sara Scinto-MadonichSara Scinto-Madonich has joined Mann Library as a part-time Systematic Review Librarian. Sara helps support various systematic review initiatives in the Division of Nutritional Sciences and is a member of the Cornell University Library Systematic Review Service Team. Sara holds a B.A. in biochemistry from Ohio Wesleyan University, and she graduated from Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy this past spring, having earned her M.S. in nutrition. She comes to us with a strong background and interest in nutrition education, evidence-based practice, and literature synthesis.

 

 

Ryan Tolnay

Ryan Tolnay is a new reference assistant at Mann Library. Ryan joins us from Bloomington Indiana where he was the administrative coordinator for an honors program in foreign languages and an assistant at the Global Village Living-Learning Center. He also spent time in South Korea as an English as a Second Language Instructor. Ryan has a BA from Indiana University in East Asian Studies and is currently attending library school through the University of Washington.