The Agenda - Faculty and Staff Newsletter

Category: Feature

  • Visit of Cape Town Mayor presents international opportunities for Institute of Jazz Studies

    img_2723-100
    On October 9, Capetown Mayor Patricia de Lille was feted during a reception at Clement’s Place, a new jazz venue operated by the Institute of Jazz Studies and the Office of the Chancellor of Rutgers University-Newark. From are Newark Mayor Raz Baraka, de Lille, City Council President Mildred Crump, Linda Juma, and IJS Executive Director Wayne Winborne. Photograph by Bronwyn Douman.

    The recent visit of Cape Town, South Africa Mayor Patricia de Lille furthers a relationship to the Institute of Jazz Studies that began in June when IJS Executive Director Wayne Winborne paid a two-week visit to the city.

    De Lille arrived in Newark on October 9 and went immediately to a dinner reception held at Clement’s Place. There she was greeted by city officials–led by Mayor Raz Baraka and City Council President Mildred Crump–and Rutgers-Newark Chancellor Nancy Cantor. Music was provided by a sextet led by drummer T.S. Monk, son of the legendary pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. The following morning de Lille attended a breakfast in the Special Collections Room at the Dana Library.

    Winborne said de Lille’s visit to Newark was one stop in a tour that also included New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Among the topics of discussion were democratic institutions, civil society, and jazz.

    On his trip to Cape Town, Winborne was dazzled by the diverse music scene he encountered. He visited such local clubs as The Crypt, The Drawing Room, and Straight No Chaser, and met with musicians, students and educators at the University of Cape Town and the University of Western Cape Town.

    “I heard everything from straight ahead jazz to South African to pop-oriented fusion,” said Winborne. He also pointed to the success of the Cape Town International Jazz Festival which has brought in such mainstays on the American jazz scene as pianists Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Gary Bartz as well as well-known local and regional musicians.

    Winborne might return to Cape Town as early as January to meet with the mayor, as well as the regional minister of culture to set up some exchange programs between IJS and the city. He predicts IJS will host performances of South African musicians.

    Cape Town jazz enthusiasts have already spoken to him about their interest in establishing an archives there to preserve the history of the music. This may result in workshops given by IJS staff members to help get the project off the ground.

    “I think this idea has huge potential,” Winborne concluded.

    Save

  • Hungary’s Anniversary and Its Refugees

    hungary2Sixty years ago Hungary was in revolution against the one-party Communist state. Soviet armed forces entered Budapest to restore order, then withdrew in the face of stiff popular resistance. Prime Minister Imre Nagy announced a multi-party government and declared the country’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact alliance. This prompted a second Soviet intervention, the ouster of the Nagy government, and the flight of 200,000 Hungarians who feared the Communist crackdown and took advantage of an open border.

    These many years later, post-Communist Hungary’s conservative government is inclined to celebrate the Revolution as a rejection of everything the Soviet regime represented. Meanwhile, the current government is confronting the European Union over the EU’s proposal that member countries be required to accept refugees according to a quota. On this issue, the government organized a national referendum for October 2 and is dominating the media with stories about the refugees entering Europe today and the need to reject the EU proposal. Scholars and opponents of the government are proposing different views of both the socialist character of the Revolution and the humane reception of refugees, then and now. I gave a paper (in Hungarian) at an exciting conference in Eger, Hungary on September 8-10: 1956 and Socialism: Crisis and Reconsideration.

    My paper translates as The Culture of Welcome and the January, 1957 Austrian Refugee Quota Proposal. On the basis of research in the archives of the United Nations in New York and the Alexander Libraries’ excellent collection of UN and European documents, I traced the debate about the Hungarian refugees in the UN and the motives behind the decision of many Western countries to announce voluntary quotas for the number of Hungarians they would accept for resettlement. My paper and those of fellow panelists were reported in the main newspaper of the Hungarian opposition (this link is broken because the paper was recently purchased by a government-friendly owner and all content moved offline). Many of these papers, including mine, are forthcoming in Világtörténet, a journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

    The Hungarian Academy is one of many organizations that encourage their scholars to make their research freely available. It is helped in this effort by the strong position of authors in the Hungarian publishing system: copyright transfers are not standard as in the US when publishing in a journal. Therefore, the editor of Világtörténet immediately assured me there was no obstacle to my posting the English original of my article—and the Hungarian translation when it is available—in the Rutgers institutional repository. Now the English version is available online in SOAR and accessible for readers in Hungary, with the Hungarian version soon to follow. SOAR’s ability to accommodate multiple versions of the same article is ideal for situations requiring prompt dissemination and different languages.

    Save

  • Now Open for Research: The Andrew Hill Papers, Music, and Audiovisual Recordings

    2016 Jazz Archives Fellows and Institute of Jazz Studies and Dana Library faculty and staff pose with Joanne Robinson Hill and the processed Andrew Hill collection. Pictured (L-R) Angela Lawrence, Adriana Cuervo, Bob Nahory, Brad San Martin, Krista White, Joanne Robinson Hill, Veronica Johnson, Max Dienemann, Treshani Perera, Elizabeth Surles, and Tad Hershorn. Photo by Ed Berger, some rights reserved.
    2016 Jazz Archives Fellows and Institute of Jazz Studies and Dana Library faculty and staff pose with Joanne Robinson Hill and the processed Andrew Hill collection. Pictured (L-R) Angela Lawrence, Adriana Cuervo, Bob Nahory, Brad San Martin, Krista White, Joanne Robinson Hill, Veronica Johnson, Max Dienemann, Treshani Perera, Elizabeth Surles, and Tad Hershorn. Photo by Ed Berger, some rights reserved.

    The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) is pleased to announce the availability of the Andrew Hill papers, music and audiovisual recordings, 1956–2011. Hill (1931–2007) was an influential and acclaimed jazz pianist, composer, band leader, educator, and winner of numerous prestigious jazz accolades, including the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master award in 2008, among the highest honors in jazz in the United States. The extensive collection, generously donated in 2015 by Hill’s widow, Joanne Robinson Hill, includes materials ranging from his musical compositions, sound recordings, correspondence, and awards, to press kits and even one of his favorite hats.

    The collection was processed as part of the 2016 Jazz Archives Fellows residency, with IJS archivists Angela Lawrence, Tad Hershorn, and Elizabeth Surles working in tandem with jazz fellows Veronica Johnson, Brad San Martin, and Treshani Perera and intern Max Dienemann to arrange, describe, and rehouse the collection and create an EAD finding aid for the materials. The (IJS) started the Jazz Archives Fellows program in 2012 with two purposes in mind: to improve diversity in the archives profession and to provide a meaningful professional development opportunity for early career archivists and for students in graduate programs who intend to become archivists. In addition, the IJS benefits directly from the fellows’ work to process a collection. To see firsthand the fellows’ work and learn more about the collection and Andrew Hill, please explore the online finding aid at http://www2.scc.rutgers.edu/ead/ijs/hillf.html.

    The processing of the collection is timely. While it has only been open to researchers for a couple of months (before being announced publicly), the collection has already been used to produce a series of Andrew Hill legacy concerts at the Jazz Standard in New York City to celebrate what would have been Hill’s 85th birthday, as well as supported research by scholars visiting the Institute.

  • Rutgers Connect Migration Postmortem

    Rutgers Connect Migration Postmortem

    Office_365_logoRutgers University Libraries faculty and staff had a busy summer preparing for the email and calendar migration to Rutgers Connect. The migration took place over three days between August 23 and August 25, 2016, but by the time we reached this milestone, over two months of work by Unit Computing Specialists (UCSs) and Integrated Information Systems (IIS) staff had already been invested into planning the process, preparing for the transition, and learning the new environment.

    Here are some of the highlights:

    • 261 users responded successfully to the pre-migration questionnaire
    • 151 RUL members attended one of seven Information Sessions before the migration
    Please fill out a brief survey by Friday, October 14, and let us know how we did and what you are looking for, in terms of Rutgers Connect training and support, in the future.
    • 277 user accounts, 61 distribution lists, and 59 shared (resource) accounts were migrated
    • 146 RUL member participated in 9 hands-on training sessions conducted by Comparex and IIS (and paid for by the Rutgers Office of Information Technology)
    • 227 support requests have been completed since August 1
    • RUL retirees are also getting help migrating to ScarletMail, but that is a slower process and we respect their schedules
    • IIS was successful in arguing for reduced University requirements related to central management of personal mobile devices when accessing Rutgers Connect mail

    The migration went relatively smoothly, without any significant data loss, but there were inevitable glitches given the complex nature of the system and the four-way handling of the process: Microsoft as the owner of the platform, Rutgers as the customer (represented by OIT), Comparex as the University’s partner performing the actual migration, and, in RUL’s case, IIS as the local IT support unit, together with our UCS colleagues.

    We want to thank everyone for your patience and understanding as we have worked, and still keep working, to make the new tools perform efficiently for all. The Rutgers Connect environment is new to all of us, and there is still a lot to learn. IIS will transform the Rutgers Connect Migration Support website into an ongoing support site in the next couple of weeks. We will also try to prepare advanced training classes in the coming months.

    Since the Rutgers Connect/Office 365 platform lives in the Microsoft cloud, several features are difficult or impossible to adjust to our exact requirements. Rutgers is still working with the vendor to make changes, including the ability to set the default Sender address.

    All IIS members and UCSs added supporting the migration to their regular responsibilities, and they deserve our thanks. Tracey Meyer has been, and remains, our lead support person, and Kalaivani Anathan coordinated the migration process. We hope we have been able to help you all, and look forward to respond to any future question or support request.

    Please fill out a brief survey by Friday, October 14, and let us know how we did and what you are looking for, in terms of Rutgers Connect training and support, in the future.

     

    Save

    Save

    Save

    Save

    Save

  • Rutgers Joins the E-book Revolution

    vivaOn December 26, 2015, Izzy Stern tweeted: “Today is the day I found out that Rutgers doesn’t even have full ebrary access. So many sad faces.” As a graduate student in a major humanities department at Rutgers–New Brunswick, Izzy might have expected to use ebrary, one of the largest academic e-book resources, for her research in the winter break, but then had a rude awakening that day when she found out that it was not available at Rutgers, yet. So she went online and shared her frustration on Twitter with the entire world, which was totally understandable. As a matter of fact, the lack of access to e-books was a major source of complaint from our students and faculty about the library collections—hundreds of similar comments can be found in the results of the LibQual+ and previous Counting Opinions surveys. Here, I quoted only Izzy’s tweet because it is on the open web, but the problem she reported was a common one.

    What a difference a few months have made! Izzy and her fellow students may be glad to hear that the Libraries have made great strides to improve their access to e-books. Here are the major e-book resources that became available at Rutgers in the last several months:

    • Ebrary Academic Complete: a subscription-based collection of about 140 thousand e-books on all academic subjects.
    • Springer Nature frontlist e-book collections: 7,175 purchased e-books published in 2016 in STM (Science, Technology, and Medicine) and Social Sciences.
    • PALCI/EBSCO Demand-Driven Acquisitions Program: about 1,000 new e-books expected to be purchased during the academic year.

    In addition, we are evaluating a new PALCI/JSTOR e-book program. The program will purchase several hundred high-use titles and also provide academic year-round access to all the JSTOR e-books, a collection of over 40,000 high quality scholarly monographs from many of the major university presses.

    Over a decade ago, the Libraries began to acquire small, subject-based e-book collections. In 2014 we joined HathiTrust, which gives us access to several million out-of-copyright works. However, the availability of large, comprehensive collections of current e-books today represents a quantum leap or a sea change. Since the Rutgers community is celebrating the 250th anniversary of the University this year with a revolutionary spirit, it may be befitting to call this significant change a revolution, an e-book revolution.

    Stepping outside Rutgers, we will find that the e-book revolution is sweeping through the academic and research libraries in the region and the country. Actually, all of our major e-book acquisitions I mentioned earlier were made or will be made together with our partners in BTAA, PALCI, and VALE. This shows that Rutgers is adopting e-books at about the same pace as the majority of academic libraries. Being in the majority does not seem as glorious as playing the role of innovator or early adopter, but it is still an advantageous position, especially from a user perspective. Of course, if we moved any slower, we would have been left behind or characterized as reactionary by our peers.

    Peer pressure is not why we are joining the e-book revolution. It is for the good of our own community. Within our organizational context, there are many reasons why the large-scale shift to e-books is happening now:

    • The arrival of Krisellen as our University Librarian last year set a new direction for the Libraries.
    • E-books provide convenient, equal, and equitable access to the entire Rutgers community, which happens to be a mandate under the University’s RCM budgeting model as well as a core value of librarianship.
    • The loss of $1 million purchasing power in the collections budget in FY15, combined with the ongoing inflationary pressures, forces us to rethink our collection development priorities and strategies.
    • When adopted by instructors as textbooks, e-books can generate substantial savings for students struggling with high textbook costs (see one reported example at Rutgers), which is important in the context of a large public university.
    • The adoption of e-books can be part of the solution to our space shortage problem. As the Library Annex is full, our largest library locations are experiencing the stacks overflow problem at the same time that the universities want the Libraries to create more study space for a growing student population.

    Relating to the last point, I distinctly remember a scene from the Library Town Hall meeting in the spring—a brave staff member stood up and asked everyone: “Since there is really no space in the Libraries, why do we keep buying print books?” Does this remind you of that fabled child who cried “The emperor has no clothes!” or what? I believe that print books are not obsolete and probably won’t be for a long time. There are also situations when only print is available. But we do have to be mindful of our space constraints when making book purchase decisions.

    The e-book revolution is giving our community unprecedented access, but what it cannot do is bring a paradise to libraryland, not at Rutgers nor anywhere else. On the contrary, profound changes are always messy, chaotic, and uncomfortable and this one will be no exception. We have already started to face a new set of problems: how to make print available to the users who need it, in spite of our space and financial constraints; how to minimize the inevitable duplication between different e-book providers; and how to improve the discoverability of e-books, just to name a few. As we navigate these complex and difficult issues and find solutions, we will continuously improve our collections for the benefit of students like Izzy Stern.

    Save

    Save

  • Central Technical Services Participates in Big Ten Academic Alliance Cataloging Partnership

    A translation from one language to another graphicLibraries operate on the premise of cooperation and support. Technical services, in particular, embodies this ideal, as evidenced by international union catalogs such as OCLC’s WorldCat and programs like the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), which contribute catalog records that are created to specific standards that are shared with other libraries, ensuring an efficient, accurate, and timely workflow.

    One of the most challenging aspects of cataloging is handling foreign languages, especially when in-house expertise is lacking. Outsourcing materials is costly and a challenge when funding isn’t available. Hiring someone short-term to handle a gift isn’t always feasible or productive. The Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) recently instituted a partnership to solve this problem in a collaborative and cost effective way.

    Catalogers from Central Technical Services (CTS) are participating in the BTAA Cataloging Partnership, a collaboration between 12 of the 14 BTAA institutions’ libraries to cooperatively share cataloging expertise for languages and formats. The partnership, coordinated by The University of Chicago, enables participants to leverage expertise across their libraries and is effective for the next two years (July 1, 2016–June 3, 2018).

    Here’s a broad overview of how the partnership works and the benefits to Rutgers:

    Step One – take inventory, create a work plan

    The first step was to conduct an inventory of language expertise and needs, plus format expertise and needs. A spreadsheet with this information was compiled that includes a proposed work plan that details which institutions will handle what work. Rutgers will contribute expertise in Hungarian, Polish, and Hindi, as well as music scores.

    A photo of books packaged for translation.
    Source: https://sites.psu.edu/librarynews/2016/08/01/big-ten-academic-alliance-cataloging-partnership-formed/

    Step Two – develop a work flow

    Materials cataloged for the partnership are sent via the BTAA’s Uborrow interlibrary loan program to hold down costs. All resources are marked by a purple band that stays on them until they are cataloged and returned to the owning institution. Cataloging can be done either using Resource Description and Access (RDA), the prevailing cataloging standard, or AACR2 (RDA’s predecessor). Materials will receive copy cataloging or original cataloging treatment, and all work is done using OCLC’s Connexion cataloging client. Catalogers will follow the BIBCO* Standard Record (BSR), which emphasizes access points over description. Participating libraries are required to commit to a minimum of ten hours of cataloging per month (ten hours per institution, not ten hours per cataloger).

    Step Three – stay in touch and assess

    A discussion list has been established for the heads of technical services at each participating institution, and there is a monthly conference call to discuss progress, concerns, etc. Statistics are submitted online monthly via a Google documents form and include language, format, number of titles cataloged (titles, not volumes, are counted), and any anomalies encountered while cataloging.

    Outcomes

    Thanks to this collaborative program, we will be able to catalog dozens of foreign language publications, exposing these valuable resources and making them discoverable. We have already sent Persian and Hebrew books to Maryland, Belarussian books to Northwestern, and Greek books to the University of Minnesota. Michigan will catalog 130 Arabic books and 72 serials for Rutgers later in 2016.

    We are also providing cataloging for many of our peer libraries. To date, Rutgers is cataloging 32 music scores for the University of Chicago and 25 Hungarian books from the University of Illinois. Rutgers will also receive 100 Polish books to catalog from Michigan and Hindi books from Northwestern.

    Roman Frackowski, Bela Gupta, Julianna (Kati) Ritter, and Catherine Sauceda are providing cataloging for Rutgers and Mary Beth Weber is Rutgers’ point person for the partnership. If you have questions about this program or the materials that are being processed, please contact Mary Beth.

     

    *BIBCO is a program within the PCC that contributes high quality bibliographic records for books.

    Save

  • 200 Coins Added to the Roman Coins Project over the Summer

    The Roman Coins project is a collaborative effort to bring the Rutgers’ Ernst Badian Collection of Roman Republican Coins fully into the digital realm and to contextualize its 1200+ items in such a way that students, researchers, and a broad section of the public can readily understand the general patterns of development in Roman money during its first 250 years.

    coin
    Aureus – Sydenham 1153 – Crawford 491/1a. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7282/T31N82ZC

    The collection holds many coins that hold particular historic, economic, or artistic interest and is one of the largest of its type in North America. However, for a variety of reasons, the coins are not readily consulted in person. In order to make them broadly accessible for study and teaching, the Classics Department and Rutgers University Libraries are working together to create a web-based public portal and archive.

    This summer with additional funding from the Classics Department and the dedicated efforts of three summer part-time employees, we were able to add another 200 coins to the portal, bringing the total to some 700 coins.

    The portal features multi-faceted display of high-resolution images of individual coins and metadata specifically designed to render ancient numismatics comprehensible to non-specialists, while offering experts much in the way of original and unpublished research.

    High-resolution digital imaging available in the Digital Curation Research Center was used to capture archival and presentation images for each coin in a format called Pyramid Tiff (or ptiff) that allows us to represent the same image at different spatial resolutions. This feature was developed for RUcore and is useful for viewing other formats such as maps.

    To see ptiff in action, click on “view slideshow” below the coin image at https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/47436/. Use the buttons to pan, zoom, and rotate the image. These are truly beautiful artifacts and the ptiff technology allows users to explore them like never before.

    The user experience is further enhanced by specialized metadata detailing the legends and images found on the coins and newly implemented faceted browsing. Faceted browsing is available at the Coins portal where users can narrow searches by denomination, material, time period, moneyer, subject, and method.

    To complete the digitization of the Badian collection, professor Corey Brennan (Classics Department) will apply for another grant from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation. These additional funds will enable us to image and ingest the remaining 500 coins into the RUcore portal. Professor Brennan will also use the Coins portal in a graduate seminar this Fall.

     

    Save

    Save

    Save

    Save

    Save

    Save

  • New Brunswick Welcome Days

    The New Brunswick Libraries hosted several events to welcome students to the new semester, as part of the campus-wide Welcome Days activities, which are organized by New Student Orientation and Family Programs (a division of Student Affairs).

    This year, staff and librarians at the Mathematical Sciences and Physics Library in Hill Center challenged students with a giant tumbling tower, while the Library of Science and Medicine offered free snacks and science puzzles. At the Alexander Library, students enjoyed cookies and the chance to spin a wheel for prizes after successfully answering library trivia. Kilmer Library offered carts of granola bars and other treats popcorn was handed out at the steps of the Art Library on College Avenue, and the Douglass Library offered students a much-appreciated coffee/cookie break.

    All of these activities were made possible through the annual Senior Class gift, which is offered in appreciation to the library for hosting the wildly popular ClubAlex dance. The Undergraduate Experience Team sends a HUGE thank you to all of the staff and librarians who made these events possible and helped to create a warm welcoming atmosphere at the libraries.

  • Alexander Library Will Host New Jersey Book Arts on November 4, 2016

    Slicing The Air Carved Board Book, Asha Ganpat
    Slicing The Air Carved Board Book, Asha Ganpat

     We take pleasure in announcing the 22nd annual New Jersey Book Arts Symposium. “From Here to . . . There: Concept and Technique in Artists’ Books,” will be held on November 4th, 2016, at the Alexander Library.

    The full day program might be described as a carnivalesque,  multi-media extravaganza for everyone curious about the field of artists’ books, including students, scholars, artists, librarians, writers, musicians, administrators, procrastinators, cowboys and farmers, fanboys and fangirls, private citizens, as well as the general public.

    The program for “From Here to . . . There” is the most ambitious we–by which I mean the New Jersey Book Arts Committee–have ever planned in New Brunswick, consisting of brief illustrated presentations by nine accomplished artists, two morning workshops open to all attendees, an artists’ book registry organized by one of two artists-in-residence, two lunchtime readings by artist/writers, a book arts jam for everyone to show off, sell, barter, or donate their own book fabrications, an open mic for cultural announcements about ongoing or upcoming events (exhibitions, workshops, classes, projects, solo and collaborative performances) broadly pertinent to the field of book arts and artists’ books in New Jersey and environs, and a pop-up exhibit featuring examples of work by all participating artists. And there’s food!

    All are welcome – students are free; discounted registration for staff and faculty.

    See http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rulib/spcol/bookarts/symp22.html for details.

    Save

    Save

    Save

    Save

  • Transforming the Way We Work at Rutgers

    cornertstoneThe new administrative information systems under Cornerstone are scheduled to go live over the next week. Cornerstone is the University’s strategic approach to unify, upgrade, and streamline its administrative information systems for Finance, Human Resources and Payroll, Procurement, etc. Upgrading and improving these systems will significantly improve how we work and collaborate across the university. These projects are also particularly exciting to the library because they will enable all of our units to finally utilize the same systems for administrative functions.

    Be on the look-out for future announcements about process updates and training opportunities related to this implementation. If you have any questions about how the new systems may or may not impact you, please see your local business staff.

    Save