UC 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.
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feature Frederic Krome, professor of history at UC Clermont College who will speak about his recent research on the unpublished memoirs of a World War I German soldier.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, (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.
Zhiyuan Yao is one of two GIS support students working in the Research & Data Service research labs at the Geology Math and Physics Library. The Data & GIS collab is open to students, staff and faculty seeking help with their geospatial data needs, and the Visualization lab is open for data visualization consultations and collaborative work. Email us at ASKData@ucmail.uc.edu for more information.
Great learning and collaboration experience in AAG-UIUC Summer School
This summer in July, I was honored to be offered the opportunity to attend AAG-UIUC 2019 Summer School, which focused on Reproducible Problem Solving with Cyber GIS and Geospatial Data Science. During the one-week summer camp, I met many scholars, got access to the supercomputer Virtual Roger through CyberGIS-Jupter, learned the cutting-edge advances regarding geospatial data science, and got a deeper understanding about reproducibility and replicability. I absolutely had a wonderful time there, and this experience provoked me to think more about how we could develop novel solutions to complex problems.
Participants in the AAG-UIUC summer school with mentor Diana Sinton (Ex Director of UCGIS in the green shirt) in the middle.
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/.
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:
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.
By: Savannah Gulick, Archives & Rare Books Library Student Assistant
If you have lived around Cincinnati, most likely you’ve heard of Cincinnati Ballet, more specifically Cincinnati Ballet’s annual Nutcracker performance at Music Hall. Every holiday season, the ballet company performs this classic and it truly is a breathtaking. However, there is so much more to the company than just the Nutcracker! For example, when it was founded in 1958, Cincinnati Ballet became the first ever company to exist west of the Alleghenies. It is a fascinating history of this local cultural institution and our holdings of its archive includes a wealth of photos of their productions as well as costume designs and choreography. This most recent accession includes programs for Carmen, The Nutcracker, The Come Together festival, and Swan Lake; costume sketches, choreography, and pieces for Swan Lake and the Nutcracker. The Archives & Rare Books Library holds the ballet’s records extending from 1960 to 2017. and this recent acquisition, accession number US-19-03, consists of 8.75 linear feet and covers 1991 to 2017. Earlier acquisitions in 2010, 2012, and 2016 have the accession numbers of US-10-03 and US-12-07, and US-16-02 and overall the collection consists of 40.32 linear feet of documents, posters, 
photographs, and programs. The finding aids for the earlier accessions, with details on the contents, can be found online on the UC Libraries Finding Aid website. ARB’s Suzanne Reller has been the contact person for the ballet and she assisted local arts writer David Lyman in his 2013 commemorative history, Cincinnati Ballet Celebrates 50: 1963-2013, from which many of following facts have been taken. The volume is available in ARB’s reference collection and has the call number of GV1786.C5 C55 2013.
Six new acquisitions have been added to the Oesper collection. Click here to see what those books are in the May-June 2019 list.
For more information about Oesper and the apparatus museum, click here.
If you have any questions about this collection, contact Ted Baldwin, Director of Science and Engineering Libraries, at Ted.Baldwin@uc.edu.
Check out
the new science books that have been added to the Geology-Math-Physics and Langsam Libraries.
Click here to access the May-June 2019 list.
If you have any questions about these books, contact Ted Baldwin, Director of Science and Engineering Libraries, at Ted.Baldwin@uc.edu.
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.
