The Agenda - Faculty and Staff Newsletter

Author: Jessica Pellien

  • Rutgers Archivists and Librarians Rock Newark MARAC

    The Spring 2017 MARAC conference was held from April 20-22 at Newark’s Robert Treat Hotel. MARAC, which stands for “Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference,” is a volunteer, regional consortium of archivists who live and work in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Overcoming skepticism that people would be eager to come to Newark, the results speak for themselves: 413 people registered–the second biggest conference in MARAC’s 45-year history!

    Befitting an archival conference in New Jersey taking place just blocks from Rutgers University–Newark, many Rutgers archivists and librarians participated in the conference as members of the Local Arrangements Committee (LAC) or as conference presenters. LAC members included:

    • Elizabeth Surles (LAC Tri-Chair), Institute of Jazz Studies
    • Natalie Borisovets, Dana Library
    • Tim Corlis, Special Collections University Archives (SCUA)
    • Bob Golon, SCUA (retired)
    • Angela Lawrence, Institute of Jazz Studies
    • Tara Maharjan, SCUA
    • Bob Vietrogoski, RBHS – Special Collections

    It took almost two years of LAC meetings to organize many of the conference events. These events included eight tours, including a tour of the Institute of Jazz Studies, and a tour of the Thomas Edison National Historic Park via a shuttle bus generously donated by Rutgers University Libraries. Other events included a “Community Service Project” providing pro bono help to local archives, a Thursday member meet and greet reception, a Thursday “Dine Around,” a Friday night reception, and even a Movie Night. LAC members also assembled over 400 conference packets, staffed the registration desk, and performed the proverbial “other duties as assigned.”

    Elizabeth Surles organized the Friday night reception that filled the Great Hall of 15 Washington Street, a recently renovated iconic Newark skyscraper now serving as a luxury Rutgers-Newark dormitory. Well over 300 conference attendees enjoyed sumptuous dining which included Portuguese hors d’oeuvres and an extensive selection of New Jersey microbrews. The reception was generously sponsored by Rutgers–Newark and the Institute of Jazz Studies

    Angela Lawrence and Bob Vietrogoski produced a “Newark Finding Dining Aid” guide to over 50 nearby restaurants. The guide was so well received that with only minor modifications, its listings became an official handout from the Greater Newark Convention & Visitors Bureau!

    Tara Maharjan created and updated the official conference blog and promoted the conference on social media:

    Rutgers librarians were also well represented throughout the conference’s program sessions. Presenters included:

    • Sheridan Sayles, Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA), and former SCUA archivist Zachary Johnson: “From Ballot Box to Document Box: Exploring Contemporary Challenges with Congressional Papers.”
    • Krista White, Dana Library: “Digital Preservation of Faculty and Student Research.”
    • Ron Becker, emeritus head of SCUA: “Discovering Primary Source Materials and Road Trip Tales: The Newark Archives Project.”
    • Christie Lutz, SCUA: “New Brunswick Music Scene Archive,” a session chaired by Jonathan Sauceda, Douglas Library.

    At the New Jersey Caucus meeting, Ron Becker received a plaque in honor of his long involvement in MARAC, which included his attendance at the previous MARAC conference held in Newark – in 1974!

    Right now, the City of Newark is experiencing visible growth and renewal, especially in the neighborhood around Military Park, which features the newly opened Hahne’s Building and its Whole Foods. The Spring 2017 MARAC conference is another sign of Newark’s revitalization. By all accounts, MARAC in Newark was an unqualified success, and a major cause of this success was the hard work and scholarly efforts of many Rutgers archivists and librarians.

    For more on the conference in general: marac.memberclicks.net/assets/conferences/marac_newark_2017programp3-1.pdf

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  • Excerpt from “Forgotten Heroes: New Jerseyans and Rutgers Alumni During the Great War” at What Exit?

    This month, What Exit? from Special Collections and University Archives featured two long forgotten New Jersey heroes, using materials from the Rutgers College War Service Bureau and the Terradell Family Papers.

    Excerpt:

    Portrait of Theodore Rosen. Undated, ca. 1926.

    With a growing number of Rutgers men in Uncle Sam’s olive drab, Earl Reed Silvers (RC 1913) established the Rutgers College War Service Bureau (RCWSB) in August 1917 to keep the 800 men in service up to date with frequent news of the college and each other. “As far as can be ascertained, no college or university in the United States kept in such close touch with her alumni and undergraduates in the army or navy,” reflected Silvers, “nor has any college the mass of material, war letters and relics, which were sent to old Rutgers by her appreciative sons.”

    Counted among the alumni who corresponded with Silvers and the RCWSB was Theodore “Theo” Rosen (1895-1940), Rutgers College Class of 1916, who served as First Lieutenant in the 315th Infantry, 79th Division.

    Creeping and crawling toward the German line in search of a machine gun nest on the early morning of November 4, 1918, Rosen found himself in the path of fire. One bullet rendered his right arm useless; the other tore through his left cheek, filling his mouth with blood and taking out seven teeth. The 23-year-old would lose the top of his left thumb, break his left wrist, have his right arm amputated, and suffer impaired hearing and vision before the onslaught was over. He only recovered consciousness as a P.O.W. on the operating table at Longwy, where he remained prisoner for the eight days before the Armistice in November 1918.

    Continue reading “Forgotten Heroes: New Jerseyans and Rutgers Alumni During the Great War” at What Exit?

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  • Annual Celebrations for Staff and Faculty of Rutgers University Libraries (2017)

    The University is recognizing faculty and staff who are celebrating a decade increment of employment at Rutgers. We are delighted to announce that 14 of our colleagues were included in the festivities and hope you join us in congratulating them on these accomplishments:

    10 Joseph Abraham (NBL)

    Martha Barnett (Shared User Svs)

    Abigail DiPaolo (Admin Svc.)

    Jie Geng (TAS)

    James Hartstein (NBL)

    Robert Vietrogoski (Smith)

     
    20 Roman Frackowski (TAS)

    Stephen Modica (Smith)

     
    30 Tracey Meyer (TAS)

    Nita Mukherjee (NBL)

    Robin Pastorio-Newman (TAS)

    Jeffrey Teichmann (NBL)

    Drue Williamson (NBL)

     
    40 Dianne Hamlette (RBHS)

     

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  • Rutgers Day in Photos

    Rutgers Day this year was a huge success thanks to the efforts of all the local committees. Each location put their own spin on the day’s events as you can see in the photos below. Whether they were strutting the red carpet in Camden, fishing for health with RBHS, learning about WWI with New Brunswick, building robots in Piscataway, or discovering jazz in Newark, our visitors were treated to spectacle, activities, and fun!

    Thank you to all the committee chairs and members who made this awesome day possible in five locations across four cities! This is one of the biggest events in which the Libraries participate and it requires a lot of hands on deck. If you didn’t participate this year, please consider volunteering to help out next time.

    If you like the photos here, there are more on our photo server (T:\CENTRAL\PHOTOS AND MEDIA\Event Photos\Rutgers Day\Rutgers Day 2017\).

    • The Voorhees Mall location highlighted the WWI Centennial and the new SCUA exhibit.

     

  • The True History of Puss in Boots on Mars is now available

    The True History of Puss in Boots on Mars – written by rare book librarian Michael Joseph and illustrated by Alexander Library Shipping and Receiving Coordinator Henry Charles – is just now out from Cats in the Basement Press. The book is a retelling of a classic fairy tale with a twist: much of the text is replaced with Martian words. Joseph and Charles visited the administrative suite to present VP for Information Services and University Librarian Krisellen Maloney with a copy that was hot off the presses.

    This book is actually the fourth foray into writing modern takes on literary fairy-tales for Michael Joseph. He has previously self-published The True History of Puss in Boots in 2009; La Nouvea Chatte Blanche, “A Gracesian retelling of a fairy tale by Charles Perrault’s contemporary Madane D’Aulnoy;” and Inherent Ogres, “A free adaptation of d’Aulnoy’s The Bee and the Orange Tree using only to words found in Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice.”

    This most recent book, The True History of Puss in Boots on Mars, Joseph notes that he and Charles are working with a double conceptual frame: pretending to be opportunistically following the Mars craze by pretending to write a thinly disguised, pulpy, version of our original book. So for promoting the book, they’ve used phrases like “8 years in the making” (since it was 8 years since the first Puss), “at last the story can be told” and “it came from the Red Planet.”

    “Every book has had a purpose or an identity,” explains Joseph. “Puss (about which I wrote a conference paper) illustrates my interpretation of the original Perrault tale as a tale about generosity of spirit (rather than cunning); Chatte Blanche explores the idea that d’Aulnoy’s  tale  is a garbled version of Robert Graves’s White Goddess. I thought the original version, in which the cat asks to be decapitated, and then transforms into a princess who recounts a story of being enchanted, was needlessly bloody-minded and tedious. Besides, it betrays the reader’s trust by first articulating the value and beauty of a cat who has her own castle and retinue and who has sophisticated conversation and enjoys a cultivated life, and then explaining it was all the work of an evil wizard. Inherent Ogres was an attempt to write a procedural novel and reverse the reader’s sympathies, so that the ogres are more human than the princess and the prince (a bit Shrek-like, but more adult); and Puss in Books on Mars is  nonsense–it’s our first attempt at nonsense.”

    In addition to his partnership with Henry Charles, (“I’ve been extremely lucky to have Henry as an illustrator. He’s talented and makes great drawings that people like as soon as they see them. He immediately gets the point of the story, he’s got a sneaky sense of humor, and he’s creative.”), Joseph credits the quality of the finished book to designer Sarah K. Stengle (“a brilliant and first-rate artist.”) who designed and printed the books.

    If you are interested in learning more about The True History of Puss in Boots on Mars please contact Michael Joseph.

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  • The Numbers Are in! Rutgers Giving Day Final Report

    Back in November, we reported on the preliminary Rutgers Giving Day results and the news was good. Now the final numbers from the Rutgers Foundation are in, and we are proud to say that the news is even better!

    Our initial goal was to roughly double our number of donors from the inaugural Rutgers Giving Day and reach 50 donors this year, but we wound up seeing an outpouring of support that greatly exceeded expectations—thanks in no small part to your support.

    According to the final reports, the Libraries raised a total of $16,544.22 with gifts from 172 donors—a 647% increase in the number of donors and an 829% increase in the total amount of funds raised over the previous year. These numbers include the early give phase, the day-of-phase, and the challenge money leaderboard.

    The leaderboard was used to determine how $80,000 in challenge money would be awarded across the university ($20,000 each for Rutgers–Camden, Rutgers–Newark, Rutgers–New Brunswick, and RBHS). A unit’s standing on the leaderboard was based on the number of individual donors for that unit during the day-of phase compared to the total number of donors for its “parent institution.” So, in other words, if there were 100 gifts total to Rutgers–Camden and Robeson Library received 10 gifts, it would receive a bonus 10% of the $20,000 in challenge money, or $2,000. Here’s how the leaderboard numbers broke down:

    Unit Total distinct donors Total dollars Percentage of “parent institution” leaderboard donors Challenge money awarded (of $20,000)
    Robeson Library 9 $170.00 1.66% $331.49
    Dana Library 19 $1,433.08 2.61% $521.26
    Institute of Jazz Studies 2 $65.00 0.27% $54.87
    New Brunswick Libraries 95 $11,609.99 3.21% $641.46
    RBHS Libraries 6 $300.00 0.78% $156.05

    As you can see, we have much to be proud of. Many thanks to everyone who went out of their way to set up a donation station, make support sheets available to their patrons, or give a gift of their own to support the Libraries. Our tagline for this year’s campaign was “We can do great things together,” and you’ve all made it abundantly clear that there is real meaning behind those words. Thank you!

  • Quick Takes on Events and News — April 2017

    Rutgers University Libraries are cosponsoring two high-profile events in New Brunswick this month:

    Alice Aycock: Selected Works
    Douglass Dean’s Colloquia: Conversations

    In partnership with Jacquelyn Litt, dean of Douglass Residential College, the Libraries are delighted to welcome Rutgers alumna Alice Aycock to the Douglass Dean’s Colloquia: Conversations with Extraordinary Women on April 6, 7 – 8:30 p.m. at the Kathleen W. Ludwig Global Village Living Learning Center. RSVP here.

    Joy Reid
    “Truth and Consequences: What We Know and Why It Matters”
    Senator Wynona Lipman Chair in Women’s Political Leadership

    The Libraries are proud to partner with the Center for American Women and Politics and others to welcome Joy Reid, national correspondent and host of AM Joy on MSNBC to Rutgers University-New Brunswick on April 4 at 7 p.m. at the Douglass Student Center. RSVP is required. See website for details.

    Two WWI-themed exhibits opened last month:

    Camden, World War I & the New York Shipbuilding Corporation at Robeson Library
    This exhibit relates the history of the New York Shipbuilding Corporation (or New York Ship for short), an American shipbuilding company that operated from 1899 to 1968, ultimately completing more than 500 vessels for the United States Navy, the United States Merchant Marine, the United States Coast Guard, and other maritime concerns.

    “Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken!”: New Jersey in the Great War at SCUA in Alexander Library
    This exhibit focuses on the individual experiences of these Jersey doughboys and servicewomen who bravely went “Over There,” and the families and neighbors who remained behind, “Over Here.” The exhibit includes loans of 29th “Blue and Gray” Division artifacts and souvenirs from the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey, wartime medical supplies from the Johnson & Johnson Archives, and postcards from the Special Collections of the George F. Smith Library of the Health Sciences at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences.

    Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries – Vol 68(2) now available

    The second part of the Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries’ special issue on the 250th anniversary of Rutgers University is now available. Entitled “From the Revolutionary War to the 21st Century,” this issue completes the discussion of Rutgers’ early history begun in “The Life and Times of Henry Rutgers” and turns its focus to the present day. David Fowler contributes the second and third installations of “Benevolent Patriot: The Life and Times of Henry Rutgers,” the most comprehensive biographical investigation of the university’s namesake to date. Additional articles explore the early history of Livingston College and the history of the Rutgers University Police Department from its roots as a parking authority to its current status as a professional law enforcement agency.

     

    WWI Poetry Reading – April 18

    Mary Ann Koruth designed beautiful broadsides like this for the exhibit.

    Michael Joseph is planning a WWI poetry reading event for April 18 to complement the themes and poetry included in the “Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken!”. If you are interested in attending or participating in the event, please check in with Michael.

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  • Crash Courses in bioPreprint and GrantForward

    The worlds of scholarly grants and publication are changing rapidly in response to new technology and shifts in funding. Fortunately, the Libraries have resources to help scholars meet the demands of these new landscapes. This month, Smith Library’s Roberta Fitzpatrick Bronson offers a crash course on two services that are particularly timely and useful for researchers/scholars. Follow the links below for the who/what/where/why/how of using bioPreprints and GrantForward.

    bioPreprints

    The NIH recently announced that it will now accept (and encourage) researchers to include preprints in applications for funding:

    “The NIH encourages investigators to use interim research products, such as preprints, to speed the dissemination and enhance the rigor of their work. This notice clarifies reporting instructions to allow investigators to cite their interim research products and claim them as products of NIH funding.”

    So, we may see an uptick in interest in how to use and find preprints. bioPreprints allows users to search several preprint databases and to solicit and respond to feedback from their peers. It is focused primarily on STEM areas of study.

    More from Roberta on bioPreprints.

    GrantForward

    In the coming years, it will be more important than ever for researchers to find outside sources of funding, and it is entirely likely that competition for these funding sources will grow. GrantForward can make this process quite a bit simpler for Rutgers researchers. Traditionally,  they would have to search multiple databases to find all applicable federal, state, and local grants. GrantForward offers a leg up by simplifying this process into a single comprehensive search of more than 25,000 funding opportunities. Users can set up a user profile and request that GrantForward automatically run searches and send them results, too. Read more from Roberta on how to access and use this resource.

    More from Roberta on GrantForward.

    If you have new resources to share with our colleagues, please reach out to Jessica Pellien.

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  • The Origins of The Weekly Agenda Newsletter

    During one of my visits to Smith Library, Mina Ghajar mentioned that she knows two people who used to write this very same internal newsletter when it was in the print form of The Weekly Agenda. Jan Leavitt (retired and presently a part-time Librarian at Franklin Township Public Library) and Ann Smith (Head of Adult Services, Franklin Township Public Library) offered to write a short recollection about the origins and content of the earlier version of The Weekly Agenda upon which our new web-based publication is based.

    From Jan Leavitt and Ann Smith:

    The Weekly Agenda was first printed in April of 1979. Instituted by the university librarian as a form of communication to faculty and staff in the libraries on the various Rutgers campuses, it became the newsletter announcing the many happenings in the Libraries.

    The faculty and staff news items included professional development announcements of various conferences, along with grant and publication opportunities and reports to the library community from those attending meetings outside of Rutgers. The Agenda also included fundraising updates from the University Foundation regarding the Parents and Friends donations to the Library budget, which supported the Libraries. Library employment vacancies were listed in The Agenda, and the library calendar of events for the month was printed on the back page. Also included on the back of The Agenda were the various exhibits on the three library campuses.

    Occasionally we would put out an April Fool’s type of publication which everyone seemed to get a laugh out of and enjoyed. One that comes to mind was the April 1, 1990 issue.

    Happily, thanks to Janie Fultz’s archival tendencies, we have bound copies of earlier issues of The Agenda. Enjoy this PDF of the April 1, 1990 issue of “The Weakly Agenda” which features a tongue-in-cheek obituary for Ken Kuehl (death by axe – one heck of a way to go); the introduction of a new policy to install “grease trucks” outside of the libraries (which as we now know was remarkably prescient); and the formation of the Acronymiacs Anonymous to combat our tendency to speak in acronyms.

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  • Performance Appraisals for URA-AFT Employees Are Due April 30

    It’s Performance Appraisal time again! The program has two components: performance evaluation and merit increases.

    In anticipation of an announcement from University Human Resources regarding the performance appraisal program for URA-AFT employees, managers and supervisors should remind their URA-AFT employees to begin a self-appraisal. To be eligible for the Staff Compensation Program (SCP), URA-AFT employees must be in a program-eligible title on or before January 1, 2017 and remain employed in a URA position through the payment date of the merit increase. The SCP runs from May 1, 2016 through April 30, 2017. Self-appraisals should be completed by April 15, 2017. Managers and supervisors must complete performance evaluations and notify eligible employees of the appraisal by April 30, 2017 and provide the employee an opportunity to comment in writing by June 1. Any employee comments are attached to the appraisal.

    Staff are evaluated against performance standards that were established during the previous evaluation process and include any additions or modifications that have been communicated to the employee during the year. The two rating categories are Meets Standards and Does Not Meet Standards. At the completion of the evaluation, supervisors establish standards for the next year’s evaluation process and discuss with each employee.

    Please note: For RBHS staff, evaluations for CWA Local 1031 are due in November. HPAE Local 5094 and Teamsters Local 97 evaluations are due in the anniversary month.

    Additional information will be forwarded when the official appraisal and merit programs are announced.

    Below are links to the UHR webpage to assist you in the process.

    If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Libraries HR.

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