Category Archives: Langsam Library

Digital Scholarship Center Welcomes a Digital Scholarship Library Fellow and Data Visualization Developer

Posted on by
Erin McCabe

Erin McCabe

The University of Cincinnati Libraries is happy to welcome the next two hires in the Digital Scholarship Center (DSC) supported by the Mellon Catalyst Transdiscipinary Teams grant.

The digital scholarship library fellow, Erin McCabe, comes to the DSC from Ithaka-JSTOR, where she was a publisher service associate. She previously held positions at Baruch College, Long Island University, and is a member of the NASA Datanauts. She received her MLIS with a specialization in digital humanities from the Pratt Institute in New York, and her BA in French studies from Concordia University in Montreal. She has worked on a wide range of digital projects and at the DSC, Erin will be responsible for organizing and leading the research efforts of our 10 new “catalyst teams” support by the Mellon grant.

Ezra Edgerton

Ezra Edgerton

The new data visualization developer, Ezra Edgerton, has worked as an independent visualization contractor since 2015, and received his B.A. with a double major in computer science and studio art from Grinnell College. Ezra has a rare blend of formal training in both art/design and computer science, and has experience with machine learning, interactive and static data visualization, user experience and user interface design, and front-end web development. Ezra will work in partnership with software developer Zhaowei Ren, who began work in the DSC on May 29, in deploying and refining our Mellon-supported machine learning and data visualization platform for digital scholarship across disciplines.

Zhaowei Ren

Zhaowei Ren

Welcome, Erin, Ezra and Zhaowei!

The University of Cincinnati’s Digital Scholarship Center, located in the Walter C. Langsam Library, is a joint venture between the College of Arts and Sciences and UC Libraries. On campus and in the community, they serve as a catalyst for hybrid forms of research and teaching, bringing together humanistic methods with technical innovations to test paradigms and to create new knowledge at the boundary between disciplines as they are conventionally imagined in humanities.

For more about the Digital Scholarship Center, visit their website at http://dsc.uc.edu.

The Benjamin Gettler Papers: An Introduction to Cincinnati’s New Public Transit

Posted on by

By:  Alex Temple, Gettler Project Archivist

Book on the Cincinnati Transit CompanyFor the past several months, work has continued on processing the Benjamin Gettler Papers donated to the Archives & Rare Books Library.  Gettler was a notable lawyer, businessman, and civic activist in Cincinnati, an international philanthropist, and a former member of the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees.  I’ve been fascinated by the amount of public transit-related history in this collection.  An often over-looked part of urban history is transportation infrastructure.  Public transportation records can tell us not only where people lived, worked, and played, but also the routes taken and who the routes served.  They can also provide insight into how, where, or why neighborhoods changed over time.

Cincinnati’s public transportation, as we recognize it today, really began in 1873 when several horse-drawn tram systems merged to form the Cincinnati Consolidated Railway Company.  Nearly a decade later, it was renamed the Cincinnati Street Railway Company (Gettler, 2012).  It remained the Cincinnati Street Railway Company until 1952, after the company had fully transitioned from rail to rubber-tire service, becoming the Cincinnati Transit Company.

Gettler himself was a prominent figure in Cincinnati’s transit history, as his involvement started slightly before the switch from streetcars to buses and through the sale of the Cincinnati Transit Company to the City of Cincinnati, forming the South Ohio Regional Transit Association (S.O.R.T.A.), and finally serving on the S.O.R.T.A. board beginning in 2003.  A good deal of the collection in the Benjamin Gettler Papers comes from his involvement in public transportation, including items such as meeting minutes from the board of directors.  One in particular which I found exciting to study was the meeting minutes from the board of directors from 1952 to 1954. Continue reading →

XSEDE HPC  OpenMP workshop August 7, 2018 11am – 5pm

Posted on by

As part of the Data and Computational Science Series funded by the Provost Office, IT@UC and UC Libraries will host a XSEDE HPC  OpenMP workshop.  

The University of Cincinnati is pleased to be a remote site for the XSEDE HPC Workshop on OpenMP, taught by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. This workshop is intended to give C and Fortran programmers a hands-on introduction to OpenMP programming. Attendees will leave with a working knowledge of how to write scalable codes using OpenMP.

When: Tuesday August 7, 2018 – 11am – 5pm

Location: CECH Library Room 320, Teachers-Dyer Complex

Free Registration (required) Click Here!

Note: You need an XSEDE account to register: Create Account

Tentative Schedule (Eastern Standard Time)

Special Instructions: Participants should bring their own laptop, no previous HPC experience needed, lunch will be provided.

Parking: Stratford Heights Garage, 2630 Stratford Avenue

Questions? Contact Jane Combs at combsje@ucmail.uc.edu

DCS2 OpenMP flyer

XSEDE (eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment) is a virtual system that provides compute resources for scientists and researchers from all over the country. Its mission is to facilitate research collaboration among institutions, enhance research productivity, provide remote data transfer, and enable remote instrumentation. XSEDE is funded by National Science Foundation (NSF). Getting Started Guide for XSEDE.

Welcoming the Newest Bearcats to UC Libraries

Posted on by
orientation

Librarian Cheryl Ghosh (right) talks about the resources available in the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services (CECH) Library.

This summer, the Walter C. Langsam Library is a busy place as over 5,000 incoming students participating in UC’s New Student Orientation visit and learn about the spaces, places and people of UC Libraries. While in Langsam, they engage in activities designed to be both engaging and informative about the various research resources and services students can utilize when they begin classes in the fall, including checking out multi media equipment, working in the various group study rooms and quiet study areas, checking out books and asking questions at the Desk@Langsam.

orientation photo

Jay Sinnard, manager of the Student Technology Resources Center, showcases the various media equipment.

 

With the Technology Showcase, students see and learn about the various media equipment available for checkout and use for class projects including cameras, projectors and even games. They learn how to locate library resources in the catalog via the UC Libraries web site and take a walking tour of the fifth floor of the library where they find where books are located in the stacks. A librarian interviewed “Between Two Book Carts” introduces the students to the people available to assist them in the library.

It is a busy hour, but the goal is to make the students comfortable with the library, introduce them to librarians and staff and to be aware of what UC Libraries has to offer. See you in the fall!

Sebastian Karcher to Present as Part of UC Libraries and IT@UC Data and Computational Science Series

Posted on by

sebastian karcherUC Libraries and IT@UC Research & Development and are pleased to announce the Data & Computational Science Series (DCS2) 2018, a speaker series supported by a Universal Provider award from UC’s Office of the Provost for faculty development.

The next speaker in the series is Sebastian Karcher, associate director of the Qualitative Data Repository at Syracuse University. He will give a talk on Annotation for Transparent Inquiry and conduct a workshop on Web scraping using R to build a qualitative dataset on Tuesday, July 24, in the Walter C. Langsam Library room 480 from 11 a.m.-noon and room 475 from 1-3 p.m. The workshop will be followed by a coffee hour from 3-4 p.m. Continue reading →

Dorcas Washington Joins UC Libraries as a Content Analyst

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

The Cycle of Knowledge and Do Unto Others: The Ouroboros of Blegen Library

Posted on by

By:  Kevin Grace

For several months from July of 2017 to April of this year, each day on the Archives & Rare Books Library’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/ArchivesRareBooksLibraryUniversityOfCincinnati/, featured an architectural element of Blegen Library, from printer’s marks to the original floor tiles and terrazzo walls.  In the way the cultural Belgen Library exteriorheritage of the building was presented with its sculptures and carvings representing the history of the book and the legacy of education, every detail was explored with a capsule account of its meaning and importance.  The figures in the bas reliefs of “Ex Occidente Lux” and “Ex Orientale Lux” were freshly discovered.  The bronze symbols of knowledge over the front door were explained.  The human stories behind the plaster and bronze printers marks were revealed. Continue reading →

UC Libraries Closed Memorial Day, May 28

Posted on by

memorial dayAll UC Libraries locations will be closed Monday, May 28 in observance of Memorial Day, except for the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, which will remain open 9am-5pm. This closing includes the Langsam Library 4th floor space, which will close Sunday, May 27 at 5pm and re-open Tuesday, May 29 at 8am.

Regular library hours for all locations will resume Tuesday, May 29.

Margaux Patel Joins UC Libraries as the Business and Data Analytics Librarian

Posted on by

On Monday, May 14, Margaux (Maggie) Patel started work at the University of Cincinnati Libraries as the business and data analytics librarian. She will be a part of the Walter C. Langsam Library’s Research and Teaching Service Department.

Maggie comes to UC from the American Financial Group in downtown Cincinnati where she was a research specialist.  At American Financial she prepared reports for the other staff at the company using many of the business databases we also have at UC Libraries.  She worked with data and helped the staff organize and analyze their data.  She taught instruction workshops, and made e-learning objects using Articulate Storyline software.  Maggie taught at Brown Macke College and worked at law firms before American Financial.

Welcome to UC Libraries, Maggie!