Author Archives: Melissa Cox Norris

Mozart in the Library: Act III

Posted on by

Ever wonder what people are playing while they are practicing the keyboards in Langsam and CCM Libraries? Jay Sinnard, manager of the Student Technology Resources Center, did so he asked one student if he could listen in.

Shayan Assani

Shayan Assani, 3rd year Bio-Medics Engineering

I think we can all agree he is very talented. Another selection…

 

A collaboration between UC Libraries and the College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), the keyboards are open to anyone wanting to play on a first come-first served basis, but bring your own headphone as they are required.

UC Libraries Names Ratio Architects, Inc. for Creation of Facilities Master Plan

Posted on by

The University of Cincinnati Libraries have contracted with the outside firm RATIO Architects, Inc., on the creation of the Libraries Master Plan. An international architectural firm, Ratio has extensive experience designing for academic libraries including the University of Illinois-Urbana, Purdue University, and Saint Louis University among others. For more on Ratio, visit their website at http://www.ratiodesign.com/.

In creating a long-term vision for library spaces, Ratio Architects will conduct a comprehensive look and needs assessment for library facilities as expressed by employees, users, and other invested parties. The Master Planning process takes 12-18 months, and the final suggestions will span the next 5-15 years. Continue reading →

Ancient Greek Pottery from Southern Italy and Sicily on Display in the Classics Library

Posted on by

vases

“From Greece to Magna Graecia” narrates in pottery the colonization by Greeks of parts of Southern Italy and Sicily beginning with the Euboeans founding the colony of Pithekoussai on the island of Ischia in the 8th c. BCE and the Corinthians Syracuse on Sicily in 733 BCE.

The exhibition, on display in the Classics Library Reading Room, features Corinthian miniature vessels, Attic black and red-figure vases as trading commodities, and Campanian red-figure. There is also an accompanying book exhibition highlighting literary sources on Magna Graecia as well as Greek temples, theaters, tomb paintings, etc., from Southern Italy and Sicily from the 8th to the 3rd centuries BCE.

In addition, there is a display featuring models of Linear B tablets discovered by UC professor Carl Blegen at “the Palace of Nestor” in Pylos. UC alumnus Emmett L. Bennett, together with Alice Kober, published the first definitive list of Linear B signs that formed the basis for Michael Ventris’ identification of the script as an early form of Greek.

Rebecka Lindau, Head, John Miller Burnam Classics Library

pottery exhibit

Two Librarians Recognized for Excellence

Posted on by

Each year, The Office of the Provost and the Office of Research collaborate to present the Dean’s Award for Faculty Excellence, which recognizes faculty members who represent excellence in all its forms. Each Dean nominates faculty from their respective units whom they deem worthy of this honor. This year, Dean Xuemao Wang recognized the work of Elna Saxton, head of Content Services in the Walter C. Langsam Library, and Tiffany Grant, interim assistant director for research and informatics at the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library. Below is more about their awards. Congratulations, Elna and Tiffany!

elna saxton

(l to r) Dr. Patrick A. Limbach, VP for Research; Elna Saxton; and Peter E. Landgren, Interim Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost

Excellence Award for Faculty-to-Faculty Research Mentoring 2016-2017 – Elna Saxton

Elna has a long history of mentoring faculty members who work as part of her team.  She encourages them to develop their positions and skill sets and provides encouragement and other support to them.  Elna’s support of faculty in her unit is unconditional, even if that means they need to leave her team to move on to other career objectives within University of Cincinnati Libraries or elsewhere.

“Receiving this award is an honor and reflects on the many successful colleagues that I’ve had the good fortune to work with.  It is very rewarding to work with new faculty and engage with their professional and career development,” said Elna.

Tiffany Grant

(l to r) Dr. Patrick A. Limbach, VP for Research; Tiffany Grant; and Peter E. Landgren, Interim Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost

Award for Faculty Excellence 2016-2017 – Tiffany Grant

Tiffany has served as co-PI on the NIH Informationist Supplement grant “The Relationship Between Vortices, Acoustics, and Vibration in Vocal Fold Asymmetries”, working collaboratively with Dr. Khosla and his team.  Dr. Grant also coordinated the writing of and now implementation of the Faculty Development Grant UC Libraries received this year for the pilot of Electronic Lab Notebooks at the University of Cincinnati.  Last fall, Dr. Grant also invited the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) to come to the University for a series of workshops for UC faculty and staff.

“I am profoundly grateful to have been considered for such an honor. I truly enjoy the work that I do and those that I work with. My work in the Libraries has been tremendously rewarding, and I’m thankful for the continued support of my Health Sciences Library and University of Cincinnati colleagues. Any “excellence” that I may have achieved has largely been due to your example and support,” said Tiffany.

‘Preserving the Past for the Future’ Exhibit Showcases Preservation Lab

Posted on by

preservation exhibitJust in time for Preservation Week (April 23-29), a new exhibit, “Preserving the Past… for the Future,” showcases the services and mission of the Preservation Lab.

Beginning in January of 2012, the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (PLCH) and University of Cincinnati Libraries (UCL) began a long-term collaboration to provide conservation and preservation treatments in an equally-managed, staffed, and equipped preservation lab situated in UC’s Walter C. Langsam Library. Employees from both PLCH and UCL work on the general circulating and rare/special collections of each institution.

special collectionThe exhibit, located on the 4th floor of Langsam Library, showcases the work of the lab as well as educates about the difference between preservation and conservation, what makes an item a “special collection,” and the techniques and tools used in the care of collections. The exhibit also features both before and after images of the treatment done to the objects and explains the process. The exhibit was curated by Holly Prochaska, preservation librarian, Ashleigh Schieszer, lab conservator, and Jessica Ebert, conservation technician, and was designed by Jessica Burhans, communications co-op design student. Continue reading →

Service Note for ILLiad (Interlibrary Loan) Users

Posted on by

In order to keep interlibrary loan information as private as possible, we are purging all transactions from our ILLiad database that were submitted prior to January 1, 2013.

Currently, you could find a list of everything you ever requested through ILL by logging into your ILLiad account and clicking on View > All Requests (which includes items currently checked out) or View > History Requests.  While this can serve as a useful record, in the future, if you want to keep a copy of your request history, you will need to download your requests using the instructions below.  We will keep a rolling history of four complete calendar years and the current year.  At this time we need to remove several years of records and future removal of records will occur in January of each year. Continue reading →

LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook

Posted on by

The Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, with funding from the University of Cincinnati’s Office of the Provost, is pleased to present the LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook.

LabArchives has been selected as the Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) vendor of choice due to its ability to assist in maintaining compliance, and to capture, secure and control data.

LabArchives:

  • Provides discipline agnostic tools and plugins to increase functionality, research efficiency, and management of laboratory data.
  • Is compliant with Federal mandates including: Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Internet2 Guidelines, FDA- 21 CFR Part 11 and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA).
  •  Is a secure and intuitive cloud-based application enabling researchers to easily create, store, share and manage their research data.
  • Provides a flexible, extensible platform that can be easily customized to match your lab’s workflow providing benefits to Principal Investigators, lab managers’ staff, post doctoral fellows and grad students.
  • Can be integrated seamlessly with GraphPad Prism, MS-Office, PubMed, Box, Learning Management Systems and other software tools that are used extensively by Academic Health Center and university wide researchers.
  • Works on multiple platforms and devices including Mac, Windows, Android and iPad, allowing researchers to store and access their data virtually from anywhere with Internet access.

LabArchives has a platform in place that will provide UC researchers with tremendous data management capabilities and research efficiency.

  • An enterprise-wide license with LabArchives has been obtained for the Academic Health Center (AHC), which includes the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Allied Health Sciences and Pharmacy. This provides an unlimited amount of licenses to members of the UC AHC.
  • An additional 100 licenses have been reserved for non-Academic Health Center UC affiliates, and each of these additional licenses will be distributed on a first-come, first-served method.

For more information about LabArchives: http://www.labarchives.com/

To sign up for a LabArchives Electronic Lab Notebook, please use the following campus links:

East Campus LabArchives Sign-up: https://mynotebook.labarchives.com/

West Campus LabArchives Sign-up: https://redcap.research.cchmc.org/surveys/?s=CP8D39PAH4

Contact Tiffany Grant, PhD, Research Informationist at the Harrison Health Sciences Library if you have questions. 558-9153 or joffritm@ucmail.uc.edu.

Please be aware that the total cost of the trial is paid through December 2017. Earnest efforts are being made to solidify continued funding. If funding is not obtained, users of the notebook may be asked to pay $124 per notebook per year after this date if they wish to continue use. Should researchers choose not to continue use, notebook contents can be downloaded for archival purposes.

Facts & Comparisons eAnswers – New Redesigned Interface

Posted on by

Facts & Comparisons eAnswers Logo

 

 

Facts & Comparisons eAnswers has moved to their new redesigned interface!

For tips on how to use the new interface and enhanced content and tools, check out training videos and the quick reference guide also available from the lower right-hand corner of the Facts & Comparison eAnswers home page.

Dean’s Corner: Spring 2017 Dean’s Advisory Council

Posted on by

The spring meeting of my Dean’s Advisory Council (DAC) focused on the fourth pillar of UC Libraries’ Strategic Plan: Data to Information to Knowledge.  The heart of this pillar is library collections and new forms of scholarship. In order to provide a holistic view of the multi-faceted work we do at UC Libraries curating, preserving, and digitizing our collections, I invited three UCL librarians to come discuss their work with the council: Eira Tansey, digital archivist and records manager; Gino Pasi, archivist and curator for the Winkler Center of the Health Professions; and Sally Moffitt, reference librarian and bibliographer. Our fourth presenter was the new director of the University of Cincinnati Press, Liz Scarpelli.

Continue reading →