Ed conducted an annual Snapshot Day to document the people and activities of the library.
Ed and Joe Wilder participate in an IJS Roundtable in 2007.
Ed (sporting some Rutgers gear!) and long-time colleague Vincent Pelote help move the IJS location in 1994.
L-R: Vinny, Loren Schoenberg (of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem), Dan Morgenstern (former IJS Director), and Ed Berger, circa 1984.
Throughout his time at IJS, Ed had a very close relationship with Benny Carter.
Ed poses with his colleagues and the 2016 Jazz Archives Fellows.
Recently Consuella Askew and Wayne Winborne sent around a note announcing that our colleague Ed Berger passed away suddenly and quite unexpectedly in January. Ed was a wonderful photographer and spent many hours documenting the spaces and faces of Dana Library and the Institute of Jazz Studies. Many of his photographs are posted on his Flickr site. Here, we take a moment to turn the camera back toward the photographer and offer a glimpse into his time and the people who he called colleagues and friends at the Institute of Jazz Studies.
Ed played a vital role in the growth and development of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies where he filled a number of positions for nearly four decades. He was also an award-winning jazz writer and accomplished photographer, teacher, producer, and road manager.
A graduate of Indiana University with an M.L.S. from Rutgers, his most recent book was Softly, With Feeling: Joe Wilder and the Breaking of Barriers in American Music (Temple University Press, 2014), which received the Association for Recorded Sound Collections’ Award for Best Historical Research in Recorded Jazz in 2015. He was a frequent contributor to Jazz Times as writer and photographer and for many years served as co-editor of the Journal of Jazz Studies.
Berger taught at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Swing University, and from 1979 to 2014 was co-host of Jazz from the Archives on WBGO-FM. He enjoyed a long association with jazz master Benny Carter, serving as Carter’s road manager for nearly two decades, as well as producing two Grammy-winning recordings for the saxophonist. Berger’s other publications include Free Verse and Photos in the Key of Jazz (2015, with Gloria Krolak); Benny Carter: A Life in American Music (2002, with Morroe Berger and James Patrick); Basically Speaking: An Oral History of George Duvivier (1993); and Reminiscing in Tempo: The Life and Times of a Jazz Hustler (1990, with Teddy Reig).
He was a beloved friend, colleague, mentor, raconteur, and a true lover of jazz and jazz musicians. His loss is devastating to all of us at the IJS and to the broader jazz community across the globe.
A public celebration of Ed’s life is being planned and will be announced at a later date.
During the Fall 2016 semester, the Art Library distributed a unique coloring book to introduce students to the library’s services and spaces. Drawing on her fine art and graphic design skills, Megan Lotts illustrated and wrote the Art Library Coloring Book to connect in a creative and fun way with students and to educate individuals about the resources and possibilities available at the Art Library. I touched base with Megan about the inspiration behind this project and the response so far.
Jessica Pellien: What inspired you to start this project?
Megan Lotts: There are several reasons I undertook this project: I’m always looking for ways to connect with the departments that I liaise, and 3/4 of the individuals that I liaise to are makers, so this is a great way to connect with them. I’ve also been researching a fair amount about play and how to incorporate playing educational experiences inside and outside of the classroom. I would also say that I LOVE to color. I’m an only child, so I’ve spent a lot of time coloring, making, etc. And lastly, I’m tired of hearing students talk about how boring their one shot bibliography session was. I’ve never heard anyone walk away from a library session saying, man life is going to be great now that I know to use the EBSCOhost database. I believe it’s important to share in a conceptual way what the libraries are about & what can happen in a library.
JP: What was the process like to create the coloring book?
ML: I came up with an idea of what I thought patrons should know about the Art Library. Then I began making drawings, based on the space. After the initial drawings I worked with a variety of individuals, including faculty, students, and staff at Rutgers, as well as colleagues from other universities to fine tune the coloring book. I also worked with New Brunswick libraries administration to get approval and funding for the project and with the communications department on proofreading and the placement of the Libraries’ logo.
JP: How did your background in art help you?
ML: I’ve been an artist for over 20 years, trained as a painter, but I would consider myself a conceptual or installation artist, because I generally make site specific works, or conceptual projects that engage the user. In the case of the Art Library coloring book, the viewer or participant add the color to the artworks.
JP: Did this project require any special skills or resources?
ML: I used, pen, paper, and when needed I referred to images of the library I had taken or to the physical space. To put the book together, I used Microsoft publisher, because that was a program that I knew the Libraries’ printing department would be able to work with.
JP: How did you promote the coloring book to your users?
ML: All total, we printed 500 booklets and we also purchased small crayon packets which I labeled with stickers. We hosted a free, public pop-up making event in October at which we handed out coloring books and crayons. We also had some snacks to further entice people to participate. We encouraged users to share their coloring with us on social media, using the hashtag #RutgersColoring. We posted pages from coloring books, as well. Rutgers Today made a video about the coloring book and there were a lot of positive responses on social media from other Rutgers and library groups.
JP: How has the response been so far?
ML: I work in a very organic fashion and I never assume that a project I undertake will have a positive impact. However, I can report, that since I started this project I have had nothing but positive feedback from faculty, staff, and students. Many individuals have indicated they would like a similar coloring book for their library or campus department and have asked me how they would go about making one.
If you have a unique project to share, please let us know. We’d love to feature it in an upcoming issue of The Agenda.
The Libraries’ Digital Humanities Working Group, with the support of Integrated Information Systems, just launched an informal digital publishing service offering two popular open source platforms: WordPress and Omeka. Both are relatively easy to learn, and allow users to develop digital publishing skills, such as the integration of texts, images, and multimedia, digital citation practices, and digital collaboration on course projects and informal research in an online environment.
WordPress and Omeka are both used for digital publishing, although they have different strengths. WordPress is widely known as a blogging platform. As the name implies, it is a text-centric application, even if themes and plugins greatly extend its appearance and functionality. Omeka excels at the presentation of small to medium-sized digital collections, which can then be curated to create digital exhibits integrating text and media. Dublin Core metadata connect items to their presentation in collections and exhibits, ensuring that context and provenance are not lost. Omeka was created by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.
Libraries faculty and staff and Rutgers graduate students and faculty in humanities and adjacent fields (meaning interdisciplinary research with a humanist twist) may request a site in WordPress, Omeka, or both. Potential users should contact their Digital Humanities library liaison to request a site. The liaison for Camden is Zara Wilkinson; for New Brunswick, Francesca Giannetti; and for Newark, Krista White (for Rutgers-Newark) and Bob Vietrogoski (for RBHS). In the first phase of this service, priority will be given to users whose projects integrate Libraries resources.
Many Rutgers librarians already use one or both of these applications. Laura Palumbo shares news on important resources in scientific disciplines at ChemInformer. Ryan Womack posts regular reflections on the data librarianship profession at RyanData. Kayo Denda created the blog of the Margery Somers Foster Center to provide an informal publication venue for student interns. Christie Lutz and other Special Collections colleagues write about rare and unique New Jerseyana at What Exit? And The Agenda newsletter itself is published in WordPress! The following three case studies demonstrate how these platforms can be used in support of library and scholarly work.
Pedagogy and Professionalization
A section of the exhibit on Gennett Records on the IJS Archives Fellowship site.
The Institute of Jazz Studies Archival Fellowship Program, instituted in 2010, supports the professional development of early career archivists and is dedicated to promoting diversity in the field of archives. The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) has its home in the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers–Newark. Krista White, the digital humanities librarian at the Dana Library, works beside IJS archivists Elizabeth Surles, Angela Lawrence, and Tad Hershorn; IJS Fellowship Program coordinator Ed Berger; and current associate director Adriana Cuervo in mentoring the IJS Archives Fellows through the process of archiving a single, small collection each year.
Krista White spearheads a digital project for the fellows each year and has used Omeka for the last two years. White chose Omeka because it is free and open source. Many archives and cultural institutions need to establish an online presence, but may not have the resources to produce expensive digital exhibits. By using Omeka as a learning tool, the fellows gained hands-on experience designing digital exhibits, evaluating copyright and intellectual property issues, and administrating metadata for public display in an online environment. Furthermore, exposure to open source tools provides a way for IJS Archives Fellows to build value-added expertise in creative digital solutions.
Project Outreach and Communication
A project update on the New Jersey Digital Newspaper Project blog.
In late July, Rutgers University Libraries learned that they, the New Jersey State Library, and the New Jersey State Archives had been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to digitize New Jersey newspapers as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program. The project team wanted to quickly establish a presence for the project and did so by starting the “New Jersey Digital Newspaper Project” blog using WordPress. The blog is administered by Isaiah Beard, John Brennan, and Caryn Radick and includes content provided by project team members.
The blog format lets the project team provide different types of information in one place including status updates, information about the partners, project staff, and advisory board, and provides a contact form for readers. Using a WordPress blog also allowed the project team to share password protected information with the Newspaper Project Advisory Board, who have helped guide the selection process.
First and foremost, the blog serves as a way to share news of the project. Currently, the partners are working to identify newspapers and learning the processes and procedures of the work involved in digitizing these newspapers for the Library of Congress Chronicling America Project. The blog has detailed various trips and meetings for getting these underway. As the newspapers are digitized, the blog will also let the project team share stories of interest from New Jersey history and provide further updates about progress.
Digital Editing and Reconstruction
Digital annotations to William Still’s letter, dated August 7, 1850.
Francesca Giannetti is creating a digital edition of the Peter Still Papers, a small manuscript collection held in Special Collections and University Archives. These manuscript letters have already been published in RUcore; a primary goal of the digital edition is to provide digital full text transcriptions. Giannetti is working with Aresty research assistants to transcribe and encode the letters using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) framework of XML. The TEI allows keyword searchability across the letters, and also provides structured data that will allow future researchers to query the letters for names, places, and dates. This Omeka site will include lightly edited HTML transcriptions of the letters, while a link included in the relation field takes the reader to a more diplomatic style transcription with original spellings and line breaks preserved, and presented alongside expandable thumbnails of the page images. The Omeka site also features a hypothes.is annotation layer (right sidebar), which could serve as the basis of group digital annotation exercises in a digital or public history course. A next step for this project will involve finding faculty collaborators in history and American studies to bring these primary documents into the classroom for study and further research.
If you have questions about how to get started using WordPress or Omeka in your work, or have comments on any of the projects mentioned in these case studies, please write to the Digital Humanities Working Group.
-Francesca Giannetti, Caryn Radick, Krista White, Bob Vietrogoski, Zara Wilkinson, Ron Jantz, Fengzhi Fan, and Tibor Purger
Rutgers-Newark students show their support for Dana Library. Credit: Ed Berger.
Dana Library had some little red boxes from the Giving Day planning team to distribute. Credit: Ed Berger.
Dana Library had a table set aside for Giving Day activities. Credit: Ed Berger.
Dana Library had a lot of support throughout the day. Credit: Ed Berger.
Consuella Askew stands in front of the Giving Day board where Dana Library tracked their leaderboard stats. Credit: Ed Berger.
One last student support sheet photo from Dana Library. Credit Ed Berger.
We couldn’t agree more — Dana Library is a place to get stuff done! Credit: Ed Berger.
An informal bulletin board showcased all the support sheets. credit: Ed Berger.
Dana Library gathered support sheets from students. credit: Ed Berger.
More medical students showing their support for the RBHS Libraries!
Smith Library had steady traffic throughout Giving Day.
The table at Smith Library was in a prominent location right near the front door which made it hard to miss!
What a great display for the support sheets and a self-serve station.
The display of support sheets in Alexander Library’s lobby.
Prior to Giving Day, we got these photos for our social media campaign to show donors what they are giving to support.
Prior to Giving Day, we got these photos for our social media campaign to show donors what they are giving to support.
Prior to Giving Day, we got these photos for our social media campaign to show donors what they are giving to support.
Nice to see our faculty and staff lending a hand to make Giving Day a success!
Nice to see our faculty and staff lending a hand to make Giving Day a success!
Nice to see our faculty and staff lending a hand to make Giving Day a success!
We had dozens of photos of students showing why they care about the Libraries!
We had dozens of photos of students showing why they care about the Libraries!
We had dozens of photos of students showing why they care about the Libraries!
We had dozens of photos of students showing why they care about the Libraries!
We had dozens of photos of students showing why they care about the Libraries!
Thanks to all of your efforts and support, the Libraries greatly exceeded our goals for Giving Day this year. Last year, we had 22 donors and our goal this year was to slightly more than double this with 50 donors. We blew our goal out of the water with 134 donors and the Libraries are on the Top Ten leaderboards for both Rutgers-Newark and Rutgers-New Brunswick. We raised a total of $13,375.00. Here are the specifics for each location:
#11 – RBHS Libraries, 6 donations, $300.00
#12 – Camden Libraries, 10 donations, $170.00
#7 – Newark Libraries, 18 donations, $1433.00
#9 – New Brunswick Libraries, 100 donations, $11,472.00
This banner ran on Instagram on Giving Day.
The figures above may shift slightly as the Foundation does their final accounting, but clearly, we did a great job!
Thank you to everyone who took time to set up donation computer stations or to sit at tables and solicit support sheets and donations in their libraries. I hope you all had a chance to see the fantastic social media campaign we ran on Twitter, using many photos of our real students and colleagues sounding off on matters most to them. Matt Badessa also created our first Instagram banner/photo grid.
If you have photos of Giving Day at your location, send them to jessica.pellien@rutgers.edu and I’ll add them to the slideshow!
Grace Agnew, associate university librarian for digital library systems , photo credit: Isaiah Beard.
Rutgers University Libraries is a key part of a team that won a $4 million grant to establish a regional data-sharing network called the Virtual Data Collaboratory. This is a huge grant that involves other departments at Rutgers University, as well as several regional university partners. We shared a press release about this initiative on our website in October, but I recently sat down with Grace Agnew who is coordinating the Libraries’ participation, to get a better sense of what it means for the Libraries and for Rutgers.
Jessica Pellien: You are part of a team that has won a multimillion dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. What is the grant for?
Grace Agnew: The grant will build an infrastructure where research data created at Rutgers and other collaborating universities can be stored, discovered, and reused. Rutgers is among the nation’s top 20 public universities in terms of obtaining research grants and number 7 among Big Ten universities, yet the university lacks a cohesive strategy for efficiently managing research data. Research data often ends up silo-ed in individual departments where it is not easily discovered and reused. Also, because we do not have a shared infrastructure that can be easily repurposed, financial and personnel resources that could be dedicated to the research itself are instead expended on duplicating infrastructure that exists in silos around Rutgers. A large scale research data infrastructure is critical for Rutgers to continue to advance as a research institution, which is part of the university’s three-fold mission.
JP: This grant involves many units at Rutgers and other regional universities. What role will Rutgers University Libraries play?
GA: The Libraries are uniquely positioned because we engage with and support Rutgers users across the spectrum, from incoming first year students to faculty members engaged in groundbreaking research. What we bring to the table is understanding and representing user needs. We are tasked with designing the data services layer which is the user-facing part of the project. Our design encompasses adding, discovering, and reusing data. We took a unique approach to ensuring the discoverability and reuse of data by designing an interface that links data with the person who created it, the tools used to analyze it, and the intermediate research products–analyses, reports, etc.–that are created around the data before the peer-reviewed publications begin. In other words, we designed a strategy that not only supports the workflow of the researcher but helps other researchers, perhaps in other disciplines, understand the context of the data and how it is used, as part of the discovery process. We will work with the lead department, Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute (RDI2) to implement the data services layer according to our design. In addition to myself, Ron Jantz is helping to design the architecture for the data services layer and Ryan Womack will be working closely with the two use cases, the Protein Data Bank with Helen Berman, Center for Integrative Proteomics Research at Rutgers and Vasant Honavar of Penn State and with Jie Gong. Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rutgers, to ensure that the design of the data services layer meets their research and workflow needs. Other librarians involved in the data services design are Karen Estlund at Penn State and Joe Lucia at Temple University.
JP: So, what is the Virtual Data Collaboratory?
GA: The Virtual Data Collaboratory is intended, ultimately, as a “one stop shop” for the storage, discovery and reuse of data. It is immediately collaborative because we are building parallel facilities at Rutgers and Penn State. Other participating universities in Pennsylvania, include Drexel and Temple. The VDC will ultimately be available to other universities in both states through the Internet2 high speed networking facilities, KINBER in Pennsylvania and NJEdge in New Jersey. The term collaboratory references both the universities involved in the design, as well as the opportunities for collaboration that the data services layer will promote. The VDC is also designed to bridge to existing collaboratories, such as the Protein Data Bank, so much of the data in the VDC will be “virtual” because they exist in other collaboratories but are accessible via the VDC.
JP: There are existing places to store data. What will distinguish our effort from others?
GA: Other universities have collaboratories. We believe the VDC has a unique focus on both robust storage and preservation of data and a user focus on multidisciplinary discovery and reuse of data. Also, the existing places are largely single university initiatives or single discipline initiatives. They are very well designed and very supportive of their users, particularly those with a disciplinary focus. The VDC will work with existing facilities and will bring new users and increased impact from other disciplines through bridges to those facilities.
JP: You note that the VDC will integrate with other regional and national efforts. Can you paint a picture of what this actually means for your average researcher? If I am a scientist doing research on X, how would VDC help me?
GA: VDC is leveraging the technologies already funded in the NSF DIBBS initiative, so the design is inherently collaborative with other large scale data facilities. What the VDC will provide is an infrastructure that the researcher can use to ensure her data is preserved, is accessible, and can be analyzed and reused by the researcher and by others. Currently, researchers at Rutgers have to build an infrastructure according to granting agency requirements to ensure that data is preserved and made openly available to others or they can deposit in disciplinary repositories. Once deposited in a disciplinary repository, the researcher generally cannot continue to work with the data, unless the data is downloaded for use. VDC is envisioned as a workflow-oriented repository with a suite of tools for reusing data and the ability to store and link data products, such as analyses, which otherwise reside on the researcher’s local server or desktop. So the VDC is somewhat unique in designing full integration in merging storage and working space for the active scientist.
JP: Will faculty and researchers at non-participating universities have access to the VDC?
GA: It is open to everyone for discovery of data. I don’t think policies for membership in the collaboratory have been developed yet. Membership enables you to upload your data, use tools, etc. The Advisory Board will assist with the development of policies for membership.
JP: When will the VDC be available?
GA: This is a four year grant that began in September 2016. The goal is to use agile methodologies to build a prototype and layer on functionality, so hopefully there will be something real to show early in 2018.
So there you have it, the team behind the VDC is already hard at work. Currently, their focus is on designing a collaboratory for sciences, though Grace was quick to point out that social sciences and humanities wouldn’t be turned away if they were interested.
When it is completed, the VDC will meet or exceed requirements for open access data management by granting agencies and will be a tremendous accomplishment for Rutgers.
President Robert Barchi adjusts a tallcase clock in the Rutgers University Libraries Special Collections and University Archives.
A couple of weeks ago, Special Collections and University Archives hosted a special visitor — President Robert Barchi.
A big fan of tallcase clocks (AKA grandfather clocks), President Barchi saw all of four of the clocks in SCUA’s collection and even took a moment to perform an on-the-spot repair to an early nineteenth-century clock that was donated by the family of Wallace Todd Eakins (1889-1968), RC’11. After a quick adjustment, the clock was once again happily tick-tocking away.
In honor of this visit, we’re proud to highlight this collection of tallcase clocks. Read below for photos of the beautiful clock faces and information about their provenance and donation.
Movement: 8-day clock; square clock face not signed
Case: intended for a (later) clock movement with an arched clock face; attributed to Nicholas Williamson Parsell (1797-1877) by the donor and is likely the same clock cited by Margaret E. White in Early Furniture Made in New Jersey, 1690-1870 ([Newark, N.J.]: The Newark Museum Association, c1958): “A tall clock with case attributed to Nicholas Parsell is owned by Catharine Schneeweiss.”
Location: Special Collections and University Archives reading room (behind sign-in desk), Alexander Library
Donor: Ralph Heyboer (1918-2011) of Linden, New Jersey
Provenance: movement created in 18th century; case created in 19th century; evidently owned at one time by Catharine Hardenbergh Schneeweiss (1893-1977), the daughter of Henry P. Schneeweiss; per donor: “from estate of Henry P. Schneewiess family”
Note: per Somerset County Historical Quarterly (vol. 8): Nicholas W. Parsell had a daughter Mary who married F.M. Schneeweiss, the father of a Henry Schneeweiss. Per Rutgers University Biographical Files: Alumni (Class of 1877): Henry P[arsell] Schneeweiss (1856-1930), who served as the treasurer of Rutgers from 1915 to 1928, was the son of Franz Maxmillion Schneeweiss and Mary (Parsell) Schneeweiss. He married Mary Cornelia Hardenbergh, a descendant of the first president of Queens College [now Rutgers University], and resided at 56 College Avenue at the time of his death.
Received: 1992; acquired, from the same donor, with other items (e.g., monogrammed china, said to be from the Parsell family, and a mahogany secretary bookcase) identified as having the same provenance
Movement: 8-day musical clock; arched clock face not signed, but movement perhaps by Leslie & Williams, per similar musical clock at Monmouth County Historical Association [see: William E. Drost, Clocks and Watches of New Jersey (c1966)]
Case: Federal era; includes linear inlay; attributed to Matthew Egerton, Jr., New Brunswick, N.J., per similar clock cases with cabinetmaker’s labels [in addition to Drost, see, for example: “Silver Jubilee Exhibitors,” Antiques, LX (October 1951)]
Location: Special Collections and University Archives office area, Alexander Library
Donor: G. Willard Quick (1892-1970) [bequest]
Provenance: per donor: belonged to Tunis Quick (1762-1836), Readington Township, Hunterdon County; per donor’s widow: “moved from the Quick home in Hunterdon County, New Jersey to Loudon County, Virginia, in 1871”
Note: Also per donor’s widow: “Restored to its present condition and put in running order, early in 1940.” Weights augmented at this time?
Received: December 1987 [from Florida, evidently following the death of the donor’s surviving spouse]
Movement: 8-day clock; presumably by “J. Martin & Son, New York” as stated on the arched clock face
Case: Mahogany?; maker unknown
Location: Clifford P. Case Room, Special Collections and University Archives, Alexander Library
Donor: Wallace Todd Eakins (1889-1968), a member of the Rutgers College Class of 1911 [bequest]
Provenance: created about 1825; “the Eakins family grandfather clock” per donor
Received: destined for or received in Special Collections by March 1970
Movement: 8-day clock; arched clock face signed by retailer (Tiffany & Co.), but movement itself (likely to name a maker such as Korfhage) not examined
Case: likely German
Location: Special Collections and University Archives reading room (between windows), Alexander Library
Donor: per small metal plaque: “Presented by the Class of 1903”
Provenance: created about 1900; per Hand-Book of the Grounds and Buildings . . . of Rutgers College ([New Brunswick, N.J.]: The College, 1904): “presented to the College on Class Day, June 16th, 1903, on behalf of the Class of 1903. The clock is a large ‘grandfather’s’ clock, in an oak case, and is the work of Messrs. Tiffany & Company. It is placed in the reading room of the Ralph Voorhees Library” [a building dedicated in 1903]; presumably transferred to new library building [now Alexander Library] about 1956; in Libraries’ central administrative offices immediately prior to 2016 transfer to Special Collections and University Archives
On Thursday, November 10th, 2016, Tara Maharjan, Processing Archivist, Janki Patel, Undergraduate, Art History & Art Library reference assistant, and Megan Lotts, Art Librarian, hosted a pop-up button making space in the lobby of Alexander Library. At this event patrons had the opportunity to create and make their own button, take a pre-made button of an image from Rutgers University Libraries Special Collections and University Archives, and view a vintage button collection, discovered in a basement, in Edison, NJ.
The inspiration for purchasing a button maker came from the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) annual conference in 2013, when Char Booth, current Associate Dean, Library at California State University San Marcos, spoke about libraries building good will within their communities and noted that the button maker they purchased was worth its weight in gold.
Button making can be a low-cost pop up making space that addresses the idea of object, from concept to consumption. In the case of a button, a wearable item is the outcome. Creating a button can strengthen ones’ creative thinking and problem solving skills. Furthermore, it also addresses finding and using images and understanding copyright laws.
Throughout the event many positive comments were made by Rutgers students, faculty, staff, alum, and non-affiliate patrons. Multiple reference questions were asked, and a few patrons inquired about other making opportunities available at the Rutgers University Libraries. Also during the event, the hosts connected with a new student, who was uncertain about navigating the Rutgers systems, and we could share with her information about the libraries, the campuses in general, and what to do in the local area. Lastly, following the event a student reached out from a Rutgers Learning Living Communities (LLC), to ask for 23 Paul Robeson buttons. The LLC is currently researching Robeson, and they all wanted this image from the RUL collections to wear proudly.
The Mathematical Sciences and Physics Library included separate prizes for their student workers and library users.
This Halloween season the Mathematical Sciences and Physics Library asked and answered an important question: how many mathematics, engineering, or pharmacy students does it take to figure out how many peanut and peanut butter M&M’s are in a jar?
From October 17 to October 31 the library held a candy guessing contest for both their student employees and library users–6 lucky winners in total were declared on November 1.
According to L. Melanie Miller, the students have used many different methods and tools to put forward their best guess.
“What is most fascinating, is watching how a number of students have used ruler’s, calculators and several different calculations to figure out how many pieces of candy there are in the jars,” said Miller.
She also notes that a number of the student workers collaborated to help each other figure it out. Miller describes the scene, saying, “they measured the width, length and circumference of the Jars and even went so far as to include the size and shape of the candy into their calculation.”
An example of one student’s candy counting equation taking into account the diameter and height of the jar measured in candy.
Needless to say, this has been a fun activity for both users and staff. From funny discussions about the choice of candy — what was it about peanut M&Ms? Why not choose plain ones? To last ditch efforts to coerce or persuade the librarians to reveal the correct number of M&M’s, the users and students workers who participated made this a great program.
Interaction of Color on display at Rutgers Art Library. Photo credit: Megan Lotts.
Rutgers Art Library recently unearthed a 1963 copy of a book by Josef Albers, Interaction of Color. The 1963 copy is special, in part, because of its size and format. It was, according to Yale University Press, originally published “as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates.” There were only 2000 original copies made and they sold out quickly. Some copies of this valuable book have made it to auction in recent years.
Following this limited run, Interaction of Color was released in smaller format books (shown in the photo above is art librarian Megan Lotts’ version from the 1990s) and eventually an app from Yale University Press.
The book was on display at the Art Library as part of the launch for the coloring book and will be put to good use in several courses in the spring, according to Lotts.
“I personally feel that this is a spectacular example of the evolution of a book, and will definitely be showing this off to my Byrne seminar in the spring, as well as the Color classes out of Mason Gross Visual Arts. I’ve been fortunate to show this book off to many people from the Zimmerli, MGVA, and arts enthusiasts since we have found it. This book really leaves a lot of mouths dropping.”
Back in August, Instagram announced a new feature called Stories. Similar to their counterparts on Snapchat, Instagram stories allow users to create a “slideshow” of images and/or videos that is viewable for 24 hours before disappearing.
As is suggested by their name, stories allow you to shape a narrative around your subject in a way that a single image or video may not.
Much like Snapchat stories, Instagram stories are well-suited to capturing action as it is happening. This allows you to leverage the “fear of missing out” to generate excitement around your programming.
When you post or update a story, your account appears in a list that runs across top of others’ Instagram feeds. This extra visibility is a welcome boon given recent changes to the platform’s timeline algorithm.
You can experiment with the story-based approach to social media without having to build a new audience from scratch on a different platform.
Cons
While you can download your story content to your camera roll as it is published, the preferred portrait orientation makes it difficult to repurpose your content elsewhere. Shooting in landscape orientation requires your viewers to either turn their heads awkwardly or rotate their phones, an inconvenience that puts your content at risk of being skipped over.
The 10 second limit on video clips presents some challenges. For example, a speaker’s comments can easily run over and get cut off, necessitating additional takes.
Viewing statistics disappear along with the image or video they are attached to, complicating assessment.
Instagram’s story editing tools (basic text and drawing) are limited compared to Snapchat’s, especially its robust filter system.
Next Steps
Identifying more story opportunities to allow for additional testing. (If you have any ideas, please get in touch!)
Incorporating stories into the Instagram content schedule.
Formalizing the procedure for recording and reporting story viewing statistics.
Ed captured this self-portrait last year.
![Movement: 8-day clock; square clock face not signed Case: intended for a (later) clock movement with an arched clock face; attributed to Nicholas Williamson Parsell (1797-1877) by the donor and is likely the same clock cited by Margaret E. White in Early Furniture Made in New Jersey, 1690-1870 ([Newark, N.J.]: The Newark Museum Association, c1958): “A tall clock with case attributed to Nicholas Parsell is owned by Catharine Schneeweiss.” Location: Special Collections and University Archives reading room (behind sign-in desk), Alexander Library Donor: Ralph Heyboer (1918-2011) of Linden, New Jersey Provenance: movement created in 18th century; case created in 19th century; evidently owned at one time by Catharine Hardenbergh Schneeweiss (1893-1977), the daughter of Henry P. Schneeweiss; per donor: “from estate of Henry P. Schneewiess family” Note: per Somerset County Historical Quarterly (vol. 8): Nicholas W. Parsell had a daughter Mary who married F.M. Schneeweiss, the father of a Henry Schneeweiss. Per Rutgers University Biographical Files: Alumni (Class of 1877): Henry P[arsell] Schneeweiss (1856-1930), who served as the treasurer of Rutgers from 1915 to 1928, was the son of Franz Maxmillion Schneeweiss and Mary (Parsell) Schneeweiss. He married Mary Cornelia Hardenbergh, a descendant of the first president of Queens College [now Rutgers University], and resided at 56 College Avenue at the time of his death. Received: 1992; acquired, from the same donor, with other items (e.g., monogrammed china, said to be from the Parsell family, and a mahogany secretary bookcase) identified as having the same provenance](https://i0.wp.com/agenda.libraries.rutgers.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/clock-schneeweiss.jpg?ssl=1)
