We are delighted to announce that Ms Anne Bell has formally accepted the University’s offer of appointment as the new University Librarian. She plans to commence duty on 20 February.
 
She is currently the University Librarian at the University of Warwick in the UK and prior to that was the Deputy Director of Information Services and Systems at King’s College London for eight years.  She has over fifteen years senior management experience in University libraries and brings with her a wealth of knowledge of the complex issues affecting multi-faculty, multi-site, research-intensive institutions.

The Library has listened to feedback from clients and decided to change its MyLibrary service to MyLoans. It is a new name but with the same functionality.
The new name will make it clearer what the service provides to our clients and remove any possible confusion to new clients.

In the West cloister of the Quadrangle, behind the Great Hall, there is a bronze plaque with 1939-1945 Roll of Honour, listing members of the staff, graduates and undergraduates of the University of Sydney who gave their lives during the Second World War.
While those that died at the front are fittingly remembered and recognised, others who contributed to the war effort away from the front lines are often forgotten. Such has been the fate of the camoufleurs who worked together to camouflage Australia during the Second World War. In a new book from Sydney University Press, Camouflage Australia: art, nature, science and war, Ann Elias tells the story of camouflage artists and explores the reasons for their invisibility in the historical record.
Through the involvement of two staff: William Dakin and Leslie Wilkinson, Sydney University played a significant role in the efforts to camouflage Australia - the grounds of the Camperdown Campus were used to test concealment and deception methods, while the Zoology Department housed a camouflage laboratory. 
William Dakin, a professor of zoology at the University of Sydney, was the most prominent figure in the development of camouflage at the beginning of the Second World War. Using his research into the behaviours and colours of animals, he developed a theoretical basis for his camouflage work. During the war, he waged a campaign in Australia to protect the nation and empire through advancements in camouflage defence.
Dakin was instrumental in starting the Sydney Camouflage Group on 3 September 1939. Apart from Dakin and Wilkinson (an architect), the group included other outstanding individuals from the arts and sciences such as Frank Hinder (an artist), Max Dupain (a photographer), Sydney Ure Smith (an art patron) and many others.
After July 1941, the majority of the Sydney Camouflage Group’s members became official camoufleurs with the Department of Home Security. But their position remained tenuous. The artists and designers deployed by the DHS to work in camouflage - a list comprising just over one hundred men and one woman - were not enlisted soldiers. As civilians working for the armed forces but not part of them, camoufleurs spent the first years of the war looking highly conspicuous in civilian clothes. It was not until May 1943 that the camoufleurs were given uniforms and received accreditation with the airforce, which allowed them to blend in with military life, though they never received the respect and recognition they deserved.
Professor William Dakin died in 1955. Unfortunately, he never in his lifetime received proper recognition for his work as Technical Director of Camouflage for Australia in the Second World War. As Ann Elias wrote, it is time to commemorate ‘a group of people and an episode in Australia’s past that have gone unnoticed among the otherwise heroic histories of the war’.
Camouflage Australia: art, nature, science and war will be launched byProfessor Stephen Garton, Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the University of Sydney on 22 November 2011 at 5:30 for 6 PM.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1947, awarded to Sir Robert Robinson, "for his work on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids" is on display in Rare Books and Special Collections, Fisher Library.

Find out more at our current exhibitions

Apologies to Fisher Library visitors for the late opening of the Library on Saturday 5 November. There was an unfortunate delay in getting services back online after construction works earlier in the morning. Work methods have been reviewed so delays do not occur in the future.

The Medical Library is closed until Thursday 3 November due to smoke entering through air-conditioning vents.

From Sunday 23 October to Sunday 13 November, the Law Library will be open on Sunday from 10am - 5pm.
For up to date Law Library's full opening hours please go to the opening hours page.

Open Access (OA) is an important global trend where researchers choose to provide free online access to their publications. To celebrate Open Access Week all research-active staff and students are invited to presentations by academic colleagues Simon Chapman, Martijn de Sterke, Alex Holcombe, Matt Todd and Goetz Richter who are harnessing the power of OA to extend their research influence and grow their citation rates .

For full details visit the Open Access site.

Information is now available through the Library web site for clients to find Library public access PCs which are available for use.

If you click on a link for a particular location you can see which PCs are free and how long it has been since they were used.

Find out more at our current exhibitions

Find out more at our current exhibitions

Find out more at our Friends of the University Library events page

Focus on Marine Science
25 July to 6 September 2011, SciTech Library


Marine science can take you to wild, sometimes remote and special places. From the tropics to Antarctica, in estuaries, on the coast and in the open ocean the University of Sydney Institute of Marine Science (USIMS) shows the diversity of their current research with contributions from geosciences, biosciences, law and engineering.

Find out more at our current exhibitions

As editor-in-chief of Household Words, Charles Dickens was able to bring his ideas on social issues of the day to middle-class households all over England. In a new anthology from the Sydney University Press, Charles Dickens' Australia: Selected Essays from Household Words 1850-1859, close to 100 essays, stories and poems relating to Australia have been collected to paint a picture of early life in the country. Between 1850 and 1859 Australia was undergoing significant social change, with the discovery of gold in Victoria and NSW bringing an influx of new migrants to the country. At the same time, convicts were still being transported to Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia to engage in indentured labour, a practice which Dickens criticised.

With many articles from Household Words reprinted in the Australian press of the time, Dickens helped to shape the way Australians viewed themselves. While contributions to the journal came from both England and Australia, Dickens' desire for editorial control meant that all the works he published are stamped with his style and ideas.

Charles Dickens' Australia is arranged into five books. 'Book One: Convict Stories' looks at the experiences of convicts from sentencing to transportation to pardon. 'Book Two: Immigration' talks about how to prepare for migration to Australia, while 'Book Three: Frontier Stories' focuses on the experience of farming and opening up new land, and includes accounts of encounters with bushrangers and Aborigines. 'Book Four: Mining and Gold' describes the life on the goldfields, depicting men and women from all ranks of society, all hoping to make a fortune. 'Book Five: Maritime Conditions' recounts experiences of the sea journeys and whale-hunting, the need for Panama and Suez canals, and other technical developments to improve global travel and transport.

Visit our latest exhibition in the Law Library.
See the current exhibitions page for more informaiton

Photo: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-Japan-oldphoto/en?uselang=ja

The scheduled outage, due to an upgrade to the Library catalogue, will take place 7.30pm, Friday until approximately 9am, Saturday. Our online catalogue will not be accessible during that period.

You will still be able to search our holdings via Summon from the Library home page, however, if the search results are catalogue related, you will not be able to reach the catalogue when clicking on any of the results for that period of time.

During the outage you will also be able to access online resources via the e-journal portal and our other lists of e-resources.

Library Borrower Number login will not be available during the outage.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Whether you want an impressive verse for a speech, the ideal poem to declare undying love or simply to improve your knowledge and appreciation of Australian poetry, there is now the perfect website to assist you.

The Australian Poetry Library, a joint initiative of the University of Sydney and the Copyright Agency Limited (CAL), is being launched tonight at Government House by Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir, Governor of NSW and Chancellor of the University.

The online library holds more than 42,000 poems by 217 Australian poets.

For information about the Fisher Library Renovation Project visit:
http://sydney.edu.au/library/about/fisher-dev/

Photographic exhibition by Sarah Barker.
24 May to 30 June 2011
See the current exhibitions page for more informaiton

You can find the power Point of a recent presentation and all the latest details of the project on the Fisher Library Redevelopment Project site

Bradfield: the Bridge and Beyond and you could win a Sydney Harbour BridgeClimb ticket!

Find out more at our current exhibitions page

Please be advised that level 4 reading area in Fisher Library will be closed this afternoon 15/4/11 for a function, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

The Library is planning to trial the use of Article Reach as the single form to be completed when requesting journal articles. The trial will commence on Monday 2nd May, 2011. The old intra-campus form will disappear from the catalogue on this date.

Currently when clients go into their My Library and click on the link “request items from Document Delivery” they will be given the choice of two options:

For articles not held in our collection – Use Article Reach Direct (they follow through instructions to do so)

For articles HELD in our collection – for use by distance/remote staff and students (they have a form on this page to complete)

The new format will only show the Article Reach Direct page and should be used for all articles required, whether not held or held (in the case of distance/remote requests). Clients should complete the required pages (home library and name/bar code)to come to the “Request an Article” form. Clients who are distance/remote staff or students requesting an item held by the library should indicate this information in the comments line.

The University of Sydney Library is developing a range of multimedia elearning tools and is seeking students to appear as ‘characters’ in these online modules.

Examples can be found at:
http://sydney.edu.au/library/elearning/learn/findbook/index.php
http://sydney.edu.au/library/elearning/learn/topic/index.php
http://sydney.edu.au/library/elearning/learn/plagiarism/index.php

If Successful, you will be required to attend a photography session (approximately 2 hours). Each session will usually include 2-3 students, hence you’ll have plenty of breaks and not be photographed constantly (very laid back)!

Skills required: None – just your enthusiasm and willingness to be photographed! All ages welcome.

Experience required: Some drama experience would be favourable, but not essential.

Faculties targeted: All

Hours offered: Approximately 2 hours (sessions will be available between 4th of May 2011 – 13th May 2011).

Rate of pay: $75 Coop Bookshop voucher for a single session – approximately 2 hours.

Applications to: Rebecca Goldsworthy – please send in your name, contact details and a current photo of yourself. One of the resources requires a small amount of video recording – please indicate if you would be happy to be videoed. Feel free to contact Rebecca if you have any queries.

Email: rebecca.goldsworthy@sydney.edu.au
Phone: 9114 0816

Draw back the curtains and peek at the influence of the Victorian world on modern sexuality. Trace the publication of rare and censored books. Discover how homosexual scandal and the fight for lesbian and gay rights were represented in a variety of different cultural milieus. Find out about the authors and theorists whose interest in same-sex desires contributed to our current understanding of freedom. After viewing this exhibition, you may conclude that Stonewall was the noisy grandchild of an older sexual reform.

Please note this exhibition includes sexually explicit images and language, which may offend some people.

Rare Books & Special Collections, level 2, Fisher Library.
21st February – 31st July, 2011

If your UniKey access to Library resources stops working please contact the Electronic Access Librarian.

Reading Across the Pacific: Australia-United States Intellectual Histories - a new book from Sydney University Press explores the literary and cultural engagement between the United States and Australia.

The book examines relations of the two countries, shifting the emphasis from the broad cultural patterns that are often compared, to the specific networks, interactions, and crossings that have characterised Australian literature in the United States and American literature in Australia. Since the mid-1800s, American writers such as Herman Melville and Mark Twain have showed some interest in Australian writing and in Australia generally, even if Australian culture has rarely been for them a primary concern. Mark Twain, the first American literary celebrity to visit Australia, commented about the affinities between Australian and American character.

Today, when relations between the United States and Australia are considered, it is more usually in the context of international affairs, the 'Americanisation' and an assumption of one-way cultural traffic towards Australia. Although the United States is Australia's most important economic partner country and a close political ally, Australian culture and literature remains comparatively invisible within the US critical discourse.

Why has Australia received so little attention in US literary circles? What cultural factors (assumptions, fears and inhibitions) are in play here? How have they changed over time as affected by political changes, or stylistic or genre transformations?

The essays in Reading Across the Pacific take American and Australian literatures out of the nationalist frameworks of the past, look at them in a global context, and attempts to redress the balance. In view of the continuing wave of Australian novelists publishing in the United States, and the recent visit of Oprah, there is hope for a change in the level of Australia's recognition in the US.

Reading Across the Pacific: Australia-United States Intellectual Histories
Edited by Robert Dixon and Nicholas Birns
Sydney University Press
ISBN: 9781920899660

Electronic items on reserve lists will be unavailable from 8am Monday 17 Jan – 8am Tuesday 18 Jan due to maintenance.