The Agenda - Faculty and Staff Newsletter

Category: Feature

  • 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.

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  • 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.

     

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • Predatory Publishing: Rutgers Alcohol Library in Conversation with Jeffrey Beall

    crocFaculty are inundated with email invitations to publish in scholarly journals or to serve on their editorial boards. Many of these solicitations are completely valid, but an increasing number of these journals are engaging in predatory publishing practices.

    Predatory publishing, a term coined by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian and associate professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, is an unwanted and undesirable side effect of the open access movement and Beall has become widely known as the “go-to guy” when it comes to checking the validity, authenticity, or value of these invitations.

    Beall maintains several resources that are great tools for promotion boards, hiring committees, and, as it turns out, librarians. The renowned Beall’s List of predatory publishers lists “potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly Open-access publishers,” on his Scholarly Open access blog. Additionally, Beall maintains a list of standalone journals and a list of criteria—covering everything from editors, staff, and business management to transparency, integrity, journal standards, and publishing practices—for identifying predatory Open-access publishers.

    The Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies (CAS) has been a frequent users of Beall’s list, since nationally and internationally recognized researchers at the Center are primary targets of invitations to participate in scholarly communication in various ways. Addiction science has been experiencing an influx of new journals and conferences, akin to health sciences.

    Judit Ward and William Bejarano have been monitoring this trend in the field at CAS and had the opportunity to interview Beall at the annual conference of the Substance Abuse Librarians & Information Specialists and the Association of Mental Health Librarians in May 2016 in Denver.

    In the July issue of The Agenda, we invited you to read part one of this interview in the Center of Alcohol Studies Information Services Newsletter, in which Beall explains how he became involved in the growing area of predatory publishing, discusses the most vulnerable groups in academia, and gives an update of the current situation. Part two, focusing on topics of greater interest for librarians, is now available in SALIS News. Beall advocates for educating users about not only predatory publishing, but also the various forms of open access and publishing standards, so that they can avoid the traps of predatory publishers.

    – RU Alcohol Library

     

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  • Michael Joseph’s Beautiful Books

    • Failing to Act Photo credit Nell Ytsma.

    In the July staff news, you may have noticed this announcement: “A poem of Michael Joseph‘s will be part of the Vispo Art Exhibition of poetry and art sponsored by the German state of Northrhine-Westphalia (NRW). The exhibition, scheduled for Spring 2017, will conclude in Burgau…” His brilliantly and beautifully conceived books are now a reality.

    Shown above in the slideshow are SPICA, a poem by Michael Joseph, Failing to Act, a collaborative artists’ book, and Dream Dirt, a book unlike any other. All three books were conceived and fabricated by Sarah Stengle.

     

    Details:

    SPICA
    Poem by Michael Joseph 2016
    Art by Sarah Stengle 2016
    Silkscreen on etched and drilled found glass autoclave windows with steel brass and neoprene rubber fittings.
    Edition of 2
    14 x 12 x 26 centimeters (height x depth x width)

    Failing to Act
    Collaborative artists’ book
    Four Poems: Michael Joseph 2016
    Book Art: Sarah Stengle 2016
    Twelve pages as follows: six turkish map-folded spreads, each containing text on one side.
    This book was typeset in Aldus and Aldus SC by Hermann Zapf, and printed on Crane Crest Natural White Cotton Wove. The endpapers are Rives Smoke Cover with Western Blot antibody test result films mounted with 3M 568 adhesive. The text appears inside mid-nineteenth century pale blue ledger-paper folded with a Turkish map-fold. The outer covers are sewn wool with printed pale celadon colored silk title labels applied. The covers are attached with waxed blue linen thread and vintage Erector Set hardware from the 1950’s.
    Edition of 8.

    Dream Dirt
    Text by Michael Joseph 2016
    Art by Sarah Stengle 2016
    A wooden train carrying two vials of dirt, 30 vials containing paper scrolls (28 short stories, 2 signatures).
    The text is available in a trade edition, titled Juvenile Fantasies and Innocent Dreams. The vials contain short stories about childhood and dirt, each one sentence in length, as well as an equivalent number of single-sentences critiques and responses to the stories. Two of the vials contain sterilized dirt from the past of the author and artist.

  • The Final Report on Latino Americans: 500 Years of History

    Latino Americans: 500 Years of History was made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.
    Latino Americans: 500 Years of History was made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.

    Rutgers University Libraries recently concluded the ALA-funded program Latino Americans: 500 Years of History. Over the course of a year, Rutgers and other scholars led 17 PBS film screening discussions about the experience of Latinos in New Jersey in collaboration with Rutgers University Libraries, the Nilsa L. Cruz-Perez Branch of the Camden County Library, New Brunswick Free Public Library, and the Newark Public Library.

    Beyond the film showings in Spanish and English, project partners offered exhibits, book talks, lectures, and special celebrations. Highlights include A Day of the Dead Celebration and Cinco de Mayo festivities in New Brunswick showcasing a variety of performances and children’s activities; a Cuban musical concert by renowned singer Gema Corredera; the exhibit “Beyond Exile: Cubans in New Jersey” at the Newark Public Library, including a keynote address by Lisando Pérez; and two separate exhibitions at the Rutgers Art Library, Ilya Genin’s “Photographs of Cuban Revolution 50 Years Later,” and “From Island to Ocean: Caribbean and Pacific Dialogues by Fidalis Buehler and Juana Valdes.”

    As project director Nancy Kranich notes in the final report on this initiative, this program allowed Rutgers University Libraries to become “a catalyst for bringing together scholars and organizations involved with the New Jersey Latino American experience and encouraging more attention to documenting it. The grant enabled us to take a more assertive role in building and strengthening relationships with local Latino communities and the scholars, organizations, and public libraries that interact with them.”

    Kranich also lists several other outcomes that may be of interest to our colleagues:

    • Several new items were added to Special Collections, including several leaflets of unpublished poetry by Newark poet Pablo Le Riverend, clippings of anti-Castro activities in Hudson County, Sarah Hirschman’s papers covering People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos.
    • The publisher and owner of Impacto, published in the 1960s, donated 99 issues of the publication to Rutgers University.
    • 15 Latino clubs are Rutgers are planning to learn how to organize and preserve their own records in conjunction with Rutgers University Libraries’ archivists.
    • Two possible books are in discussion: a history of Latinos in NJ and an anthology of unpublished documents about Latino migrant workers in NJ and the United States.
    • The New Brunswick Free Public Library and Rutgers University Libraries are discussing partnering again on another ALA public programming grant proposal.
    • A deeper understanding of the Latino collections in the state and increased participation in depositing scholarly works into our Rutgers Inclusion and Diversity Research Portal.

    For additional information about this program, please visit the project LibGuide

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  • Introducing Full Text Finder

    On August 18 the Libraries upgraded to Full Text Finder, EBSCO’s newest holdings and link management tool designed to replace its A-to-Z and LinkSource services, which are being phased out. A-to-Z is the product that powers the Libraries’ electronic journals search. LinkSource is the product that powers its link resolver service (locally known as “Get it @ R”). You may notice some changes to these interfaces. Below is a quick summary of what to expect.

    The new e-journals search interface is a little cleaner, better organized, and offers a variety of new features including:

    • Responsive autocomplete to facilitate known title searching
    • Discipline-specific browsing to help users identify titles in their subject area
    • Filters to refine results by subject, format, or publisher
    figure1
    Click to enlarge.

     

    The new link resolver menu has been streamlined to help users determine the availability of an item faster, more efficiently, and with less confusion. New features include:

    • Improved menu layout and design
    • Intuitive labels and icons
    • Real-time catalog lookup for print holdings
    • Fail-safe options in case of link resolver error
    figure2
    Click to enlarge.

    Please be sure to update any guides or tutorials that refer to these products. Links to the old A-to-Z Journals and Citation Linker pages have automatically been updated in LibGuides, but you may want to double check your guides just to be sure.

    As with any software migration, you may notice some irregularities as we work to resolve temporary glitches. If you have any questions or wish to report a technical problem, please contact serials@rutgers.libanswers.com.

    Special thanks to the Serials Team for their work migrating our holdings data as well as the Web Team for their help customizing the design of the interface.

  • Changes to the Rutgers University Photo Gallery Policy

    A recent policy change means that high resolution images from the Rutgers University Photo Gallery are now available free of charge for Rutgers projects.

    Douglass Library
    Douglass Library. Nick Romanenko/Rutgers University

    The gallery offers access to professional images of Rutgers buildings, faculty, staff, and students. Previously, low resolution images (72 dots per inch, suitable for projects such as PowerPoint presentations, email newsletters, and webpages) were available for free download, while high resolution images (300 dots per inch, suitable for print projects such as flyers, posters, and brochures) had to be purchased for $20 each. Now, however, because of changes due to RCM, the high resolution images are also available at no cost to the Rutgers community.

    Finding the perfect image for your project is as simple as following these three easy steps:

    1. Log in to the gallery using your NetID and password.
    2. Browse through the categories to identify a photo you like.
    3. For low resolution images, read and accept the terms and conditions to download the image immediately; or, for high resolution images, contact photo archivist Jane Hart with the file name and how you intend to use the photo.

    In the event that you can’t find an image you like in the gallery, you may request access to the University Communications and Marketing Photo Archive, which contains thousands of additional photos for your perusal. Contact Jane for access to the archive.

    For more information, visit University Communications and Marketing’s guide to finding photos.

     

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