SDSU Students Approve Library Use Fee
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In a referendum held March 13-14, 2002, SDSU students voted to recommend implementation of a student library use fee in support of longer library hours and increased access to materials beginning in fall 2002. If implemented by the chancellor, a $10 mandatory fee would be paid each semester by enrolled students, with a maximum $8 fee paid by summer enrollees. Based on current enrollment projections, this fee would add $657,000 next year to support enhanced library services. The Reserve Book Room would remain open 24 hours a day, while the Library and Student Computing Center would not close until 1:00 a.m. Sundays through Thursdays, adding 12.5 hours of Library and 5 hours of computing center operation. In its support of the fee, the Daily Aztec editorialized that "higher education is about self-teaching, but it becomes quite difficult to teach oneself when access to information is limited."

Librarians and library staff members are proud of their service-oriented profession and look forward to providing Library and computing services that will better meet the needs of SDSU students.

The festivities began on November 29 with a poetry reading by Mr. Collier, who also serves as the director of the Breadloaf Writers' Conference. After introductions by Provost Nancy Marlin and William Rogers, director of the Honors Program, Mr. Collier entertained the audience of students, donors, and faculty and staff with a selection of his poems that included "All Souls," "Mission Boulevard," and "Argos."

On the morning of November 30, Mr. Collier met individually with student poets from the Master of Fine Arts program and the Honors Program in the Honors Council Room. The dedication celebration concluded later that day with a reception in the Honors Study that was attended by SDSU President Stephen Weber, Michael Collier, Darlene Davies, Henry Janssen, Dr. Rogers, and faculty, staff, and honors students.

"The Darlene Gould Davies Honors Study Room is an major step forward for the University Honors Program that would not have been taken without the generosity and vision of Professor Davies, the determination of Dean Connie Vinita Dowell, and the creative contributions of honors students themselves. It's an example of what can be accomplished when all of us in the SDSU family work together. Michael Collier's thoughtful, image-filled, and emotionally-grounded poetry celebrated this occasion in an ideal way," Dr. Rogers said.

The new study room provides honors students with "a place of their own"- a quiet room to study, relax, mingle, and network. The room contains new furniture and carpeting and includes computer jacks for laptop computers. Next door, the Council Room affords a meeting place for honors society members.

The World Wide Web has made it easier to gather information, shop for gifts, talk to people around the world, and much more. For librarians, the web is an important means of delivering information and services. From our website, we provide access to databases that offer the full text of journal articles, services such as Interlibrary Loan and email reference, guides to researching topics, and even whole books online to our students, staff, and faculty-anywhere, anytime. Interestingly, many of our best "customers" come from outside our SDSU user base-we get regular email about our research guides from all over the world. What not long ago was a medium with burgeoning utility has become an essential component of our mission.

Because web services have become a core part of our offerings, we need to be especially careful not to exclude patrons who have a disability. That means that we must put extra care into our web development from the start. Because the web is a largely visual medium, we often talk about vision impairments when discussing website accessibility. However, there are also other disabilities to consider. For instance, some people are unable to use a keyboard and mouse. Deaf people cannot hear the sound in streaming audio or video clips. People with a cognitive impairment may have trouble with information presented in a purely textual manner.

While we have always kept all users in mind while designing and building our site, we are striving to do more. Over the next year, we will be reviewing our website using a new set of standards published by the federal government. These rules, called Section 508 guidelines, will ensure that we have done our utmost to make our website accessible to all of our patrons.

To read more about Section 508 guidelines, see: http://www.section508.gov. If you have any questions about Section 508 or the Library website, please contact Laura Hudson at lhudson@mail.sdsu.edu or 594-3521.

Lincoln Scholar Michael Burlingame Lectures Twice at SDSU; Visits with Friends of the Library
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Below: Dr. Michael Burlingame (center)
talks with audience members after
the luncheon.

Listening to Dr. Michael Burlingame speak about Abraham Lincoln is like listening to a man talk about a long-time friend-his likes, his dislikes; his motivations and his irrational impulses; his triumphs and his failures-all peppered with colorful anecdotes and memorable quotes. Faculty, staff, and Friends of the SDSU Library were fortunate to be treated twice to Dr. Burlingame's insights about Lincoln, first at the Friends of the Library Winter Luncheon and again at a lecture on Presidents' Day, which was co-sponsored by the Library, the Africana Studies Department, and the History Department.

Burlingame is Sadowski professor of history emeritus at Connecticut College; associate director of the Presidential Papers of Abraham Lincoln Project in Washington, D.C., and the author/editor of 10 books about Lincoln. Burlingame also is a self-styled "psychohistorian"-a historian who relies not only on documented facts about an individual to build that person's history, but who also explains an individual's behavior and actions through that person's life experiences.

At the luncheon on February 16, Burlingame shared his knowledge about Lincoln's personal life and his theories about Lincoln's rise to power. According to Burlingame, becoming involved in politics was actually Lincoln's means of escaping an unhappy home life. In addition, Lincoln's wife, Mary, was an ambitious woman who pushed her husband toward the presidency.

On February 18, Burlingame delivered a speech at Casa Real titled "'Emphatically the Black Man's President': New Light on Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass." Burlingame discussed the conflicting accounts regarding whether Lincoln was a friend or foe of slavery and presented arguments and evidence to support both views. After examining all of the evidence, though, Burlingame concluded that Lincoln had always been against slavery. In addition to various written records, Burlingame based this theory on the fact that, as a boy, Lincoln's father had rented him to neighbors to work and then kept the money for himself-a relationship typical of a master and slave.

John Hood, Friends of the Library president, attended both the luncheon and the public lecture. "Michael Burlingame's two talks on Lincoln were most provocative. He is a controversial historian, and (they were) exciting," Dr. Hood said.

At the beginning of both of his talks, Dr. Burlingame credited librarians for much of the research help he received. Librarians often pointed him toward little-known or recently found materials that eventually helped him to paint a more accurate, well-rounded picture of President Lincoln.

Last revised February 19, 2003 by Laura Hudson