Ce qui se passe...
The newsletter of
Ellender Memorial Library
Nicholls State University
volume 2 issue 3
Library Hours
Monday – Thursday
7:30 am – 11:00 pm
Friday
7:30 am – 4:30 pm
Saturday
12:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Sunday
3:00 pm – 11:00 pm
Note: For changes to schedule
due to holidays or emergency
closures, please see the library
website. All patrons are asked to
leave the library 15 minutes prior
to closing. The phone number for
library hours is 985-448-4660.
Drop In Classes
We now offer Drop-In
Classes in Research Methods, Career Research, Computers and Technology Resources, Literature, and
Culinary Arts Resources,
among others! While we
have no set Summer schedule for these classes, you
can contact Tony Fonseca
at 448-4675 if you have a
group of three or more students, and he will set up a
class session.
We encourage both students
and faculty to take advantage of this and learn all
about the latest technology
the library has to offer.
Library Tip #1
We have new furniture in
the Reference Leisure
Reading area, and a new
Leisure area in Serials (see
the article on page 2).
Come by, grab a book or
magazine, and relax!
www.nicholls.edu/library
Summer 2006
What’s Up (In) Docs?
It’s been almost two years since the library last had a degreed
librarian in Government Documents, but as people often say,
“good things come to those who wait.”
Although she has degrees in Philosophy, has studied Latin and
symbolic logic, and has written a Masters thesis in the field of
Cambodian Historiography, as well as diverse creative essays on
the historical and sociological significance of flooring, and on the
relationship between Pythagorean foundations of music and language, newly hired Government Documents Librarian Cynthia
DuBois is first and foremost a consummate library professional.
She has worked in libraries ever since she was an undergraduate
at Tulane, where she was a student worker in Special Collections,
working with rare books, Louisiana materials, political ephemNew Government Docuera, and manuscripts.
ments Librarian Cynthia
A long time resident of New Orleans and graduate of the School DuBois
of Library and Information Science at LSU, DuBois has worked
various library jobs, with the unifying theme of her professional
experience seeming to be her penchant for special projects. As a Graduate Assistant, she
worked at the Tulane Geology Department Library, where she was involved in a project for The
Smithsonian. From there, she moved to Ladysmith, Wisconsin, where she supervised the moving of a Carnegie library into a new facility. She then came back to Louisiana, where she took a
job in the Ouachita Parish system, reorganizing the genealogy and special collections sections.
From there, she took a fork in the road and tried her hand at Technical Services, working in
Broward County in Florida. When we found her, Cynthia was overseeing a digitization project
for the University of Houston Law School, through the State Archives in Austin, Texas. There,
she was responsible for digitizing originals of various state supreme court documents, since
copies of those documents had been lost during Allison.
She has already identified four major projects for the Ellender Library Government Documents
department: She has contacted the Louisiana Recorder of Documents and arranged for a site
visit here at NSU. She is revisiting and rewriting the department’s collection development policy, especially in how it deals with state documents. She has one staffer, Pamela Tabor, organizing the department’s map room, and checking the bibliographic accuracy of the catalog in this
area. And she has another staffer, Angela Graham, working on a NOTIS—a library management system—Project.
When she isn’t organizing and overseeing special projects, Cynthia spends her time gardening
(she states that she is a member of the “controlled chaos school of gardening”) and managing
her pet feline, BabyCat (she states that she also subscribes to the “Boy Named Sue” school of
naming conventions). She is an avid movie watcher, listing among her favorites anything with
Bill Murray (a scene from 2005’s Broken Flowers is the image on her desktop wallpaper), and
specific titles such as Jacob’s Ladder, Angel Heart, The Chocolate War, Bad Lieutenant, Ironweed, and other similarly Catholic themed films. As for music, she will stop in her tracks and
become absorbed in a song that catches her attention. She is particularly fond of Indie and punk
artists. So far, she enjoys living in Thibodaux, for it has, in her words, a soul.
Tony Fonseca, Serials
VOLUME 2 ISSUE 3
www.nicholls.edu/library
PAGE 2
Navigating the Murky Waters of Research with WebFeat
WebFeat is the newest addition to the
electronic research database options at
Ellender Memorial Library. According
to published literature, it is one of the
top three most popular federated search
engines in the United States. Federated
searching consists of transforming a
query and broadcasting it to a group of
disparate databases with the appropriate syntax, merging the results collected
from the databases. The federated
search engine then presents the results
in a succinct and unified format with
minimal duplication, allowing the library patron to sort the merged result
set by various criteria. This greatly reduces the time it takes to do a basic
search. And WebFeat gives the added
benefit of setting options to search by
selected individual categories.
tabases to find the best ones for a
search.
In other words, with WebFeat, the
searcher can specify that he or she
wants to search all of Ellender’s literature (or nursing, or business, etc.) databases simultaneously, and with just one
click. WebFeat has been programmed to
at that point choose the correct databases, which means that the user does
not have to scroll through the list of da-
After a query is submitted, the end
results report shows the number of
hits per database, per catalog, and/or
per individual resource chosen. Following this is a detailed list containing
the top ten retrieved hits in the chosen
search selections. The user has the
option to view the next set of hits in
each selection if he/she so chooses.
Here is a word of caution though: WebFeat is not intended for power searching. At the present time, the best
search option for relevant results is
“Keyword.” Keyword searching will
list results in chronological order; however, it retrieves an enormous number
of hits because Keyword searches the
entire bibliographic record—as well as
the text of the records. Also, the Boolean “AND” appears to be the only
operator (word that allows combinations, as for example AND, OR, NOT,
etc.) that effectively aids in limiting
search results. The only other search
limiter at present is that for “full-text
articles only.”
Furniture Feng Shui
If the end results are from a library catalog (i.e., if they are book or video titles),
the top twenty results are displayed with
the option of retrieving the next set. The
list displays the title of the book, author,
and publication year, as well as the call
number. The call number will be in the
classification scheme of the chosen library and of the chosen document.
Pam Tabor, Government Documents
Library Tip # 2
Remember to bring your student ID with
you when you come to the Library, since
it doubles as your library card. Also commit your student email address to memory; your computer login is based on it.
dents and faculty can read their favorite newspapers and magazines. The
staff set up the Serials Leisure Reading
area in front of the current Information
counter, near the microforms readerprinter machines. Among the tables
and chairs, the staff also placed a bookstand in which new issues of our entertainment titles could be placed.
During the Spring semester of 2006,
the second floor of Ellender Library
received new furniture to improve the
appearance of the Leisure Reading
area, making for a more pleasant environment.
In fact, the area where the furniture
has been placed, behind Reference, is
so pleasant that staff has had to carefully monitor the new couch to make
sure that hard-working (and sleepy)
students don’t get too relaxed! Along
with the new couch, the Leisure Reading area now has eight very comfortable club chairs, two cube tables, and
two new end tables. The new furniture is not only functional, but aesthetically pleasing, as its deep blue
and cerulean colors match the color
scheme of the new computer chairs
which the Reference area received
concurrently.
If the results are from an electronic research database choice, the end result
shows the citation information, such as
title, journal name, publication information, pages, etc. If full-text is available,
there will be an .HTML or .PDF icon immediately following the citation. If fulltext is not available, the user is then
prompted to “Check the LinkSource Journal.” In this case, the following options
are given: Search library catalog (iLink)
for Print holdings; Place an Interlibrary
Loan Request (ILLiad); or Report a problem with a link above.
The new furniture not only gave the
second floor a new look, but also
turned out to be a boon for Serials.
The serials staff decided that it
would take advantage of the chance
to get “hand-me-downs,” and saw the
modification of the second floor as a
chance to get enough reasonably
comfortable furniture to create a
much needed leisure area where stu-
This addition of furniture also occasioned an overdue rearrangement of
the study tables, to provide easier access between the front stacks and the
browsing section. An added perk was
that the new arrangement gives the
department better ambiance, or what
some call feng shui. These changes,
and a new alarm system, have given
Serials a facelift.
Danny Gorr, Serials
VOLUME 2 ISSUE 3
www.nicholls.edu/library
PAGE 3
The Kindness of Strangers
In the last issue of Ce qui se passé, our
feature story was about the Harwells,
two former Nicholls’ professors who donated some seven thousand books, many
of them brand new, to the library’s collection. One could not overestimate the importance of such generosity to a postKatrina South Louisiana library. Many of
those books have now made their way
onto our shelves, making accessible to
our students and faculty biographies,
literary studies, psychological treatises,
and oversized art books, among others,
that they would have never had access to
otherwise.
Recently, a new wave of kindness—this
time from someone not affiliated with
Nicholls, makes it possible for the Library’s Serials department to get, free of
charge, some half dozen medical titles
geared towards cancer research and
treatments. This was made possible when
a Houston based medical library had to
close its doors because of funding issues.
Librarian Leah K. Muilenburg, whose
sister in Louisiana lost her library to
Katrina, offered to bring the journals—at
her own expense—to Louisiana and Mississippi so that they would not be discarded. Among her many stops in the
state, she dropped off some forty plus
years of titles such as Cancer, Cancer
Research, The Journal of Clinical
Oncology, and The British Journal
of Urology.
Sandi Chauvin, Tony Fonseca,
and Clifton Theriot unload boxes
of donated journals.
Library Student Workers No Strangers to Success
They came. They studied. They graduated.
Along the way, they worked in the library.
The commencement exercises for graduates of Nicholls took place May 20, and
among the 447 robed and capped participants eager to grab that piece of parchment and head out into the real world
were former library student workers:
Jacob Adams (Lockport), Mallory Cortez
(Vacherie), Elizabeth Holcomb (Morgan
City) and Agata Konopka (Wroclaw, Poland). Adams and Cortez, both of whom
worked in Serials, and Holcomb, who
helped in Multimedia, graduated with
honors. Cortez and Holcomb were named
to the Nicholls State University's Hall of
Fame (the highest honor bestowed upon a
Nicholls student).
Cortez was a veteran of Serials (we often
joked that she ran the department), a
person who brought sunshine with her to
work. She was also a scholar who had
much to be proud of during her college
career. Mallory was awarded the Scholastic Achievement in Chemistry Award by
the Department of Physical Sciences, and
was a member of various organizations—
Alpha Lambda Delta, the Honors Program, the Residence Hall Association.,
Phi Mu, and Panhellenic. She also managed to find time to serve as President of
the NSU Chemical Sciences Society. All
of her accomplishments resulted in her
being named a member of Who's Who
Among Students in American Universi-
ties and Colleges. She graduated magna
cum laude with a degree of Bachelor of
Science in Chemistry. Though she would
be quite a catch for any graduate program,
Mallory has decided not to
venture far
from home,
as she will
pursue
her
Master's this
fall at Tulane
University.
Cortez and NSU President Stephen
Hulbert
Holcomb was a breath of fresh air in Multimedia, always arriving to work with a
smile. With the overall staff shortage,
she worked not only several night shifts,
but was responsible enough to be added
to the Saturday rotation and Sunday
night rotation as well. Many may remember her as quite the successful thespian,
acting in all the Nicholls productions; she
was rewarded by an invitation to attend
a performing arts school in London
(unfortunately, she did not have the
funding for such an adventure). Elizabeth
also taught aerobics on campus, worked
in a local nightclub, was active in her
sorority—and was a member of the 2004
Nicholls Homecoming Court. Moreover,
she had talent, energy, and brains. She
graduated magna cum laude with a
Bachelor of Science in Marketing Professional Sales.
For Adams, the tassel was worth the
hassle. Our former “library mailman”
always did his job admirably, delivering mail throughout our various departments with a smile on his face
and a laugh not far behind. Not
many young men worry more about
their hair and clothes than do young
women, so Jacob was special—so
special to us in Serials that we suffered through the job search process
with him. It became our mission to
help him find not just employment,
but the RIGHT job. Jacob graduated
cum laude with a Bachelor of Science
in Business Administration, and although he was perpetually nervous
about interviews, he landed a great
position in management training
with SEACOR of Morgan City. Konopka, who worked 3 semesters in
Library Automation, graduated with
a BS in Chemistry, and is headed to
San Diego.
To these former student workers we
all say kudos. Personally, I have a
special wish for each of them. To use
the often quoted words from many a
graduation speech, “I hope your
dreams take you to the corners of
your smiles, to the highest of your
hopes, to the windows of your opportunities, and to the most special
places your heart has ever known.”
Sandi Blair Chauvin, Serials
VOUME 2 ISSUE 3
PAGE 4
www.nicholls.edu/library
Retirement at Reference
For over thirty years Francine Middleton had been a fixture in Ellender Memorial Library, most notably at the Reference Desk, where she was known for being friendly, kind-hearted, and above all,
tenacious. If someone had a question
that was complex and could take thirty
minutes or longer to answer, she was the
librarian to whom that person gravitated.
Her motto seemed to be “leave no stone
unturned.” She understood that if what
one was looking for was a needle in a
haystack, then one had better be prepared to spend some time sifting a lot of
hay—and she was willing to sit by a researcher’s side the entire time.
What many did not know about Fran is
that she had a quick wit and a wicked
sense of humor, something which made
her a favorite among her colleagues. And
above all, she was a master storyteller
who always found time to talk with you
when you needed it. Energetic and gregarious, she was often active in many
university projects. Students were sure
to see her behind the book toss game at
Jubilee or Family Day, and if her research expertise or hands were needed
for the Fletcher Lecture Series, she was
ready and willing. In the meantime, she
balanced her personal interests in needlework (her counted cross-stitch works
are widely known for being exquisite),
academic fiction, and local history, as
well as her parenting skills, with the
necessity that she wear various hats in
the library. During her three decades
here, she served in many capacities—
working at circulation, in microforms,
Interlibrary Loan, and on the Reference
Desk. In addition, she served as the
back-up for Government Documents.
Library Tip # 3
The Serials Department now houses
donated copies of Selecciones del
Reader's Digest—the Spanish version of
Reader's Digest. Students and faculty
who are studying and teaching the language may find these rather interesting
and helpful, and International Students,
as well as International Faculty and/or
Staff may be interested in reading stories, short essays, news snippets, and
jokes in their first language.
Middleton, pictured, retires after 30
years of service.
The library staff will miss her laugh and
the glint in her eye when she was telling
a funny story, as well as her confectionary contributions to parties, but we
thank Fran for her many years of library work—and more than anything
else, we wish her well in retirement.
Tony Fonseca, Serials
Library News
Tony Fonseca has published Read On... Horror Fiction, through Libraries Unlimited
Press.
Guidroz Wins Presidential Award
Danny Gorr volunteered to judge the NSU
Region 10 Social Studies Fair.
Recently, the university held its Annual
Staff Service Awards Program. The program, which recognizes excellence
among Civil Service and unclassified
professional staff, is held annually. This
year, Cataloger / Library Associate 4
Daisy Guidroz was presented the prestigious Presidential Award for Professional Staff, sharing the award with
Renee Hicks in Institutional Research.
Guidroz won a plaque and a permanent
$1,000 increase in salary. Also honored
for years of service were Angela Graham and Deannie Robichaux (25
years each) and Anke Tonn (10 years).
Cynthia Marchbanks is now serving as Secretary for the Credit Committee of the Nicholls
Federal Credit Union.
Carol Mathias and Clifton Theriot attended the Society of Southwest Archivists
Conference in El Paso. It’s focus was on lessons learned from Katrina and Rita.
Guidroz was humbled by the award. "It
was both a surprise and an honor to
have been nominated for the Professional Staff Award,” she said. She
added, “In being chosen as one of the
two recipients, I feel doubly honored and
deeply blessed."
L to R: Graham, Tonn, Guidroz, and
Robichaux.
The entire library staff will take
turns attending the American Libraries
Association Annual Conference, the first
major conference held in New Orleans
since Katrina. Along with various professional interest group meetings and
discussions of topics ranging from Information Literacy, to staffing, to better
serving adult patrons, library staffers
will also get to hear speakers such as
Madeleine Albright and Anderson Cooper. During their free time they will
visit hundreds of exhibit booths featuring new library hardware and software
products and new ideas in library furniture. Librarians will also get to meet
with database and acquisition vendor
representatives, as well as reps of virtually every publishing house, small and
large, returning with lots of new ideas
for collection development.
Newsletter staff: Tony Fonseca, Managing Editor; Sandi Chauvin, Editor; Danny Gorr, Editor, Jeremy
Landry, Consultant. Please e-mail comments and/or suggestions to Tony Fonseca (tony.fonseca@nicholls.edu).
The statements and opinions included in these pages are those of the newsletter staff only. Any statements and
opinions are not those of Nicholls State University or the University of Louisiana System.