Author Archives: Melissa Cox Norris

Elizabeth Meyer Appointed Head of the Deshon, Schlachter DAAP Library

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DAAP Library

Interior of the DAAP Library

Elizabeth Meyer has been appointed head of the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) effective immediately. Elizabeth has been graciously serving as the interim head of the DAAP Library since 2017. In her interim role, Elizabeth has been commended for her commitment to outstanding services and collections at the DAAP library, her creativity and her vision of how to engage with the faculty and students of DAAP to ensure a vital library presence with their innovative programs and research interests.

Elizabeth began working at UC Libraries in 2004 as the visual resources librarian. She holds an MLS from Indiana University, and a BA in art history from DAAP. Her research interests include Cincinnati modernist architecture and historic preservation, and she has continually engaged with the design and architecture communities in the Cincinnati metropolitan area, securing unique papers, archives and special collections that benefit both DAAP and the broader research community.

Congratulations, Elizabeth, on her new role as the Head of the DAAP Library!

Update from the Classics Library

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Welcome and welcome back! There is much (mostly) good news to report from the Library

We have new Classics Library access policies. Please see: https://libraries.uc.edu/libraries/classics/classics-library-policies.html

Please note that faculty, graduate students, Tytus fellows in Classics are given swipe card access to the stacks.  We are also getting lockers primarily for non-UC classicists in which to place bags.

The rare classics books in ARB have been transferred from ARB to the new “Rare Book and Manuscript Room” in the former Pal cage on S4. Please ask library staff to retrieve rare books for consultation in the Circulation area, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m, M-F.

Most of the palaeography collection has been transferred to the Scriptorium – The John Miller Burnam Palaeography Reading Room — room 414A off of the main Reading Room. Please request that the staff at the Circulation desk unlock the door for you.

The Reference collection is now located on the 4th floor opposite the Circulation desk and the current journals have been moved to the mezzanine.

Please review the Classics Library’s borrowing privileges for the collections in these and other locations: https://libraries.uc.edu/libraries/classics/services.html

The “New Books” have been moved to the cubby hole in the Circulation area.

We have “new” more comfortable chairs opposite the Circulation desk.

Please note that our annual supply budget of $250 cannot pay for new furniture (barely for pens). We make regular trips to UC Surplus on our own time and money to pick up discards. Much is trash, but occasionally we find decent chairs and things which was the case with the two armchairs we have put in the graduate study room to replace the tattered green one.

We currently have three new student assistants: Emily Dean and Elaine Suer (both Classicists), and Kayla Weiglein (in the German Ph.D. program).

Returning student assistants include: Brycen Carle, Kathleen Johnson, Maddie Menssen, Yo Shionoya, and Amber’Nay Wilkins. We are currently in the process of hiring additional student assistants. So far we are pleased with the applicant pool.

We are happy that Yo will be staying with us albeit in a different capacity from during the summer.  Our many projects (and calamities) have greatly benefited from Yo’s intelligence, kind and helpful manner, and hard work in the supervisory position he has held since late May. His many transformative initiatives have included a new student worker recruitment process and training procedures as well as his supervision of and active participation in the many reorganization projects and salvage efforts this summer.

The black mold from the leak in the Reading Room has been removed, so the room is again safe to use.

The leak in the stacks (under the urinal) has more or less been fixed. We are still waiting for the areas affected to be cleaned. Some 400 German dissertations are being treated by the Preservation department in Langsam.

Last but not least, the Classics Library has a new and improved website: https://libraries.uc.edu/libraries/classics.html

The website has been a major undertaking for many months because of added content but also because earlier versions kept being overlaid on newer ones, not by us). I wish to personally thank Lindsay Taylor for her invaluable help in navigating the many complexities of the different reiterations and editing modules. John Wallrodt used his Photoshopping skills to produce the composite image on the Classics Library landing page.

The moving of some 15,000 books has been quite an overwhelming effort. Most of the work – reviewing each book, changing locations and labels in the catalog and on spines, carrying, lifting, and cleaning numerous books, book cases, and shelves (we’re not quite finished yet) — has been carried out by our small Classics Library staff and student workers. An outside company moved the books from ARB to the Classics Library, but because of misshelvings and other issues, some of this work has been (and continues to be) fixed by the Library staff.

Hope you will like our new and improved library organization and welcome (back) to the John Miller Burnam Classics Library, UC’s Best Kept Secret!

From Your Classics Library

CANCELLED: Got Data?! Join Us for the Data Visualization Showcase Oct. 25

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PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.

The University of Cincinnati Libraries’ Research & Data Services is calling for virtual submissions that best demonstrate the power of visualization to present complex data.

Event

The Data Visualization Showcase will be held from 1-3 pm on Friday, Oct. 25, 2019 in the Visualization Laboratory (240H Braunstein Hall, Geology-Mathematics-Physics Library). Coffee and refreshments will be served. All are welcome.

Eligibility & Deadlines

Submissions for the showcase are open to all University of Cincinnati affiliates, but must be submitted to AskData@uc.edu by Oct. 11 to be considered for the awards. All submissions will be evaluated by a panel of judges and should follow submission guidelines.

Judging

The showcase will be juried by a panel of interdisciplinary judges scoring each submission on the following four tenants of data visualization: Impact, Storytelling, Technical Aptitude and Creativity. See the rubric for more details.

Continue reading →

10 year anniversary STRC@Langsam YouTube site

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10 years ago on September 1st 2009 the STRC uploaded their first video to YouTube.   The video was of a old book that was sent to UCL’s Conservation and Binding department.  They needed a quick way to show someone in California how the book would be repaired. 10 years later the STRC site has 300 videos, 400,000 views and 367 subscribers.  178 of the videos are UC student projects made at the STRC editing suites and STRC video production room.  Below is a link to the most viewed student project (Tom Cruise on Teaching Composition) with 15,000 views. And also below is a link to the first video added 10 years ago, (Conservation of book) with 7,300 views.

 

videos STRC

 

Welcome, Melissa Previtera, Health Sciences Library/Winkler Center Academic & Research Services Specialist

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On Tuesday, Sept. 3, Melissa Previtera began her position at the University of Cincinnati Libraries as the academic and research services specialist for the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library (HSL) and the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions (Winkler Center).

Melissa is a familiar face in UC Libraries having worked previously in the HSL/Winkler Center, College of Engineering and Applied Science Library, and most recently at the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services Library. In this new role, she will work closely with HSL and Winkler Center faculty as well as members of the Winkler Center Board, College of Medicine, College of Nursing, College of Pharmacy and Allied Health faculty, researchers, staff and students.

Welcome (back), Melissa!

Most UC Libraries Closed Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 2

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labor dayUC Libraries will be closed Monday, September 2 for Labor Day, except for the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, which will be open 9am-5pm. This closing includes the Walter C. Langsam Library 4th floor space, which will close Sunday, September 1 at 11pm and re-open Tuesday, September 3 at 7:45am.

A complete listing of library hours can be found online at www.libraries.uc.edu/about/hours.html.

Enjoy the long holiday weekend.

A needle in a PDF haystack

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One of my research areas is examining the role of recordkeeping and documentation in environmental regulations. A research tactic I frequently use is to sift through hundreds of PDFs at once. Large numbers of PDFs are posted on many environmental regulatory websites, but there isn’t a lot of information about what’s in them or how big they are, or where the juicy stuff is. If this sounds daunting – well, it is! But I’ve come up with a few tricks to help me sort out what is useful and what isn’t.

Step 1: Download

The first thing is figuring out how to download a zillion PDFs at once. For this, I recommend getting a bulk downloader add-on for your browser (here is an example). This will scan through every URL on a page that ends with .pdf, which indicates that the URL is likely a downloadable PDF. A bulk downloader prevents the need from clicking on every single link, which can be a lot when you’re on a page with dozens of PDFs like this one from the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Step 2: Text Recognition

Once you download all the files you want, I like to place them into a dedicated folder. This is because even though theoretically most government agency PDFs should have optical character recognition (OCR), the actual practice is very inconsistent. OCRed text is critical for PDF searching because it allows you to do a keyword search within a single file or across multiple files at once. Currently, there is not widely-available OCR functionality for cursive or handwriting, just typeface.

Adobe Acrobat has a useful function (under Tools > Text Recognition > In Multiple Files) where you can run the OCR function across everything in a specific folder. This can take a while, but at least there is a progress bar that’ll show you how long it takes – which could be a while, considering that many government environmental regulation records can be a hundred pages for each file. Using the Adobe Acrobat tool also allows you to keep or modify original file names. I like to downsample the files to 600 dpi – it takes longer than the lower dpi measures, but I think it enables better keyword searches later on.

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3: Dig into the PDF files!

There is a free software program called PDF-XChange Viewer, which you can use to do keyword searches over large amounts of PDFs. You can also run a similar search within Adobe Acrobat, but I find that the searching takes far longer and the results are presented less tidily than with PDF-XChange Viewer. Supposedly you can also run batch OCR with this program, but I haven’t tried it.

The example demonstrates how I wanted to find PDFs from coal mine inspection safety reports that mention the word “map.” The results show me that of the dozens of documents I searched in my dedicated folder, there were 187 hits for the word “map” across 14 of the documents. I can get an idea from the left-hand preview pane what the keyword is like in context, and then click on that to see the actual PDF in the right-hand window.

This step helps me pull out the PDFs that I need to analyze more deeply, thus saving me the headache of opening up every single PDF in case it might have something of interest.

Welcome Back!

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HSL Updates

September 2019, Vol. 1

On behalf of the faculty, staff and students of the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library (HSL), – welcome back for the 2019-2020 school year.  I would like to share with you some library updates and links that you can easily access for information as it relates to classes being offered in the HSL, hours of operation, new technology, upcoming lectures and collaborative spaces for study and research.

HSL upgrades:

  • Over the summer, the electrical engineers were able to finalize the upgrades of lights on the R, E and G levels of the library
  • New power outlets were installed on the R-Level of the library.
  • At the request of HSGA representatives from last year, the HSL purchased four (4) new ergonomic stand-up tables that are located in the Computer Lab.
  • In mid-September the HSL Circulation Desk students will begin offering scheduled 20-minute walking tours of the HSL Library and Winkler Center.  The tour will include, but is not limited to information on equipment that can be checked out, HSL IT Help Desk services, how to navigate the Computer Lab and information on the HSL’s Electronic Classroom.  Look for more information about the tours in October.

HSL Updates will be posted on a monthly basis to share the HSL Workshop calendar and any other information related to things happening in the HSL.  If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me directly.  As always, we are happy to welcome you into the HSL.

Regards,

Lori E. Harris, Interim Director
Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library and
the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions
Tel:  (513) 558-0315
Fax: (513) 558-2682

Email: harri2li@ucmail.uc.edu
Web:  www.libraries.uc.edu/hsl

The Archives and Rare Books Library presents the 2nd annual German-Americana Lecture, which will feature Frederic Krome

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August, Hans and Adelaide Schiller

August, Hans and Adelaide Schiller

The second annual German-Americana lecture, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 19, 3-4:30 p.m., in Annie Laws (407 Teachers/Dyer), will feature Frederic Krome, professor of history at UC Clermont College who will speak about his recent research on the unpublished memoirs of a World War I German soldier. “In Times of War: Hans Schiller’s Recovered Memoirs” will provide a fascinating window into the motivations and experiences of Hans Schiller during tumultuous times, without the extensive post war re-writing so common to what historians are starting to refer to as “Ego Documents.”

Enlisting in the German Army in the fall of 1914, Hans Schiller fought on the Eastern, Italian and Western fronts during the war, and with the Freikorps in the Baltic from 1919-21. Sometime in 1922, as he was recovering from Scarlet Fever, Hans Schiller collated his notes and wrote a memoir of his military service. The handwritten memoir was then placed in a box, where it lay as Schiller married, had a family, and in 1939 was recalled to active duty as an occupation administrator in Eastern Europe. In January 1945 he committed suicide and his manuscript, still in the box, came to his younger daughter, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s. It was re-discovered by Karin Wagner, Schiller’s granddaughter, shortly before her mother’s death.

frederic krome

Frederic Krome

Frederic Krome, (Ph.D. University of Cincinnati, 1992) taught at Northern Kentucky University (1992-98) before becoming the managing editor of the American Jewish Archives Journal at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Since 2007 he has taught at the University of Cincinnati. His publications include The Jews of Cincinnati (with John Fine), The Jewish Hospital and Cincinnati Jews in Medicine (2015), and Fighting the Future War: An Anthology of Science Fiction War Stories, 1914-45 (2012), along with numerous articles and book reviews.

Organized by the Archives and Rare Books Library, the German-Americana Lecture is free and open to all, but reservations are requested to jennifer.mackiewicz@uc.edu or by phone at (513) 556-1394.

The German-Americana Lecture is generously supported by The Charlotte and Edward Unnewehr Fund for the German-Americana Collection made possible by the Marge and Charles J. Schott Foundation.

Libraries Moving to Mediated Service Model for Kanopy Streaming Videos

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kanopy home screen
Kanopy, the University of Cincinnati Libraries’ on-demand streaming video service available at http://uc.kanopystreaming.com, is a content-rich, much-used resource. However, the Libraries’ materials budget cannot sustain the current level of spending for Kanopy. It is important to note that films obtained in Kanopy are not owned, but leased for one year at $135 per lease. When the lease has expired, the film can then be triggered for another one-year lease.

In the past, Kanopy films were automatically leased after 30 seconds of viewing by any user with access to the library, including walk-in visitors. In an effort to eliminate purchases triggered by casual users and to focus on course-related use of the rich academic material included in Kanopy, UC Libraries is moving to a mediated leasing model beginning the 2019 fall semester.

University of Cincinnati students, faculty, and staff will continue to have immediate access to films currently leased by UC (approximately 645 titles as of June 2019) until they expire. People will still be able to search in Kanopy for films the Libraries does not already lease, however, when attempting to access such a film, users will have the option to select the “request” button next to the film, fill out the form, and the Libraries will work to fulfill the request, typically obtaining a new lease within one business day.

For additional streaming video sources, or for further information on the mediation of Kanopy films, please visit the Libraries’ Kanopy LibGuide at https://guides.libraries.uc.edu/Kanopy/FAQ.

For more information regarding Kanopy’s streaming service please read the following article from the May 2019 issue of Film Quarterly at https://filmquarterly.org/2019/05/03/kanopy-not-just-like-netflix-and-not-free/.