Be Sure to Check Out and Vote for ‘The Great American Read’

readUC Libraries and the University of Cincinnati Press are proud sponsors of PBS’s “The Great American Read,” an eight-part series that explores and celebrates the power of reading, told through the prism of America’s 100 best-loved novels. The series features entertaining and informative documentary segments, with compelling testimonials from celebrities, authors, notable Americans and book lovers across the country talking about their favorites among the 100 chosen books.

The series kicks off May 22, 8pm, on CET. Be sure to watch! Throughout the summer, viewers will be encouraged to vote for their favorite of the 100 best-loved novels and the winner will be announced October 23.

For more information about “The Great American Read,” and to see a list of the 100 best-loved novels, visit www.cetconnect.org/community/great-american-read.

Happy Viewing (and Reading)!

@GreatAmericanReadPBS 

XSEDE High Performance Computing Summer Boot Camp 2018

 

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

The University of Cincinnati is pleased to be a remote site for the XSEDE Summer Boot Camp, taught by the Pittsburg Supercomputing Center. The workshop will run from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm each day from June 4-7th. This 4-day event will include training with MPI, OpenMP, OpenACC, and accelerators.  The workshop will conclude with a special hybrid exercise contest that will challenge participants to apply their skills for three weeks after the training. Winners will be awarded the Fifth Annual XSEDE Summer Boot Camp Championship Trophy and an XSEDE Badge will be available to those who complete the challenge.

The event is free and open to all.  If you have further questions or need parking directions,

please contact Jane Combs: combsje@ucmail.uc.edu

Date: Monday, June 4 – Thursday, June 7, 2018

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, snacks and lunch will be provided.

Parking: Stratford Heights Garage, 2630 Stratford Avenue

XSEDE Overview

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.

 

 

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

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!

Art and Empire in Nineteenth-Century India

By:  Alia Levar Wegner

Travel literature in 19th-century India was closely linked to the British empire. Behind every picture was an army. This is especially true of Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Ramus Forrest’s illustrated book, A Picturesque Tour Along the Rivers Ganges and Jumna, In India, (SpecCol RB Oversize DS408 .F65) published in 1824.

Picturesque Tour Title Page

Title page of A picturesque tour along the rivers Ganges and Jumna, in India. (Spec Coll RB Oversize DS408 .F65)

Continue reading

The University of Cincinnati Libraries Have Joined HathiTrust

The University of Cincinnati Libraries have joined HathiTrust, a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future by collaboratively collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating and sharing the record of human knowledge. UC Libraries joins more than 130 international research libraries in HathiTrust, and is the third Ohio library to join along with The Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve University.

“Membership in HathiTrust will enable the University of Cincinnati Libraries to partner with national and international collaborators with similar missions to preserve, protect and make accessible the scholarly record,” said Xuemao Wang, dean and university librarian. “Our membership will provide opportunities to enhance digital scholarship research like that done in our Digital Scholarship Center, as well as ensure the long-term digital preservation of our collections.”

HathiTrust began in 2008 as a collaboration of the universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (now the Big Ten Academic Alliance) and the University of California system to establish a repository to archive and share their digitized collections. Today, the HathiTrust’s Digital Library catalog equals 16 million volumes digitized and deposited by member libraries.

As members of HathiTrust, the University of Cincinnati community will have full access to digital materials inputted by UC Libraries, as well as those items in the public domain and those for which there is permission. In addition, benefits of HathiTrust membership include digital content storage, cost-effective long-term preservation and access services for UC Libraries’ digitized content. Continue reading

UC Libraries Names Brad Warren Associate Dean of Library Services

Xuemao Wang, dean and university librarian, announces that Brad Warren will join the University of Cincinnati Libraries as the associate dean of library services starting August 3, 2018.

Brad comes to UC Libraries from Yale University where he has served as the director of access service for Sterling Memorial and Bass Libraries since March 2009. Prior to Yale, Brad held various librarian positions at the University of North Carolina Charlotte J. Murrey Atkins Library and North Carolina State University Libraries. He received his BA in comparative literature and history from Indiana University and his Masters in library science from Indiana University.

Brad will be a member of the Dean’s Cabinet and his leadership portfolio will include Langsam Library’s Research, Teaching and Services Department, the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, the Albino Gorno Memorial Music Library, the John Miller Burnam Classics Library and the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services Library.

Welcome to UC Libraries, Brad!

Langsam Library Exhibit Celebrates Appalachian Culture

appalachian heritage monthCincinnati lies just at the border or outer edge of Appalachia, a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York to northern Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia and includes portions of Pennsylvania, Ohio, North and South Carolina and all of West Virginia. A new exhibit on display on the 4th floor lobby of the Walter C. Langsam Library showcases resources from UC Libraries in celebration of Appalachian culture and heritage. Included are resources from the collections of the Albino Gorno Memorial (CCM) Library, Geology-Mathematics-Physics Library, the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Library, the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP), and Langsam. Also featured are online resources that showcase and inform about Appalachian culture.

The exhibit was curated by UC Libraries’ Mikaila Corday, Susan Banoun and Carissa Thatcher. It was designed and produced by Sam Kane, communications design co-op student, and Melissa Cox Norris.

A bibliography of Appalachian resources in the exhibit and more is available online.

Congratulations to Award Winning Capstone Project

Seniors Celeste Bauer, John Meyer and Xi Ru take first prize for their Environmental Engineering Capstone Project

The Data & GIS Collab would like to congratulate Environmental Engineering Seniors John Myers, Xi Ru, and Celeste Bauer on their award winning capstone project. The project entitled “Ohio River Harmful Algal Blooms: Indicators and Real Time Monitoring” resulted in the design a geographic web application that tracks and updates river conditions from sensors set at multiple points along the Ohio River.  Collab Students Shiyu Gong and Jenny Latessa worked with Ms. Ru as she investigated various web mapping tools for her team to use.  This is one of several web mapping projects the Collab has consulted on recently and shows growing interest and applications for this type of mapping.  It is a great pleasure for the lab to be involved and to gain knowledge about new tools and  techniques.  We congratulate John, Xi and Celeste on their hard work and great ideas and wish them much success in their future endeavors.

Dean’s Corner: A Busy April Overview

It’s April at the University of Cincinnati, the end of another eventful academic year. This April was especially busy for UC Libraries, beginning with our 16th annual International Edible Books Festival event on April 3rd. Later in the month, the library hosted my Dean’s Advisory Council, and the board of downtown Cincinnati’s Lloyd Library. We honored Marian A. Spencer, this year’s recipient of the Taft Medal of Notable Achievement at UC’s Distinguished Alumni Celebration, and held our first German-Americana lecture. We celebrated the kickoff of UC’s bicentennial, participated in UC’s Research + Innovation Week and brought music to the Gorno Library.

This is just a short list, in no way comprehensive. It says nothing of UC Libraries’ hardworking faculty, staff and student workers, spread out over 10 campus locations.

From the upper left hand corner: Celebrating Edible Books; handing out snacks and giveaways at UC’s Bearcat Block Party; dining with members of my Dean’s Advisory Council Continue reading

UC Libraries and IT@UC Announce Next Session of the Data and Computational Science Series

DSC2 series

The University of Cincinnati Libraries and IT@UC Research & Development announce the next in 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.

DCS2 brings to the University of Cincinnati research community a variety of innovative workshops and distinguished speakers on advanced research data topics including high performance computing, cloud computing, data visualization, research story-mapping, spatial analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning.  The workshops are free and open to all, but registration is required. Continue reading