by Scott Martin, Biological Sciences Librarian, University of Michigan Library
Welcome back, everyone! And a special greeting to this year’s grad student cohort – I’m looking forward to working with you! For a general introduction to the library, my Canvas orientation course is open for you; you might also want to check out my past blog posts for information on recreational reading and streaming films available from the library.
With a substantial return to on-site instruction this term, the campus libraries have also largely restarted in-person services. You can get the full story from our recent news posting, but here are the highlights:
-The major campus library buildings (Hatcher, Shapiro, AAEL, Taubman) are open for public access 9am-5pm M-F, with extended evening and weekend hours for Mcard holders. Masking is required, in accordance with overall university policy.
-Contactless pickup of print material continues, with additional locations added (including Museums) and with delivery of materials from other library locations now available as well. (I’ve already started requesting stuff from the Music Library to catch up on personal reading.)
-Online access to digitized HathiTrust in-copyright works through the Emergency Temporary Access Program has ended. Ebooks that we have through other platforms are, of course, still available.
As far as my personal plans for fall go, I’m taking something of a “working remotely from on-site” approach: I’m planning to be in my office on campus, depending on campus COVID rates, but my office hours and one-on-one appointments are defaulting to Zoom for the foreseeable future.
Hopefully this approach will strike a good balance of focus, availability, and safety. My main challenge so far has been figuring out a minimal-exposure way to acquire coffee; fortunately, M36 at South U and East U (where Espresso Royale used to be) has online ordering through Snackpass, and one of my Science Library colleagues is a serious coffee geek, so I’ll have an in-office solution soon. [photo caption: The fashionable look for campus librarians this fall: Winter Soldier cosplay.]
Library services will invariably change as the public health situation, on campus and in our surrounding community, continues to change; I’ll do my best to keep you all up to date as they do. In the meantime, let me know if I can help out with your research, teaching or other information-related needs! My email, Twitter handle, and Zoom office hour info can all be found on my library profile page.
PS. If you didn’t get the joke in the title, it’s a riff on this classic LL Cool J tune.