Call for Nominations for the Fall 2017 Featured UC Faculty ‘Life of the Mind’ Presenter

The Nov. 14 lecture will celebrate UC faculty research, scholarship and creative output and foster the free and open exchange of ideas and discourse.

Life of the Mind LogoLife of the Mind, started in spring 2011, is an annual lecture series featuring interdisciplinary conversations with UC faculty from a variety of disciplines around a one-word theme. The fall lecture, scheduled for 3-5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 14 will focus on the theme of “truth.”

Life of the Mind lectures feature one faculty member presenting his or her work and expertise in concert with the prescribed theme. The presentation is not simply be a recitation of the presenter’s work but promotes a point of view. A panel of three responds to and discusses the lecture from diverse perspectives, and a moderator encourages audience engagement.

The Life of the Mind Steering Committee seeks nominations for the featured UC faculty presenter. Each featured UC faculty presenter possesses:

  • Accomplished UC faculty member with national/international reputation.
  • Proven record of scholarship or creative works.
  • Recognized as an expert in their field of study, research or creation of works.
  • Experienced at presenting their work to an audience outside the classroom.
  • Excellent and engaging speaker able to relate to a non-specialist audience.
  • Provocative topic of study/research/creative work.

Continue reading

Most UC Libraries Closed Labor Day, September 4

labor dayUC Libraries will be closed Monday, September 4 for Labor Day, except for the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, which will be open 9am-5pm. This closing includes the Langsam Library 4th floor space, which will close Sunday, September 3 at 11pm and re-open Tuesday, September 5 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.

An Environmental Legacy

By:  Eira Tansey

Bob MarshallOver the last couple years, I’ve been exploring the relationship between record keeping, archives, and environmental policy. Right now, I’m shifting my research gears towards the role of recordkeeping practices in the formulation and enforcement of environmental policy.

To understand how we’ve arrived at today’s environmental problems and policies, it’s helpful to go back to the past and look at one of the most influential periods of federal action on natural resource protection. During Roosevelt’s New Deal, major environmental protection projects were undertaken, as well as the introduction of a major federal regulatory state. The Civilian Conservation Corps employed thousands of young men to build trails and buildings still in use today, as well as undertaking environmental restoration projects such as reforestation. While most of today’s major federal environmental laws have their roots in the 1970s, the legal foundation for federal action to be taken on issues that no state can resolve on its own can be traced back to many New Deal-era regulations. Continue reading

The Graduate School Extols the Benefits of Scholar@UC

scholar@uc

A recent article by Danniah Daher, graduate assistant to the Graduate School Office, entitled Scholar@UC: The Archive You Need, talks about the need to preserve and protect scholarly work and research data by submitting it to the university repository. Linda Newman, head of digital collections and repositories, is quoted as saying, “The mission of Scholar@UC is to preserve the permanent intellectual output of UC…We are very serious about preservation. We’re also very serious about access. We want to make the content accessible—content that otherwise would just be sitting on someone’s hard drive in their office. We consider preservation and access our two most important jobs.”

The full article can be read online at http://grad.uc.edu/student-life/news/scholaratuc.html.

Available at https://scholar.uc.edu/, 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 their papers, presentations, publications, datasets, or other scholarly creations. Students, through an approved 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 inspire derivative works, and to enhance discoverability and access to these resources.

Job posting: Digital Lab Manager, University of Cincinnati Libraries

The University of Cincinnati Libraries is seeking a Digital Lab Manager (a 3-year renewable position). The successful candidate will direct the operations of a digital lab in a university research library, including digitizing rare books, manuscripts and special collections, managing digitization projects and workflows, maintaining equipment and software, providing quality control, and supervising student assistants. This is an exciting opportunity to join a dynamic and diverse organization in a great university, great city, with high potential for interesting technical work.

Evaluation of candidates begins on September 21, 2017. The University of Cincinnati is an EE/AA employer. For more information and application instructions see: https://jobs.uc.edu/job/Cincinnati-Digital-Lab-Manager-OH-45201/425512200/.

GIS Learning Community – First Meeting for 2017-2018

 GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems.  GIS has applications for both teaching and research across many disciplines.

Do you need to visualize your spatial data but don’t know how? Do you have spatial data but don’t know how to map it?  Are you looking for guidance or have expertise to share regarding the analysis of spatial data?  Are you an ArcGIS, Q-GIS or other GIS program user and want to connect with other people who use these programs?  Are you simply curious about GIS and want to learn more?

The GIS Learning Community can help you address these and other questions.  The goal of the community is to be a user-driven forum for novice and expert practitioners to come together and discuss tools, resources, projects and solutions surrounding the spatial aspects of their data.   We invite interested individuals across all of UC to join us in building this community. The community is open to All Faculty, Staff and Students, as well as interested parties from outside of UC.  Please share with your colleagues and students.

The Details –

Date: September 6, 2017

Time: 3:00 to 4:30 pm

Place: (VENUE CHANGE 480 Langsam)

Light refreshments will be served

RSVP and Join the GIS LC at https://form.jotform.us/72324913145149.

If you are interested in the GIS Learning Community and are not able to come to the first meeting, RSVP or email ASKGIS@UC.Edu to be added to the GIS LC email list. Future invites will go to the GIS LC email list only.

More information is available on the GIS LC page on the GIS research guide:  http://guides.libraries.uc.edu/GIS/GISLC

The Mystery and Emotion of “Blue”

By: Kevin Grace

The Three PrincessesIt is a color that has both negative and positive connotations, is symbolic of mysticism, social rank, both high and low emotions, and of serenity and wisdom.  Blue is a color that is a signifier of both Hell and purity, of luxury and dignity.  There are as many interpretations of what “blue” symbolizes as there are cultures in the world.

And the symbolism of the color is the rationale behind an online exhibit created by Archives & Rare Books Library.  Intended to highlight the spectrum of rare books in the collections, the selections show the cultural diversity over the ages of this particular color.   Nineteen volumes are represented in the exhibit, with several examples from each of illustrations and bindings, ranging from a 15th century illuminated book of hours to early Qur’ans and Persian poetry.  There are botanicals, fairy tales, Art Deco bindings, Asian drawing Ms. No. 20manuals, pochoir pattern books, and Turkish ebru marbled paper.  Each indicates a specific use of blue that depends on religion, technology, or geographical heritage. Continue reading

UC Libraries and the Graduate School Host Workshop about the Open Science Framework

The University of Cincinnati Libraries and the Graduate School are pleased to host the Center for Open Science for a workshop on “Increasing Openness and Reproducibility in Quantitative Research” on Wednesday, Oct. 25.  The workshop will cover project documentation, version control, pre-analysis plans and the Open Science Framework.

There will be two duplicate sessions of the workshop, one on the Medical Campus from 9 a.m. to noon and one on the West Campus from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The event is free and open to all. To register, visit https://goo.gl/Hf5neh. Participants should bring their own devices for the best workshop experience.

The Open Science Framework (OSF) is an open-source workflow management tool developed by the Center for Open Science. Appropriate for any discipline, OSF enables researchers to manage workflows, share files, view project analytics, and more. Available at osf.uc.edu, OSF for UC is the portal for students, faculty, staff and others to manage project files and documents. There is no cost to use OSF and sign-in is easy. Simply go to osf.uc.edu, click on the sign in button, choose University of Cincinnati, then enter your UC 6+2 Central Login.

Workshop Information:

Date: Oct. 25, 2017

Session 1
Time: 9 a.m.-noon
Location: Medical Campus – Troup Learning Space, Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library – MSB G005G

Session 2
Time: 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Location: West Campus – 480 Walter C. Langsam Library

Questions? E-mail Amy Koshoffer, science informationist, at ASKDATA@UC.EDU for more information.