Left to right: Sally, Mark, Hong, Tengiz, Arlene, and Ted

Left to right: Sally, Ted, Mark, Tengiz, Arlene, Tiffany

Sponsored by UC’s Office of Research, the UC Libraries welcomed the first IREX scholar, Tengiz Simashvili, with six library faculty members at Langsam on October 25, 2016. Dr. Simashvili is the head of Caucasus Scientific-Research Center at Telavi State University, Georgia. He came to UC with a mission of learning how American universities utilize new strategies and methods to support researchers. As a collection of research hubs on campus, the UC Libraries have a lot to share with him.

Sally Moffitt started with a presentation on how subject librarians support researchers such as Dr. Simashvili in the field of history. Arlene Johnson introduced the Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarship Center and our new dual hire, Dr. Lee, as a model of collaboration. Another important area was presented by Mark Konecny regarding open access movement, copyright protection and UC’s commitment to providing affordable textbooks and free open educational resources to students and faculty. In terms of the libraries’ ever-expanding digital collections and the institutional repository Scholar@UC, Ted Baldwin highlighted some projects and collections that can be easily found and indexed by search engines, allowing scholars in the digital age to be more globally visible to their communities. Finally, Tiffany Grant introduced the data management services offered across disciplines at UC and the team’s drive to meet the increasing demand for these services in our data-driven research environment.

Dr. Simashvili brought the libraries copies of his manuscripts as well as showcasing websites scholars at UC can access for Georgian history and research about Stalin.