Author Archives: Melissa Cox Norris

How many archives are in the United States?

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Archives located in the Gulf South

In recent years, there’s been growing awareness within the United States cultural heritage community about exposure to climate change. Many emerging communities of concerned cultural heritage professionals have emerged. There is now a Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice, the American Library Association Sustainability Roundtable, and ProjectARCC (Archivists Responding to Climate Change). Climate change is showing up at conferences and journals in the field.

One of the major challenges in assessing the risk of climate change to cultural heritage is that data on cultural heritage is inconsistent. How can you predict how many museums, libraries, or archives will be exposured to climate change without adequate data on how many institutions exist in a given vulnerable location? There is a lot of great data on museums thanks to the Museum Universe Data File. There is a semi-representative directory of American libraries (but it leaves out school libraries). But as an archivist working on climate change issues, I was pretty dismayed to discover a few years ago that there really isn’t a comprehensive data set of archives in the United States.

Last year, my research collaborator Ben Goldman (Penn State University) and I received a Society of American Archivists (SAA) Foundation grant to attempt to compile the first comprehensive data set of all US archives. The roots of this project began with an article we co-authored with geospatial experts from Penn State, in which we took a very limited data set of around 1,200 archives (furnished by OCLC’s ArchiveGrid) and examined their exposure to climate change risks, like sea-level rise, storm surge, and changes in temperature/humidity. However, we knew if there was ever going to be a comprehensive risk assessment of US archives, someone had to bring together a comprehensive data set of how many US archives exist and where they are located. This is what we set out to do with our SAA Foundation grant.

Over the course of the grant, we worked with a fantastic assistant, Whitney Ray, who did an incredible amount of heavy lifting with contacting over 150 archival organizations for any data they had. Essentially, we reached out to anyone we thought may have maintained lists of archives in their region or area of interest. What we received was over 30,000 raw data points! The data came to us in every way you can imagine – from very tidy spreadsheets to webpages with broken links to PDFs of archives. You can read much more about our workflow and process on our RepoData project blog.

We’ve now made data available for 30 states plus Washington DC on our public GitHub repository. We plan to work through the remainder of the states through 2018. While we originally created this data because we know it’s critical for future climate assessment work, we know there will be a lot of potential reuse for it – and we’re excited to see how people use it!

The Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library Selected to Host Traveling Exhibition about Native Concepts of Health and Illness

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Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Powwow, Mashpee, Massachusetts, July 2010. Courtesy National Library of Medicine/Bryant Pegram

Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Powwow, Mashpee, Massachusetts, July 2010. Courtesy National Library of Medicine/Bryant Pegram

The Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library has been selected in a competitive application process to host Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness, a traveling exhibition to U.S. libraries.

Native Voices explores the interconnectedness of wellness, illness and cultural life for Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. Stories drawn from both the past and present examine how health for Native People is tied to community, the land and spirit. Through interviews, Native People describe the impact of epidemics, federal legislation, the loss of land and the inhibition of culture on the health of Native individuals and communities today.

As one of 104 grant recipients selected from across the country, the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library will host the traveling exhibition July 23 through Aug. 30, 2018.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) developed and produced Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness. The American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office, in partnership with NLM, tours the exhibition to America’s libraries. Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness was displayed at the NLM in Bethesda, Maryland, from 2011 to 2015. To learn more and view content from the exhibition, visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices.

Suzanne L. Singer

Suzanne L. Singer

Related Events

In association with the Native Voices exhibit, related events have been scheduled to explore the topic of Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness. The first scheduled event is keynote speaker Suzanne L. Singer scheduled for 5-7:30 p.m., Thursday, July 26, in the CARE/Crawley Atrium (Medical Sciences Building, 231 Albert Sabin Way). Throughout August, lectures that cover such topics as “The Contribution of Native Voices to Medicine through Botany,” “Breaking Bread: A Perspective of Fry Bread and Native Health” and “Preventing Tuberculosis while Regulating Indigenous Bodies” have been scheduled in the Stanley J. Lucas, MD, Board Room, E level of the Medical Sciences Building near the Kresge Circle.

A full schedule of events is listed online.

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Dorcas Washington Joins UC Libraries as a Content Analyst

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Dorcas Washington joins UC Libraries today, Monday, July 2, 2018, as a content analyst on the Content Services team.  Dorcas comes to us from Wright State University where she was a statistical consultant and a graduate teaching assistant.  Dorcas was previously an intern for Care Source in Dayton, OH in the System Information and Security division.  She holds an MS in applied statistics with a concentration in bio-statistics from Wright State University and a BA in mathematics from Transylvania University.

As a member of the Content Services team, she will focus on innovative ways to perform functions, manage access and provide services for collections.

Welcome, Dorcas!

UC Libraries Closed Wednesday, July 4th

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july 4thUC Libraries will be closed, Wednesday, July 4 for Independence Day. This includes Langsam Library’s 4th floor, which will close Tuesday, July 3 at 11pm and reopen Thursday, July 5 at 8am. Normal hours for all library locations will resume July 5th. Have a safe and enjoyable July 4th.

Dean’s Corner: Collaborating at Home and Abroad

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One of UC Libraries’ greatest strengths is its partnerships and collaborations. On or off campus, at home or abroad, the Libraries are always looking for opportunities to forge new relationships, while engaging in the university’s global agenda. As library dean I am fortunate enough to be involved with many of these relationships from their infancy.

This spring I traveled to China with UC’s Provost Kristi Nelson and Vice Provost for International Affairs Raj Mehta to visit Beijing Jiaotong University and Shandong University. In my role as Special Advisor to the Provost on China Initiatives, I have traveled to China on many occasions with various members of UC’s senior leadership, assisting in UC’s China engagement. More often than not, these trips include tours of university libraries (see the picture on the bottom left corner of Provost Nelson and me at the new Shandong University Qingdao campus library).

Pictures from China:

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AHRQ National Guideline Clearinghouse Not Available After July 16th

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AHRQ National Guideline Clearinghouse (NGC) will no longer have funding after July 16th and so will no longer be available.

The NGC was originally created by AHRQ in partnership with the American Medical Association and the American Association of Health Plans (now America’s Health Insurance Plans [AHIP]), the NGC mission was to provide physicians and other health care professionals, health care providers, health plans, integrated delivery systems, purchasers and others an accessible mechanism for obtaining objective, detailed information on evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and to further their dissemination, implementation, and use.

For more information, see NGC Announcements.

Read Source to Learn How We’re Making Digital Collections More Widely Available and More UC Libraries’ News

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

In this edition of Source we highlight some of the University of Cincinnati Libraries’ newest endeavors in digital collections. From the latest version of the university’s digital repository, Scholar@UC, to a new archive space for special collections, to our recent membership in the large-scale collaborative repository HathiTrust, UC Libraries has made great strides in increasing our digital footprint and exploring new ways to enhance our user’s scholarship and the ways they can access and utilize our collections.

In addition, read about two exciting projects UC Libraries is involved in: PBS’s Great American Read and the touring exhibit Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness.

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.

Dr. Stanley B. Troup Learning Space Grand Opening June 18

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Troupe
Join us Monday, June 18, from 1-2pm in G005G of the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library for the Dr. Stanley B. Troup Learning Space Grand Opening. Librarians and informationists will give demos of the space. They will show how the technology is integrated into the classroom and transforms the way they provide library instruction. All are welcome, so bring a colleague.

In May 2015, Paula Troup made a donation in honor of her late husband, Dr. Stanley B. Troup, former senior vice president and director of the UC Medical Center, to create the learning space that bears his name. For more about the gift and on Dr. Stanley B. Troup, read the Source article online at https://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/source/words-of-wisdom-live-on-in-newly-named-learning-space/.

Zhaowei Ren Joins UC Libraries as a Software Developer in the Digital Scholarship Center

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Zhaowei Ren started work as a software developer in the Digital Scholarship Center (DSC) on Tuesday, May 29. Zhaowei is the first hire funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of the Digital Scholarship Center’s research on machine learning and data visualization in multiple disciplines in the humanities and beyond.

Zhaowei received his Master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science from UC’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, where he focused on data mining, algorithm design and semantic modeling. He has worked at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center on several bioinformatics projects, and at Spatial.ai, a data science firm.

He brings a terrific set of both theoretical and practical skills to the DSC that will help in implementing and scaling up their machine learning and data visualization platform for transdisciplinary research.

Two additional hires funded by the Mellon grant will begin in the DSC in July.

Book Sale in the Classics Library

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In an effort to raise some much needed funds for our Library as well as offer our users some very fine books dealing with classical antiquity at bargain prices, we have launched an ongoing Book Sale in the printer area to your right as you enter the Library. It is self-serve. You will need exact change to put into the piggy bank. The price of each book is indicated on the verso of the cover and on a list in the bookcase on which we ask that you write your name next to the book(s) you purchase (List of Books).  All book lovers,

Happy Bargain Hunting!