Category: Department

Quick takes on events & news

National Library Week

April 10 – 16, 2016

The theme of this year’s National Library Week is “Libraries Transform.” You can read up on National Library Week here: http://www.ala.org/news/mediapresscenter/factsheets/nationallibraryweek.

Student Employment Week

April 10 – 16, 2016

The Student Coordinator Group is putting the finishing touches on their plans to celebrate and thank our student workers. Each unit will have different activities throughout the week and we will host a spotlight series showcasing a different student worker across the system each day as a news story. Look for more information on this soon.

“The Elusiveness of Progress: Voting Rights in America” exhibit at Kilmer Library

Ends August 31, 2016

The Elusiveness of Progress: Voting Rights in America is on display at Kilmer Library, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, now through the end of August. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

Like Jazz Women’s History Month Film Festival in Newark

March 29 – April 7, 2016

Dana Library and the Institute of Jazz Studies are partnering with Women In Media – Newark n their 2016 Women’s History Month Film Festival.

April 5 at 5 p.m.: Dana Library will host the screenings of Airgirl and The Unforgettable Hampton Family (with Dawn Hampton making a special appearance at the screening).

April 6 at 5 p.m.: Dana Library will show An Educated Woman and Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band.

For a complete schedule of films please visit their website: http://wim-n.com/film-festival-2016/

TFAP@TEN exhibit at Douglass Library

Ends April 8, 2016

Detail from Apiphobia (2011) by Anonda Bell. Mixed media installation. Dimensions variable.

TFAP@TEN, a group exhibition honoring the 10th anniversary of The Feminist Art Project (TFAP), is on display through April 8 in the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries at Douglass Library.

Women and Creativity House Student Exhibitions

April 20 – May 2, 2016

Sarah Ferreira, After Jill Magid, Muse Portrait, 2014, digital photograph, 14 x 11". From 2014-15 WCH Exhibition. — Sarah Ferreira, After Jill Magid, Muse Portrait, 2014, digital photograph, 14 x 11″.
From 2014-15 WCH Exhibition.

Women and Creativity House Student Exhibitions will feature the work of Sarah Ferreira, CWAH intern and Stacy Scibelli, learning community coordinator.

The annual Women and Creativity House Student Exhibition is sponsored by Douglass Residential College and the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities, a unit of the Office of the Senior VP for Academic Affairs. The exhibition is part of the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, a program of the Center for Women in the Arts and Humanities in partnership with Rutgers University Libraries, and is the oldest continuous running exhibition space in the United States dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established contemporary women artists.

Twenty years later, Jim Niessen will revisit Historians and the Internet

Twenty years ago, near the beginning of his career as a librarian, world history librarian Jim Niessen was invited to contribute to a discussion about the Internet on the pages of the Debrecen journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and his essay on “Historians and the Internet” appeared here (in Hungarian): http://w3.atomki.hu/debrecen/debszem/96_2/niessen.html . The contributors will now be providing updates to their remarks, and Jim has promised us a recap of his new essay for our next issue.

Preservation Week

April 24 – April 30, 2016

Rutgers University librarians are participating in events to celebrate Preservation Week, which is an initiative of ALA ALCTS-PARS:

“From Cassette to Cloud: Reformatting Audiotapes,” by Krista White on April 26 from 2 – 3 p.m.

Learn how to evaluate audio formats and the technical details of digitizing them in this one hour webinar.

“Preserving Your Digital Life,” by Krista White and Isaiah Beard on April 28 from 2 – 3 p.m.

Learn how to develop and implement a plan for preserving your digital life so that friends and family can enjoy your memories far into the future.

Both of these webinars are designed by ALCTS to be suitable for a lay audience. The official description of the webinars and more information is at the ALA/ ALCTS-PARS Preservation Week site here: http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/preswk/alctsevents

“Cherry Blossoms in Spring” exhibit at Dana Library

April 14 – June 30, 2016

cherry blossoms in spring exhibit image 300

Dana Library is hosting “Cherry Blossoms in Spring,” an installation by artist Karen Guancione, in the Gallery from April 14 through June 30. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, April 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Library’s Dana Room and an accompanying program on the history of cherry trees in the Garden State featuring horticulturist Anthony S. Aiello will take place on Thursday, April 21, at 3 p.m. in the Dana Room. Read up on these events here.

New digital exhibition: “Invisible Restraints: Life and Labor at Seabrook Farms”

April 20, 2016

The online exhibition, “Invisible Restraints: Life and Labor at Seabrook Farms,” which will be hosted by the New Jersey Digital Highway, will officially launch this month. The opening event will be held Wednesday, April 20, 2016 at 4 p.m. in the Teleconference Lecture Hall at Alexander Library. For more on this unique collaboration, read our news story.

Digital Humanities Initiative workshop

April 6, 2016

L0022787 L. Ercker, The laws of art and nature... Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Sculpture II. Engraving The laws of art and nature... Lazarus Ercker Published: 1683 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ — Engraving from “The laws of art and nature…” (1683) by Lazarus Ercker. Image credit: Wellcome Library, London.

Rutgers’ Digital Humanities Initiative and the Libraries will host a Digital Lab Series of five workshops throughout the spring semester at the Alexander Library, Rutgers University–New Brunswick. This lab will introduce the basic building blocks of the web: HTML and CSS.

Introduction to Web Development with HTML and CSS
with Francesca Giannetti
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

SAPAC brown bag presentation, “A Citation Analysis of English Dissertations at Rutgers University”

April 6, 2016

Brown Lunch bag paper with red apple on white background

The Scholarly and Professional Activities Committee invites you to a brown bag presentation on Wednesday, April 6, at noon, in the Pane Room, Alexander Library, with video-conferencing to the Dana (Dana Administrative Conference Room) and Robeson (290).

A Citation Analysis of English Dissertations at Rutgers University
Kevin Mulcahy
Abstract:
Academic libraries, especially at state funded institutions, face converging pressures—budgets that are often flat or declining; increased requests for a wide variety of resources (journals, print and e-books, full-text databases, data sets, films and other media), and demands for assessment and accountability from university administrations and state legislatures. Literature librarians confront, directly, or at least implicitly, the additional challenge: is spending institutional funds on books worthwhile. While there is perhaps a tendency for literature specialists to throw up their hands in dismay or to regard the questioners as philistines who simply do not understand the nature of literary research, a more sound strategy is to assess the actual use of their collections. What evidence proves that books are still an integral part of the resources used by literature scholars? To help answer this question, I examined the bibliographies of 30 recent (2008-2014) dissertations from the English Department at Rutgers University, and coded 5870 citations by format and date. Books account for 67.7% of all citations, journal articles for 16.8%, and literary works (novels, drama, poetry, etc.) for 9.7%.

TeachMeet, “See One, Do One, Teach One”

April 6, 2016

The Instructional Community of Practice (ICOP) and the Instruction and Information Literacy Team (NB) invite you to a TeachMeet being presented by our RBHS colleagues, Roberta FitzPatrick and Peggy Dreker.

See One, Do One, Teach One
Date: Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Location: Pane room, Alexander Library (Dana, Robeson, Smith teleconference)
Time: 2 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Students at the New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) and the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine (RSDM) attend an instructional session which covers some basic searching and evidence-based medicine/dentistry concepts, as well as information about writing a CAT (Critically Appraised Topic). They learn how to write a searchable question and how to break that question into concepts, called the PICO format, which helps them to generate search terminology. Students use the information taught in the session to write their own CAT, then teach from that CAT in their subsequent small group sessions. The scholarship and research skills demonstrated by their finished CAT are graded by the preceptor. Hear how this approach to assessment can be adopted in your own discipline/instruction sessions.

March 31, 2016

A Celebration of Books reception is scheduled for April 12

Micah Kleit, incoming director, Rutgers University Press

We are holding the reception for A Celebration of Books (previously called the Faculty Author Celebration) on April 12 at 5 p.m. in Alexander Library. In addition to a display of books and poster giveaways, we are delighted to announce that our featured speaker for the evening will be Micah Kleit, the incoming director at Rutgers University Press.

He will address the convergence of publishing, libraries, and universities and what it is that causes us to want to produce—and reproduce—knowledge. Exploring the landscape of publishing (generally) and university press publishing (more specifically), he will discuss how libraries, scholars, and universities with and without presses need each other now more than ever. The talk will take into account questions of risk, especially as the landscape of scholarly publishing and depositories is changing, and how the risks embedded in contemporary publishing offer new opportunities for scholars, students, and the general public.

Micah Kleit is the incoming director of Rutgers University Press. He has been at Temple University Press for the last seventeen years, first as executive editor, then as interim editorial director, and most recently as editor-in-chief. Before Temple, he was an editor at Beacon Press and the University of Minnesota Press.

Please RSVP using this form: http://go.rutgers.edu/14dnx3nb or email events@rulmail.rutgers.edu.

March 31, 2016
Social media summit, April 19, 2016

The communications department is hosting a social media summit to kick off a discussion of social media strategy for the Libraries and introduce the formation of a Libraries’ Social Media Taskforce. All Libraries faculty and staff who are currently working on social media are strongly encouraged to attend. The summit is also open to anyone interested in learning more about social media and how academic libraries can best reach their audiences through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Date/Time: April 19, 2016
9:30 am -3:00 p.m. (lunch will be provided)
Location: Teleconference Room, 4th floor, Alexander Library

Guest Speakers:

Karen Smith (Assistant Director, New and Emerging Media, Rutgers University Communications and Marketing) will provide an overview of Rutgers University’s social media, visual identity, and editorial guidelines and discuss what to consider when making a social media plan.

Aaron Kenji Ginoza (Social Media & Community Engagement Coordinator, University of Maryland Libraries) will discuss how academic libraries can best reach their audiences through social media, describing some of his most successful social media campaigns and highlighting pitfalls to avoid.

Download a flyer for this event [JPG]

RSVP: Jessica Pellien, Communications Department

March 31, 2016
RUcore hosts “Signs@40: Feminist Scholarship through Four Decades”

The interactive topic model for the fortieth anniversary edition of Signs, Signs@40: Feminist Scholarship through Four Decades, is now publicly available in RUcore (http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7282/T35D8TVZ). Users may download the entire project (topic model data and browser software) or selectively download either the data or the software.

This collaborative project uses digital techniques to explore the Signs archive, the changes in the journal’s content over time, and its role in shaping the fields of Women’s, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. Visitors will discover a visual exploration of the journal’s archive and a snapshot of how topics change over time. While there, they can also view a cocitation network graph that maps the citation patterns in Signs, read commentaries from feminist scholars reflecting on the editorial content and evolution of the journal since its launch, ooh and ahh over forty years’ worth of cover art, and more.

Thanks to journal editor Mary Hawkesworth and the project creators, Andrew Goldstone, Susana Galán, C. Laura Lovin, Andrew Mazzaschi, and Lindsey Whitmore, as well as Ron Jantz and Kayo Denda of the Rutgers University Libraries, this project is now archived for posterity and downloadable by anyone interested in exploring, reusing, or adapting this rich artifact of feminist scholarship.

March 31, 2016
Rutgers Connect Coming to Rutgers University Libraries
As many in the Libraries have already heard, the university has started the migration of faculty and staff email and calendaring to a unified system, called Rutgers Connect, in the Microsoft Cloud using Office 365. The Libraries are scheduled to migrate in Phase 2, sometime between June and August of 2016, but we are still working with colleagues in the Health Sciences Libraries to determine whether they will be part of the Libraries’ migration, or remain part of RBHS, which is scheduled to migrate in the ongoing Phase 1.

There is plenty of good news to look forward to, even if some effort will be required from everyone in the course of the migration:
- Uniform availability anytime, anywhere, of mail, calendar, and the basic Office 365 applications on any platform: Windows, Mac as well as tablets and smart phones of all three flavors (Android, iOS, and Windows)
- The Office 365 cloud-based suite offers all major productivity apps: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote, which will also be available in desktop versions
- The email/calendaring client, called Outlook, including Tasks and Contacts (now called People), and its Web-based version, called OWA (for Outlook Web Access), offer each user 50 Gigabytes of mail storage – an order of magnitude higher than what is currently available
- In addition to the large mail quota, each user will get 1 Terabyte of shareable file storage for collaboration (similar to Google Docs) on Microsoft OneDrive that will show up in your Windows Explorer (now called File Explorer in Windows 10; had been called File Manager before 2000) as just another “drive”
- In addition, Rutgers Connect includes access to Skype for Business for everyone
- More collaboration tools (like SharePoint) will be probably added in 2017
The Rutgers Office of Information Technology (OIT) has contracted a third-party integrator, Comparex, to help with the migration. They will provide webinar-based instruction and tutorials for the use of the entire Office 365 suite. The Libraries’ own Integrated Information Systems (IIS), together with the Libraries’ Unit Computing Specialists, will provide local, customized help in transitioning from Zimbra to Outlook.

As part of the transition to Office 365, our email addresses will change from “@rulmail.rutgers.edu” to the more intuitive “@libraries.rutgers.edu.” To prepare for this change, everyone is encouraged to set up a Rutgers-wide alias in the form of [firstname].[lastname]@rutgers.edu, and have it point to the current @rulmail.rutgers.edu address. (This can be done now by each user on their own, or IIS can help with the rather simple process that takes but a few minutes.)

Much more information will follow in the coming weeks and months as IIS prepares the support infrastructure for everyone to use. We will have a Communications Plan and a Support Website (just like for the Zimbra transition in 2011) with all relevant information, so you won’t have to search several Rutgers sites for every detail. The final migration plan itself will be worked out together with representatives of OIT and Comparex about one month before the actual date.

Here are a few pointers to alleviate early concerns:
- The current @rulmail.rutgers.edu addresses will forward incoming mail to our new accounts for one full year after migration (without the possibility of logging into the old account) – so that people will have plenty of time to adjust their external list subscriptions.
- All internal lists will be migrated and/or updated manually by IIS, or support will be provided for lists that we don’t have access to.
- Since all Rutgers Faculty and Staff domains will “trust” each other, it will be easy to find anyone in the global directory, and to sign up for lists from other departments.
Please look for a lot more information coming to your mailboxes as we move closer to the migration period. It is a good idea to take the online webinars close to the migration date (so as not to forget everything by the time you need to use the new apps). In the meantime, please let IIS know of any concern or question you might have at support@rulhelp.rutgers.edu and, in a few weeks, at the support website.
March 31, 2016
Changes to the Events and News sections of the website

Rutgers University Libraries website will be getting a slight facelift in order to feature more of our news stories and to accommodate our new events calendar. News and Events will now appear in separate sections and will contain more visual content.

The News Section

The News section will now feature a rotating gallery that displays four thumbnail images, each with a headline. Users can scroll to read additional stories or click on the thumbnails/headlines to read more. There will also be a jump button to the archives for news stories.

To submit news, please contact Jessica Pellien.

The Events Section

A rotating carousel of featured events will run in the Events section with a link to enter the calendar page. The content for this section will be selected from the events submitted by event organizers. There will also be a link to the complete events calendar which can be sorted or filtered by location, date, type of event, etc. For more information on how the Calendar will work, please scroll down.

The Featured Collection Section

The appearance of this section will essentially remain the same. Please continue sending submissions for this to Mary Ann Koruth.

Events Calendar:

The newly developed Libraries events calendar will include events hosted and sponsored by the Libraries, as well as events sponsored by other organizations that are using our facilities and may be of interest to our users. You can preview the calendar here (please note that not all the features may be functional yet and that this link can only be viewed from within the Libraries).

Event organizers can submit their events via a simple web form that includes a short description, an image for the event, location, date, time, and contact. The events will not be “live” on our public events calendar until they have been moderated by the Communications Department. It is recommended that you upload your event as soon as you have the information for the listing—event title, description, date, time, location, image. The Communications Department can make changes to the events posting after it is published on the Libraries website. Additional documentation on adding an event will be available at the event submission website.

March 31, 2016