How to find new books through the Caltech Library

By George Porter, Engineering Librarian

The Caltech Library purchases more than a hundred new books each month.  A listing of the new titles, grouped by subject, can be found under the ‘New books’ <http://library.caltech.edu/techservices/new/newmaterials.htm>  link in the center of the library’s main web page <http://library.caltech.edu/>.  The lists are generated monthly and are usually posted to the website by the middle of the following month.  New chemistry, biology, physics and math books are on a booktruck by the Millikan Circulation desk for a week after receipt and the engineering new books are on shelves on the 3rd floor of Sherman Fairchild Library, also for a week.  New books in the pertinent disciplines are also displayed for 4 weeks on the new book shelf in the Geology Library, a few weeks in the Astronomy Library in Cahill, and several weeks in Dabney.

Over the last couple of years there has been explosive growth in the availability of ebooks.  See the ‘Ebooks <http://libguides.caltech.edu/ebooks> ’ link on the library’s homepage.  The Library purchases access to both individual titles and large packages of ebooks from publishers.  Some notable packages include a rotating 100 title collection of primarily O’Reilly computer books from Safari, the entire Springer math and statistics collection beginning with titles published in 2005, the complete book collections from both IEEE and SIAM, and almost 400 books from the Morgan and Claypool Synthesis digital library of engineering and computer science.  All individual titles can be searched in the library’s catalog.  Going through the catalog provides proxied access for easy off-campus use.

Beginning in January 2011, the Library began a trial program of offering Kindles for checkout to students and faculty.  Upon checkout, an individual is permitted to acquire up to $25 worth of titles to the Kindle.  The six Kindles are synced so that the content on each is the same.  Each individual book title is indexed the library catalog with a location of eBook/Kindle in the Sherman Fairchild Library. In the last year, the program added over 330 titles to the Library’s collection through 600+ checkouts.

The library is happy to receive recommendations for book purchases.  An email form is available on the library’s main page to make suggestions.  The form allows one to specify whether print or ebook is the preferred format. Or, simply email library@caltech.edu.