Some book titles come across during this year's weeding

Complex:

• On the null spaces of fully symmetric basic rules for quadrature formulas in s-dimensions
• Defect and local error control in codes for solving stiff initial-value problems
• Some GCD and divisibility problems for sparse polynomials

Dated:

• Faster, faster; a simple description of a giant electronic calculator and the problems it solves
  
• FORTRAN IV with WATFOR
• FORTRAN IV with WATFOR and WATFIV
• EVAMEA I ; a computer program for economic analysis
• Job control languages : past, present and future

Curious:

• Zap! : how your computer can hurt you and what you can do about it (1994)
• Programmers : elite of automation
• Programmering ssprak
• Microprocessor background for management personnel (1981)
• Reader's digest how to do just about anything on a computer (2000)
• Enchanted looms : conscious networks in brains and computers
• Marshall McLuhan meets the millennium bug : the first 100 years of computers, and how we can make it

:

The hiring process

I've just been placed on another search committee, my second this year. In the faint hope that someone will read this and that it will spare some future search committee a little pain, I'd like to offer a few tips for applicants on the Cover Letter.

Search committees are cursed by applications. They just keep coming in, more than we want, more than we need, most of them completely useless additions to the pile of paperwork. After a while, we're punch-drunk, virtually incapable of giving your application the special care you probably think it deserves. The fifth or seventh cover letter telling me that the applicant is a “proactive, people-oriented go-getter” who “synergizes and leverages” while being “results-oriented” leaves me wanting to throw up on the application rather than hire the applicant.

Make things concrete. I've worked with a friend applying for a teaching-oriented position whose letter didn't mention her Masters' in Education, another whose letter expressing interest in a cataloging job didn't refer to her five years' experience cataloging. Please! Mention your most recent, most relevant positions and spell out exactly why they are relevant. Mention relevant degrees.

Basically, the key to a good cover letter is to write as if you were trying to explain your qualifications to a young, not especially bright child with a short attention span. Don't expect the search committee members to read between the lines of your resume to deduce your qualifications, or even read your resume at all. We're not going to assume you're qualified if you don't say you are. Use your cover letter to spell out why you are appropriate for this position using short sentences consisting of words with few syllables, using verifiable facts to do so.

Don't even THINK about making us think.