The Agenda - Faculty and Staff Newsletter

Category: Units

  • Harry Potter, Books We Read, Science Café – What’s Cooking at Chang?

    The fall 2019 semester has brought literature, science, and even a little magic to the Stephen and Lucy Chang Library on Cook Campus.

    In course papers on redesigning the Chang Science Library submitted for the Landscape Architecture course in 2018, students expressed their strong interest in events at the library that are “educational, entertaining, and competitive.” Inspired also by the revelation that Rutgers students not only read for fun, but enjoy a wide variety of genres and topics, the Chang Science Library took the challenge to meet the interests and expectations of the Rutgers community today.

    In the summer of 2019, we developed a group of new programs to promote recreational reading at the library under an umbrella initiative called Books We Read. The idea originated from library sessions in spring 2019 taught as part of a SEBS course called Portals to Academic Success (PASS), where students were tasked to find one of their favorite books in QuickSearch and, using a template, create a poster including the book’s title, its availability at the Libraries, an image, and the proper citation. A select group of posters were displayed at Chang Library after the course, but when students asked for a virtual home for the posters the Books We Read website was born. Galleries of these posters are still available on the site as examples of peer-to-peer book recommendations.

    Books We Read is exactly what the name suggests: an initiative to promote, highlight, and build communities around reading for pleasure at Rutgers. Hosted on the brand new Rutgers WordPress site, the Books We Read website aims to facilitate non-required reading through book suggestions from students for other students. It also links to a curated lists of books available at Rutgers Libraries in a LibGuide, updated frequently. The browsable collection showcasing books in American literature and recreational reading also includes titles for ESL (English as a Second Language) readers.

    Led by Nick Allred (MSt., Oxford), PhD candidate at the Rutgers English Department and Graduate Specialist at New Brunswick Libraries, a weekly short-fiction reading group has begun meeting on Wednesdays at Chang Science Library in the Fall semester to promote reading for fun. Students are invited to join as often as they like, and no preparation is required as we will be reading the pieces in session. Advertised as “like SPEED-DATING THE LIBRARY STACKS”, the program will allow students to encounter writers from classic to contemporary, discuss the experience with friends, and maybe even start a fling with a new favorite author or genre.

    The reading program, along with the web site, wishes to create a sustainable model of reading for pleasure individually or in a group setting, using the Libraries’ collection. It intends to connect students with library resources, while helping them learn about library research for their school assignments. By providing tips and resources, the sessions and the web site also empower students to create book clubs or reading groups of their own.

    The kick-off event on Tuesday, September 17 revolved around one of the most beloved recreational reads on Rutgers (or any) campus: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. SEBS faculty and students volunteered to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone aloud in shifts throughout the day, all while enjoying Harry Potter-themed outfits, activities, food, drinks (butterbeer, anyone?), and goodies. Over 30 readers participated, split evenly between faculty and students – the latter drawn largely from two dedicated student groups, READ, the Rutgers University Book Club and Muggle Mayhem (the Rutgers Chapter of Harry Potter Alliance). The competition aspect of the event involved Harry Potter trivia and spells managed by students and an international component to identify languages of book covers from the international editions. Thanks to art librarian Megan Lotts and archivist Tara Maharjan, participants also got a chance to make buttons and color in unusual (or magical!) archival images scanned from special collections.

    The event was extremely well received on the Cook Campus and the Libraries and SEBS social media. The success is based on Chang’s central location on campus and partnerships previously established with the SEBS Office of Academic Affairs and the SEBS International Office. The two new student group partners hopefully will strengthen ties with pleasure readers on other campuses.

    Another new initiative also shows a great promise for all parties. On September 18, the first Science Café was held at the Chang Science Library. A popular event on the Cook Campus, the Science Café series invites experts and laypeople to have coffee and chat about important issues in science. The successful event, entitled “Why We Need Pest Management”, will be followed by two more: on October 24, Oscar Schofield will discuss “Why Rutgers is Building a Global Ocean Observing a System and it is COOL!” and on November 14, Donna Fennell and Kevin Dixon will talk about how “Microbes are in the Atmosphere!”, both from 10 am to 11 am.

     

  • Library Reading Lists Created within Multiple LMSs

    Students in electronic classroomThe Ex Libris Leganto Reading List Management tool is now available for use in Blackboard, Canvas, and Sakai. The reading list tool can help instructors create impactful resource lists using library content and integrate a variety of materials into one, easy-to-use list. The tool is accessible from inside the learning management system, so students can access the reading list, along with other course resources. Instructors and librarians can collaboratively create and process reading lists for students from all types of resources.

    Because the reading lists tool is integrated in Blackboard, Canvas, and Sakai, access to materials is easy and streamlined for students.

    Here are some of the key features:

    • Instructors can create reading lists from books, articles, streaming media, and other resources held by the Libraries or add their own content. Reading lists integrate with the saved favorites feature on QuickSearch and lists can be used for multiple sections of a course or copied into new courses.
    • Reading lists can be divided into sections, by chronology, or by citation type.
    • Instructors and students can view information about each citation such as availability and status.
    • Instructors can collaborate with peers to enrich reading lists and keep them up to date.
    • Instructors can access usage data about their reading lists.

    The tool is now available in the external tools sections of the learning management systems. For more information, or if you have any questions, contact me at maria.breger@rutgers.edu.

  • Ex Libris Implementation Project Update – November 2019

    quicksearch logoThe project to append Rutgers Law Libraries’ Koha Catalog data to our instance of Alma and QuickSearch is picking up the pace. During the summer the Implementation Team and its working groups met with our counterparts at Law to review Alma configuration options and best practices for data cleanup and loading records. Then in September and October, Law supplied configuration and mapping forms and exported their full catalog of bibs and patrons to Ex Libris.

    Below is the tentative schedule for the remainder of the Law Append project:

    October 2019

    • Ex Libris performs test load and builds test system
    • Law starts using our ILLiad and redirects their users to our ILLiad form

    November 2019

    • Law and Libraries review results of test load
    • Libraries provide Alma training
    • Law stops lending under NJRLL (Law Camden) and RULAW (Law Newark) symbols in ILLiad
    • Law Exports Koha Catalog Titles to OCLC
    • OCLC attaches NjR symbol to Law titles in WorldCat

    December 2019

    • Continue Alma Training

    January 3, 2020

    • Law provides final version of configuration forms and extracts to Ex Libris

    January 4-8, 2020

    • Technical Services and Fulfillment Activities are frozen
    • Ex Libris appends Law data to our instance of Alma and QuickSearch

    January 9, 2020

    • Law Goes Live with Alma and QuickSearch

    January 10, 2020

    • Load Offline Circulation transactions

    January 2020

    • OCLC removes NJRLL and RULAW symbols from existing Law titles in WorldCat

  • Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

    Robeson Library’s cultural sensitivity and diversity training in August.

    Diversity, equity, and inclusion are acknowledged as being fundamental values of the American Library Association and its members, and diversity is listed as one of ALA’s key action areas. The Libraries’ philosophy is that “as the intellectual commons of one the most diverse universities in the nation, Rutgers University Libraries advance and promote diversity in all its forms. We believe the Libraries are stronger and can more effectively support the mission of Rutgers when we are inclusive and equitable.”

    Paul Robeson Library has reaffirmed its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by creating a comprehensive action plan with strategic FY20-21 priorities. One of the initiatives from the Robeson priorities led to an all-staff, day-long training session in August on cultural sensitivity and diversity with Baseemah Ismail. Ismail is a senior human resources generalist, with experience in an array of HR functions including diversity strategy, training, talent acquisition and retention, and organizational development and design; a certified Development Dimensions International learning systems facilitator, as well as a DiSC Communication Styles and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator practitioner. The training addressed understanding cultural differences, awareness of biases, enhancing sensitivity to cultural sensitivities, and differences and strategies for fostering a cohesive workplace.

  • What’s Happening around Rutgers – September 2019

    Painting
    Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein

    Tuesday, September 3, 2019 to Sunday, January 5, 2020
    Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick

    Dimensionism: Modern Art in the Age of Einstein is a groundbreaking exhibition that explores how modern art was influenced by advances in science, from Einstein’s theory of relativity to newly powerful microscopic and telescopic lenses. A first-of-its-kind touring exhibition, Dimensionism is organized by the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College and opened at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

    Learn more.

    Savage Feast book
    Writers House: “Savage Feast” with Boris Fishman

    Thursday, September 12 | 12:45 to 1:45 p.m.
    Rutgers–Camden Writers House

    Boris Fishman was born in Minsk, Belarus, and immigrated with his family to New York in 1988, at nine. He is the author of the novel A Replacement Life, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year that also won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal, and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, also a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His new book is Savage Feast, a nonfiction family history told through recipes. He lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Princeton University.

    Learn more.

    Gardens Party
    Rutgers Gardens party

    Thursday, September 26, 2019 | 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.
    Rutgers Gardens, New Brunswick

    At this year’s Gardens Party, we will celebrate the opening of Cook’s Market. Our weekly farm market, now housed in its permanent green-roof structure, features vendors of local and Jersey-fresh products, many of whom will be featured at the party.

    At the event, Dr. Dennis Werner will be presented with the 2019 Hamilton Award. Dr. Werner is a fellow of the American Society for Horticultural Science, and was recently named the Alumni Association Distinguished Undergraduate Professor by North Carolina State University.

    We will be joined by chef, grocer, and television personality “Produce Pete” Napolitano, for a book signing, who is well known across the state for his weekly fruit and vegetable segments on NBC affiliates in the greater New York and Philadelphia areas.

    Learn more and register.

    Porch fest
    The Newark Porch Fest in Forest Hill

    Saturday, September 28 | 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.
    Forest Hill, Newark

    This inaugural celebration of community arts will take place in Newark’s Forest Hill historic district. Organized by the Forest Hill Community Association, our FREE family-friendly event will have amateur and professional artists (both performing and visual) volunteering to showcase their talents. Residents from Forest Hill will make their porches available to serve as community stages to accommodate the artists. Attendees will be invited to visit stages across the neighborhood to enjoy a full afternoon of entertainment, food, and fun. Visit us at Facebook: Newark Porchfest or Instagram: @newarkporchfest for updates and information.

    Learn more.

  • This Month in the Agenda – September 2002

    Rubbing Shoulders with the Pres’

    In August, President George W. Bush asked Paul Robeson Library’s Julie Still to join him in Waco, Texas for a national economic forum.

    Julie is a member of an investment club and participated in July in a town meeting in Philadelphia organized by the United States Secretary of Commerce that focused on small investors’ reactions to corporate misdeeds. Julie spoke up and was quoted by an AP reporter and then in a Philadelphia Inquirer story. One or both stories apparently caught the eye of the President’s people, and she got invited to Waco.

    Getting Hi-Tech

    Congratulations to Paul Robeson Library’s Vibiana Bowman, whose article “Reading Between the Lines: An Evaluation of WindowEyes Screen Reader as a Reference Tool for Teaching and Learning” was published in the latest issue of Library Hi Tech. This is a special issue of Library Hi Tech devoted to accessibility of Web information resources for people with disabilities.

    Gifts from Taipei

    Colleagues or students visiting the undergraduate reading room on the first floor of Alexander Library may notice a large new artwork, taking up much of the wall space near the windows overlooking the entry walkway.

    “A City of Cathay” was donated in June by the Taipei Cultural Center in New York City. The Taipei Cultural Center also donated a significant collection of Chinese language books and journals to the East Asian Library in May.

    Power to the People

    After a regular August maintenance downtime was completed, IRIS returned to regular use with two significant modifications. The Rutgers Request Service (RRS) changed its name to the Rutgers Delivery Service (RDS), and a major new feature, user-initiated holds, became available.

    The name change to the Rutgers Delivery Service reflects the Rutgers University Libraries growing use of technology to save time, enhance services, and offer increased options to Libraries users.

    The Agenda 24, no. 14 (September 8, 2002)

  • 2019 Faculty/Staff Picnic

  • Reservations Accepted for One Button Studio

    One button studio at Alexander Library
    The One Button Studio at Alexander Library.

    Students, faculty, and staff now can reserve the One Button Studio in Alexander Library to create high-quality digital video recordings in a studio setting. The studio does not require users to have prior video production knowledge. Lighting, audio, and video configurations have been pre-set for ease of use.  With support and funding from Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, vice chancellor for Undergraduate Academic Affairs at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, this space will enable students to present their research as a high-quality video, an alternative to the more static conventions of the poster or long-form essay. The room is set up for one to three people to create a video with only a FAT formatted flash drive. It really is as simple as 1-2-3-4: insert your USB drive into the dock, press the large silver button to begin recording, press the button to stop recording, and remove your USB drive to deactivate the studio camera and lights. Shared User Services provided support to list the One Button Studio on the Group Study Rooms web page and link to a user guide/reservation page. Reserve the room online and visit the Circulation Desk in Alexander Library to check out the key with your Rutgers ID card.

  • Ex Libris Implementation Project Update – September 2019

    quicksearch logoAs we embark on a new academic year, we thought it would be a good time to let you know about some improvements coming to QuickSearch. Below is a summary of some of the major enhancements that Ex Libris plans to introduce in 2019-2020.

    Central index

    In Q1 2020, Ex Libris plans to release a new and improved central index. Leveraging the combined assets of its Primo and Summon indexes, Ex Libris’s new, unified Central Discovery Index (CDI) promises expanded content coverage, faster updates, improved deduplication, and better result filtering. In addition to providing an improved search experience for users, the new central index also offers better integration with Alma, making it easier to administer and maintain. 

    Related items

    As part of its effort to build a bigger and better central index, Ex Libris is also developing a graph database that will allow users to explore connections between related items. For example, a record for a book will soon have links to reviews of that book and the individual chapters contained within, creating additional opportunities for exploration and serendipitous discovery.     

    Browse journals by subject

    The Journal Search page will be enhanced to allow users the option to browse journals by subject. Subject categories will be based on Library of Congress Classification and offer researchers an easier way to identify and locate journals in their area of study. 

    Enhanced personalization

    Users will be given more control over their search experience with customizable preferences, including the ability to configure their preferred library, sort order, and number of results per page. 

    Bulk actions

    Currently, actions such as save, email, and export can only be applied to records individually. However, users will soon have the ability to perform these actions in bulk on a set of records. They will also have the option to export search results to Excel or CSV.

    Be on the lookout for more information about these enhancements as they are released. As always, if you have any questions or would like to report an issue with QuickSearch, please email the Ex Libris Implementation Team at exlibris@rutgers.libanswers.com. You can also use the “Report a problem” link in QuickSearch. For more information on how to use QuickSearch, visit QuickSearch Help or check out our QuickSearch tutorial videos.

  • Google Books, HathiTrust, and Our Contribution to the Collective Collection

    The record for a HathiTrust text displayed in QuickSearch.

    As you may have read in the Cabinet minutes, the Libraries recently formalized our commitment to participate in the Google Books Library Project. With the goal “to create a comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog of all books in all languages,” this partnership between Google and dozens of libraries worldwide—including those of the BTAA, which signed an agreement to participate in 2007—has digitized millions of books and made them searchable through the Google Books platform.

    In addition to improving Google’s search, the books scanned through the Google Books Library Project are deposited into the HathiTrust Digital Library. The BTAA and University of California system were instrumental in setting up HathiTrust, a community-owned partnership developed to “be a vital catalyst for emerging forms of research, teaching, and learning that engage the scholarly and cultural record.” We already benefit greatly from the services of HathiTrust, which include preservation of the scanned versions of the content, access to research tools such as textual analysis, and books for people with print disabilities. Moreover, full-text content from HathiTrust is discoverable in QuickSearch, adding to the amount of resources our users have access to at the click of a button.

    Though our work on this project is really just beginning, it has already been months in the making. Last spring, we worked with Google to go through a test run of their digitization process, from the identification of books in our collection to the review of the final, scanned versions. Now that we’re moving forward, a Librarieswide team has been formed to carry out the project with Joann Parrone acting as the central coordinator. This group had its kick-off meeting last month and is already working to comb through the candidate list provided by Google, which amounts to nearly 170,000 unique items. Each needs to be reviewed for eligibility, taking into consideration size, condition, and a variety of other factors.

    And this is all just the tip of the iceberg. This project will call upon many of us throughout its lifecycle, from the selection of materials, to packing and staging, to coordinating checkout policies while the books are away being scanned. But this this is an important undertaking and a great opportunity for us to further our contribution to the collective collection, advancing the elements of our mission to accelerate discovery, illuminate understanding, and contribute to the public good.

    In their new report on operationalizing the BTAA collective collection, Lorcan Dempsey and his colleagues write that “effective collaboration, the provision of shared infrastructure, and operational sustainability are all now central issues for libraries and the institutions of which they are a part.” Contributing to initiatives like the Google Books Library Project and the HathiTrust Digital Library is one of the many ways we can embrace this spirit of collaboration and ensure that we maximize the impact of our collections—not just in the here and now, but around the world, and for generations to come.