Library Summer Hours

Monday – Thursday – 8AM – 6PM
Friday- 8AM – 4:30 PM
Saturday & Sunday – Closed

Library Closed May 21-23 for renovations

Due to renovations, Rentschler Library on the Hamilton Campus will be
closed on the following dates:

Monday, May 21 – Wednesday, May 23

We are closed on weekends throughout the summer. During this time, databases and other electronic resources can be accessed from the library’s website:
http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/library/

Library staff will be working 8AM to 5PM on these dates and can answer
reference questions via the phone (785-3235) and via online chat:
http://www.ham.miamioh.edu/library/services/get-help/

Students in need of printing and computing services can use the
computer lab in MOS 302:
http://miamioh.edu/regionals/technology-services/classrooms-labs/index.html

We apologize for any inconvenience and invite everyone to visit us and
see our new front desk when we reopen on Thursday, May 24.

Cram Jam @ Rentschler Library

Rentschler Library and the Office of Learning Assistance are proud to offer Cram Jam again this semester. There’ll be peer tutors in a variety of subjects, librarians, snacks and coffee.  Open to all Miami students and hosted at Rentschler Library, Schwarm Hall, Miami Univ. Hamilton campus. The dates & hours of Cram Jam are:

Thursday, May 10, 6-9pm
Saturday, May 12, 12-5pm
Sunday, May 13, 3-10pm

Haiku contest winner

Karen O’Hara is the winner of the 2018 Rentschler Library Haiku Contest. Karen is the Web Specialist for University Communications & Marketing in Oxford and teaches EGS 215 (Workplace Writing) on the Hamilton campus.

Her haiku:

Window cat wonders
at snowflakes dancing up, down
Why can’t she catch them?

 

Her haiku was selected by a panel of four judges using a blind review process. There were 39 other entries. Thanks to all who submitted a haiku!

Shout out to Carrie Girton, Public Services Librarian & Web Developer, for creating the haiku website and managing the submissions. Another shout out to Ruth Orth, Regional Campus Social Media and Communications Specialist, for including the contest in the digital signage system.

I’d also like to thank the other judges: Krista McDonald, Library Director, Dr. Theresa Kulbaga and Dr. Tory Pearman, Associate Professors from the Department of Literature, Languages, and Writing.

Still time to enter our haiku contest!

There is still plenty of time to submit your own original haiku for the Rentschler Library Haiku Contest!  The contest ends April 30th. Winner gets a T-Shirt!

Nature themes always make for good haiku. In fact, traditional Japanese haiku almost always had some mention of what season it was written. (either explicitly or implied). Just look around you for inspiration as you walk to class. Take, for instance, the Canadian geese outside of Schwarm Hall…

Harbingers of spring:
daffodils, tulips, robins
goose poop on sidewalks.

 

 

Your haiku must be in the 5-7-5 syllable format. The contest is open to students, faculty and staff. Winners will be announced no later than May 4th.

Do YOU Haiku? Enter our Haiku Contest!

Swampy Dagobah —
even a Jedi Master
can’t keep his feet dry.

 

If you enter the Rentschler Library Haiku contest, you don’t even have to have a serious theme. That’s how wide open the contest is. Write one about your favorite popular culture thing, your dog, that time you got sick on the bus. As long as it’s cleverly done, we don’t care.

So go ahead…submit a haiku using our online form. Win, you just might.

Enter our Haiku Contest

April is National Poetry Month and just one of the ways Rentschler Library is celebrating this year is with our Haiku Contest. Just write your own original haiku in the 5 syllable, 7 syllables, 5 syllable format and you could win a haiku T-shirt (at left.) You get to select your color and size, though.

The contest is open to all Miami-affiliated persons (students, faculty, and staff.) You can enter your haiku online at the URL below or stop by our display in Rentschler Library to fill out a form. We also have a small collection of haiku books on display for inspiration. 

Entry form: https://goo.gl/forms/kEGcAT9lSbPCsqQt2

What is a haiku? Here’s what the Academy of American Poets says:

“A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression….. As the form has evolved, many of these rules—including the 5/7/5 practice—have been routinely broken. However, the philosophy of haiku has been preserved: the focus on a brief moment in time; a use of provocative, colorful images; an ability to be read in one breath; and a sense of sudden enlightenment and illumination.

Here’s a haiku from novelist and poet Richard Wright to get you started:

 From this skyscraper,

all the bustling streets converge

towards the spring sea