Category Archives: UC Libraries

Use this category for your post to appear on the main blog homepages, as well as the main site homepage

UC Libraries Seeks Books Good Enough to Eat for the International Edible Books Festival

Posted on by

edible bookKnow of a good book to eat?! Create an Edible Book for UC Libraries International Edible Books Festival!

It’s time once again for the fan favorite International Edible Books Festival scheduled for 1-2 p.m., Tues, April 3, in the Walter C. Langsam Library’s fifth floor lobby. UC Libraries is seeking people interested in creating an edible book for the enjoyment (and consumption) of all in attendance. There are few restrictions – namely that your creation be edible and have something to do with a book – so you may let your creativity run wild.

As in previous years, entries will be judged according to such categories as “Most Delicious,” “Most Creative,” “Most Checked Out” and “Most Literary.” Special prizes will be awarded for the “Best Student” entry and “Best Overall” entry.

If you are interested in creating an edible book, e-mail melissa.norris@uc.edu by Fri, March 23 with your name and the title of your creation.

books by the banks logoLooking for inspiration? Visit UC Libraries on Facebook to see photos from the 2017 festival.

Edible Books, 2018 is sponsored in part by Books by the Banks: Cincinnati Regional Book Festival.

Scholar@UC Upgraded to Enhance Both the Use and Access of the University’s Digital Repository

Posted on by

Scholar@UC, the University of Cincinnati’s digital repository, has been updated and includes enhanced submission and viewing features:

  • improved look & feel
  • content dashboard for easier management of submitted works
  • batch work creation and upload – upload an entire folder of works simultaneously or create multiple works at once including from folders
  • usage analytics of content (views and downloads)
  • new work-relation model allowing works to be nested and related in meaningful ways
  • social media sharing widgets.

All content previously in Scholar@UC was migrated from the old platform, with files validated and the metadata and relationships maintained.

Scholar@UC is a digital repository that enables the University of Cincinnati community to share its research and scholarly work with a worldwide audience. Faculty and staff can use Scholar@UC to collect their work in one location and create a durable and citeable record of papers, presentations, publications, datasets or other scholarly creations. Students, through an approval process, may contribute capstone projects such as senior design projects, theses and dissertations.

The mission of Scholar@UC is to preserve the permanent intellectual output of UC, to advance discovery and innovation, to foster scholarship and learning through the transformation of data into knowledge, to collect a corpus of works that can be used for teaching and to enhance discoverability and access to these resources.

Scholar@UC is an open source, agile development project supported in partnership by the University of Cincinnati Libraries and IT@UC. To submit or view works in Scholar@UC, visit https://scholar.uc.edu/. Contact the Scholar@UC Team (scholar@uc.edu) with any questions.

Read about Preserving Taft, the Writing of E.B. White and the Digital Scholarship Center in Source.

Posted on by

source vol 16 no2Read Source, the online newsletter, to learn more about the news, events, people and happenings in UC Libraries.

This latest issue of Source includes a feature on the work of the Preservation Lab and their collaboration with the Archives and Rare Books Library on a collection about William Howard Taft. Xuemao Wang, dean and university librarian, talks about how libraries need to adapt for the future. Kevin Grace, university archivist and head of the Archives and Rare Books Library, writes about a collection centered around children’s books author and co-writer of The Elements of Style, E.B. White. A grant from The Andrew 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 is announced. Dean Wang and Liz Scarpelli, director of the University of Cincinnati Press are interviewed about the progress of the Press one year in. Gino Pasi, archivist and curator for the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions, writes about a set of historical and important surgery films recently digitized and made available. Other articles announce the Libraries’s Adopt-a-Book program and the 2016/17 Annual Progress Report.

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.

Libraries’s Business Office Welcomes Two New People

Posted on by

Debbie Myree, director of business affairs, announced today two new additions to the UC Libraries’s Business Office.  Christopher A. Zonker joined the office Mon, February 26 and Dorcas Gichuru will begin on Thurs, March 1, 2018.

Chris comes to UC Libraries from General Cable Corporation and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration/Accounting from the University of Cincinnati. He has a solid Accounts Payable background and a record of providing accuracy and attention to detail, which he used to automate key processes on two major projects during his career.  His experience in driving vendor compliance, invoice processing, month-end closing, financial reporting, Concur p-card transactions and working directly with customers, positions him to be successful in the Business and HR Operations.

Dorcas joins the Libraries from the College of Medicine, and her breadth of experience includes higher education, publishing and healthcare industries.  In addition to strong analytics and communication skills, she has demonstrated knowledge of SAP, UC Flex Business Warehouse, Concur and University of Cincinnati Financial Policies. Dorcas’s experience in fund accounting, financial reporting, budgeting, journal entries, deposits and PCR’s will be an asset to Business and HR Operations.

Welcome to UC Libraries, Chris and Dorcas.

Save the Date: Cecil Striker Society Annual Lecture May 3

Posted on by

The Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions and the Cecil Striker Society for the History of Medicine will host the 9th Cecil Striker Society Annual Lecture on Thurs., May 3, 2018.

Michael Farrell

Michael Farrell

This year’s lecture will focus on the contributions and historical relevance of Pediatrics in the Cincinnati region with a primary focus on The Children’s Hospital.  Michael Farrell, M.D. and Bea Katz, Ph.D. will serve as our co-lecturers for the event. Dr. Farrell is currently Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He was Director of the Pediatric Residency Programs until 2001 and Chief of Staff at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center until 2015. His major interests are general pediatrics, the history of medicine and gastroenterology/nutrition. Bea Katz, Ph.D., the editor of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (2008) by Arcadia Publishing, has chronicled the history of Children’s Hospital for 30 years, first as a writer in the hospital’s Marketing and Communications Department and later, post-retirement, as an independent author and researcher.

Their lecture is entitled Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Impacting the Health of Children in Our Community and the World: The Past, Present and Future and will be held from 5:00-6:30pm in Kresge Auditorium, Medical Sciences Building, 231 Albert Sabin Way. A reception will immediately follow the lecture from 6:30-7:30pm held outside of the Lucas Boardroom; with an accompanying exhibit inside of the Lucas Boardroom highlighting the pediatric history of Cincinnati.

bea katz

Bea Katz

Originally formed in 1976, the initial purpose of the Society was to promote and perpetuate an interest in the history of medicine and all related disciplines in the health care field. Currently, the lecture helps to engage the local community in topics related to the history of medicine; brings people together who have a common interest in the history of medicine; and fosters positive attention to the Winkler Center through publicity and scholarly activities.

__________________________

The Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions gratefully recognizes the generosity and foresight of the following individuals and organizations who have provided significant support to establish the Cecil Striker Lecture Endowment Fund.  This endowment fund is a vital permanent resource to strengthen the annual lecture program.

Presenting Sponsor

Dr. and Mrs. Carl Fischer

Dr. and Mrs. Theodore W. Striker

Dr. John E. Bossert

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center


Supporting Sponsor

UC Health

Additional support provided by Dr. and Mrs. Michael K. Farrell and Cecil L. Striker, PhD.

To discuss a gift to the Winkler Center, contact Christa A. Bernardo, Director of Development, at (513) 556-0055 or christa.bernardo@uc.edu.

Exploring Tagalog Grammar

Posted on by

By:  Alia Levar Wegner, ARB Intern

The University of Cincinnati’s Archives & Rare Books Library holds a rare first edition of Sebastián de Totanes’s Tagalog grammar, Arte de la lengua tagala y manual tagalog para la administración de los Santos Sacramentos.  Printed entirely on rice paper and bound in vellum, this book served as a Tagalog language primer for Spanish missionaries.

Tagalog Grammar Cover and Title Page

Left:  Vellum cover of Arte de la lengua tagala (PL6053 .T7 1745),  Right: Title page

Continue reading →

Get Ready for a Night Full of Fun: WorldFest Trivia Night

Posted on by

Who doesn’t like trivia? Trivia contests offer a wonderful way to learn interesting facts and show what you know. Even if you don’t feel confident enough to compete you can always watch seasoned participants, learn some new, possibly surprising facts, connect with people, and have fun.

A library seems a natural place for a trivia contest. We are looking forward to welcoming everyone to our 3rd annual Trivia Night co-hosted by the UC Quiz Team and UC Libraries as part of the Worldfest 2018 program.

Here are the prizes you can win:

Some attendees are getting into a competitive mood and asking to share questions from past years in order to be better prepared.We have posted a link to last years’ quizzes at our Facebook event page. Please visit the page for information and updates.

Last but not least, there will be plenty of snacks and pizza for everyone!

Data Cleaning with OpenRefine – Workshop on Feb 26

Posted on by

UC Libraries is pleased to offer a data science workshop this spring on OpenRefine. Join us in 850D Baldwin Hall (CEAS Library classroom) on Monday, February 26 from 2:00pm – 4:00pm.  Register here (UC 6+2 Central Login required).

OpenRefine, http://openrefine.org, is a free, powerful, and easy-to-use tool for cleaning up and transforming datasets in order to prepare them for analysis and sharing. In this workshop, you will learn how to leverage OpenRefine’s interface and scripting language for basic data exploration and bulk transformations. No prior knowledge necessary.  Please bring your own laptop for the hands-on exercises.

Contact Ted Baldwin with questions, Ted.Baldwin@uc.edu .

Talking About “Style” and the UC Alum Behind It

Posted on by

By:  Kevin Grace

Strunk Cover     If you took a composition course in America, chances are you were faced with the seminal book in writing well, William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style.  And if you were fortunate, you had a high school teacher or college professor whose teaching could match the plain elegance and helpful guideposts of this little book.  The Elements of Style is arguably the most referenced guide to writing in American education.

But how many of us know the story behind this famous text?  Chances are we’re all familiar with E.B. White, the decades-long columnist for the New Yorker and the author of modern classics like Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, One Man’s Meat, The Second Tree From the Corner and a host of other books.  Curmudgeonly almost to a fault and a writer with uncommon regard for the simple declarative sentence, White was one of the great literary stylists of the 20th century.  And William Strunk?  He happened to be an English professor at Cornell University during White’s undergraduate days, White graduating from Cornell in 1921.  Strunk developed a little handbook for writing that he used in his classes and decades later White wrote an essay for The New Yorker about Strunk’s lessons for usage and style.  At the urging of a publisher, White revised Strunk’s work, added an introduction and The Elements of Style was born.

William Strunk

William Strunk, Jr.

Now to the University of Cincinnati connection: William Strunk, Jr., the author of this famous guide, grew up in Cincinnati and was an 1890 graduate of UC.  For the Archives & Rare Books Library’s “50 Minutes” lunchtime series of talks, Greg Hand returns to campus on Thursday, February 22, to relate in his well-informed fashion the story of Mr. William Strunk, and an interesting one it is.  As always, Mr. Hand tells his tales with great aplomb and guaranteed satisfaction for all, earning the favor of everyone in attendance.  He will speak of facts and fictions, of parodies and paradoxes, and if he were to offer an elegant phrase or two of his own, we would not mind in the least.  The talk begins at 12:00 noon in Room 814 of Blegen Library and will last until everyone is ushered out around 1 pm.  Bring your lunch, a friend, and acceptable manners (note the Oxford comma).  There will also be a random drawing of select and relevant books.