Rutgers Future Scholars use Legos at the Art Library to learn about teamwork and libraries. Photo credit: Megan Lotts.
The Rutgers Future Scholars program places rising High School juniors in an internship for one week during the summer. This summer, the New Brunswick Libraries hosted two internships. Ryan Womack hosted 5 students and worked with them on Big Data, and Jill Nathanson hosted 5 students working on gamification.
For those unfamiliar with the Rutgers Future Scholars Program, here is the description from its website:
The goal of the Rutgers Future Scholars program is to increase the numbers of academically ambitious high school graduates who come from less-advantaged communities, inspire and prepare them meet the standards to be admitted to colleges and universities, and then provide tuition funding to those who are admitted and choose to attend Rutgers University.
In addition to working on their respective projects, the interns were provided an overview of the Libraries and had an opportunity to meet a variety of faculty and staff. Snack breaks were hosted each day by librarians, access services staff, and the communications team. The interns also traveled to the Art Library one day to participate in using Legos to learn about teamwork and libraries.
The students working with Jill Nathanson created an event for transfer students. The challenge was to create an event that reinforced the library instruction transfer students received in their library sessions while also making it fun and giving them an opportunity to interact with other transfer students. The students worked together to create a team based activity that will be used this fall at the Alexander Library.
The students working with Ryan Womack explored data science with R, working through exercises on data wrangling, data analysis, and data visualization using the R open source statistical software environment. By working with real-world College Scorecard data, the students gained understanding of the challenges and possibilities of working with live, raw data sources.
On July 25, the office of research and economic development announced the impending launch of the Research Administration and Proposal Submission System (RAPSS) Phase II on August 8. The text below is taken directly from that announcement. As this system is implemented, our ability to work in an informal manner will be eliminated. In order to successfully submit a grant, we must follow the correct RAPSS process. If you have any questions about RAPSS and how it applies to your work at the Libraries, please bring those questions to your director or AUL.
What you need to know:
Faculty and staff need to complete training on the new system before it goes live.
On August 8, RAPSS will become mandatory for all new submissions of research proposals, corporate contracts, and associated items. Paper submissions will no longer be possible.
Information about RAPSS user training and the schedule of training sessions are posted here.
Zara Wilkinson provides information about the Libraries to new students at Raptor Welcome.
Faculty and staff across the entire system of libraries at Rutgers University participated in numerous events over the summer to welcome students to the campus.
The Paul Robeson Library is a longtime participant in Raptor Welcome, a fun and interactive orientation program for first-year and transfer students at Rutgers University-Camden. Raptor Welcome includes a full day of programming and a campus information fair with over 80 tables representing university departments, student support services, and student organizations. Robeson will host a table at the event, welcoming over 700 new students with information, candy, and giveaways. As a result of the Bridging the Gap financial aid program, Rutgers-Camden is expecting the biggest incoming class it has ever had!
In addition to Raptor Welcome, Robeson participates in orientation programs for graduate students, teaching assistants, international students, and resident assistants. This year, library faculty and staff are also looking forward to being part of Rutgers-Camden’s brand new Raptor Passport Program, which is designed as an extra-curricular first-year experience with helpful workshops, social events, and the potential to earn prizes.
As hosts of the fair, the New Brunswick libraries get a prime spot at the front of the space. Giveaways include pens, highlighters, post-it pads, water bottles, and sunglasses. We also distribute informational flyers on undergraduate services and special collections.
Over the summer, the New Brunswick Libraries hosted the resource table fair for new and transfer students for the second year at Kilmer Library. There were 22 sessions, which were attended by around 4000 or so students and families. The libraries engaged participants with interesting facts about library services and facilities, as well as popular giveaways, such as sunglasses and water bottles.
This event was staffed by library faculty and staff who provide students information about printing, library hours and facilities, technology, and getting research help.
This fall, the New Brunswick Libraries is distributing a special mystery gift to new students who visit Alexander Library or Kilmer Library on the first day of classes, September 6. To promote this giveaway, flyers will be posted in first-year dorm common areas and the communications department will run a social media campaign. Hopefully this encourages more students to stop in and say “hi.”
While we don’t have specifics just yet, Dana Library also participated in numerous student welcome days at Rutgers University-Newark. They distributed goodies and had a special brochure with information about Dana Library to distribute.
Click to enlarge. Photo credit: Michael Joseph, Rutgers University Libraries.
In preparing a pop-up exhibition for the Northeast Victorian Studies Conference in April, we turned up a previously unknown and unrecorded letter from Charles Dickens bound into one of the Libraries’ books. Written by Dickens on 24 November 1849 to the Reverend John Dufton, the 3 p. letter responds to Dufton’s pamphlet, The Prison and the School: a Letter to Lord John Russell, M.P. (London: John W. Parker, 1848). Dickens writes warmly in support of the pamphlet, though he registers a disagreement with Dufton’s apparent enthusiasm for the “reformatory influences” of the new “model prisons,” noting, with a Dickensian touch, that the reformatory spirit cannot “[survive] the unnatural air of the solitary cell.”
Penal reform was a complex and pressing topic, then as now. The skepticism of the reforming capacities of prison Dickens shared with Dufton anticipates his 1850 essay “Pet Prisoners,” as well as David’s cynical views of the “model prison” in chapter 61 of David Copperfield, which Dickens would begin writing in 1849. Despite their disagreement on what Dickens calls a “momentous”—and Phillip Collins in Dickens and Crime (1968) a “blood-heating”—issue, Dickens concludes his letter on amiable terms by inviting Dufton to visit him in London. Quite familiarly, he invites himself to visit Dufton: “if I should find myself near Ashford as I generally do, sometime in the autumn I shall make bold to remind you for a few minutes, of our correspondence.” No such visit has been recorded.
Dickens thought well enough of Dufton’s pamphlet to keep and annotate it, and it has survived into our time. Regrettably, however, it is currently unavailable to scholars. In 2010, it was sold by Henry Sothern Limited to a private collector in Switzerland (see Piccadilly Notes 56 [2010] item 100, no. 11). [i]
Click to enlarge. Photo credit: Michael Joseph, Rutgers University Libraries.
Dickens and Dufton were not strangers. Elsewhere in the volume housing the Dickens letter (noted below) is a manuscript note, dated 1846, from George Cruikshank to Dufton, written on behalf of Dickens and the Committee of the Ashford Mechanics’ Institution, thanking Dufton for sending a lecture, as requested.
The letter is captioned “Devonshire Terrace.” Dickens lived at 1 Devonshire Terrace (now 15-17 Marylebone Road, Marylebone), near Regent’s Park, from December 1939–1851.
John Dufton was rector of Warehorne, in the Ashford Borough of Kent and the author of other ephemeral publications including National Education, What it is and What it Should be (1848).
The letter has escaped detection because it was all but buried within an extra-illustrated copy of Blanchard Jerrold’s Life of George Cruikshank (1882). As Ron Becker discovered in a search of the archives of the Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries, Don Sinclair recorded the acquisition of the volume in 1956:
Click to enlarge. Photo credit: Michael Joseph, Rutgers University Libraries.
Without doubt the most striking single gift is that of the Class of 1933, which had presented earlier an extra-illustrated set of Benjamin West material. The present gift, preserved in the same form, is the Jesse Metcalf collection of George Cruikshank prints and manuscripts. It is interleaved in a first edition of Blanchard Jerrold’s Life of George Cruikshank (1882), published originally in two octavo volumes, here expanded to seven gilt-edged, large folio volumes
bound in scarlet crushed Levant morocco. The items have not been counted, but a careful estimate places the number of prints at nearly a thousand, with perhaps six dozen manuscript letters. Virtually all types of Cruikshank’s artistic work are represented (oil paintings excluded): etchings, some in color, woodcuts, at least one original watercolor, etc.; caricatures, book illustrations for Dickens and others. His well-known Temperance series, The Bottle (1847) and The Drunkard’s Children (1848), are present. The first volume also contains his famous Specimen of a Bank Note—not to be imitated (1818), a bitter, effective caricature inspired by the hanging of several women convicted of passing counterfeit notes. Engraved in banknote style, it shows eleven hooded figures hanging by the neck, and other macabre decorations. (19:2)
George Cruikshank (1792–1878) was an important caricaturist, illustrator, and print-maker, perhaps best known now for his illustrations of Sketches by Boz (1836) and Oliver Twist (1838). In George Cruikshank, Life, Times and Art: Volume 1, 1792–1835, Robert E. Patton notes that Ruskin thought him second only to Rembrandt in etching (8). “He infused his pictures with a humor at times bawdy, crude, sentimental, inconsequent, grotesque, bathetic, or pathetic. Like Dickens, to whom he was frequently compared, he was both a ‘special correspondent to posterity,’ focusing a journalist’s eye on the rapidly changing world around him, and a visionary humanist, outraged by injustice, greed, and folly, sympathetic to the defenseless and neglected,moralistic toward those who abused their power, their prerogatives, their neighbors, or their bodies.” (8)
Michael Joseph
Kevin Mulcahy
[i] Andrew McGeachin, e-mail message to M. Joseph, March 31, 2016.
Like most other people, I cringe at the very thought that the fall semester is only a month away. Didn’t the summer just start? Where did all the time go? Why couldn’t we have a summer that is all year long? Oh well, such is life. But here is the good news, if there is good news in contemplating that the summer days are numbered: in September when tens of thousands of students return to or come to Rutgers for the first time, the Libraries will have a better collection of information resources waiting for them.
Cover of the May 1917 issue. (American Vogue) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vogue,_portada_de_mayo_de_1917.jpg
Fiscal Year 2016 that ended on June 30 started off as a very challenging year for collection development, due to the loss of about $1 million of purchasing power in the collections budget in the previous year. Thanks to the strong support and guidance from the new Libraries administration and the tireless work of all the colleagues involved in collection development, we have more or less turned a corner. The University Librarian’s Report from the July issue of the newsletter includes a summary of major acquisitions that the Libraries made in FY16. Additionally, at the end of FY16 we purchased the British Periodicals collections and Vogue archive, two valuable humanities resources that have been on our wish list for a very long time. It is fair to say that, since last year, the Libraries have been making considerable progress to improve access to all kinds of scholarly resources (online journals, e-books, and primary sources) that the entire Rutgers community can benefit from.
Our collection development program is continuing the upward trend that began last year. Since July 1, which is when the new fiscal year started, we have been focusing on acquiring and upgrading resources essential to the education mission of the University, in anticipation of the beginning of the new academic year. These new resources include:
ProQuest ebrary Academic Complete: a collection of about 140,000 current scholarly e-books on all academic subjects.
Springer Nature STM (Science, Technology, and Medicine) and social sciences frontlist e-books: over 7000 newly published titles from the largest STM e-book publisher, paid for with a funding increase from the universities.
Academic Video Online: Premium (AVON): over 50,000 videos on Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Science & Engineering, and Health Sciences topics from many reputable producers such as BBC and PBS.
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) Global: 1.7 million full-text dissertations and theses from both American and international institutions.
Clinical resources: In the spring, the Libraries received a funding increase from the universities for five new clinical resources. UpToDate and Bates’ Visual Guide are already available. VisualDx, DynaMed Plus, and JAMA Evidence will be added soon.
Some of the resources are available now and others will be available later in the fiscal year. We are confident that these new resources will greatly enhance the Libraries’ support for undergraduate, graduate, and medical education at Rutgers. Yes, even when summer is ending, there will be a lot to look forward to in the fall!
Spring Sutras, an art installation by Karen Guancione that features thousands of recycled catalog cards from Rutgers libraries, officially launched on June 2 and is on display through the fall at Dana Library. The artist statement, remarks, and acknowledgments below are mounted on a poster accompanying the exhibition. Congratulations to all Libraries faculty and staff who helped make this installation a success!
Spring Sutras
Artist Statement
“The Sanskrit word sutra literally means a thread, string or line that holds things together. It derives from the root siv- (to sew), and is related to suere in Latin, sew in English, and the medical term suture. It refers to Hindu or Buddhist texts, sometimes described as threads of wisdom or knowledge strung together.” (Wikipedia 2013)
Spring Sutras, credit: Ed Berger
Sutra began in 2013 when I was caring for my ninety year old mother who suffered with severe dementia. Normally, it takes months and marathon days of work to make an installation for a public space, but I could not leave my mother’s living room; I was well into an endless, exhausting, all-consuming caregiving hell. With the help of Rutgers University librarians I obtained boxes and boxes of the long discarded and forgotten hand-typed catalogue cards that I wanted to recycle for an installation. While caregiving around the clock in the house where my mother had lived for sixty-five years, I was able to work near her and string together the thousands of pieces of paper—a repetitive, meditative act that enabled me to continue making art. I named the installation Sutra. Caregiving is a process that requires compassion and, like art, sometimes tests the limits of patience and endurance. As I sewed, I was reminded of the piecing together of segments of all people’s lives, who, depending on individual or social circumstance, may themselves become long discarded and forgotten. The first installation using catalogue cards was created for the Noyes Museum and prominently displayed from 2013 to 2015.
In 2016 with the support of Rutgers University Libraries and Rutgers-Newark I was invited to create Spring Sutras, a site-specific installation in the John Cotton Dana Library. The public art project celebrates the nation’s largest and most varied collection of Japanese cherry trees in Newark’s Branch Brook Park and commemorates the city’s 350th anniversary. Thousands of recycled catalogue cards from Rutgers Libraries and hundreds of faux flowers were hand-sewn and suspended beneath a two-story-high skylight and throughout the fourth-floor space, which is also home to the Institute of Jazz Studies. Viewers are literally surrounded and touched by pieces of the hanging installation; the large-scale work transforms an entire area of the Dana Library.
In an age of digital information I have relished holding in hand the many singular pieces of paper that once spoke of a vast and impressive array of accumulated knowledge. The strung flower garlands celebrate new life and honor the old and departed.
Special thanks to librarians: Ann Watkins, Yoshiko Ishii, Michael Joseph and Grace Agnew for their help in procuring the cards from Dana Library, Alexander Library, Special Collections and Rutgers Law Library.
Karen Guancione
About the Artist
Karen Guancione has been awarded a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Artists and Communities Grant, four New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships, a Ford Foundation Grant, a Puffin Foundation Grant and an Arts and Culture Exhibition Grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Her work has been exhibited worldwide and is in numerous public and private collections. Her interdisciplinary art includes large scale installations, public art projects, performance, sculpture, printmaking, papermaking, bookarts and video. She has curated many exhibitions, is an adjunct professor of art at the State University of New York (SUNY Purchase), Montclair State University and Middlesex County College and has been a visiting artist and lecturer at Pratt Institute, Rutgers University and numerous schools and institutions in the United States and abroad. For over a decade she has served as artistic director / guest curator of the annual New Jersey Book Arts Symposium and Exhibition. She is the first time recipient of the Erena Rae Award for Art and Social Justice. She collaborated on the critically acclaimed production of Cuatro Corridos, a multidisciplinary chamber opera about human trafficking that has been continually traveling throughout the USA and Mexico since 2013. She has just received a 2016 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts for Works on Paper.
A Note on the Art of Karen Guancione
An artist, educator, curator, and longtime Artistic Director of The New Jersey Book Arts Symposium, Karen Guancione has been making books for over fifty years, and collaborating with artists and workers all over the world on installations that adapt traditional book making techniques. Spring Sutras continues a thread of her work that investigates the seam between art and value, here working with discarded catalog cards and plastic flowers to reach toward a vision of ecstatic renewal. Intriguingly, within the work’s central assemblage, a mobile hung from the Dana Library atrium, the catalog cards suspended like leaves or stars have been assembled in roughly alphabetical order, preserving and transforming not only the librarian’s tools of organization, but the original library vision: it, too, changes and becomes part of what is renewed and endures.
Michael Joseph
Acknowledgments
The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of Rutgers University Libraries and its staff for making this exhibition possible. This project was generously funded through a Rutgers-Newark Cultural Programming grant. Special thanks to Consuella Askew, Director, John Cotton Dana Library and Ann Watkins, Dana Arts Coordinator and Librarian for their administrative support and cultural commitment. A special note of appreciation to Jeff Baxter and Rutgers Physical Plant for expert installation assistance, Bob Nahory for technical advice, Bruce and Beverly Riccitelli for beautiful photography, Tad Hershorn for printing expertise, Mark Papianni and Yoshiko Ishii for lending a hand during installation, Michael Joseph for insightful writing and Roseann Reilly for help and comradery during many long sewing sessions.
Heartfelt thanks to those who have contibuted to this project in many ways: Grace Agnew, Mary Apikos, Matt Badessa, Isaiah Beard, Donny Bruno, Asha Ganpat, Gary Guancione, Angela Hidalgo, Liz Koepplinger, Susan Narucki, Jessica Pellien, Suzanne Reiman, Carol Van Savage, Lauren Vitiello and Sally Willowbee. Sincere thanks to the skillful Rutgers-Newark Physical Plant workers: Tony Sharo, Rob Pellicone, Bob Conklin and Dave Barbara, the Dana Library Custodial staff, and Rugers-Newark Campus Security officers.
Cabinet recently approved a new set of guidelines for the use of photography at the Libraries. These guidelines endorse and support the guidelines for the university as a whole, but also add a few tweaks specifically for the Libraries. If you are photographing events, people, or spaces of the Libraries, it is important that you familiarize yourself with thees guidelines and obtain all the necessary model releases. Three groups of subjects require special attention: children, Rutgers student athletes, and medical patients.
Also, if you are in the position of having your photograph regularly taken at Library events and wish to avoid having to sign a new release each time, we have made available an extended model release for library faculty and staff only. If you would like to complete this one-time form, please right click and download the Extended Model Release Template RUL Faculty and Staff only (also available on the new central drive: T:\CENTRAL\Procedures and Resources\Communications\model releases for photography), complete, sign, and return to the communications department.
The guidelines also cover how to handle videotaping and photographing events. If you are taking photos that might be useful to your colleagues or for publication on our website or in our print materials, please be sure to upload the photos and scanned copies of the signed model releases to the Photos and Media network location, too.
There is a lot of confusion about when model releases are necessary. Some situations are clear–as when you are taking a photo of a single person or a group of people–but other scenarios aren’t as obvious. A guiding mantra is that if you want to identify someone in the written caption for the photography, you will need a model release. Hopefully the examples below will help clarify how to deal with different types of situations.
Model Release Examples (arrows require model release, circles are optional depending on circumstance)
No photo release would be necessary for this type of group photo as everyone is facing away.
Before photographing this group, the photographer should announce that s/he is taking a photograph and provide time for people to move out of the frame if necessary.
You would not need a photo release for a photo like this of a subject looking away and not identifiable.
Even though you might be able to pick out and identify individuals because you know them, this scene would not require any photo releases as there is no “subject” per se.
However, there should be a notice in the program and a sign at the entrance indicating photography will take place and to notify the event staff if they don’t want to be included.
You would get a model release from the gentleman in the foreground of the photo, but not from the others in the room. You would also need a model release if you want to mention the teacher by name.
In a photo like this, you would need releases from the library staff behind the table, but not from the standing person. However, this is a case, where you would likely want the name of the person for the caption, in which case you would need a release.
The primary subject of the three is the man facing the camera. Even though the man in the back is blurred and facing sideways—a model release is required. The woman is facing away so a release is not required. If you planned to mention their names in the caption, then you would need model releases.
This is a scenario where you would want to identify all subjects in the caption. So, even though only two people are identifiable and require a model release, you would want to get model releases from all five.
A straightforward photograph that requires model releases even if these individuals work at the library or have given permission to use photographs on another occasion.
Image credit: Ingfbruno – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27955753
The Libraries now have a Central drive (T:\CENTRAL) where shared items of interest to all areas of the Libraries can be stored. The plan is to eventually store shared resources, information, procedures, and manuals in this location. Currently, it contains folders for Assessments, Collection Development and Management, Communications and Marketing, Photos and Media, Procedures and Resources, and Visual Identity, but more folders will be added as needed. Some of the folders are read-only, while others like Photos and Media are available to all for adding materials.
Please take some time to peruse the folders:
Jeanne Boyle recently sent an invitation to view the LibQUAL+ survey results now stored in the Assessments folder.
Under Visual Identity, you will find resources that are useful if you are making flyers, advertisements, or website graphics, such as the colors, fonts, logos, and letterheads that are approved by University Communications and Marketing.
Photos and Media is a one-stop place to find images of our spaces, our events, and faculty & staff.
The communications department has also moved their folders from the ALEX drive to Central location Communications and Marketing.
Procedures and Resources currently holds the recent communications policies for photography and fielding requests to photograph in the Libraries, but will be populated with other materials, procedures, and FAQs in the future.
These changes are partly philosophical–these are resources we all share and shouldn’t be housed on one of the unit server locations–but they are also intended to surface important materials and provide a single authoritative place to look for procedural information and guidance. If you have feedback, suggestions for how to further improve this shared drive, or materials you would like added to this drive, please speak with your unit director or supervisor.
The Carey Library has been recently redesigned with comfortable seating, functional work spaces, bright lighting, and fun colors.
On June 8th, the James B. Carey Library at School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) hosted librarians from the Martin P. Catherwood Library of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR). As part of a “Liaison Exchange Travel Award” program, Suzanne Cohen, collection development librarian, and Aliqae Geraci, ILR research librarian, were given the opportunity to visit liaison universities in order to connect with and learn from institutions with similar programs and public mission. The program focused on liaison roles in the areas of collection development, reference, instruction, outreach services, scholarly communication, and assessment.
The agenda for the day consisted of a tour of the Labor Education Center on the Cook Campus, followed by lengthy discussions covering Carey Library projects, the structure of the Rutgers University Libraries, and information about the library’s collection development, reference, and instruction services. Meetings were arranged to provide more insight on Carey Library outreach services with SMLR’s director of undergraduate & master’s programs in labor education and employment relations, with SMLR’s career management specialist, and with the director of assessment, research, and writing support from Rutgers University. These key positions were selected in order to showcase the Carey Library’s involvement in student and faculty success, career services, and the writing centers.
Suzanne summarized the Cornell visit stating that “We were excited to visit the James B. Carey Library, which has many parallels to the Martin P. Catherwood Library at Cornell University’s ILR School. Both libraries serve the academic missions of schools studying and teaching management and labor relations; both have faculty, staff, and students distributed across multiple locations; and both have public missions, serving labor relations and human resource management professionals, working people, employers and government agencies of their states. We came away from our visit with a lot of great ideas related to library spaces, services, and potential partnerships with other school/library departments. One of the most important outcomes was developing a stronger relationship with Julie. As there are fewer librarians specializing in the subject areas served by our libraries, it is more important than ever that we create a network of ILR information professionals. It was a great day!”
Overall, the visit was a success. It not only built a stronger relationship between the James B. Carey Library and the Catherwood Library, but opened the lines of communication between the two libraries and sparked many new ideas for future collaboration. A standing invitation to visit Ithaca was offered, which I will gladly take advantage of.
With Gabryel Smith, Assistant Archivist at NY Philharmonic Archive, Lincoln Center
With Gino Francesconi, Director of Archives and the Rose Museum at Carnegie Hall
The fellows and Angela Lawrence with Gino Francesconi, Carnegie Hall
The three Fellows with Duke Ellington’s piano at the Jazz Museum in Harlem
ith archivist Matt Snyder at the New York Public Library Services Center, Queens
Archivist Ricky Riccardi shares some treasures at the Louis Armstrong Archive, Queens College
Treshani, Brad, and Veronica holdi Louis’ horns as Ricky Riccardi and Satchmo himself look on.
With Kathy Kauhl, Archivist at the Essex County Parks Archive.
The fellows during Q&A with Rutgers University Library administrators
Brad, Veronica, and Treshani with Joanne Hill and the Andrew Hill Collection.
The Institute of Jazz Studies Archival Fellowship Program was established in 2011 to support archival career development, as well as to promote diversity in the archival field. Each year, three Fellows are selected from among dozens of applicants, who are either currently enrolled in, or recent graduates of, an MLIS program, have a special interest in jazz and or African American culture, and aspire to careers as archivists. Fellows receive a stipend to cover travel, hotel, and miscellaneous expenses. The Fellowship Program is funded by longtime IJS supporter John Van Rens.
The Fellows spend two weeks on campus working closely with IJS archivists and staff. Participants gain hands-on experience processing one of the Institute’s multi-faceted collections and preparing a related digital project that can be shared with colleagues and prospective employers. There are also seminars with RUL as well as Newark campus administrators, who provide an overview of Rutgers-Newark as the nation’s most diverse university, as well as role of an archive within an urban university library. The Program also involves two days of visits to other area archives and institutions, which have included the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library Archival Processing Center, the Louis Armstrong House Museum and Archive, the Jazz Museum in Harlem, the Carnegie Hall Archive, and the New York Philharmonic Archive at Lincoln Center. There are also several social gatherings with IJS staff and area librarians and archivists.
This year’s fellows were Veronica Johnson (MLIS student at Wayne State Univ.), Treshani Perera (MLIS student at Univ. of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), and Brad San Martin (MLIS student at Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), who were on campus from June 6 to June 17. In collaboration with IJS archivists Elizabeth Surles, Angela Lawrence, and Tad Hershorn, and Digital Humanities Librarian Krista White, they processed the collection of pianist/composer and NEA Jazz Master Andrew Hill (1931-2007). Hill as both player and composer was a unique figure, who forged an original style that was at once part of the jazz tradition while extending its boundaries. On the last day of the fellowship program, Hill’s widow, Joanne, and donor of the collection, visited IJS to meet with the Fellows and to examine the newly processed collection she had donated as well as to view digital presentations by the fellows covering selected aspects of her husband’s distinguished career.
Veronica Johnson, photo by Ed Berger.
VERONICA JOHNSON:
Completing the IJS fellowship at Rutgers was an amazing experience and one that I will forever be grateful for. I learned so much about processing and the steps it takes to make a collection available to users. Working on the Andrew Hill Collection was great, and it really gave me the opportunity to process a larger collection, which I had never done before. I learned a lot about Hill and quickly became a fan of his work, which was very innovative. My favorite part of the program was learning about EAD and being able to create a finding aid using Oxygen. EAD was an area I did not have much experience in outside of school, so having Elizabeth and Angela show me how to use the software and create this awesome finding aid for the collection was very enlightening. I also really enjoyed visiting the other archives like the Jazz Museum of Harlem and the New York Philharmonic in order to see how other archives both large and small operate. The IJS Fellows program really gives graduate students the opportunity to be archivists for two weeks and get a real sense of the day to day tasks of the profession. The IJS staff is awesome and really made me feel welcome and a part of the team. I also developed some great friendships with the other fellows and am so thankful that I was able to take advantage of this great opportunity.
Treshani Perera, photo by Ed Berger.
TRESHANI PERERA:
I’m really thankful that I was chosen as a 2016 IJS Fellow. Throughout my two-week experience, I was so impressed with the work ethic and collegiality of the IJS staff, and their willingness to make every moment a teachable one during and outside of processing the collection. I was thrilled for the opportunity to process jazz pianist Andrew Hill’s collection, and discover his genius and creative thought captured in his music. The icing on the cake was meeting Mrs. Hill at the end of the experience, and talking to her about Mr. Hill as a musician and spouse. My favorite part of the experience was visiting music archives in the Greater New York area, and learning about how each archives does things differently. Throughout the two week internship, I was able to put into practice what I had learned in the classroom, and process the collection as a group, which was a unique experience. I’m truly grateful for this opportunity, and can honestly say that it was a transformative experience!
Brad San Martin, photo by Ed Berger.
BRAD SAN MARTIN:
The greatest strength of the Institute of Jazz Studies Fellowship was in the way it provided well-rounded insight into nearly all facets of an archives’ operations. While processing a collection at a fairly granular level (as we did with Andrew Hill’s papers) gave us invaluable experience in the most fundamental archivist tasks, our meetings and discussions with administrators, directors, historians, and even a donor offered much-needed perspective into archives role in the larger arts community – and the associated challenges entailed with maintaining and evolving that presence. It didn’t hurt that the people we met were all passionate, thoughtful, accomplished professionals who were willing to both share their time and speak candidly about the pleasures and pressures of the field. The two weeks flew by, and I’m sure that, when I look back, I’ll find my time at the IJS to have been a perfect (and much-needed) enrichment to my formal library and archive science studies.
