|
 | U. of Rochester Students Pitch in to Build a Better Campus Library
It's become a hot topic at colleges and universities in recent years: what do students really want from their campus library? With that in mind, librarians at the University of Rochester (UR) came up with a common sense approach to a planned library renovation project: they asked students what they wanted. And, in fall of this year, the UR library will open a new library space that its students actually designed.
Crews at UR are now busy converting 20,000 square feet of former library staff offices located on the first floor of the library's east wing into a commons-style space featuring a wide-open group study area, media lounge, private work areas, and meeting rooms. The offices originally located on the first floor space have been dispersed throughout the library, and the new space, connected to the computing center will be open 24-hours. Susan Gibbons, assistant dean for public services and collection development at UR's River Campus Libraries said the project has been in the planning stages for the last five years, funded by a $5 million with a grant from the Gleason Foundation with architects from Baltimore-based Ayers Saint Gross brought in to translate the students' vision into library reality.
"Usually, you go to an architect with a program," Gibbons told the LJ Academic Newswire, "but we made clear that students were really driving the design for us. We said, 'We don't know exactly what we want, but here are some drawings. Let's work together on this.'" Gibbons says UR librarians didn't look at other projects elsewhere. "The design was completely derived on our campus," Gibbons said, noting that UR students organically designed a space that "confirmed what's become a national trend," toward open, commons-like collaborative space, "but not one that we pushed them toward."
Flexibility, both for students and for the library emerged as the key concept in the new design. Structurally, students wanted natural lighting, so four bay windows were punched through a brick facade. The space will be open, with pillars for support, with a quiet area that Gibbons says librarians would not have included, but that students insisted on. "There are lots of quiet spaces in the library," she said, "but what we heard was that students want to be able to move easily between rooms and spaces."
The students also voiced a need for more power outlets, literally drawing them into their sketches. There were more surprises when it came to furnishing the room. The librarians put together a plan that featured comfy sofas by the new bay windows. Students, instead, wanted tables by the windows, explaining that when they work, they "spread out with papers and laptops" and that they wanted "the prime space," for this purpose. "We would not have done it this way," Gibbons said. "We would have gotten it wrong."
Getting a wealth of good student input, she says, was as simple as putting out signs offering students a little pocket money and some free food. "We gave them poster boards, markers, scissor, crayons, all kinds of arts and crafts stuff, told them they had a space the size of the Douglas dining hall for reference and asked them to design their perfect study location," Gibbons said, adding that the space will certainly continue to evolve over the next few years, both for students and librarians. Notably, she said with a chuckle, the students didn't really include library staff in their design. "Their view of staff was very generic," she said. "They don't see the difference between a reference librarian, an IT person, or a barista to make them a great latte." And, she adds, librarians will abide that, for now, observing how the need for staff (and what kind of staff) plays out before inserting service points.
The most enduring part of this renovation exercise may be the knowledge UR librarians have gained. "One thing we learned is that students' academic and social activities have come together," she said. "They cannot be pulled apart." Another thing UR librarians learned is that if you want to know what your students want, it is as simple as asking. "This didn't take a huge effort," Gibbons notes. "I think we assume you have to do these full blown research projects. This wasn't difficult, it was fun."
|
|
Google Defends "Personalized" Search
As Google continues to snap up market share and derive more advertising revenue, privacy issues have become an increasing concern for some, wary of how their information gleaned from any of Google's products will be used. Last week, Peter Fleischer, Google's Global Privacy Counsel, acknowledged those concerns in a Financial Times op-ed, but suggested users will choose to risk some measure of privacy for better searching.
Fleischer's commentary raises broad implications for the library community, which has also begun to wrestle with the idea of allowing patrons to choose their own level of privacy for improved services. Fleischer acknowledged that personalized search "does raise privacy issues," in that advances in searching are enabled by users revealing their web histories. "The question," he writes, "is how do we deal with this challenge? Stop all progress on personalized search or give people a choice?" Fleischer said Google's policy is to allow users to opt-in, and that at any time "they can turn off personal search, pause it, remove specific web history items or remove the whole lot...in other words personalized search is only available with the consent of the user."
Fleischer writes as European officials have expressed concern over Google's privacy policies. On May 16, the Article 29 Working Party, a European advisory body, wrote Fleischer expressing its uneasiness over Google's newly announced data collection policy, which dictates keeping user logs for up to two years. "It is of the opinion that the new storage period of 18 to 24 months on the basis indicated by Google thus far, does not seem to meet the requirements of the European legal data protection framework," the letter notes. "The Article 29 Working Party is concerned that Google has so far not sufficiently specified the purposes for which server logs need to be kept, as required." Still, the group also praised Google for its willingness to address the issues, while suggesting that Google's policy "can be further improved."
|
| Cornell Library Lands Grant To Document Founding of HBCUs
Thanks to a $450,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Cornell University Library will help produce a digital collection chronicling the founding of America's black colleges and universities, by "sharing its expertise in digital imaging, preservation and management" with librarians and archivists from the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Library Alliance. The online collection results from a partnership that began in 2005 between Cornell and the HBCU Library Alliance. With the support of Mellon, Cornell librarians trained staff members from the first ten HBCU institutions to use flat-bed scanners, multimedia computers and digital imaging software, as well as storage, collection management and access systems. They digitized material from libraries at Alabama State University, Bennett College, Fisk University, Grambling State University, Hampton University, Southern University, A&M College-Baton Rouge, Tuskegee University, Tennessee State University, Virginia State University, and from the Robert W. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Center.
In the partnership's next phase, library staff from ten additional HBCU institutions will be trained in digital collection building so materials from their founding collections can also become part of the online repository. They include Lincoln University-Missouri, Miles College, Morehouse School of Medicine, North Carolina Central University, Paine College, Southern University at Shreveport, South Carolina State University, St. Augustine's College, Texas Southern University, and the University of the District of Columbia. The grant also will allow the first ten participating HBCU institutions to continue their digitization efforts and provide funding to train selected HBCU librarians in digital video and audio techniques. The HBCU Library Alliance is a consortium that supports the collaboration of institutions dedicated to providing resources designed to strengthen the libraries of historically black colleges and universities and their constituents.
|
| A Librarian Champions Political Poster Art
After LJAN got an announcement that Lincoln Cushing, formerly a librarian at the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Industrial Relations and Bancroft Library, was producing a series of books on political poster art, we wanted to learn more. Now out from the collective Inkworks Press is Visions of Peace & Justice: 30 years of political posters from the archives of Inkworks Press, which Cushing edited and served as lead archivist and photodocumentor.
LJAN queried Cushing, who also will co-author Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, to be released later this year by Chronicle Books, which reflects a collection given to the UC Berkeley East Asian Library. He also plans to co-author a book on posters of the American labor movement, Art/Works–American Labor Graphics, for the Cornell University Press.
LJAN: Do you think political posters are not taken seriously enough?
LC: These three books follow up on one I did in 2003 on Cuban posters, and all are part of my passion for the medium. One of the issues involved here is the relative lack of academic interest in posters—in Europe, or Japan, posters are a big deal, and there are whole institutes devoted to their care and feeding. Here, frantic and underappreciated special collections librarians and archivists have stacks of unprocessed material under their care. And the few of these that are cataloged and available on-line have poor basic catalog information, such as artist name or date.
I think one key ingredient in promoting a "new wave" of scholarship in these is the opportunities offered by digital technology. Visual-based materials like posters are so much easier to peruse in an OPAC if they have images attached. I advocate digitizing a collection before it's cataloged, not eventually and if the money shows up. Once people know what's there, and can snag a digital image for classroom use or an article, these can be better integrated into research and teaching.
How'd you become a librarian?
I worked in the printing industry for over 20 years, sidelining as a graphic artist (screen-printing and offset), and decided that I wanted to become more professional in my approach to documenting and cataloging poster art. I went to UC Berkeley's School of Information, not intending to become a "librarian," but luckily took a library track series of courses and ended up getting a great academic librarian job right out of the gate at UC Berkeley's Institute of Industrial Relations (IIR), now IRLE.
How did you get hired at IIR?
My hire at IIR was due to the good sense of the head librarian there who appreciated my talents and skill set. I promptly engaged in several key projects, including building the first public dataset of full-text union contracts and mounting a series of labor photo exhibits that drew public attention and helped build our archive. Because of the political nature of labor studies in higher education, the special funding that covered my salary was specifically eliminated by the new governor upon taking office.
Then you moved within the campus?
After three years, I jumped to the Bancroft Library and did original cataloging of rare Spanish-language materials. Because the Bancroft Library, like many academic special collections, relies on "soft money" for technical services, I was laid off there a year ago. I became the first career librarian at UC thus "let go" in many years. The China poster archive is unusual in that it was a collection I helped bring to UC, and am in fact listed as co-donor. In an innovative public-private partnership move, I shot and retain rights to all the poster digital images—I wanted the library to have something to offer quick collection access, but requests for print-sized images will be directed to me.
|
Best Sellers in Biology, November 2006–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
(13-digit ISBNs included in brackets)
-
Mismatch: Why Our World No Longer Fits Our Bodies
Gluckman, Peter
Oxford University Press
2006. ISBN 0192806831 [9780192806833]. $29.95
-
Gentle Subversive: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, and the Rise of the Environmental Movement
Lytle, Mark Hamilton
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195172469 [9780195172461]. $23.00
-
Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith
Kitcher, Philip
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195314441 [9780195314441]. $20.00
-
End of the Wild
Meyer, Stephen M.
MIT Press
2006. ISBN 026213473x [9780262134736]. $14.95
-
Aldo Leopold's Odyssey
Newton, Julianne Lutz
Island Press
2006. ISBN 1597260452 [9781597260459]. $35.00
-
Making Sense of Evolution: The Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Biology
Pigliucci, Massimo
University of Chicago Press
2006. ISBN 0226668371 [9780226668376]. $28.00
-
Tinkerer's Accomplice: How Design Emerges From Life Itself
Turner, J. Scott
Harvard University Press
2007. ISBN 0674023536 [9780674023536]. $27.95
-
American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land
Coates, Peter A.
University of California Press
2006. ISBN 0520249305 [9780520249301]. $39.95
-
Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering
Sandel, Michael J.
Belknap Harvard
2007. ISBN 067401927x [9780674019270]. $18.95
-
Cell of Cells: The Global Race to Capture and Control the Stem Cell
Fox, Cynthia
W.W. Norton
2007. ISBN 0393058778 [9780393058772]. $26.95
-
Biodiversity Planning and Design: Sustainable Practices
Ahern, Jack
Island Press
2006. ISBN 1597261092 [9781597261098]. $25.00
-
Darwin and the Nature of Species
Stamos, David N.
State University of New York
2007. ISBN 0791469387 [9780791469385]. $28.95
-
Cluster and Classification Techniques for the Biosciences
Fielding, Alan H.
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521618002 [9780521618007]. $55.00
-
Evolutionary Bioinformatics
Forsdyke, Donald R.
Springer
2006. ISBN 0387334181 [9780387334189]. $59.95
-
Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism
Andrew J. Petto
W.W. Norton
2007. ISBN 0393050904 [9780393050905]. $27.95
-
Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project
Wells, Spencer
National Geographic Society
2006. ISBN 0792262158 [9780792262152]. $24.00
-
Biological Emergences: Evolution by Natural Experiment
Reid, Robert G.B.
MIT Press
2007. ISBN 0262182572 [9780262182577]. $38.00
-
Evolution and the Levels of Selection
Okasha, Samir
Clarendon Oxford
2006. ISBN 0199267979 [9780199267972]. $55.00
-
Geometry of Evolution: Adaptive Landscapes and Theoretical Morphospaces
McGhee, George R.
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 052184942x [9780521849425]. $75.00
-
Galapagos: The Islands That Changed the World
Stewart, Paul D.
Yale University Press
2006. ISBN 0300122306 [9780300122305]. $29.95
Library Journal Academic Newswire
Contributing Editor: Andrew R. Albanese
Phone: 646-746-6852 E-mail: aalbanese@reedbusiness.com
Editor: Francine Fialkoff
Phone: 646-746-6807 E-mail: fialkoff@reedbusiness.com
News Editor: Norman Oder
Phone: 646-746-6829 E-mail: noder@reedbusiness.com
TO UNSUBSCRIBE
To unsubscribe send an e-mail to Unsub_Academic_Newswire@email.libraryjournal.com
TO SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to Academic Newswire or our other newsletters
Subscribe to Library Journal magazine
ARCHIVE
Read past issues
PRINT
You must change your print settings from portrait to landscape to print this page.
VIEW OUR PRIVACY POLICY
Click here
ADVERTISING
Contact your LJ Sales rep for advertising information
QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions or need further assistance, please contact our
Online Support Team
Reed Business Information
2000 Clearwater Drive, Oak Brook, IL 60523
MediaSupport@reedbusiness.com?Subject=LJ-"AN"
© 2007 Library Journal. All rights reserved.
"Library Journal" is a registered trademark. "Library Journal Academic Newswire" is a trademark.
|
