Grab your turkey sandwich and sit back; it’s time to review our many reasons to be thankful. Usually, this is a personal endeavor. But at the UW Tacoma Library, we have lots of reasons to be thankful. We suspect that we aren’t the only ones, and so we’re going to share with everyone!

We’re grateful for:

• Our incredible resources
  We’re a small campus with the resources of a top research university. That’s right, we have more online databases than we do faculty here at UWT. From the International Medieval Bibliography to the ACM Digital Library, if you’ve got an interest, we’ve got a resource for you. It’s a beautiful thing! Speaking of beautiful...
  
• A beautiful building on a beautiful campus
  This one is obvious: just look around. Embracing the past while moving toward the future, we’ve got the best of both worlds here on campus. You can sit outside the Library and use your cutting-edge iPhone to surf the web on the UW Tacoma wireless network while taking in historic buildings that are once again filled with vitality.
  
• Amazing colleagues
  I am constantly astonished at the depth and breadth of experience and knowledge of all our colleagues on campus. You never know who’s a virtuoso clarinetist or a director of plays (in her "spare" time), a former punk rocker, a holder of patents. Makes for interesting meetings and wonderfully far-ranging conversations. The concept of life-long learning is made manifest.
  
• Beyond-belief technologies
  The technologies we take for granted today were not even imagined when the UW Tacoma campus first opened its doors in the Perkins Building. At one time it seemed impossible that we would have a working elevator, much less do-it-yourself home access to almost every one of the Library’s databases, online registration (remember the STAR system?) and on and on. Who knows what educational technologies are in the offing? Whatever they are, you can be sure that we can’t begin to imagine them now. But when they come, we’ll be right here implementing them for our students.
  

Come exploit this gratitude for yourself!  Have a question or need some research assistance?  Check out the hours and e-mail addresses of all library staff.

Carole Svensson is the assistant director of the UW Tacoma Library.

Got an idea for a book to feature in Book Dirt? E-mail Carole at svensson@u.washington.edu.