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.
Making Rowan University and Camden County College Students Feel Welcome
Through a partnership agreement, Paul Robeson Library is now the campus library for Rowan University and Camden County College students. Bart Everts is the library liaison for these students and has started a new Facebook page to share information about their library privileges and resources. The agreement allows students to access the library, use library databases, and check out books using their student ID cards. Robeson also has computers reserved for their use.
Morroe Berger–Benny Carter Jazz Research Fund
Each year the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) awards up to ten grants of $1,000 each to assist jazz researchers. Half of the awards are designated for students in the Rutgers University-Newark Master’s Program in Jazz History and Research and half are awarded to scholars from other institutions or unaffiliated researchers to enable them to visit IJS in conjunction with their projects. To date, we have given more than 70 awards to scholars and students worldwide working in a variety of disciplines, including jazz history, musicology, bibliography, and discography.
Applications for the 2017 grants are due October 21, 2016. Awards will be announced by November 14.
“Homecoming! Some Highlights from the Library of J. Milton French” at Alexander Library
Homecoming! Some Highlights from the Library of J. Milton French is on display now in the Scholarly Communication Center at Alexander Library. This case exhibit features a selection of volumes recently donated to Rutgers by the family of J. Milton French (1895–1962), a Milton scholar and professor of English at the university from 1940 to 1960.
The books on display include rare first and early editions of works by John Harington, Richard Barckley, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, John Suckling, George Wither, William Wollaston, and John Milton.
New Brunswick Music Scene Symposium Planned for October 27, 2016
Save the date. Special Collections and University Archives will hold the next New Brunswick Music Scene Archive symposium on October 27, 6 p.m. in the Teleconference Lecture Hall at Alexander Library. Stay tuned for more information, including the participants. In the meantime, here’s a look back at the 2015 symposium, featuring a who’s who of New Jersey music (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/news/symposium-local-notables-inaugurate-new-brunswick-music-scene-archive).
Credit: Laura Anderson Barbata.
Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries Welcomes “Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations beyond Borders”
This fall, the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library will welcome the 2016-17 Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist Exhibition, Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations Beyond Borders. The exhibit contains selected highlights of textile, sculptural, 2-dimensional, and video works from the traveling exhibition Transcommunality.
“Peep Show: Books from the Art Library X Room” Exhibit at Rutgers Art Library
Megan Lotts has raided the X Room to put on a case display of beautiful, surprising, amusing, and impressive books.
Stop by to get a taste of the treasures that reside in the Rutgers Art Library’s archives.
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.
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
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
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.
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. 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:
Log in to the gallery using your NetID and password.
Browse through the categories to identify a photo you like.
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.
Rutgers University-Newark’s Honors Living-Learning Community (HLLC) is an initiative intended to go beyond high SAT scores or high school rankings. The goal is to identify and blend an international group of traditional and non-traditional students into a curriculum based on themes of “Local Citizenship in a Global World,” and focusing on academic, social, and personal development.
Among the targeted student populations are high school graduates, first-generation college students, transfer students, veterans, older students, General Education Development (GED) recipients, student parents, and financially independent students. Dana librarians will be important liaisons in building the effort, according to Bobbie Tipton, the library’s point person who recently met with Marta Esquilin, the associate dean of HLLC and assistant professor of professional practice. HLLC will be divided into “cohorts,” each containing about ten students, which may be mentored by a librarian. The curriculum will be a mixture of core classes specific to HLLC, as well as a capstone project, filled in by required classes to earn an undergraduate degree.
Among the areas of instruction librarians would provide to new and transfer students through workshops are finding their subject librarian; finding core databases in the subject area; using a citation manager; determining the correction citation style for the subject; and avoiding plagiarism.
“This is intended to be a holistic learning experience with a strong emphasis on social justice and community,” Tipton said. “It is definitely an expanded definition of ‘honors’ that goes beyond academic performance. The intention is to educate movers and shakers in social engagement.”
Mary Beth Weber won the ALCTS Slogal Contest for her slogan, “Creating the future, preserving the past.” This slogan will be used during the 60th anniversary celebration of ALCTS in 2017. In addition to bragging rights, Mary Beth also received a prize of registration for CE webinars valued at $350. Congratulations Mary Beth!
“Peep Show: Books from the Art Library X Room” Exhibit at Rutgers Art Library
Megan Lotts has raided the X Room to put on a case display of beautiful, surprising, amusing, and impressive books.
Stop by to get a taste of the treasures that reside in the Rutgers Art Library’s archives.
Location: Rutgers Art Library
It’s Getting Hot in Here
Late in July, America faced record temperatures outside and Smith Library in Newark was no exception. With the A/C out for several days, the librarians and staff had to come up with new ways to keep their cool. Here, a short haiku on the experience:
The books are burning!
Librarians are weeping…
The heat is too much.
– Sarah Jewell
Communications Tip – Using Rutgers Go to Shorten URLs
Want a short, trackable URL to use in an email or social media post? There are many URL shorteners on the market including goo.gl, bitly, and ow.ly, but go.rutgers.edu offers something the others can’t–an actual Rutgers URL to make your link appear official and trustworthy. This service allows Rutgers users to quickly and easily shorten a URL and track how many times that URL is viewed.
While I used the same shortened URL on both Facebook and Twitter, I could have created separate shortened URLs for each social media site to track the relative traffic. I did this for an earlier post about the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive, which allowed me to see the number of views on each platform (162 for Twitter, 7 for Facebook).
I highly recommend you try out go.rutgers.edu if you have not already done so.
–Jessica Pellien
New Brunswick Music Scene Symposium Planned for October 27, 2016
Save the date. Special Collections and University Archives will hold the next New Brunswick Music Scene Archive symposium on October 27, 6 p.m. in the Teleconference Lecture Hall at Alexander Library. Stay tuned for more information, including the participants. In the meantime, here’s a look back at the 2015 symposium, featuring a who’s who of New Jersey music (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/news/symposium-local-notables-inaugurate-new-brunswick-music-scene-archive).
Full Text Finder Training
This fall the Rutgers Libraries will be migrating 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”). Although the basic functionality of these tools has not changed much, we have taken the opportunity to introduce a few custom modifications that we hope will simplify the process of finding full-text articles and improve the overall user experience. If you’d like to learn more about Full Text Finder and the upcoming changes, feel free to attend one of the 30 minute drop-in sessions scheduled in August. Videoconferencing to Dana, Robeson, and Smith is available upon request.
Full Text Finder Information Sessions
August 4 @ 2 p.m. — LSM Conference Room, Library of Science & Medicine
August 8 @ 2 p.m. — Pane Room, Alexander Library
August 11 @ 2 p.m. — Pane Room, Alexander Library
Buttons! Buttons for Everyone!
Custom buttons are now available from the Communications Department.
The buttons we mentioned in the July issue of The Agenda proved a popular giveaway at the New Student Orientations in New Brunswick. This is a relatively low-cost and fun way to run a promotion or to market something at the Libraries. If you are interested in borrowing our machine for a project, please make sure to purchase the supplies that are available here. We’re happy to train you or your student workers on how to create buttons.
You’ve Got People, Now What?
August 3, 2016
9 a.m. – 1 p.m.NEW DATE!
This course is ideal for new and experienced managers, supervisors, and administrators who have direct reports and would like to apply their knowledge of personal styles to flexibly manage their staff.
Location: Pane Room, 1st floor, Alexander Library
RSVP: Erica Parin on behalf of the Professional Development Committee
Manager as Leader – Developing Staff
August 30, 2016
9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
This course is ideal for managers, supervisors, and administrators who would like to sharpen their situational leadership skills and discover how flexible and effective they are in a variety of situations with staff.
Location: Pane Room, 1st floor, Alexander Library
RSVP: Erica Parin on behalf of the Professional Development Committee
Credit Line: Laura Anderson Barbata, Performance for San Pedro Festivities, 2011, Zaachila, Oaxaca. Photo: Marco Pacheco / Image courtesy of the artist.
This fall, the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library will welcome the 2016-17 Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist Exhibition, Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations Beyond Borders. The exhibit contains selected highlights of textile, sculptural, 2-dimensional, and video works from the traveling exhibition Transcommunality.
Save the Dates: Tuesday, November 1st, 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m Join us for a reception in honor of the artist at 5 p.m. and a free public artist lecture on in the Mabel Smith Douglass Room at Douglass Library.
Wednesday, November 2nd, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Barbata will presentLa Extraordinaria Historia de Julia Pastrana, a performance work in progress at Alexander Library in the Scholarly Communications Center.
Background: Born in Mexico City and based in New York, Laura Anderson Barbata’s work focuses on participatory art initiatives that document communities and traditions, using storied art forms as platforms for social change, contemporary performance, group participation, and protest. Her collaborative and ongoing transdisciplinary works have been initiated in places such as the Amazon of Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, Norway, the United States., and Mexico. Her practice intertwines traditional and contemporary mediums, so-called “fine art” and popular art, and craft and folk customs forging links between the past and the present, as well as the individual and the community.
Among her most well-known projects are: Transcommunality, a decade-long project with communities in Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, and Brooklyn highlighting the moko jumbie stilt walking tradition; Intervention: Wall Street, a collaborative performance with the Brooklyn Jumbies that took place during 2011’s Occupy Wall Street protests; and The Repatriation of Julia Pastrana, a project involving the return of Ms. Pastrana (a woman who was exhibited in the 19th century as the ugliest woman in the world) for burial in her homeland of Mexico.
Barbata’s work is included in numerous private and public collections, among them, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; and Landesbank Baden-Wϋrttemberg, Stuttgart, Germany. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, FONCA-CONACULTA, México; and the Julia Pastrana project is supported by the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, FONCA-CONACULTA, México.
Rutgers is not the only major New Jersey institution celebrating its 250th anniversary this year!
On Saturday May 23, I attended the Medical Society of New Jersey’s 250th Anniversary Celebration and Inaugural Gala. The celebration was held at the Heldrich Hotel in New Brunswick, on the actual 250th anniversary of the Medical Society of New Jersey’s first ever meeting, also held in New Brunswick (at Duff’s Tavern!). The Medical Society of New Jersey (MSNJ) is America’s oldest state medical society, and has over 5000 members. RBHS–Special Collections holds a nearly complete run of MSNJ journal publications from 1848 to 2005, as well as substantial archival holdings of its constituent Burlington, Essex, Hudson, Monmouth, Passaic, and Warren County Medical Societies. We also hold the records of the Medical Alliance of the Medical Society of New Jersey (formerly the Women’s Auxiliary).
Credit: Robert Vietrogoski
At the gala, I joined Dr. Peter Carmel, the emeritus chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Carmel is also the current president of the Medical History Society of New Jersey and a recent past president of the American Medical Association! During the program, Dr. Carmel presented a well-received illustrated historical retrospective on the MSNJ’s founding and its centennial and bicentennial celebrations. Some of the images used by Dr. Carmel were drawn from RBHS–Special Collections materials.
For the gala, Dr. Carmel also organized an exhibit on Dr. Wells P. Eagleton, the first New Jersey neurosurgeon, and a medical luminary who received the first Edward J. Ill award from the Academy of Medicine of New Jersey in 1939. Thanks to Dr. Carmel’s generous restoration efforts, Eagleton’s actual Edward J. Ill medal was on display. This artifact was rediscovered last summer in storage at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and is now part of the holdings of RBHS–Special Collections. Dr. Carmel’s exhibit and the Eagleton artifacts will soon be on display in the lobby of Smith Library.
Credit: Robert Vietrogoski
If the Eagleton name seems familiar at Rutgers, Dr. Eagleton’s wife Florence Peshine Eagleton was a founding member of the board of managers of the New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College) and a Rutgers trustee from 1932 to 1946. She made the bequest in 1956 that established Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, which itself is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
The newest addition to the RBHS–Special Collections artifact collection is the commemorative 250th anniversary “challenge coin” given to gala attendees by Captain Joseph P. Costabile, the incoming MSNJ president. The gala was a most enjoyable event and I hope to extend the relationship between the Medical Society of New Jersey and RBHS–Special Collections. (And for those familiar with my normal mode of dress, here is photographic proof of me in a tuxedo!)
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.
Failing to Act Photo credit Nell Ytsma.
