By: Pam Bach

Hmmm, what to do with book jackets removed from items in the Cohen Enrichment Collection when the books are sent to the stacks to make room for new titles?  Pondering this question while looking out at the 4^th floor of Langsam Library and seeing the less-than-attractive concrete columns, inspiration hit — let’s create collages of the book jackets to wrap the columns! To make it even more fun, let’s inquire  about a donation of Duck Tape from ShurTech, where Madeline Aerni, a Library peer mentor, was interning this summer.

This proved to be the perfect activity for launching this years’ Langsam Connect event series, Fun, Food and Library Finds. Using tape, paper, and scissors, students created 4’ x 11’ collages from book jackets and Duck Tape, all while enjoying an afternoon snack in the Library. Watch the video capturing the fun, food, friends, and library finds!

Stop by Langsam and check the out the wrapped columns on the 4^th floor. You will likely find a book title and call # that you will want to check out and take home with you.

 This year UC Libraries were honored to participate in UC’s first International Conference for incoming international students. Planning for the Conference was a huge collaborative effort and we enjoyed working with many campus partners under the leadership of UC International. Graduate students Holly Zhang and Yu Mao and UC Alumna Ankita Singh, who have been active users of libraries and wanted to let new students know how libraries can enhance their academic success, prepared a great interactive PowerPoint presentation. Even though the library session was offered at the same time as the sessions on internships, housing, being a TA, and other important topics, we got a great interested audience, who actively participated and asked good questions. More students stopped by the Libraries’ table at the Resource Fair. They got to meet librarians Rosemary Franklin and Olga Hart and doctoral student Holly Zhang, introduce themselves, and ask questions in an informal setting. Some students used our interactive exhibit to learn more about plagiarism and finding help with plagiarism avoidance.

On August 18 Langsam Library hosted a fun, hands-on orientation session for international undergraduates. The students were pleasantly surprised to hear Dean Xuemao Wang’s welcome in English and Chinese followed by greetings in various languages from the UC international community. Led by friendly and energetic SOLs, the students learned a lot about UC Libraries in just an hour and a half.

We hope that UC Libraries will be home away from home for our international students. Once again, welcome! We are very happy to see you at UC and looking forward to helping you with your learning and research. We also hope to see you at library events.

Many people from UC Libraries and beyond contributed to making the library orientation for international students a success. Lots of thanks to everyone to everyone who helped! This brief video shows how much we had. Please join us next year!

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 Olga Hart

UC Libraries will be ending the OhioLINK KnowItNow chat service as of May 6.  If you would like to ask an online question you can

• email a subject librarian
• fill out the “Ask a Reference Question” form
• for immediate assistance you can use the public library chat service via your local public library or the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (http://www.knowitnow.org/).

Thank you very much.

Posted by Debbie Tenofsky

We can’t blame those were too scared to attend last Friday’s event and confront the zombies. However those who dared to come had a lot of fun. See what happened at the library after 4…

http://youtu.be/UZe8CfsPSJE

4712 (or 2014) is the year of the horse

January 31 will ring in Chinese Year 4712. Chinese New Year is the most important of the Chinese festivals.

Many traditions and and rituals associated with the celebration of the Chinese New Year are observed not only by the Chinese but by other nationalities as well, from the Far East to America and Europe.

Continue reading →

During the month of October designated as National Information Literacy Awareness Month UC Libraries invites students to think about scenarios that have to do with the ethics of using information. A couple of weeks ago we posted the following prompt:

(These are just a few responses we received).

We have asked Dr. Cynthia Nitz Ris, Associate Professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, to comment on your responses. Here are her thoughts: Continue reading →