The Archivision Digital Research Library is currently comprised of 77,000 images of architecture, archaeological sites, gardens, parks and works of art with broad appeal in humanities teaching. The collection is curated by Scott Gilchrist, a trained architect as well as professional photographer, who is actively adding new content. The Library spans the globe and all time periods, offering a mix of historic and contemporary material.
Know 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.
Looking 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.
The UCBA College Library will have the following hours during Spring Break:
The Library will resume regular Spring Semester hours on Monday, March 19th at 7:30 am.
Please visit our hours webpage to view all UCBA Library hours, including holidays and any exceptions to our regular schedule.
Create the winning design for our National Library Week buttons and win a $30 UC Bookstore Gift certificate and bragging rights!
Design a 2.25 inch button. Guidelines and templates can be found on the Button Design Contest page. Design submissions will be accepted from March 5 – March 30, 2018. Submit final designs in PDF or JPG format to: ucbalibrary@ucblueash.edu.
The winning design will be determined using a blind submission and voting process among the UCBA Library Team. Voting team members will not be aware of the students responsible for the button designs during the voting process. The winner will be notified on Monday, April 2, 2018.
These new bibliographies in Classics of c. 2,000 items (many annotated) are divided into two parts: 1) Fields of Study (e.g., Archaeology, History, Literature); 2) Types of Sources (e.g., Bibliographies, Journals, Theses). Several categories are further subdivided. It is a work in progress. http://guides.libraries.uc.edu/classical-sources
December 12, 2013, Youngstown, Ohio. Truck crash and spill. EPA incident review conducted. Truck was a contractor hauling fracking wastewater from ChemTron in Avon, OH. Liquids went into storm sewers and Crab Creek – a tributary of Mahoning River. Image courtesy of FracTracker. Photos from Lynn Anderson, Frack Free Mahoning, & Jean Engle, Youngstown Community Bill of Rights Committee
In my recent explorations of how recordkeeping practices inform environmental policy and knowledge, an interesting trend has revealed itself in the context of state regulation of fracking in the Marcellus/Utica shale region (i.e., Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia). State agencies in these areas are far more likely to proactively disclose records concerning permits, well locations, and production volume than any other records.
This means that there is significant data on the expansion of fracking – from its geographical extent to the volume of extractive activity. What is far more difficult to obtain is information on the effects of fracking. In other words, the records that contextualize fracking’s impact on the communities where it takes place – complaints, routine inspections, and investigations – are largely absent from the available data on state oil and gas websites. Instead, citizens must file records requests to obtain this information. Pennsylvania is a notable exception in comparison to Ohio and West Virginia, as it discloses records specifically pertaining to inspections and waste production and handling. It also partially discloses complaint and investigation records (primarily related to water contamination issues).
Ohio’s inspection records are highly obscured, requiring one to go through a very confusing process to obtain records from the Department of Natural Resources website. There is no obvious way to search for specific inspection, complaint, or investigation records through either Ohio or West Virginia’s website. Ohio law requires that a database concerning major violations by oil and gas operators be made available to the public on the Division of Oil and Gas resources website. Some of this information may be available through Ohio’s RBDMS application, but due to installation difficulties, I was unable to confirm this. When I asked an agency official regarding whether this web database was available, I was told the agency was “in the process” of creating it. The law calling for such a database was passed in 2010 and amended in 2011.
According to an issue paper authored by the Natural Resources Defense Council and FracTracker, West Virginia once had an active Oil and Gas spills database that was updated at least through 2013. The database is still hosted online, but does not appear to have any records in it from the last several years, or the time period in the issue paper.
When agencies have leeway to determine the scope of their proactive information disclosure, what is shared likely reflects how the agency views it mission. It appears that Ohio and West Virginia’s regulatory agencies prioritize disclosing information about the growth of fracking far more than its potential ramifications for the environment.
Scholar@UC, the University of Cincinnati’s digital repository, has been updated and includes enhanced submission and viewing features:
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.
Have you ever pondered pi? Does 3.14 and beyond interest you? Whether you find this mathematical constant fascinating or not, you will want to be a part of our Pi Day celebration.
Beginning March 1, sign up to win a free pi t-shirt. The winner’s names will be drawn on March 14. Five shirts will be given away. Stop by the Clermont College Library and fill out an entry with your name, email, and preferred size.
On March 7, our math professors will be passing out pi(e) and coffee in the hallway, in front of the library. If you are up to a challenge, stop by Dr. Malla’s table and write out pi to as many digits as you can remember. There will be three prizes for the top winners.
Penny McGinnis
Technical Services Manager
A table 
with origami supplies is set up in the Clermont College Library; for anyone who would like to try his or her hand at this ancient art form. Through folding, the origami paper can be shaped into birds, frogs, flowers, and many other designs. The table will be set up through March 29.
Penny McGinnis
Technical Services Manager
Read 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.