The Agenda - Faculty and Staff Newsletter

Category: Staff News

  • Stephanie Bartz Retires after More than 30 Years of Service

    Stephanie Bartz

    Stephanie Bartz, Government Resources and Information Services Librarian at Rutgers University–New Brunswick Libraries, retired after more than 30 years of service to the university.

    Stephanie started at Alexander Library as a Reference Assistant in 1983 while a student at the School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies (SCILS) and continued in various capacities until 1989 (when she resigned). Her responsibilities included working at the reference desk and helping to maintain the print reference collection (much larger and more heavily used in those days).

    Stephanie was asked to return in a part-time capacity in 1994 and began working full-time in 1996 to assume responsibility for government resources while another librarian was on leave. When that same librarian retired in June 2015, Stephanie took over the bulk of the government documents duties for Alexander Library. In January 2016, she also assumed responsibilities for the government documents and maps collections at the Library of Science and Medicine and began splitting her time between the two locations.

    Stephanie quickly became an indispensable member of the reference department at Alexander and then of the larger New Brunswick Libraries (NBL). She often helped to preserve the sanity of more technologically challenged colleagues by fixing minor and not-so-minor computer problems. While Stephanie frequently disclaimed being a tech person, she provided a high level of computer support for Alexander Library colleagues and served as an informal interpreter between librarians and staff in the Systems Office. Her willingness to take on additional responsibilities during leaves or job vacancies played a key role in sustaining the library’s support for faculty and students. One measure of her readiness to pitch in was her participation in LibGuides. She created and/or maintained more than 30 reference, government publications, and general interest guides. Moreover, she became the local LibGuides expert providing assistance and training, coordinating the transfer of guides caused by personnel changes, and updating/babysitting orphaned guides. Beyond that, she was a silent partner on other guides, helping librarians design and maintain their subject guides.

    Stephanie also contributed enormously to a dizzying array of committees, task forces, working groups, and councils. She served on the Rutgers University Libraries (RUL) PC Working Group from 1997 until 2016 and as the NBL PC Coordination Team leader from 2001 until 2014. She provided tech support, allocated computers, coordinated computer and related equipment purchases, and maintained the NBL website, among other tasks.

    She served on the Library Catalog Committee from 1999 to 2018 and chaired the group from 2005 until 2018. From 2016 to 2019, she was a member of the Discovery Working Group, which essentially replaced the Library Catalog Committee.

    Stephanie served multiple terms on the Rules of Procedure Committee, co-chairing the group for several years. She created the first RUL electronic ballot, became the local expert on bylaws, and maintained an archive of bylaws editions and drafts.

    She assumed responsibility for NBL chat coordination in 2020 and handled the complicated process of scheduling as many as 34 librarian and graduate student chatters.

    Stephanie joined the NBL Web Content Team when preparations for the new RUL website were being finalized in 2021 and assumed responsibility for creating and maintaining NBL’s content. She also managed NBL’s pages on the staff website.

    She maintained many mailing lists/groups, including the retirees list that we hope will be continued after her retirement.

    Stephanie helped coordinate the Digital Learning Commons, Hatchery, Google Books, and Alexander bound periodicals weeding projects for NBL. Simply listing this coordinator role can give no sense of the tireless and scrupulously careful detail work involved, one of Stephanie’s many strengths, and her remarkable ability to work collaboratively across departmental and unit boundaries.

    Stephanie’s life outside the libraries manifests a similarly high level of participation and willingness to take on both leadership roles and the often unsung, behind-the-scenes work that sustains organizations. For example, she served more than 40 years as a volunteer for the Middlesex County Fair.

    For more than 20 years, Stephanie has been deeply involved in the South River Historical & Preservation Society in capacities ranging from secretary, newsletter editor, webmaster, and archivist. One result of that work was the Images of America book on South River.

    No listing of tasks and accomplishments can adequately capture Stephanie’s contributions to NBL and RUL as a whole. She has been an invaluable librarian and a highly respected colleague. Judit Ward captures many of our sentiments: “Stephanie Bartz is an exceptional colleague. Stephanie is my friend. How many of us think of her just like that? Always there for us with answers and solutions, the much-needed gentle reminders—that’s the Stephanie I know. She has always held herself to the highest professional standards at RUL. Because she cares. Competent and fair, authentic and trustworthy—these are precious and rare qualities. That’s Stephanie. I am honored to call her my friend. Hope I can still call her my friend in the future.”

    For many of us, it is hard to imagine the Libraries without her. I have turned to Stephanie for guidance, wisdom, and help across a range of initiatives and projects. I appreciate her sense of humor and her dedication to the community. Whether the community is our own faculty and staff, our retirees and alumni, the larger Rutgers landscape, the citizens of NJ, or other states who could benefit from our government documents, Stephanie is there.

    Stephanie, you have brought humanity and dedication to your role. Thank you for your service, and may your next chapter be fulfilling with just the right amount of peace. You will be deeply missed.

  • An Evening with LIS Students

    As the editor of a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, I interact with many people. I work closely with potential authors during the review and publication process, and often keep in touch with some of them after their papers have been published. This was the case with Dr. Keren Dali, whose paper I accepted for publication (see Keren Dali and Leah K. Brochu, “The Right to Listen: A Not So Simple Matter of Audiobooks,” Library Resources and Technical Services volume 64, no. 3 [2020]). Keren and I bonded over some mutual interests. She recently invited me to speak to the students in her Collection Management Course, which is offered by the Research Methods and Information Science Department of the Morgridge College of Education at the University of Denver. In her email invitation to me, Keren wrote, “This is a class on the selection and weeding of library materials, as well as related policies and HR procedures. It would be great if students could hear from a high-level manager in one of the top research academic libraries in the country.” Resource description and technical services work, particularly weeding and transfer projects, are important aspects of collection development and management and I was flattered to have been asked to discuss my work. When I was in graduate school, I found it beneficial to hear firsthand from practitioners about their work and experiences.

    I’ve spoken to LIS classes before, and this was the first time I did it via Zoom. Pre-pandemic, I would’ve still needed to use videconferencing to speak to a class in Denver. The difference this time is that everyone participated via Zoom. I’ve become used to participating in meetings, conferences and webinars remotely. Keren’s class was small (14 students) and was a good size for discussion.

    The evening was an informal, freely flowing discussion instead of a lecture. I was asked about my personal trajectory into librarianship, specifically academic librarianship. I discussed how I chose technical services librarianship (which actually wasn’t my first choice) and my experience managing a busy department in a large academic library. I truly enjoy the complexities of resource description and like that my work provides the infrastructure to enable my public services colleagues to successfully deliver reference service and to teach courses. It also gives our users the ability to find and select the resources they need.

    Not surprisingly, the conversation touched on how our normal operations have changed due to COVID-19 and what implications it has had for collections and organizational processes. I described the challenges and successes of transitioning our cataloging operation to function remotely. That included making sure everyone had the equipment and access to the necessary technology to do their work. Fortunately, the cataloging resources we use (Classification Web, RDA Toolkit, Connexion) are all available remotely, and Alma is cloud based. Using WebEx for meetings was new for some of my staff, as was accessing files via Box. We developed a work plan before we began working remotely that specified who would do what work, which helped immensely with the transition to remote. Additionally, I noted that Rutgers, like many other research libraries, is using HathiTrust’s Emergency Temporary Access Services (ETAS), and also offering services like Click and Collect and home delivery to meet the needs of our users.

    Questions that I was asked included how my work at Rutgers informs my work as the editor of Library Resources and Technical Services (great question!). The two are closely related, and my professional experience and knowledge come into play when I provide authors with feedback on their manuscripts. I’m aware of trends, past and present, that have a bearing on technical services work.

    The importance of belonging to a professional organization (very important) was another question posed to me. I emphasized the benefits of sharing your expertise, as well as acquiring new expertise and gaining professional contacts. Although many conferences this year were virtual and a trend that may likely continue due to the benefits such as holding down costs and reducing time out of the office, I encouraged the students to attend them to find an organization that aligns with their interests and needs.

    Librarianship has evolved so much since I was in graduate school. Remote classes weren’t even offered then. Technology is now such an important part of technical services work. Shared databases make it easier to obtain copy for the resources we catalog. Discussion lists and Facebook communities allow us to share information and resolve our problems. Speaking to a class of future library professionals was an uplifting experience. I was impressed by their enthusiasm and perceptive questions.

  • Announcing Archival Description of Notated Music and the Guidelines for Archival Description of Notated Music

    In early October the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the Music Library Association (MLA) co-published a new open-access ebook, Archival Description of Notated Music (ADNM), co-authored by the MLA Working Group for Archival Description of Music Materials, which I had the pleasure of co-chairing with Dr. John Bewley, a Rutgers alumnus and the retired associate librarian/archivist at the University at Buffalo Music Library.  Working Group members also included Sofía Becerra-Licha, lead archivist at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; Maristella Feustle, music special collections librarian at the University of North Texas; Vincent J. Novara, head of the Acquisitions and Processing Section in the Music Division at the Library of Congress; Matthew Snyder, archivist at the New York Public Library; and Karen Spicher, manuscript cataloger and processing archivist at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

    ADNM provides guidance intended for a wide readership and is helpful for experienced archivists with limited knowledge of music, music librarians with limited knowledge of archival practice, students in MLIS and archival studies programs, and others with responsibility for archival collections with notated music. The book includes discussion of fundamental archival principles as applied to collections with notated music, recommendations for descriptive approaches based on the musical and non-musical content of a collection, a glossary, and an annotated resource list. In addition, included as an appendix are the Guidelines for Archival Description of Notated Music, which provide a standard for archival description of notated music and represent the first subject-specific supplement to Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). The Guidelines were endorsed by the SAA Council as an external standard at the end of 2019. Both the Guidelines and ADNM are available via MLA’s Humanities Commons repository. ADNM may also be downloaded free-of-charge from the SAA Bookstore.

    The Working Group started the project in 2016, and none of us expected it to become a full-length book and professionally-endorsed standard, much less require four years and countless hours of meetings to complete. We took a collective approach to authorship: one or two group members drafted each section of the book, which we then revised and edited as a group. Although this approach was time-consuming, the final publications represent our consensus agreement on standardized archival practice and the full range of group members’ considerable expertise. We also solicited and incorporated feedback from colleagues in other music libraries and archives and collaborated closely with SAA’s Technical Subcommittee on DACS, which contributed to SAA’s endorsement of the Guidelines. This cross-organizational collaboration was essential to the successful outcome and will hopefully serve as a model for future DACS supplements.

  • Recapping Summer SAPAC

    In a year of many firsts, this summer saw RUL’s first Summer SAPAC talk series. After a discussion in the Spring Central Forum, SAPAC co-chairs Janet Croft and Bart Everts decided to send out a call for summer talks. SAPAC talks are a way for library faculty and staff to discuss research, programming, innovations, and more with a friendly audience of colleagues, and Summer SAPAC turnout was high. Bart Everts from the Robeson Library hosted the talks.

    6/9: A Modest Proposal: Trusted Pick-Up Points for Interlibrary Loan for Distant Users
    Janet Brennan Croft

    6/23 An Environmental Scan of Artists’ Book Collections: An Ontology for Visualization
    Sonia Yaco

    7/22 Digital Badging
    Grace Agnew, Mei Ling Lo, Ryan Womack

    8/11 The Library Freedom Institute: Becoming a Privacy Advocate
    Katie Anderson

    8/14 Closing the Transactional Distance in an Online Graduate Course through the Practice of Embedded Librarianship
    Leslin H. Charles

    8/18 “Agitation of the Question”: James McCune Smith’s Nomination for Fellowship to the New York Academy of Medicine, 1847
    Robert Vietrogoski

    8/25 From Digital to Computational: The Current and Near-Future State of Technology and Data Storage and How We Manage our Virtual Lives
    Isaiah Beard

     

     

  • Notes from Libraries HR

    Past Workshops

    Returning to Rutgers Safely:  Wear Your Mask, Watch Your Distance & Wash Your Hands

    Information Sessions on COVID-19 Health and Safety Precautions were held earlier this month hosted in partnership with Rutgers Environmental Health and Safety (REHS).  Subject experts and instructors Peter Skeels, REHS, Manager of Health and Safety Services and Christine D’Angelo, MPH, Health and Safety Specialist II, spoke about safety precautions intended to mitigate the risks of the spread of COVID-19 as staff, faculty, and certain students begin to return to work on campus and offered knowledgeable tips.

    The sessions were intended for employees returning to buildings onsite.   Attendees had the opportunity to choose among various sessions and ask questions.   All staff and faculty are expected to follow university policies and guidelines in order to sustain a healthy campus.  It is important that we all diligently adhere to these health precautions. If you have any questions or need more information, please contact REHS at 848-445-2550.

    As a reminder, the state is requiring additional compliance training regardless of any previous medical, health, or professional training you may have taken. The specific module can be accessed through your compliance training page under “Safety Short: Coronaviruses and COVID-19”:  https://rutgersu.percipio.com

    Additional University-wide COVID-19 Information can be found in the Returning to Rutgers guide and here for health and safety.

    Understanding the Manager’s Role Under FFCRA

    Earlier this month, essential training on understanding the manager’s role in employee leave options under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) and understanding the manager’s role in Accommodations, was provided in a recorded presentation to supervisors.  The session was intended to explain university policy as it relates to leaves of absence to ensure supervisors are giving the correct information and support to employees.

    Employees who are expected to return to the workplace and who wish to seek a reasonable accommodation, should contact Office of Employment Equity (for Staff) or Academic Labor Relations (for Faculty).

    Supervisors had the opportunity to choose to attend various virtual drop-in sessions and ask questions hosted by Libraries HR.

    Employees with specific questions should make appointments by contacting Libraries HR:

    Michele Petosa, Coordinator of Human Resources at (848)-932-5949 or email rulhr@rutgers.edu

    Erica Parin, Administrative Assistant at (848)-932-5947 or email rulhr@rutgers.edu

    Additional information from the NJDOL, DOL, and University Human Resources is below:

    A message from Occupational Health on Influenza Vaccinations:

    “Occupational Health remains committed to keeping our faculty and staff safe during this global COVID-19 pandemic.  We strongly encourage all Rutgers employees to receive a flu shot this year.  Those employees who have not returned to campus should receive their vaccine at their local pharmacy which is provided at no cost with most medical insurances.  For those currently on campus, we will have 3 curbside outdoor flu clinics at the Hurtado Health Center located in New Brunswick.  We will partner again with Walgreens to assist with providing vaccinations at these clinics, so employees should bring their medical insurance cards at the time of the visit.  Occupational Health will provide any uninsured employee with the vaccine free of charge.  As parking and hours are limited, on campus employees may also consider receiving the vaccine at a local pharmacy.  Due to COVID-19 infection control concerns, this year we will not be able to schedule any off site vaccination clinics.  All graduate students should contact Student Health for their flu shot.”

    The curbside outdoor flu clinics will be located in New Brunswick, at this time no clinics are currently scheduled for Newark or Camden.    Additional information will be shared as we learn more, including dates and times—Be on the lookout for announcements from Libraries HR!

    Rutgers Occupational Health offices by location:

    • Rutgers–New Brunswick, Rutgers–Newark, and Rutgers–Camden: 848-932-8254
    • Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) Newark: 973-972-2900
    • RBHS New Brunswick/Piscataway and University Correctional Health Care: 848-445-0123 ext. 2
    • Robert Wood Johnson Medical School faculty and staff: 732-235-6559 

    Stay safe!

    Upcoming Reminders from Libraries HR

    As you prepare to embrace the Fall semester, reminders for employees can be found below as a new academic year is upon us!

    • Rutgers Employee First Initiative—University Human Resources is pleased to announce the Rutgers Employees First initiative. This initiative is intended to provide employees with tools and resources to support and promote employee wellness and build communities of interest around topics relevant to your needs and interests. To explore resources, please visit
    • Online Harassment Prevention Annual Training—All employees should receive an email from “Skillsoft”, a third party vendor, requesting you to complete online training regarding mandatory Harassment Prevention Education. The university uses a third party vendor, “Skillsoft”, as a provider of cloud-based learning and online training for it’s annual harassment prevention education.   Employees must complete this annual mandatory training no later than November 6, 2020.   If you have not yet received your personalized training link, employees may complete the training by logging in with their NetID This training is done on annual basis and is mandatory.
    • COVID-19 Compliance Training: The state is requiring mandatory compliance training regardless of any previous medical, health, or professional training you may have taken. Employees must complete this mandatory training by logging in with their NetID here.  The specific module can be accessed through your compliance training page under “Safety Short: Coronaviruses and COVID-19”:  https://rutgersu.percipio.com
    • Ethics Armor system-Outside Activity Questionnaire (OAQ)–As a reminder, all University faculty and staff members must complete an Outside Activity Questionnaire (OAQ) in the Ethics Armor system in accordance with University Policy.
    • Rutgers University employees (including legacy UMDNJ employees) should update their emergency contact information, home address, phone number(s), and or legal name changes with the Human Resources & Payroll system in your myRutgers Portal as follows:
    • Voluntary Self ID – Ethnicity/Race–We encourage you to take a moment to update your Race/Ethnicity demographic information. Although this two-item questionnaire is voluntary, we hope that you choose to complete it. The data from this survey helps us to build a modern and diverse workforce. Having the ability to benchmark our success in our hiring practices aids us in many ways. It helps us plan for our future state, as well as ensures federal and state affirmative action requirements are being met.
      • Please visit the myRutgers Portal at https://my.rutgers.edu/. Upon login, go to the Employee Self Service tab and click on Ethnic Groups under Personal Information to complete this short questionnaire.

    Any questions or concerns, please contact Libraries HR.

    Best wishes for good health and a safe year!

     

  • In Conversation with Diane Biunno

    Diane Biunno is metadata archivist for the Institute of Jazz Studies.

    Diane Biunno joined the Libraries as metadata archivist for the Institute of Jazz Studies back in February. Here, we catch up with her to learn more about her experience and what she has been working on since the shift to online-only service.

    Tell us a bit about your background prior to coming to Rutgers.

    Prior to joining the team at the Institute of Jazz Studies in February 2020, I served as a project archivist at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP) in Philadelphia. At HSP I worked on several projects including the Hidden Collections Initiative which was a grant funded project to improve the accessibility and discoverability of archival collections housed at Philadelphia-area small repositories. As part of the initiative, I helped staff and volunteers at local historical societies, ethnic organizations, and religious institutions better arrange, describe, and care for their collections. I enjoyed working on this project because it gave me an opportunity to get to know members of the local archival community and their amazing collections.

    Before coming to Rutgers, I also worked on several innovative digital projects that were focused on improving the discoverability of archival and special collections materials. For example, I served as a digital project assistant at Penn Libraries for the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis
    project, an initiative to digitize and make freely available all the known medieval manuscripts in the Philadelphia region. In addition, I was a digital project associate for the Historical Images, New Technologies Project, which explored how to better describe archival visual materials using TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) markup. Through working on these projects, I learned a great deal about metadata standards and formats, as well as, digital preservation and digital project management best practices.

    I received my B.A and Ph.D. in Italian from Rutgers University and my Master’s in Library & Information Science from Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

    What have you been working on during the quarantine?

    I’ve been working with my colleagues at IJS to copyedit and publish the approximately 200 finding aids that the IJS created last year. A finding aid is document that describes an archival collection and helps guide researchers in using the collection. The IJS finding aids will be published online and made accessible to the general public and researchers, with the goal of helping our patrons better understand our collections and how our materials can meet their research needs.

    What does the process look like?

    Before beginning the process of copyediting the finding aids, we quickly realized that we needed a style guide to ensure that all finding aids would be edited according to the same capitalization, punctuation, and grammatical guidelines. Unfortunately, there isn’t a standard style guide for archivists, so we decided to create our own and base it on the Chicago Manual of Style, a style guide widely used in academic publishing.

    Next, we created project workflows, as well as spreadsheets for keeping track of the project’s progress. We made sure to keep the project style guide, spreadsheets, and other documentation in a shared folder that was easily accessible to everyone working on the project. Most importantly, used software tools that allow us to easily track changes to documents and to view the edits of our coworkers in real time.

    How far along are you and what are the next steps?

    At this point, we are halfway through the project and have published approximately 110 finding aids. We’re moving at a steady pace and hope to wrap up the project in a few weeks.

    While working on the project, I began thinking about how the IJS might use Wikipedia to help guide researchers and the general public to our collections. Because patrons use Wikipedia as a starting point to find general information on a topic, as well as, additional resources, I’ve begun adding links to the institute’s finding aids in the “External Link” section located at the bottom of Wikipedia entries. For example, at the bottom of the Benny Goodman Wikipedia entry, I’ve added a link to the IJS finding aid for the D. Russell Connor collection of Benny Goodman audio recordings. Moving forward, I hope to add additional links to our collections and explore other ways to make our finding aids and collections more broadly accessible to the public.

    Where can people learn more?

    People can visit the repository page for Institute of Jazz Studies to view the finding aids that we’ve already published. https://archivesspace.libraries.rutgers.edu/repositories/6

    People can also check out the IJS Facebook page for more information about events and other news: https://www.facebook.com/InstituteJazzStudies as well as the institute’s page: https://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/jazz

  • Quick Takes on Events and News – May 2020

    NBL’s virtual stressbusters LibGuide.
    Real Stress, Virtual Busting

    In lieu of physical events this finals season, New Brunswick Libraries have developed a virtual stressbusters LibGuide. Visit it to check out their virtual escape rooms, puzzles, tours, crafting activities and much more! Kudos to Rose Barbalace for her work organizing this resource for our students during what is surely an extra stressful time.

    NBMSA Takes the Scene Online

    On their Facebook page, the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive will be featuring a series that invites donors and other supporters to share what music they’re listening to and/or performing during this time, what their favorite NBMSA item is, and if they wish, share a related photo. This is a way for us to stay connected with our community while SC/UA is closed and we can’t accept physical donations. Kicking off the series this week will be former SC/UA public history intern Rachel Ferrante, who as part of her internship helped maintain the NBMSA social media presence and solicited donations via her work at 90.3 The Core and involvement in the New Brunswick basement scene. She also designed the NBMSA Facebook page logo!

    Congrats Ying!

    Congratulations are in order for Yingting Zhang, who has been asked to serve on the Medical Library Association’s 2022 National Program Committee. Her three-year term begins June 1.

    Introducing New Jersey’s Historical Newspapers

    A round of applause to Jacob Paul for his work editing the New Jersey Digital Newspaper Project’s latest promotional video. Way to go, Jacob!

  • Rutgers Meets Japan

    The planned exhibit was converted to a digital exhibit, which will be mounted on the course website.

    In 1867, Kusakabe Tarō (1844-1870), a samurai from Fukui in the remote west of the country, left Japan to study at Rutgers. After his untimely death in 1870, his mentor and friend, William E. Griffis (1843-1928) of the Rutgers Class of 1869, was invited to teach Western-style education in rapidly modernizing Japan. Griffis would spend his life writing and speaking about Japan and collecting books and archival material. His collection came to Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives (SC/UA) after his death. This spring, Haruko Wakabayashi of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, is teaching “Rutgers Meets Japan: Revisiting Early U.S.-Japan Encounters,” an interdisciplinary honors seminar based on the Griffis Collection. This seminar examines this crucial moment of early U.S.-Japan relationship and cultural exchange as we commemorate the 150th year since William E. Griffis left for Japan. As curator of the William Elliot Griffis Collection at SC/UA, I am supporting the class through helping them access books, documents, and images from the collection. Assignments are based on primary sources and prints from the Griffis Collection and the Zimmerli Art Museum, which are posted on the course website. For the final project, students planned to curate an exhibition at the Alexander Library using materials from the Griffis Collection. The culmination of the course was meant to be a two-week field trip, “The Japan that Griffis Saw,” where the students along with Professor Wakabayashi and myself would visit in Fukui, Yokohama, and Tokyo.

    On March 10, the class visited SC/UA to use maps and city directories to try to envision what New Brunswick was like at the time Griffis and Kusakabe were students. When we learned the next day that all Rutgers courses were going online after spring break, we had to adapt quickly. The planned exhibit was converted to a digital exhibit, which will be mounted on the course website (https://sites.rutgers.edu/rutgers-meets-japan). The trip to Japan was postponed until January.

    Access to the Griffis Collection was an even more difficult problem. In 2000, the Griffis Collection was microfilmed through an agreement with Adam Matthew, a company in the U.K. In 2017, Rutgers contracted with Adam Matthew to digitize this material, with a stipulation that Rutgers would get free access. When it became apparent that we would have no physical access to the Libraries for the rest of the semester, I followed up with Adam Matthew Digital regarding the status of the project. Thanks to Jeff Carroll, Elizabeth York, and their teams, the digital version of the Griffis Collection is now available through the database Area Studies: Japan, enabling students to access digitized primary source documents from the collection. Class discussion now takes place on the Canvas site. According to student Raj Malhotra, SAS ’22, “The transition to this digital classroom environment has come with its expected difficulties, but has shown us how to stay connected through the vast digital libraries and resources available for class meetings and teachings.” All are looking forward to the trip, which we hope will still take place.

  • Creating Homemade PPE

    I would like to share my experience during these difficult days of our quarantine to fight against COVID-19.

    While all of us are working from home, the medical staff are on the front line fighting the virus while lacking the PPEs. This became a great concern in my family, when my daughter called me three weeks ago, and asked if I could make some masks and head covers for her husband, who is a doctor, and also her doctor friends who are taking care of COVID-19 patients.

    She did some research how to make safe cloth masks for medical staff to place over the N95 masks to make them last longer. Pretty quickly, we figured out how to make them out of cotton fabric and flannel while using different filters. I used any item possible at home: T-shirts, cotton sheets, cotton tablecloths, bags, baby wipes, laundry softeners, vacuum cleaner filters. I also made head covers out of shower curtains while sending her all transparent plastic available at home so she could use it to make face shields, helped by her friend who made parts of them by 3D printing. She was able to make 30 face shields.

    My daughter and I also started a campaign on social media, asking people to make masks and sharing the instructions, suggesting they donate them to the community. The social media network in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey was able to make 350 masks and donated them to hospitals and friends. My daughter, who is also a doctor, for about a month never stopped raising awareness on social media that everyone needs to wear a mask when we go out.

    I shared my experience with the Smith Library access services staff and shared guidelines about how to make masks. I will continue to make cloth masks and head covers until the pandemic is over. Doing something good for the community helps me release the stress and be happy that I can do my little part to fight the pandemic.

    How to Sew a Medical Face Mask

    Materials

    • 2 pieces of 100% cotton fabric that measure about 7 inches by 9 inches—cotton T-shirts, dish towels and pillowcases are good options (make sure all fabric is washed and dry)
    • 2 pieces of cotton fabric that measure about 1.5 inches by 40 inches for the mask’s strap (in a pinch, you can use something like shoelaces, elastic 6 inch long or ribbon)
    • A ruler, sewing pins, a pair of scissors, thread, an iron and a sewing machine.

    Video Tutorials

    Instructions

    Step 1: Sew the two main rectangle pieces together with the “right” sides of the fabric—the side you want to see—facing each other. Sew almost all the way around the rectangles, leaving a small gap (a few inches) open on the long side.

    Step 2: Turn the rectangle right-side-out by reaching into the gap you left open and pulling the fabric through. Now your edges are on the inside and you have a neatly sewn two-sided rectangle. At the gap you left open, just tuck the edges inside for now; you’ll sew it closed later.

    Step 3: Make three evenly spaced pleats along both 7-inch sides of the fabric, making sure to keep all of your tucks facing in the same direction, and pin in place. One way to do this is by marking the spacing with pins: place one about 1.5 inches down the short side of the fabric; add the next 1 inch down from that, then the third ½ inch down from that, and keep alternating between 1 and ½ inches until you’ve used all six pins. To create the pleats, just bring the first pin down to meet the second, the third to meet the fourth, and the fifth to meet the sixth. Repeat on the other side.

    Step 4: Once the pleats are pinned, stitch all the way around the perimeter of the rectangle. This will sew the pleats into place and also close the gap you had left open in Step 1.

    Step 5: If you’re using a strip of fabric for your strap, fold and iron it in half lengthwise and then fold and iron the raw edges in. Find the centers of your straps and the centers of the long sides of your mask, and match them. Pin the straps in place along the long edges of the mask, so there is a strap on the top of the mask and one on the bottom, with equally long pieces coming out to the sides. If you’re using a strip of fabric, pin it so it’s wrapped around the edge of the rectangle.

    Step 6: Sew the strap to the mask by stitching all the way down each strap, catching the edges of the mask as you pass. (If you are using a strap that did not require folding, you can opt instead to stitch around the perimeter of the rectangle one more time.)

     

  • United We Stand against COVID-19

    Photo credit: New York Times.

    Since March 17, a few residents in Warren, Watchung, Green Brook, and Long Hills and I have organized a donation campaign and raised a total of $31,214.60 from the local Chinese American community to donate PPEs to Robert Wood Johnson Hospital and St. Peter’s Hospital in New Brunswick, Overlook Hospital in Summit, Somerset Medical Group in Somerset, and Morristown Medical Center in Morristown, as well as local EMT, police, and fire fighter units.

    I have worked many nights trying to allocate PPE resources in the United States. I used my online search skills and technical background to perform the due diligence process and verified all PPE sources for quality and safety based on ASTM standards and CDC/FDA guidelines. Up to April 6, the following PPEs have been purchased and sent to the above organizations:

    • 1,200 N95 masks
    • 1,400 KN95 masks
    • 8,800 surgical masks
    • 1,014 DuPont protection gowns
    • 472 3M safety googles
    • 6,400 gloves
    • 20 big boxes of wipes
    • 8 big bottles of hand sanitizer

    A few news media including the New York Times, Echoes-Sentinel, Bitpush News, and other local community newspapers have interviewed me and published articles about the effort.

    Editor’s note: Kudos to Connie on this amazing and inspiring work!!