Memorial Day at the Anagama Kiln

I wanted to share a couple of thoughts from my trip to UM's anagama kiln today. I was there for over an hour in the mid-afternoon and had a chance to chat with Scott Meyer, a couple of our student artists, and some visiting artists from the faculty at UAB.

This weekend's action is the twelfth firing of the anagama kiln since its maiden blast back in the spring of 2002. Once again, I was impressed with the mammoth effort that it takes to keep Fat Bastard up and running. While I was there, I caught the four o'clock temperature reading, which registered just above 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit in two rear locations and 2,375 degrees in the front fire pit. No more than five or ten minutes passed between stoking and feeding the flame.

The artists participating in this May 2008 firing have started a photo pool, which you can check out here. There's not too much there at this point, as most of the people involved in the project have likely been too busy to post their shots, but we'll be adding the library's photos there. As always, you can view all of the pics we've taken on our Flickr.

Photos: Anagama Fire!

Anagama fire!
Originally uploaded by carmichaellibrary

This is the view from campus today as UM Professor of Art Scott Meyer, along with dozens of volunteers and area artists, celebrate the latest firing of Montevallo's own anagama kiln, also known as Fat Bastard.

The firing will continue through the holiday weekend and the unloading will take place on the 3rd of June. Visitors are welcome!

Check out a few more shots of today's events at our Flickr.

GreenFile

EBSCO has made GreenFILE freely accessible via the WWW. GreenFILE is an ecology database that focuses on the relationship between humans and the environment. You can use this resource to find information on environmental topics such as global warming, recycling, and alternative fuel resources.

According to EBSCO's website, GreenFILE includes abstracts and indexes for more than 600 titles and "comprehensive coverage – from volume 1, issue 1 to present – for Bioscience (back to 1964), Conservation Biology (back to 1987), Journal of Ecology (back to 1913) and Journal of Environmental Planning & Management (back to 1948). The total number of records is approximately 295,000, and full text is provided for more than 4,600 records from open access titles."

You can access GreenFile by clicking here and logging in through our proxy server, or you can use the following direct link for easy access:

http://www.greeninfoonline.com

Library Services Restored, May 17th

We've been checking access to the library web site and catalog throughout the day and these services have now been restored. We'll be back in the library Monday morning at 8:00 AM to assist you with all of your research needs.

University Servers Down Tomorrow, May 17th

We have received the following information from Computer Services:

Please be advised that necessary maintenance to the university’s server room electrical system will be performed tomorrow Saturday, May 17th beginning at 6:30 am. At that time, all systems (including email, the Admin system, Banner, web access, internet connectivity, network shares, etc) will be unavailable while this work is performed. Services will be restored as quickly as possible. We estimate that it could take more than 12 hours to complete all tasks, but some services will be restored as soon as they become available. Please direct any questions or concerns to the Help Desk at (205) 665-6520 or via email to helpdesk@montevallo.edu.

This outage will affect the library's catalog and remote database access. We'll be checking the status of the library's servers throughout the day tomorrow and we'll post here when our systems are again available.

Harbert Writing Center May Term Hours

This information comes from Glenda Conway, Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of the Harbert Writing Center:

The Harbert Writing Center is open during May Term from 10:00-2:00.

Members of the University of Montevallo community are welcome to come to the Center to meet with a Writing Consultant or to use the resources (including computers, grammar and documentation guides, or simply the comfortable space).

Harbert Writing Center consultants are trained to work with writers at all stages of the composing process.

The Writing Center is located in Comer Hall, room 311. The phone number is 665-6438.