Library today: Vandalism in the library
From UST Libraries
A custodian recently found a copy of Ward Churchill's On the Justice of Roosting Chickens in a toilet in the men's restroom of the Charles J. Keffer Library on the Minneapolis campus. The book had been taken from the library's New Books area and was dropped accidentally or intentionally in the toilet.
This book and its author are controversial, but anyone hoping to deny the community of the possibility of reading it will be disappointed – the library will replace the book as soon as possible. The UST libraries hold the freedom to read as one of our highest values. To quote from the American Library Association Freedom to Read statement: "We, as individuals devoted to reading and as librarians and publishers responsible for disseminating ideas, wish to assert the public interest in the preservation of the freedom to read" (read the entire statement).
The libraries have a clearly stated vandalism policy, which states in part:
"When a member of the community removes or destroys library materials, it is a violation of a social contract, and it deprives others of the benefit of this commonly owned resource. Library collections, in part, are developed to preserve ideas for the future. Librarians take seriously their responsibility to collect, preserve and circulate these important materials. The system is unique in society, it is very civilized, and it works as long as the community respects and honors the basic principles of community owned and maintained resources."
Database of the week
The UST libraries continue to add new electronic resources, and we will highlight them over the next several weeks in the Bulletin Today. This week's featured database is International Financial Statistics.
International Financial Statistics is a statistical database from the International Monetary Fund that contains country financial data such as financial flows, GDP, exchange rates, trade volumes, employment, interest rates, and inflation rates from more than 200 countries. World data is available for similar topics, as well as commodity prices for major internationally traded goods. While this electronic version contains the same information as the print version of this product, the database has a flexible interface that allows users to search by countries, data items, and years of coverage. Data can be displayed as Excel, html, delimited text files or as a PDF version of the table from the monthly publication.
International Financial Statistics is ideal for users who want to analyze current international financial data, including: inflation, exchange rates, international liquidity, international banking, money and banking, interest rates, prices, production and international transactions.
For more information on how to access International Financial Statistics or any other library database, please call a UST reference librarian at (651) 962-5001 or (651) 962-4664.
