Read Source, the online newsletter, to learn more about the news, events, people and happenings in UC Libraries.

source headerRead Source, the online newsletter, to learn more about the news, events, people and happenings in UC Libraries.

In this issue of Source, Dean Xuemao Wang writes about how a digital core is part of a 21st-century liberal education.

Two exhibits that highlight women who fought for equality are featured in this issue along with an article by Kevin Grace, university archivist and head of the Archives and Rare Books Library, who writes of Mark Twain’s relationship with Cincinnati, including that quote attributed to Twain about where he hopes to be when the world ends.

This issue announces the exciting comeback of the former popular Authors, Editors & Composers exhibit that will combine with the current Life of the Mind lecture to form one event that will celebrate the achievements of UC’s artists, authors, editors & composers. We announce the 5th University of Cincinnati Libraries Annual Progress Report – A Year of Reflection.

Lastly, we announce two upcoming events – the second Hidden Treasures: An Adopt-A-Book Evening on March 12 and the upcoming annual Cecil Striker Lecture to focus on Dr. Christian R. Holmes and scheduled for May 7.

Read these articles, as well as past issues, on the web at http://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/source/ and via e-mail. To receive Source via e-mail, contact melissa.norris@uc.edu to be added to the mailing list.

Preserving University Websites through Web Archiving

All of us have experienced clicking on a link and receiving an error, or 404 notice. Web pages are notoriously fragile documents, and many of the web resources we take for granted are at risk of disappearing. In one case study, archivists who were preserving the hashtags related to the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris found that just a few months later, between 7 and 10% of tweets had been deleted. The average life span of a webpage is between 44 and 100 days. And even if you think that we won’t really lose much in the long run if we don’t get every website of interest preserved – the issue of “link rot” is a big deal, as half of all URLs in Supreme Court opinion citations are now dead.

Web archiving overcomes these issues of obsolescence through thoughtful planning and curation of organizationally and historically valuable web content. Most web archiving today takes place through third-party services such as WebRecorder or Archive-It. To archive a website, you have to supply the URL of the website and give the web archiving service instructions about what you want to capture, and how many links below the main page you want the service to “crawl”. Web archiving is not simply “saving as a PDF” or taking a screenshot of a website. Because of the dynamic nature of most modern websites, their embedded media, interactive options, and rapidly changing nature, adequately capturing a website so that a user can interact with the archival file requires creating a WARC file. Web archiving services created files known as WARCs, which is a standardized file format for creating archival web content. Implementing web archiving services addresses several critical archives and records use cases.

A web archiving subscription service such as Archive-It offers both a preservation tool and collection development tool in one: the archivist can use the service to “crawl” a website in order to create a WARC file, and then the service also allows the archivist to present these resources to the public for research through the Internet Archive’s Archive-It website, which is currently used by over 60 ARL research libraries.

At the Archives and Rare Books Library, we have started using Archive-It to begin preserving important university websites. We’re just getting started, but so far we are prioritizing preserving the websites for the Board of Trustees, President, and Provost. All of these websites host important minutes, reports, documents, and other information that is important to retain for university archives. We are also capturing copies of “endangered” websites on the uc.edu – websites that may be going offline in the near future, but which have important university history embedded in them (you can see an example here).

Down the road, we’ll be expanding last year’s pilot project to collect websites from student organizations in order to fill in some of our archival gaps reflecting the student experience. You can see our pilot project collection here.

Do you have any ideas about important university websites that ought to be crawled? If so, contact Eira Tansey, ARB’s Digital Archivist via email at eira.tansey@uc.edu or 513-556-1958.

 

Happy Valentine, Greeks and Romans!

February is a rainy but also lovable month, so curling up with poetry is perfect. Many ancient poems expressed love in its many forms. For example,

Love of nature as longingly expressed by the great Roman poet Vergil in his Eclogue 1:

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/virgil-eclogues/1916/pb_LCL063.29.xml?mainRsKey=z6gF20&result=2&rskey=9aEESD

“…fortunate senex, hic inter flumina notaet fontis sacros frigus captabis opacum. hinc tibi, quae semper, vicino ab limite saepes Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro; hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras: nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes, nec gemere aëria cessabit turtur ab ulmo” (Ecl. 1.51-58).

“…happy old man! Here, amid familiar streams and sacred springs, you shall enjoy the cooling shade. On this side, as of old, on your neighbor’s border, the hedge whose willow blossoms are sipped by Hybla’s bees shall often with its gentle hum soothe you to slumber; on that, under the towering rock, the woodman’s song shall fill the air; while still the cooing wood pigeons, your pets, and the turtle dove shall cease not their moaning from the elm tops.”

Or the touching love of a dog in Homer’s Odyssey (hey Mike!):

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/homer-odyssey/1919/pb_LCL105.175.xml?mainRsKey=TOKAcJ&result=1&rskey=vLoZ2S

“…ἂν δὲ κύων κεφαλήν τε καὶ οὔατα κείμενος ἔσχεν, Ἄργος, Ὀδυσσῆος ταλασίφρονος…  ἔνθα κύων κεῖτ᾿ Ἄργος, ἐνίπλειος κυνοραιστέων. δὴ τότε γ᾿, ὡς ἐνόησεν Ὀδυσσέα ἐγγὺς ἐόντα οὐρῇ μέν ῥ᾿ ὅ γ᾿ ἔσηνε καὶ οὔατα κάββαλεν ἄμφω, ἆσσον δ᾿ οὐκέτ᾿ ἔπειτα δυνήσατο οἷο ἄνακτοςἐλθέμεν…” (17. 290-291; 302-304).

“…and a dog that lay there raised his head and pricked up his ears, Argus, steadfast Odysseus’ dog… There lay the dog Argus, full of dog ticks. But now, when he became aware that Odysseus was near, he wagged his tail and dropped both ears, but nearer to his master he had no longer strength to move…”

Or the love of a cow for her newborn calf when he is brutally taken away to be sacrificed (or raised for veal) in Lucretius:

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/lucretius-de_rerum_natura/1924/pb_LCL181.123.xml?rskey=phideb&result=1

“…nam saepe ante deum vitulus delubra decora turicremas propter mactatus concidit aras, sanguinis expirans calidum de pectore flumen; at mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans quaerit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis, omnia convisens oculis loca si queat usquam conspicere amissum fetum, completque querellis frondiferum nemus adsistens et crebra revisit ad stabulum desiderio perfixa iuvenci; nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis oblectare animum subitamque avertere curam, nec vitulorum aliae species per pabula laeta derivare queunt animum curaque levare: usque adeo quiddam proprium notumque requirit…” (2.352-366).

“…for often in front of the noble shrines of the gods a calf falls slain beside the incense-burning altars, breathing up a hot stream of blood from his chest; but the mother, bereaved, wanders through the green glens, and knows the prints marked on the ground by the cloven hooves, as she surveys all the regions if she may espy somewhere her lost offspring, and coming to a stand fills the leafy woods with her moaning, and often revisits the stall pierced with yearning for her young calf; nor can tender willow-growths, and grass growing rich in the dew, and those rivers flowing level with their banks, give delight to her mind and rebuff that care which has entered there, nor can the sight of other calves in the happy pastures divert her mind and lighten her load of care: so persistently she seeks for something of her own that she knows well…”

Or the love of a woman as expressed by the greatest of the Ancient Greek lyric poets, Sappho:

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/sappho-fragments/1982/pb_LCL142.79.xml?mainRsKey=v1YYtJ&result=2&rskey=i9iJXE

“…ὠς γὰρ ἔς σ᾿ ἴδω βρόχε᾿, ὤς με φώναισ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἒν ἔτ᾿ εἴκει, ἀλλὰ κὰμ μὲν γλῶσσᾴ <μ᾿> ἔαγε, λέπτονδ᾿ αὔτικα χρῷ πῦρ ὐπαδεδρόμηκεν, ὀππάτεσσι δ᾿ οὐδ᾿ ἒν ὄρημμ᾿, ἐπιρρόμβεισι δ᾿ ἄκουαι, κὰδ δέ μ᾿ ἴδρως κακχέεται, τρόμος δὲπαῖσαν ἄγρει, χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας ἔμμι…” (frag. 31.7-14).

“…for when I look at you for a moment, then it is no longer possible for me to speak; my tongue has snapped, at once a subtle fire has stolen beneath my flesh, I see nothing with my eyes, my ears hum, sweat pours from me, a trembling seizes me all over, I am greener than grass…”

Or the love of a man as passionately expressed by Roman poet Catullus (and to the delight of all school children studying Latin)

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/catullus-poems/1913/pb_LCL006.7.xml?result=1&rskey=Fz5uL7

“…da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum dein, cum milia multa fecerimus, conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut nequis malus invidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum…” (5)

“…give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred. Then, when we have made up many thousands, we will confuse our counting, that we may not know the reckoning, nor any malicious person blight them with evil eye, when he knows that our kisses are so many…”

Or one of the many rather twisted and often sad love stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses — Pyramus and Thisbe, Apollo and Daphne, Orpheus and Eurydice and countless others

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/ovid-metamorphoses/1916/pb_LCL042.3.xml?rskey=XVZ0kK&result=3 

Pyramus et Thisbe, iuvenum pulcherrimus alter, altera, quas Oriens habuit, praelata puellis, contiguas tenuere domos, ubi dicitur altam coctilibus muris cinxisse Semiramis urbem. notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit, tempore crevit amor; taedae quoque iure coissent, sed vetuere patres: quod non potuere vetare, ex aequo captis ardebant mentibus ambo. conscius omnis abest; nutu signisque loquuntur, quoque magis tegitur, tectus magis aestuat ignis…” (Met. 4.55-64).

Pyramus and Thisbe—he, the most beautiful youth, and she, loveliest maid of all the East—dwelt in houses side by side, in the city which Semiramis is said to have surrounded with walls of brick. Their nearness made the first steps of their acquaintance. In time love grew, and they would have been joined in marriage, too, but their parents forbade. Still, what no parents could forbid, sore smitten in heart they burned with mutual love. They had no go-between, but communicated by nods and signs; and the more they covered up the fire, the more it burned.”

Or that of Cupid (Amor) himself and Psyche in Apuleius:

https://www.loebclassics.com/view/apuleius-metamorphoses/1989/pb_LCL044.259.xml?result=2&rskey=4iNfhs

“…centies moriar quam tuo isto dulcissimo conubio caream. Amo enim et efflictim te, quicumque es, diligo aeque ut meum spiritum, nec ipsi Cupidini comparo…” (Met. 5.6)

“…I would rather die a hundred times than be robbed of your sweet caresses. For I love and adore you passionately, whoever you are, as much as my own life’s breath, and I would not even compare Cupid himself with you…” [what Psyche does not know is that it is Cupid himself who caresses her]

Happy Reading!

 

Women of the Movement: Leaders for Civil Rights and Voting Rights

women of the movement graphic
The exhibit, Women of the Movement: Leaders for Civil Rights and Voting Rights, currently on display on the 4th floor lobby of the Walter C. Langsam Library, profiles female leaders of the fight for civil and voting rights. Beginning with Sojourner Truth, former slave and abolitionist, and including contemporaries Diane Nash, a key player in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Cincinnati’s Marian Spencer, a champion for Civil Rights both locally and nationally, the exhibit spans history into current times.

Included in the exhibit are women instrumental to the Suffrage fight – Sojourner Truth who worked closely with Susan B. Anthony; Mary Church Terrell, founder of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 as part of the Suffrage Movement after black women were excluded from the Women’s Suffrage Movement; and Mary McLeod Bethune who led voter registration drives following passing of the 19th Amendment.

Civil Rights activists on display include Fannie Lou Hamer, who famously said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired;” Daisy Bates, an integrated schools advocate; and Ida B. Wells, a journalist, educator and one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The exhibit’s design is inspired by a recently created ArtWorks mural in Cincinnati’s Avondale neighborhood honoring Louise Shropshire, composer of the hymn, “If My Jesus Wills,” that became the well-known mantra “We Shall Overcome” during the Civil Rights Movement. Louise Shropshire’s papers are located in the Archives and Rare Books Library.

Women of the Movement: Leaders for Civil Rights and Voting Rights was curated by June Taylor-Slaughter, public services supervisor in the Geology-Mathematics-Physics Library, and was designed by Michelle Matevia, UC Libraries communication design co-op student. A handout is available at the exhibit with more information on the women featured in the exhibit.

Bibliography:

  • Alexander, Shawn Leigh. An Army of Lions : The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Print. LANGSAM; CLERMONT E185.61 .A437 2012
  • Bracey, Earnest N. Fannie Lou Hamer: The Life of a Civil Rights Icon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2011. Print. LANGSAM E 185.97.H35 B73 2011
  • Brooks, Maegan Parker. A Voice That Could Stir an Army: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rhetoric of the Black Freedom
    Movement. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. Print. LANGSAM E 185.97.H35 B76 2014
  • Harwell, Debbie Z. Wednesdays in Mississippi: Proper Ladies Working for Radical Change, Freedom Summer 1964. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014. Print. LANGSAM E185.93.M6 H37 2014
  • Christenson, Dorothy H, Keep on fighting: the life and civil rights legacy of Marian A. Spencer. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015. LANGSAM  F499.C553 S643 2015
  • Frontline feminism 1975-1995 : essays from Sojourner’s first 20 years / edited by Karen Kahn ; foreword by Robin Morgan. San Francisco : Aunt Lute Books, c1995. LANGSAM. HQ1402 .F76 1995

Three UC Libraries employees accepted to participate in RMD 102: Beyond Research Data Management for Biomedical & Health Sciences Libraries course

UC Libraries’ Rebecca Olson, Tiffany Grant and Don Jason have been accepted into the RDM 102: Beyond Research Data Management for Biomedical & Health Sciences Librarians (Spring 2020) course, offered through the National Network of Libraries of Medicine Training Office (NTO).  

The major aim of this course is to provide an introduction to the support of data science and open science with the goal of developing and implementing or enhancing data science and data literacy training and services at UC. Threaded throughout the course will be the librarian’s role in research reproducibility and research integrity and include practice in using Jupyter Notebooks. The course topics include an overview of data science and open science, data literacy, data wrangling, data visualization and data storytelling. 

Rebecca, business and social sciences informationist, Tiffany, research informationist, and Don, clinical informationist, are all members of the Research & Data Services Team and are working on forwarding the mission of the team and digital integration efforts across the Libraries. Participation in this course will afford both the opportunity to demonstrate improved skills in research data management, as well as to gain the knowledge and ability to support data science services here at UC.

 Please join us in celebrating their initiative and accomplishment!

Honoring Professor Jack L. Davis: Exhibition in the Classics Library

Classics Library Exhibition Flyer 

The John Miller Burnam Classics Library celebrates Professor Jack L. Davis who has been awarded the 2020 Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement, the highest award the Archaeological Institute of America bestows. The exhibition in the main Reading Room of the Library, in the Blegen Library building, highlights Professor Davis’s illustrious academic career and extensive publications.

UC Classics has a long history of excellence in Classical Archaeology. Jack L. Davis joins the distinguished company of four previous AIA Gold Medal recipients from the UC Department of Classics: Carl W. Blegen (1965), John L. Caskey (1980), Emmett Bennett (2001), and C. Brian Rose (2015).

Professor Davis received his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati. The title of his 1977 dissertation was Fortifications at Ayia Irini, Keos: Evidence for history and relative chronology (CLASS Stacks C.U. 151.77.D28). Already as a student, Professor Davis had worked with another famous UC archaeologist, Gerald Cadogan, at Knossos and with Caskey at Ayia Irini on the Cycladic island of Keos.

He has since directed regional archaeological projects in the Nemea Valley, and on the island of Keos, and in Messenia around the Palace of Nestor. In addition, he has led regional studies and excavations in  Albania of the ancient Greek colonies of Dyrrachium/Epidamnos and Apollonia.

UC Professor Carl Blegen uncovered the “Palace of Nestor” and led systematic excavations at Pylos, 1952-1966, after his initial campaign in 1939. Already in his first year, he discovered a cache of a large number of clay tablets with a syllabic script referred to as Linear B, which was later understood to be the earliest example of Greek. Professor Davis resumed and directed excavations around the Palace of Nestor, together with his wife, archaeologist Sharon R. Stocker, many years later. In 2015, the couple created a world-sensation with the discovery of an intact Bronze Age shaft tomb containing more than 3,000 artifacts including weapons, jewelry, armor and silver and gold objects such as a very unusual Minoan seal stone depicting warriors in combat with detailed representations of the bodies of the men, leading some admirers to refer to the unknown artist as a Minoan “Michelangelo,” and four signet gold rings with detailed images of goddesses and bull leapers. The tomb has been dated to c. 1500 BCE, so most likely before the Mycenaean hegemony and the Palaces and the Trojan War, described in Homer’s Iliad.

Before Professor Davis came to UC as faculty in 1994, he had taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 1977-1993. He later served as Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2007-2012. He has moreover held visiting professorships and positions at UC Berkeley, Stanford, Cambridge, and Northwestern among other institutions.

A reception for Professor Davis was organized by the Classics Department with a thank you speech in which Davis most memorably thanked his mother, his wife (archaeologist Shari Stocker), and his mother-in-law. 

Professor Davis cuts a gold cake served in honor of his AIA Gold Medal award at the reception in the Classics Department.

Exhibition in the Classics Library honoring Jack L. Davis’s achievements, including his pioneering archaeological studies and excavations and extensive publishing output. 

Tytus Fellow Kenneth Sheedy, Research Associate Shari R. Stocker, Professors Jack L. Davis, and Peter van Minnen. 

 

Some of Professor Davis’s books include:

Papers in Cycladic Prehistory (Los Angeles 1979).
Keos V. Ayia Irini: Period V (Mainz 1986).
Landscape Archaeology as Long-Term History: Northern Keos in the Cycladic Islands (Los Angeles 1991).
Sandy Pylos: An Archaeological History from Nestor to Navarino (University of Texas Press 1998).
A Guide to the Palace of Nestor, Mycenaean Sites in Its Environs, and the Hora Museum (American School of Classical Studies at Athens 2001).
An Historical and Economic Geography of Ottoman Greece: The Southwestern Morea in the Early 18th Century (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2005).
Between Venice and Istanbul: Colonial Landscapes in Early Modern Greece (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2007).
Philhellenism, Philanthropy, or Political Convenience (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2013), coedited with Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan.
Carl W. Blegen: Personal and Archaeological Narratives (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2015) with Natalia Vogeikoff-Brogan and Vivian Florou.
Mycenaean Wall-Painting in Context (Paris and Athens, 2015), edited with Hariclia Brecoulaki and Sharon Stocker.
The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 2017), edited with John Bennet.

His articles, book chapters, book reviews, conference proceedings are too numerous to list here. A fuller account is included in the exhibition.

 

Announcing the 5th Annual University of Cincinnati Libraries 2018/19 Annual Progress Report – A Year of Reflection.

annual progress report coverThis past year the University of Cincinnati marked its Bicentennial led by the tenants: To Honor the past. Elevate the present. Bend the future. While
celebrating the Libraries’ vital role in the past 200 years of the university, we also took this opportunity to reflect on our goals, objectives, accomplishments and gaps as the next phase of our strategic direction.

Our year of reflection has resulted in the need for the creation of an emerging, and even bolder, Strategic Framework – one built upon the knowledge of our strengths and challenges, coupled with the needs and perspectives of our users, and that will propel us forward as we strive to become the globally engaged intellectual commons of the university – now and well into the future.

The University of Cincinnati Libraries Annual Progress Report, 2018/2019, available online at https://issuu.com/uclibraries/docs/uclannualreport18_19, makes note of the accomplishments and happenings of the previous year, as well as celebrates the people and donors integral to us fulfilling the work of our mission to empower discovery, stimulate learning and inspire the creation of knowledge by connecting students, faculty, researchers and scholars to dynamic data, information and resources.

Questions? Request a print copy? E-mail melissa.norris@uc.edu.

Happy Reading!

UC Libraries Closed Monday, Jan. 20 for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. from LIFE Magazine

UC Libraries will be closed Monday, Jan. 20 for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day with the exception of the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, which will be open 9am-5pm. The libraries will resume normal hours on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

This closing includes the 4th floor of the Walter C. Langsam Library, which will close at 11pm on Sunday, Jan. 19 and re-open at 7:45am on Tues, Jan. 21.

Want to read up on Martin Luther King, Jr., his impact and legacy? Check out these library resources.

2020 Lexicomp App Access Now Available – App Accounts Expire Annually

Happy New Year!

The Health Sciences Library subscribes to Lexicomp Online and with each annual renewal, the previous year’s app access expires and 50 new Lexicomp app access codes are provided.

50 access codes for the 2020 Lexicomp app

  • Lexicomp app registration is first come, first serve
  • App accounts expire annually

Lexicomp Academic Discount Program

Lexicomp Online

Lexicomp Online is a collection of clinical databases and clinical decision support tools that provides users with an extensive medical library.  It provides clear, concise, point-of-care adult and pediatric drug information as well as in-depth information on interactions, toxicology, and more.  Lexicomp also includes support tools like drug ID, calculators, and patient education.

Unlimited Lexicomp Online access is available in a responsive design that will resize to your device.

UC Libraries Closed for Winter Seasonal Days, Dec. 23-Jan. 1

happy holidaysThe faculty and staff of the University of Cincinnati Libraries bring you good tidings of the season and wish you a prosperous and joyful 2020! UC Libraries will be closed for Winter Seasonal Days, Dec. 23-Jan. 1, with the exception of the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, which will be open on a limited schedule. A complete list of library hours is available online.