We had an extra reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving. After a long search process, we are delighted to welcome Regina Koury as the new director of Paul Robeson Library at Rutgers–Camden. Read our news release to learn all about Regina, and prepare to welcome her to her new position in the new year starting January 16.
Watch: Providing Hurricane Maria Relief
Digital Humanities librarians Francesca Giannetti and Krista White were on ABC7NY’s Tiempo with Joe Torres to discuss their initiative to host open data mapping events in support of Hurricane Maria relief efforts in Puerto Rico. Watch the entire segment on YouTube courtesy of Rutgers Today. Kudos to Francesca and Krista for this recognition of their work!
Dee Magnoni speaks at the Carr Library dedication ceremony. Credit: Jim Stapleton.
Watch: Honoring Rutgers’ First Black Graduate
As you are all well aware by now, earlier this semester we rededicated the former Kilmer Area Library in honor of Rutgers’ first black graduate, James Dickson Carr. In case you were unable to attend the ceremony, a full video of the event is now available online courtesy of RU-tv. Have a watch and enjoy!
Watch: Native American Arts in the Spotlight
In September, we joined the Middlesex County Cultural and Heritage Commission to welcome John Haworth to Alexander Library. Haworth, senior executive emeritus of the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, delivered an engaging lecture on Native American arts and cultural practice in America. Check out the full video of the presentation, courtesy of our friends at RU-tv.
Honoring the Legacy of the Modern School
Special Collections and University Archives hosted the 45th annual meeting of the Friends of the Modern School, a group formed to preserve the history of the progressive education community located in Piscataway Township from 1915 to 1953. The event was well-received and even spurred a deep-dive into the history of the Modern School and the Modern School Collection, which is held by Rutgers, in the Daily Targum.
The Big Read exhibit at Robeson Library features a magnetic poetry board.
What’s On? Catch These Exhibits while You still Can!
The Web Improvement Team (WIT) is excited to announce some changes coming soon to the Rutgers University Libraries website. Since September, we’ve been speaking with our users (students, faculty, and staff) and analyzing survey and usage data to determine how we can begin to improve our website user experience. We’ve been exploring best practices for user-centered design, content strategy, responsive design, and accessibility. Through one-on-one conversations, focus groups, and data analysis, we have learned more about our users’ essential tasks and resources, pain points in the current design, and user preferences.
Here are some of the takeaways from our first round of user research:
Users are very task-oriented, and generally come to the site knowing what they want; the scope of their use is quite narrow
The current homepage was thought to be too busy and complex
Pages are hard to read, with small text and too much content
Users spend very little time on most pages, and rarely scroll below “the fold”
A relatively small number of resources are especially heavily used (hours, room booking, A-Z database list, ILL, library account)
We based our first round of changes on these findings. Our goals became to:
Surface and prioritize the most frequently used resources and services
Freshen up the look and feel: reduce visual clutter on the homepage, enlarge fonts for sitewide readability
Refine the presentation and content for a few key pages
Minimize initial disruption to lower-level pages
Our overall approach is one of incremental change over radical redesign. Making incremental modifications based on user data ensures that those modifications are genuine improvements (as opposed to change for the sake of change, or change based on guesses or assumptions). If we’re proven wrong, smaller changes are easily reversed or refined. Although change can be uncomfortable at times, a continuous cycle of improvement and evaluation builds a sustainable, usable website that delivers a positive user experience.
You’ll also notice that a lot of things haven’t changed: the red navigation bar, most of the underlying content, the mobile presence. These, too, will change in time, but require considerable user research, usability testing, and content control. There will be opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to get involved in future research.
The new website is expected to be in place by late December, in time to greet students in the new semester.
Stop by our poster at the State of the Libraries if you want to learn more!
In this second update on the Ex Libris Implementation Project, we report on a major milestone achieved in November – the completion of organizational planning. In early December the project will transition from the pre-implementation to implementation stage, so this update also introduces the timeline from December to June, focusing on the three key phases of implementation – Define, Build, and Deploy.
Completion of Organizational Planning
Cabinet recently approved a proposal to form several working groups connected to the Implementation Team, marking the completion of organizational planning for the project. As reported last month, the Implementation Team was created in late September and includes seven members from the infrastructure units of the Libraries. Reporting directly to the University Librarian, the team functions as the coordinating body of the project. The working groups will provide expert input to the Implementation Team, organize workflow reviews, testing, and training in their focus areas, and involve library faculty and staff in the implementation process. The team appoints team members to liaise with the working groups to facilitate two-way communications.
Here is a list of working groups and their membership:
Michelle Best, Paul Cabelli, Cathy Pecoraro, Lucy Vidal, Geoff Wood, Tao Yang
Fulfillment
Chris Sterback
Access Services Committee*
Interlibrary Loan
Gracemary Smulewitz
Abbey DiPaolo, Orla Mejia, Glenn Sandberg
Resource Management
Mary Beth Weber
Colin Bitter, Jamie Smith, Geoff Wood, Tao Yang
(* indicating existing groups)
The Discovery Working Group and Access Services Committee are existing groups, and the others are newly established. All of the groups have members from multiple departments or units of the Libraries.
While approving the working groups, Cabinet also made two important points:
The Ex Libris Implementation Project is a top priority that must be completed within the established timeframe. Members of the Implementation Team and working groups are taking on a significant amount of work, so it may be necessary for everyone to adjust the expectations for them in areas unrelated to implementation.
Communicating with library users about potential service interruptions (and enhancements) is an essential component of the implementation project. The Implementation Team will work with the Director of Communications to develop an external communications plan.
The Implementation Team has also made significant progress on creating a project website and performing data preparation and validation. We hope to describe them in more details at the poster session of the State of the Libraries or in the next monthly update.
Overview of Implementation Timeline (December – June)
Ex Libris divides the Alma/Primo implementation process into three phases: Define, Build, and Deploy. During the Define phase for Rutgers (December – early February), the Implementation Team gains access to the standard Alma sandbox environment including standard Ex Libris data and configuration, takes Alma training (including configuration training) via pre-recorded sessions, and then configures the sandbox environment. At the same time, the Libraries continue with data extraction and validation and deliver the data from source systems (Symphony and EDS) based on the Ex Libris specifications for migration to Alma. The Define phase ends with Ex Libris completing the configuration of the Alma production environment with the input from the Rutgers team and a test load of the migrated data.
During the Build phase (late February – May), the Libraries receive access to both the Alma production environment and Primo environment for functionality review and data testing. Both environments use Rutgers data and configurations and we need to document any necessary modifications for the cutover data load. The Implementation Team works with Ex Libris to define a list of third-party integrations (such as the ILL and Central Authentication Systems). Ex Libris conducts onsite workshops to explain the workflows of the new system. The Implementation Team and working groups also prepare and perform internal staff training. This phase completes with a “freeze” of the source systems (Symphony and EDS). Ex Libris then performs the cutover data load.
Alma and Primo are scheduled to go live at Rutgers on June 1, which is the Day 1 of the Deploy phase. From June to July, the Implementation Team works closely with Ex Libris to address any issues and support library faculty and staff through their first steps with Alma and Primo in production.
Additional information about the three phases can be found in this chart published by Ex Libris:
We look forward to the opportunities to discuss the project with you at the State of the Libraries and other venues. Please do not hesitate to contact us or other Implementation Team members if you have any questions or comments. Thank you!
A new year is approaching! If you are thinking about retirement and what is involved in the process you should check out the important on-line links below that offer key information to help you prepare.
Additionally, UHR offers seminars to both ABP and PERS members contemplating retirement. If you are interested in attending a seminar, please check the Learning and Development Course Registration System under Employee Benefit and Work-Life Programs managed by University Human Resources.
Please note: Employees will need to submit an intent to retire letter to their supervisors to advise of the effective date of retirement once they have fully committed to retire.
Tom Frusciano accepts the 2017 Roger McDonough Librarianship Award from Bob Vietrogoski.
On October 24, at a meeting of the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, the 2017 Roger McDonough Librarianship Award was presented to Thomas J. Frusciano, the university archivist of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. This award is named for Roger H. McDonough, New Jersey state librarian from 1947 to 1975. Beginning in 2002, the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance, together with the New Jersey Historical Commission, Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference-New Jersey Caucus, and the New Jersey Library Association History & Preservation Section, has given this award annually to a librarian, archivist, or manuscript curator for excellence in service to the New Jersey history research community and/or the general public.
A New Jersey native, Tom Frusciano is a tenured member of the library staff at Rutgers University Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives. He began his professional career as an archivist at Educational Testing Services in Princeton. He then became the first professionally trained university archivist at New York University, and later coauthored New York University and the City: An Illustrated History. At Rutgers since 1989, Frusciano has written or edited histories of the presidents of Rutgers, Douglass College, and the Rutgers Scarlet Knights football team, among many other subjects. In recent years, he played an integral role in the 2016 Rutgers 250th celebration, library exhibit, and commemorative historical volume entitled Rutgers: A 250th Anniversary Portrait. Starting in 2015, he also served on the Rutgers Committee on Enslaved and Disenfranchised Populations, which produced the report Scarlet and Black. This committee’s important work has led to the new naming of James Dickson Carr Library (formerly Kilmer Library), now named in honor of Rutgers’ first African American graduate.
Beyond Rutgers, Frusciano has long been professionally active, particularly in the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC). He was elected to the SAA Council from 2009 to 2012, coedited the SAA manual Archival Arrangement and Description (2013), and was named an SAA Fellow in 2002. He has taught archival courses at both New York University’s Archival Management and Public History program, and the Rutgers School of Communication and Information. Some of his former students are now archivists and librarians at archives, libraries, and historical societies throughout New Jersey and elsewhere. He has also served on several editorial boards and coedited the Journal of Archival Organization.
Tom is the fourth recipient of the McDonough Award from Rutgers University Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives, following Bonita Craft Grant (2011), Janet Riemer (2014), and Ron Becker (2015).
Bart Everts at Robeson Library has compiled a new research guide that aggregates on-campus DACA resources. It includes statements from Rutgers officials and the New Jersey and federal governments in addition to Rutgers-related DACA news. Kudos to Bart for tracking this important issue and its impact on Rutgers students.
The 23rd annual NJ Book Arts Symposium takes place at Alexander Library on November 3.
Celebrating the Book Arts at Rutgers
Opposition, the 23rd annual New Jersey Book Arts Symposium, will take place at Alexander Library on November 3. The program features seven distinguished artists whose work opens up for discussion the presence and uses of opposition in the 21st-century artists’ book, and an Austrian bookseller who specializes in artists’ books. An exhibit will be on display through January 29. For more information or to register, visit libraries.rutgers.edu/bookarts.
Reading Big at Rutgers–Camden
Paul Robeson Library will partner with the Rutgers–Camden Center for the Arts to commemorate the Big Read with an exhibition of materials related to Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) beginning November 1. Described as a genre-defying convergence of poetry, visual art, and criticism, Citizen discusses racial aggressions in 21st-century life and media. It was awarded the 2014 National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism the same year.
Opera @ the Art Library!
The Art Library will welcome Hub City Opera and Dance Company for a free concert and dance performance with excerpts from Carl Orff’s opera Der Mond (The Moon) on Sunday, November 12 at 5 p.m. Hope to see you there!
White boards in Alexander Library provided a forum for student voices during Open Access Week.
Shining the Spotlight on Open Access
Libraries and other institutions around the world celebrated Open Access Week from October 23 through October 29. The festivities at Rutgers included a #RutgersOAT social media campaign sharing statistics about open access and the impact of the Open and Affordable Program on Rutgers students. Whiteboards in Alexander Library asked students to respond to a number of prompts surrounding the issues of textbook affordability and open access, including “What does open access mean to you?” Perhaps our favorite response: “Empowering all to access information + use it to enact meaningful change.” Well said!
Imparting Wisdom on the Next Generation
The exhibition What I know Now That I Wish I Knew Then, on display at Douglass Library through November 15, presents a series of messages from the alumnae and friends of Douglass Residential College. Curated by sociology professor Caren Cerulo, the display highlights career advice and reflections from professional women.
Magnificent Miltons
Milton to Milton: The Legacy of J. Milton French, is on display at Alexander Library through February 28. The exhibition features highlights from the collection of Joseph Milton French, a former president of the Milton Society and professor and chair of the Department of English at Rutgers, where he taught from 1940 to 1960. The collection includes over 200 volumes published between 1600 and 1800, with rare first and early editions by John Milton, Ben Jonson, George Wither, Michael Drayton, John Suckling, and other iconic figures in the history of English literature.
Three hundred new Rutgers electronic theses and dissertations were recently added to RUcore.
Making Grad Students’ Research Available to the World
Shared User Services reports that 300 new Rutgers electronic theses and dissertations from the May 2017 degree period have been added to RUcore: 174 from the Graduate School–New Brunswick, 65 from the Graduate School–Newark, 38 from the Camden Graduate School, 13 from the Graduate School of Education, 5 from the School of Health Professions, 3 from the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, and 2 from the School of Public Health.
Sure, the Libraries play host to a slew of great events throughout the year—but so do other units across the university. Check out what’s in store from other departments in November.
The Rutgers Jewish Film Festival takes place October 29–November 12.
The Rutgers Jewish Film Festival
October 29–November 12
Times and locations vary, Rutgers–New Brunswick
The Rutgers New Jersey Jewish Film Festival showcases dramatic and documentary features from around the world, each of which offers unique insight about Jewish life.
(How) Can Teaching be a Force for Justice? presented by the GSE takes place on November 2.
(How) Can Teaching be a Force for Justice?
Thursday, November 2
Reception 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.
Lecture 4:30 p.m.
Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers–New Brunswick
The Graduate School of Education cordially invites you to join them to celebrate the 95th anniversary of the GSE. In honor of their anniversary, they are launching the Advancing Excellence and Equity in Education Distinguished Lecture Series. Dr. Deborah Loewenberg Ball, the Willi William H. Payne Collegiate Professor of education at the University of Michigan, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, the director of TeachingWorks and the current President of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) will give the inaugural lecture on diversity and inclusion in the STEM fields.
Rutgers–Camden’s Conference on Cuba will be open to the public on November 6.
International Conference on Cuba
Monday, November 6
8:30 a.m. – 6:30 p.m.
Campus Center, Rutgers–Camden
Conference on the Future Directions for a New Cuba: Building Sustainable Partnerships will explore how institutions of higher learning build sustainable public-private partnerships for research and entrepreneurial programs in sustainable agriculture, education, the medical sciences, the arts, and community development. Dignitaries and leading scholars from the University of Havana, San Geronimo University, and the University of Medical Sciences of Havana will discuss research on effective strategies for increased development in Cuba as the country continues to normalize relations with the United States. The first day of this weeklong conference is open to the public, and will feature a 9:30 a.m. keynote address by Ambassador José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez of the Cuban Mission to the United States.
The Timeless Lessons of Wall Street’s Scandals
Thursday, November 9
5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
15 Washington Street, Rutgers–Newark
A timely talk by Diana B. Henriques, New York Times contributing writer and author of A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday in Wall Street Historyand The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust.
In May 2017, HBO released its film-length adaptation of The Wizard of Lies, with Robert De Niro starring in the title role and Ms. Henriques playing herself. The film was nominated for four Emmy awards, including “Best Picture.”
The Rutgers Climate Institute’s symposium will be held on November 15.
Rutgers Climate Symposium 2017: Climate Change and Cities
November 15, 2017
8:15 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Livingston Student Center, Rutgers–New Brunswick
This one-day symposium is intended to stimulate interaction and collaboration among the community of natural and social science researchers and university students interested in climate change who are from institutions in the greater New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia region. Over 200 attendees representing more than 20 research institutions in our region participate annually. Talks are centered on the symposium theme. The poster session invites abstracts on climate change scholarship and are not restricted to the theme. There is no fee to attend but registration is required.
R. David Lankes will present about the future of library and information science at Alexander Library (and online!) November 15.
Claiming Victory and Moving On – MI Colloquium by R. David Lankes
The rise of information as an idea and discipline since World War II has been driven by the belief that information underlies, and can change, just about every other discipline and industry. When every industry is an information industry, what is left in library and information science? Lankes will lay out a new emerging world view based not on data, or information, but knowledge and meaning. He will talk about the necessity to shift the narrative in libraries and iSchools and propose an agenda focused on communities and the common good. Free and open to the public, no RSVP required.
Imagining Research, Researching Imagination
November 16, 2017
4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Writers House, Rutgers–Camden
Novelist Janet Benton, author of Lilli de Jong, and Janet Golden, professor of history, Rutgers–Camden, come together to explore the ways imagination and research inform the writing of both fiction and history, drawing on their mutual interest in the history of mothers and infants. Books will be for sale following the conversation. Admission is free but please RSVP.
Join the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY for a special fireside chat on November 29.
Prospects for the National and Regional Economy: Federal Reserve Bank of New York Fireside Chat
Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences and Department of Economics invites local and regional business leaders to join us for a discussion with William C. Dudley, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Light breakfast, networking, presentation, discussion, and Q&A.
Tom Clareson, senior consultant for digital and preservation services at LYRASIS, presents at the Disaster Planning and Recovery Workshop.
On October 17, Anthony Timek and I attended part one of a two-part Disaster Planning and Recovery Workshop sponsored by the New Jersey Cultural Alliance for Response (NJCAR). NJCAR is a new alliance that is comprised of a network of organizations, associations, agencies, and individuals dedicated to safeguarding the State’s cultural heritage.
The full-day event was presented by Tom Clareson, senior consultant for digital and preservation services at LYRASIS, the nation’s largest library and cultural heritage network. He talked about the importance of evaluating collections ahead of time and generally knowing the types and value of the materials an organization owns. Clareson laid out a comprehensive disaster plan that includes:
The group conducts a facilities assessment of Old Town Village.
A communication plan
Emergency procedures
Facilities plans
Resources lists
Holding priorities
Insurance information
Response procedures
Evacuation plans
As part of an exercise, the group completed a thorough facilities assessment of East Jersey’s Old Town Village, who hosted the event. This included evaluating major areas of the grounds including architecture, drainage, protection from fire and water, the HVAC system, security and more. This kind of assessment identifies vulnerabilities and proposes ways to mitigate them. Part two of the workshop will be held in late November and will cover recovery and hands-on training with damaged materials.
Many of you will have seen by now that this year’s State of the Libraries meeting on December 6 features special guest speaker Calvin K. Lai. (If you haven’t yet registered on Eventbrite, please take a moment to do so. Enter SOTL2017 when prompted for a password.) In advance of his visit to Rutgers, let’s learn a bit more about his research.
As director of research for Project Implicit, Lai explores implicit biases, or the tensions between our conscious experience and unconscious mind and the resultant disconnect between our thoughts and actions. These biases are evident when, for instance, our attitudes about particular groups of people (based on their gender, race, religion, weight, ability, and so on) are at odds with our explicitly stated values about those groups.
Lai’s research focuses on different approaches to changing our implicit biases and the question of whether changing these biases is actually the best approach for mitigating their effects on our behavior. He also offers lectures and workshops to organizations that discuss how unwanted influences can impair organizational performance.
If you simply can’t wait to learn more, visit the Project Implicit website to complete an Implicit Association Test on your own or check out Who, Me? Biased?, a video series on implicit bias from the New York Times that features Lai (above).
Stephanie Mikitish is co-author, along with Lynn Silipigni Connaway, William Harvey, and Vanessa Kitzie, of “Academic Library Impact: Improving Practice and Essential Areas to Research,” a new report from The Association of College and Research Libraries. We asked her to provide an overview of the findings and what might be most applicable to Rutgers University Libraries. Enjoy!
Educational stakeholders are increasingly calling upon academic libraries to document their impact, especially in the areas of student learning and success. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) commissioned OCLC to investigate how librarians and other library employees can define, measure, and communicate their contributions to these areas. As Rutgers University Libraries continue to adapt to responsibility centered management (RCM) with the rest of the university, librarians and other employees can utilize the report and tools developed by the project team and add to research on library contributions to student learning and success.
RCM has remapped stakeholder groups into more defined units. The deans of the university’s schools now control more of their budget, and they will likely be more willing to fund resources and services that clearly and directly benefit their faculty and students. Currently, library faculty and staff collect and report numbers for entire groups of users, such as the number of books checked out by undergraduate students for the entire university, or for library location, such as the number of exits at Alexander Library or the number of reference questions answered at the Robeson Library reference desk. Some data are more school- and even department-centered, such as the number of bibliographic instruction classes taught for the Newark College of Arts & Sciences. Studies of student learning and success conducted at other RCM institutions can suggest future directions for the Libraries’ research in these areas. However, the quality of data collected is an important factor that librarians and other library employees must address.
To facilitate future studies and reporting, library faculty and staff may need to rethink strategies for collecting relevant data in a more consistent manner with concern to individual user privacy. While some data, such as the exit gate count, is consistently taken at each library, other data, such as reference statistics, may be recorded using different units of measurement (e.g., time required to answer a question), even at the same location. Standardizing data collection is a large task, but research that documents and informs other librarians on how to go about this and how to use the data may be eligible for funding from ACRL.
In order to promote research, ACRL will be offering grants to conduct and/or present research in the following 6 areas.
Communicate the library’s contributions
Match library assessment to institution’s mission
Include library data in institutional data collection
Quantify the library’s impact on student success
Enhance teaching and learning
Collaborate with educational stakeholders
The project team identified the above areas based on literature on academic library impact on student learning and success and from interviews with librarians and provosts. Given the scope of the Libraries’ collections, spaces, and services, any work done to demonstrate our contribution to student learning and success would fall into one or more of the categories above. The components of the ACRL/OCLC project, which include a research agenda to guide future work on the topic and a literature search/visualization, can suggest what aspects of the Libraries’ resources are most relevant to Rutgers stakeholders, ways to measure reach and impact, and how to effectively communicate the results of such work.
A new year is approaching! If you are thinking about retirement and what is involved in the process you should check out the important on-line links below that offer key information to help you prepare.
