As recently announced, University Human Resources (UHR) will host a series of Open Enrollment Benefits Fairs throughout the month of October to educate employees about their SHBP benefits options, as well as other benefits and services that are available and may be of interest.
Save the date and plan to attend the Open Enrollment Benefit Fair that is most convenient for you:
Rutgers University/ Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) New Brunswick
Oct. 10, 2016, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Medical Education Building, 1 Robert Wood Johnson Pl.
Rutgers University – New Brunswick/Piscataway
Oct. 11, 2016, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Rutgers Student Center, College Avenue Campus
Oct. 20, 2016, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Busch Student Center, Busch Campus
Rutgers University – Camden
Oct. 13, 2016, 10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Athletic and Fitness Center, 301 Linden St.
Rutgers University – Newark
Oct. 19, 2016, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Rutgers University – Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) Newark
Oct. 25, 2016, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Medical Science Building, 185 South Orange Ave.
Contact the Benefits Administration staff with questions regarding benefits at (848) 932-3990 or via email at benefits@hr.rutgers.edu.
Save the date for State of the Libraries – December 7, 2016
Many more details will follow, but please save the date of December 7 for the 2016 State of the Libraries. The program will begin with poster presentations at 10:30 a.m., lunch will be served around noon, and presentations by Krisellen Maloney and others at 1 p.m. The event will take place at the Busch Campus Center, so hopefully this schedule will allow many of our colleagues from Camden and Newark to avoid the brunt of rush hour traffic.
Judy Cohn to be a mentor in the 2016-2017 NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program
Congratulations to Judy Cohn who has been selected as a mentor in the 2016-2017 NLM/AAHSL Leadership Fellows Program, sponsored by the National Library of Medicine and the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries. The Program prepares emerging leaders for director positions in academic health sciences libraries through a year-long mentoring relationship with a director of another library and a curriculum focused on developing leadership knowledge critical to enhancing the value of libraries in their institutions.
In this highly competitive program, Judy will be one of ten fellows and mentors from academic health sciences libraries across the U.S. who will begin their work together in November. Since the program began in 2002, 42% of all fellow graduates have assumed director positions.
President Barchi mentions Libraries’ capital construction projects in Report to the University Senate
Excerpt: “University Libraries: The University has also launched an in-depth master plan for the university libraries. Libraries have changed their mission; we are looking to align them with what students want and need today, including better computing resources, collaborative areas, and other amenities. Individual projects have been identified and designs are under way for a new OIT computer center at Alexander Library in New Brunswick and a Professional Development and Scholarship Center in Dana Library in Newark.”
“The centipede party,” 40 inches by 42 inches, oil painting by BFA student Audrey Meehan. This will be on view at the Mason Gross Galleries.
Art Library participating in The Co-Cureate Show
Undergraduate and graduate visual arts students are teaming up to conceptualize and install a collection of eight student exhibits at three locations across the New Brunswick campus: the Mason Gross Galleries, Rutgers Art Library, and Douglass Student Center. The co-cureate shows (the title is a mash-up of what the initiative has prompted teams to engage in: conceive, curate and create exhibits) are set to run from Thursday, September 29 through Monday, October 17, 2016. The shows will feature student performances, paintings, photographs, sculptures, media, and prints. Admission is free.
The Art Library will host In Search of Punchline is curated by Johanna Boyce, Audrey Meehan, and Ed Weisgerber and features the work of Johanna Boyce, Erin Keane, Audrey Meehan, Carlyn Perlow, Delfina Picchio, and Ed Weisgerber.
New Brunswick Music Scene Symposium Planned for October 27, 2016
Save the date. Special Collections and University Archives will hold the next New Brunswick Music Scene Archive symposium on October 27, 6 p.m. in the Teleconference Lecture Hall at Alexander Library. Stay tuned for more information, including the participants. In the meantime, here’s a look back at the 2015 symposium, featuring a who’s who of New Jersey music (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/news/symposium-local-notables-inaugurate-new-brunswick-music-scene-archive).
Credit: Laura Anderson Barbata.
Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries Welcomes “Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations beyond Borders”
This fall, the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library will welcome the 2016-17 Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist Exhibition, Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations Beyond Borders. The exhibit contains selected highlights of textile, sculptural, 2-dimensional, and video works from the traveling exhibition Transcommunality.
The new administrative information systems under Cornerstone are scheduled to go live over the next week. Cornerstone is the University’s strategic approach to unify, upgrade, and streamline its administrative information systems for Finance, Human Resources and Payroll, Procurement, etc. Upgrading and improving these systems will significantly improve how we work and collaborate across the university. These projects are also particularly exciting to the library because they will enable all of our units to finally utilize the same systems for administrative functions.
Be on the look-out for future announcements about process updates and training opportunities related to this implementation. If you have any questions about how the new systems may or may not impact you, please see your local business staff.
Faculty are inundated with email invitations to publish in scholarly journals or to serve on their editorial boards. Many of these solicitations are completely valid, but an increasing number of these journals are engaging in predatory publishing practices.
Predatory publishing, a term coined by Jeffrey Beall, a librarian and associate professor at the University of Colorado, Denver, is an unwanted and undesirable side effect of the open access movement and Beall has become widely known as the “go-to guy” when it comes to checking the validity, authenticity, or value of these invitations.
Beall maintains several resources that are great tools for promotion boards, hiring committees, and, as it turns out, librarians. The renowned Beall’s List of predatory publishers lists “potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly Open-access publishers,” on his Scholarly Open access blog. Additionally, Beall maintains a list of standalone journals and a list of criteria—covering everything from editors, staff, and business management to transparency, integrity, journal standards, and publishing practices—for identifying predatory Open-access publishers.
The Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies (CAS) has been a frequent users of Beall’s list, since nationally and internationally recognized researchers at the Center are primary targets of invitations to participate in scholarly communication in various ways. Addiction science has been experiencing an influx of new journals and conferences, akin to health sciences.
In the July issue of The Agenda, we invited you to read part one of this interview in the Center of Alcohol Studies Information Services Newsletter, in which Beall explains how he became involved in the growing area of predatory publishing, discusses the most vulnerable groups in academia, and gives an update of the current situation. Part two, focusing on topics of greater interest for librarians, is now available in SALIS News. Beall advocates for educating users about not only predatory publishing, but also the various forms of open access and publishing standards, so that they can avoid the traps of predatory publishers.
Making Rowan University and Camden County College Students Feel Welcome
Through a partnership agreement, Paul Robeson Library is now the campus library for Rowan University and Camden County College students. Bart Everts is the library liaison for these students and has started a new Facebook page to share information about their library privileges and resources. The agreement allows students to access the library, use library databases, and check out books using their student ID cards. Robeson also has computers reserved for their use.
Morroe Berger–Benny Carter Jazz Research Fund
Each year the Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) awards up to ten grants of $1,000 each to assist jazz researchers. Half of the awards are designated for students in the Rutgers University-Newark Master’s Program in Jazz History and Research and half are awarded to scholars from other institutions or unaffiliated researchers to enable them to visit IJS in conjunction with their projects. To date, we have given more than 70 awards to scholars and students worldwide working in a variety of disciplines, including jazz history, musicology, bibliography, and discography.
Applications for the 2017 grants are due October 21, 2016. Awards will be announced by November 14.
“Homecoming! Some Highlights from the Library of J. Milton French” at Alexander Library
Homecoming! Some Highlights from the Library of J. Milton French is on display now in the Scholarly Communication Center at Alexander Library. This case exhibit features a selection of volumes recently donated to Rutgers by the family of J. Milton French (1895–1962), a Milton scholar and professor of English at the university from 1940 to 1960.
The books on display include rare first and early editions of works by John Harington, Richard Barckley, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, John Suckling, George Wither, William Wollaston, and John Milton.
New Brunswick Music Scene Symposium Planned for October 27, 2016
Save the date. Special Collections and University Archives will hold the next New Brunswick Music Scene Archive symposium on October 27, 6 p.m. in the Teleconference Lecture Hall at Alexander Library. Stay tuned for more information, including the participants. In the meantime, here’s a look back at the 2015 symposium, featuring a who’s who of New Jersey music (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/news/symposium-local-notables-inaugurate-new-brunswick-music-scene-archive).
Credit: Laura Anderson Barbata.
Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries Welcomes “Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations beyond Borders”
This fall, the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series Galleries in the Mabel Smith Douglass Library will welcome the 2016-17 Estelle Lebowitz Endowed Visiting Artist Exhibition, Laura Anderson Barbata: Collaborations Beyond Borders. The exhibit contains selected highlights of textile, sculptural, 2-dimensional, and video works from the traveling exhibition Transcommunality.
“Peep Show: Books from the Art Library X Room” Exhibit at Rutgers Art Library
Megan Lotts has raided the X Room to put on a case display of beautiful, surprising, amusing, and impressive books.
Stop by to get a taste of the treasures that reside in the Rutgers Art Library’s archives.
Latino Americans: 500 Years of History was made possible through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Library Association.
Rutgers University Libraries recently concluded the ALA-funded program Latino Americans: 500 Years of History. Over the course of a year, Rutgers and other scholars led 17 PBS film screening discussions about the experience of Latinos in New Jersey in collaboration with Rutgers University Libraries, the Nilsa L. Cruz-Perez Branch of the Camden County Library, New Brunswick Free Public Library, and the Newark Public Library.
Beyond the film showings in Spanish and English, project partners offered exhibits, book talks, lectures, and special celebrations. Highlights include A Day of the Dead Celebration and Cinco de Mayo festivities in New Brunswick showcasing a variety of performances and children’s activities; a Cuban musical concert by renowned singer Gema Corredera; the exhibit “Beyond Exile: Cubans in New Jersey” at the Newark Public Library, including a keynote address by Lisando Pérez; and two separate exhibitions at the Rutgers Art Library, Ilya Genin’s “Photographs of Cuban Revolution 50 Years Later,” and “From Island to Ocean: Caribbean and Pacific Dialogues by Fidalis Buehler and Juana Valdes.”
As project director Nancy Kranich notes in the final report on this initiative, this program allowed Rutgers University Libraries to become “a catalyst for bringing together scholars and organizations involved with the New Jersey Latino American experience and encouraging more attention to documenting it. The grant enabled us to take a more assertive role in building and strengthening relationships with local Latino communities and the scholars, organizations, and public libraries that interact with them.”
Kranich also lists several other outcomes that may be of interest to our colleagues:
Several new items were added to Special Collections, including several leaflets of unpublished poetry by Newark poet Pablo Le Riverend, clippings of anti-Castro activities in Hudson County, Sarah Hirschman’s papers covering People & Stories/Gente y Cuentos.
The publisher and owner of Impacto, published in the 1960s, donated 99 issues of the publication to Rutgers University.
15 Latino clubs are Rutgers are planning to learn how to organize and preserve their own records in conjunction with Rutgers University Libraries’ archivists.
Two possible books are in discussion: a history of Latinos in NJ and an anthology of unpublished documents about Latino migrant workers in NJ and the United States.
The New Brunswick Free Public Library and Rutgers University Libraries are discussing partnering again on another ALA public programming grant proposal.
A deeper understanding of the Latino collections in the state and increased participation in depositing scholarly works into our Rutgers Inclusion and Diversity Research Portal.
Mary Beth Weber won the ALCTS Slogal Contest for her slogan, “Creating the future, preserving the past.” This slogan will be used during the 60th anniversary celebration of ALCTS in 2017. In addition to bragging rights, Mary Beth also received a prize of registration for CE webinars valued at $350. Congratulations Mary Beth!
“Peep Show: Books from the Art Library X Room” Exhibit at Rutgers Art Library
Megan Lotts has raided the X Room to put on a case display of beautiful, surprising, amusing, and impressive books.
Stop by to get a taste of the treasures that reside in the Rutgers Art Library’s archives.
Location: Rutgers Art Library
It’s Getting Hot in Here
Late in July, America faced record temperatures outside and Smith Library in Newark was no exception. With the A/C out for several days, the librarians and staff had to come up with new ways to keep their cool. Here, a short haiku on the experience:
The books are burning!
Librarians are weeping…
The heat is too much.
– Sarah Jewell
Communications Tip – Using Rutgers Go to Shorten URLs
Want a short, trackable URL to use in an email or social media post? There are many URL shorteners on the market including goo.gl, bitly, and ow.ly, but go.rutgers.edu offers something the others can’t–an actual Rutgers URL to make your link appear official and trustworthy. This service allows Rutgers users to quickly and easily shorten a URL and track how many times that URL is viewed.
While I used the same shortened URL on both Facebook and Twitter, I could have created separate shortened URLs for each social media site to track the relative traffic. I did this for an earlier post about the New Brunswick Music Scene Archive, which allowed me to see the number of views on each platform (162 for Twitter, 7 for Facebook).
I highly recommend you try out go.rutgers.edu if you have not already done so.
–Jessica Pellien
New Brunswick Music Scene Symposium Planned for October 27, 2016
Save the date. Special Collections and University Archives will hold the next New Brunswick Music Scene Archive symposium on October 27, 6 p.m. in the Teleconference Lecture Hall at Alexander Library. Stay tuned for more information, including the participants. In the meantime, here’s a look back at the 2015 symposium, featuring a who’s who of New Jersey music (http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/news/symposium-local-notables-inaugurate-new-brunswick-music-scene-archive).
Full Text Finder Training
This fall the Rutgers Libraries will be migrating to Full Text Finder, EBSCO’s newest holdings and link management tool designed to replace its A-to-Z and LinkSource services, which are being phased out. A-to-Z is the product that powers the Libraries’ electronic journals search. LinkSource is the product that powers its link resolver service (locally known as “Get it @ R”). Although the basic functionality of these tools has not changed much, we have taken the opportunity to introduce a few custom modifications that we hope will simplify the process of finding full-text articles and improve the overall user experience. If you’d like to learn more about Full Text Finder and the upcoming changes, feel free to attend one of the 30 minute drop-in sessions scheduled in August. Videoconferencing to Dana, Robeson, and Smith is available upon request.
Full Text Finder Information Sessions
August 4 @ 2 p.m. — LSM Conference Room, Library of Science & Medicine
August 8 @ 2 p.m. — Pane Room, Alexander Library
August 11 @ 2 p.m. — Pane Room, Alexander Library
Buttons! Buttons for Everyone!
Custom buttons are now available from the Communications Department.
The buttons we mentioned in the July issue of The Agenda proved a popular giveaway at the New Student Orientations in New Brunswick. This is a relatively low-cost and fun way to run a promotion or to market something at the Libraries. If you are interested in borrowing our machine for a project, please make sure to purchase the supplies that are available here. We’re happy to train you or your student workers on how to create buttons.
You’ve Got People, Now What?
August 3, 2016
9 a.m. – 1 p.m.NEW DATE!
This course is ideal for new and experienced managers, supervisors, and administrators who have direct reports and would like to apply their knowledge of personal styles to flexibly manage their staff.
Location: Pane Room, 1st floor, Alexander Library
RSVP: Erica Parin on behalf of the Professional Development Committee
Manager as Leader – Developing Staff
August 30, 2016
9 a.m. – 12 p.m.
This course is ideal for managers, supervisors, and administrators who would like to sharpen their situational leadership skills and discover how flexible and effective they are in a variety of situations with staff.
Location: Pane Room, 1st floor, Alexander Library
RSVP: Erica Parin on behalf of the Professional Development Committee
Rutgers is not the only major New Jersey institution celebrating its 250th anniversary this year!
On Saturday May 23, I attended the Medical Society of New Jersey’s 250th Anniversary Celebration and Inaugural Gala. The celebration was held at the Heldrich Hotel in New Brunswick, on the actual 250th anniversary of the Medical Society of New Jersey’s first ever meeting, also held in New Brunswick (at Duff’s Tavern!). The Medical Society of New Jersey (MSNJ) is America’s oldest state medical society, and has over 5000 members. RBHS–Special Collections holds a nearly complete run of MSNJ journal publications from 1848 to 2005, as well as substantial archival holdings of its constituent Burlington, Essex, Hudson, Monmouth, Passaic, and Warren County Medical Societies. We also hold the records of the Medical Alliance of the Medical Society of New Jersey (formerly the Women’s Auxiliary).
Credit: Robert Vietrogoski
At the gala, I joined Dr. Peter Carmel, the emeritus chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at New Jersey Medical School. Dr. Carmel is also the current president of the Medical History Society of New Jersey and a recent past president of the American Medical Association! During the program, Dr. Carmel presented a well-received illustrated historical retrospective on the MSNJ’s founding and its centennial and bicentennial celebrations. Some of the images used by Dr. Carmel were drawn from RBHS–Special Collections materials.
For the gala, Dr. Carmel also organized an exhibit on Dr. Wells P. Eagleton, the first New Jersey neurosurgeon, and a medical luminary who received the first Edward J. Ill award from the Academy of Medicine of New Jersey in 1939. Thanks to Dr. Carmel’s generous restoration efforts, Eagleton’s actual Edward J. Ill medal was on display. This artifact was rediscovered last summer in storage at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and is now part of the holdings of RBHS–Special Collections. Dr. Carmel’s exhibit and the Eagleton artifacts will soon be on display in the lobby of Smith Library.
Credit: Robert Vietrogoski
If the Eagleton name seems familiar at Rutgers, Dr. Eagleton’s wife Florence Peshine Eagleton was a founding member of the board of managers of the New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College) and a Rutgers trustee from 1932 to 1946. She made the bequest in 1956 that established Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, which itself is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
The newest addition to the RBHS–Special Collections artifact collection is the commemorative 250th anniversary “challenge coin” given to gala attendees by Captain Joseph P. Costabile, the incoming MSNJ president. The gala was a most enjoyable event and I hope to extend the relationship between the Medical Society of New Jersey and RBHS–Special Collections. (And for those familiar with my normal mode of dress, here is photographic proof of me in a tuxedo!)
On July 25, the office of research and economic development announced the impending launch of the Research Administration and Proposal Submission System (RAPSS) Phase II on August 8. The text below is taken directly from that announcement. As this system is implemented, our ability to work in an informal manner will be eliminated. In order to successfully submit a grant, we must follow the correct RAPSS process. If you have any questions about RAPSS and how it applies to your work at the Libraries, please bring those questions to your director or AUL.
What you need to know:
Faculty and staff need to complete training on the new system before it goes live.
On August 8, RAPSS will become mandatory for all new submissions of research proposals, corporate contracts, and associated items. Paper submissions will no longer be possible.
Information about RAPSS user training and the schedule of training sessions are posted here.
Most of you have, by now, visited the Rutgers Connection Migration Support website. I hope you are finding a lot of useful information there, but if anything is missing, please let us know using the Submit Your Questions form. This story is meant to update everyone on the newest pieces of the migration plan. Most importantly, to let you know that everyone’s email in Rutgers University Libraries will be migrated August 23–25, 2016. The exact grouping will be worked out in collaboration with AULs and library directors.
Kickoff meeting:
A successful kickoff meeting was held on Friday, July 22, with four representatives of OIT, all UCSs; and all IIS staff, joined by a special Migration Representative from the Health Sciences Libraries. A four-hour recording of that discussion is available with RUL NetID authentication–but you are hereby warned: It is heavy on technical jargon! Unless you want to delve into every detail, you would be better off perusing the support site and attending the upcoming information sessions and subsequent training.
Prepping for the migration:
But first, as the most important part of preparations, we must collect information about all existing accounts, as only one account per Rutgers employee can be migrated automatically. Content from other accounts should be first transferred to the primary account, or migrated later.
For this purpose, IIS has developed an instrument with half a dozen questions and a lot of help on how to respond to them. Please use your NetID to log in (each RUL member needs to fill it out personally or with the help of their UCSs) and provide the required information about the Rutgers email accounts you currently hold. The more accurate the data we receive, the more efficient and more painless the migration will be.
Since the new email and calendaring tools will appear quite different from what Zimbra users are used to, IIS will offer a series of 90-minute information sessions August 8–19 in several libraries covering all three geographic regions. The schedule for these sessions will soon follow via RUL_Everyone messages, and will be available on the support site’s calendar by August 5.
The plan for the migration:
All three hundred email users at RUL will be migrated over a three-day period August 23–25. Groups of account holders will be scheduled for each day based on organizational, geographic, and logical criteria. When you come to work on your assigned day of the migration, all your email and calendar appointments will be ready for you in the new system. You can immediately access them and continue working with them in the new interface called OWA (Outlook Web Access) by logging in through any browser using the link connect.rutgers.edu and your new email address [NetID]@libraries.rutgers.edu. (Please see details about account names in the Questionnaire and at the support site.)
Throughout the days of the migration, IIS staff and UCSs will be “roaming the halls” in the libraries to help users access their mailboxes using the client of their choice: The desktop version of Microsoft Outlook, available on every RUL workstation, is the preferred client for work in the office, while any browser may be used to log into OWA away from your desk.
Training opportunities:
Two-hour-long introductory, instructor-led, classroom-based, hands-on training will be offered in several sessions over two days of the migration. If you cannot make it during those days, the training sessions will come back after Labor Day, including more advanced training later on. Individual introductory sessions will also be available for those who learn best that way. Please check back to the support site’s calendar around August 15 for the exact schedule and to sign up.
In the first wave of training sessions we will focus on the communication tools included with Rutgers Connect (which is, as you know, a customized version of Microsoft’s Office 365 running in the Microsoft cloud): OWA (and Outlook on the desktop), Calendar, People, Tasks, OneDrive for Business (cloud-based file storage), and Skype for Business. But the rest of the Office 365 tools will also be immediately available to everyone from the same online interface: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. At the same time, the respective applications can be downloaded and installed on your home computer and mobile devices, while you will have them installed on your RUL desktops in the Office 2016 version that is fully interchangeable with the cloud-based apps.
Questions or concerns:
Much more information will continue to become available as we approach the migration week. In the meantime, please let IIS know of any concerns or questions you might have by writing to support@rulhelp.rutgers.edu or using the support site’s Submit Your Questions form.
Faculty are inundated with email invitations to publish in scholarly journals or to serve on their editorial boards. Many of these solicitations are completely valid, but an increasing number of these journals are engaging in predatory publishing practices.
