Author Archives: Melissa Cox Norris

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/.

Announcing the Redesigned UC Libraries Website

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redesigned libraries homepage

Check out the redesigned Libraries website scheduled to launch Thursday, Aug. 15.

Some of the new features and upgrades of the UC Libraries website redesign include:

  • updated look and feel and an uncluttered homepage
  • refreshed, user-centric content under the categories of: “Find, Request, Borrow,” “Special Collections,” “Research and Teaching Support,” “Spaces and Technology,” “About” and “My Accounts”
  • tabbed search box located prominently front and center at the top of the homepage, allowing users to search for articles, books, journals and databases much more quickly and easily
  • ability to search Research Guides by subject via the homepage
  • call-outs for Special Collections, Digital Technologies & Innovation and Library as Place
  • library news and links to information such as the Strategic Plan, Progress Report, Staff Directory and more.

Included in the redesign are all college and departmental (C&D) library web pages from the Archives to Rare Books Library to the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, as well as the Clermont College Library and UC Blue Ash College Library web pages.

While the starting web address of the site remains the same – www.libraries.uc.edu, the navigation and content within the site has changed, so update any links or bookmarks you may have to the site. And while great care was taken to be accurate, if broken links or missing content are discovered, contact Team Dynamix.

NIH Data and Open Science Expert to Present Lecture and Workshop on September 17, 2019

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Image of Dr. Lisa Federer

Dr. Lisa Federer, PhD, MLIS

Join UC Libraries and IT@UC for a lecture on the reuse of biomedical research data and a workshop on data visualization in R.

On September 17th, Dr. Lisa Federer, Data and Open Science Librarian for the National Library of Medicine, will visit UC as part of our Data and Computational Science Series (DCS2).

The DCS2 planning committee cordially invites you to attend Dr. Federer’s lecture, luncheon and workshop.

Lecture and Luncheon:

If You Share It, Will They Come? Quantifying and Characterizing Reuse of Biomedical Research Data
Tuesday, September 17, 2019 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM
Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, Stanley J. Lucas, MD Board Room.

Workshop:

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: Creating Customized Data Visualization with ggplot2 in R
Tuesday, September 17, 2019 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, Dr. Stanley B. Troup Learning Space.

These events are free and open to all. Registration is required.

Register for the Lecture and Luncheon.  Register for the Workshop.

Please be sure to log into the Faculty Development OneStop website to complete your registration.

Registration also permitted via phone and email | (513) 558-0725 | Don.Jason@uc.edu

These events are funded through a universal provider grant awarded by the Provost Office.

Dean and University Librarian Xuemao Wang to take on Additional Title of Vice Provost of Digital Scholarship

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xuemao wang

Xuemao Wang

Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Kristi A. Nelson announced that Dean and University Librarian Xuemao Wang will take on the additional title and responsibilities of vice provost of digital scholarship.

The new title reflects both the university’s commitment to digital scholarship as well as Wang’s extensive expertise in the subject. As dean and university librarian, he has led UC Libraries in the formation of the Digital Scholarship Center (DSC), the creation of the university’s digital repository, Scholar@UC, along with the development of new digital publishing capacities with the University of Cincinnati Press, the establishment of new services offered through research and data management and he partnered with three colleges to form the Digital Media Collaborative (DMC).

“Xuemao’s broad expertise in digital scholarship and strategic-thinking approach that has developed UC Libraries into an intellectual commons will be a tremendous asset in advancing UC’s dynamic data, information and resource offerings as we implement the Innovation Agenda outlined in Next Lives Here,” said Nelson.

This additional role of vice provost of digital scholarship will cover a broad spectrum of areas including the DSC, Scholar@UC, the DMC and research and data management, but also digital archives and preservation, digital records and assets management, scholarly communication and digital publishing, as well as the rapidly evolving movements of open science, open education resources, open data and open access.

Wang, who joined the University of Cincinnati in 2012, will continue to provide leadership of UC Libraries as the dean, which includes the Walter C. Langsam Library, the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library and Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, the Archives and Rare Books Library and seven college and departmental libraries. The Libraries’ strategic plan, created under the leadership of Wang, has as its vision to transform UC Libraries into “the globally engaged, intellectual commons of the university — positioning ourselves as the hub of collaboration, digital innovation and scholarly endeavor on campus.”

“I am honored and thrilled to take on this new responsibility for the university. My additional role in leading university wide digital scholarship efforts will allow me to contribute at a new level in supporting the advancement of UC’s Next Lives Here strategic direction,” said Wang. “I plan to capitalize on the experience, resources and the catalyst role of the Libraries, as well as the extraordinary expertise of library faculty and staff, to facilitate university wide digital scholarship integration.”

With a career that spans international, public, library consortium and academic library worlds, Wang came to UC from Emory University where he was the associate vice provost of University Libraries. Prior to that, he worked at Johns Hopkins University, Sheridan Libraries, the Metropolitan New York Library Council, Borough Public Library, as well as spent numerous years gaining academic librarian experience in China. He has a strong research interest and background in global librarianship and digital scholarship, publishing and consulting internationally. Wang currently chairs the OhioLINK special task force on the future of the digital library system, is chair of the Innovation Lab Working Group of the Association of Research Libraries, and chair of the Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarship Special Interest Group of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions.