Checking Out the Chicago Public Library: UCBA Librarian Visits the Harold Washington Library Center

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One a recent July 4th holiday visit to Chicago, Michelle McKinney, UCBA Reference and Web Services librarian, made a brief stop at the Harold Washington Library Center (HWLC) of the Chicago Pubic Library (CPL). The main branch of CPL is located on 400 S. State Street, Chicago, IL 60605 in the South Loop. The building is a site to behold. It is 10 stories high, 756,000 square feet, and takes up a full city block. Here are just a few photos from Michelle’s all-too-brief visit. Follow the links at the end of the post to learn more about the Chicago Public Library and the Harold Washington Library Center. Continue reading →

Scholar@UC 2.0 is here.

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Scholar 2.0 is here!   It includes two new work types, Theses and Dissertations and Student Works, increasing the support in Scholar@UC for exemplar student content.  Also included in today’s Scholar 2.0 release are major enhancements such as improved collection searchability and management, email notifications, and catalog discovery and sort options (in particular a new ‘date created’ facet, and the ability to sort the catalog browse by title).  For a complete list of features and bug fixes see our change log.

With the deployment of this version, we are beginning work on the next major release, Scholar 3.0.  Our work for Scholar 3.0 will begin in a sandbox (test) environment where we will build upon substantial new code contributions from the Project Hydra community (to be technical, upgrades to Fedora 4, Solr 5 and a new implementation of Hydra named ‘Sufia 7′).   When we have merged our code with the code from the Hydra community, we will reach out to early adopters and others to help us evaluate this major release with substantial additional functionality.

While we are beginning work on Scholar 3.0, at the same time we will continue with improvements and point releases to Scholar 2.x.  There will be a decrease in the deployment schedule for Scholar 2.x, with our development cycles now devoted to multiple projects.   This does not mean that deployment will stop.  An additional College and Department facet, and integrations with Kaltura, Research Directory, and ORCID are still on an estimated 3 month road map.  Efforts will also be devoted to increasing the overall performance of the application.

Please continue to contact the Scholar@UC Team with any questions or comments.


Source: Scholar@UC

What Fools We Mortals Be

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By:  Sydney Vollmer

Rackham, What Fools These Mortals BeWe all remember Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  What a little imp.  Well, actually, he isn’t quite an imp.  He’s more of a hobgoblin.  In fact, Puck is less a name than a species.  Throughout mythology, “Puck” is interchangeable with “Robin Goodfellow.”  The names come in different forms among various languages, but they all translate roughly to either “pixie” or “hobgoblin.”

Throughout A Midsummer Night’s Dream, poor Puck is given orders to put spells on people he doesn’t recognize and things go awry.  His willingness to perform, and then correct, shows his true obedience to King Oberon.  However, if you aren’t King of the Fairies, a puck may not be as obedient.  Pucks have a knack for being temperamental.  It’s said that they’ve been known to do some minor household chores if they take a liking to you, but the helpfulness stops as soon as you offend them. Continue reading →

Presidential Election 2016

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Although some people may feel their vote really doesn’t matter, our 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, stated, “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

(from “Quotations” From Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Washington, D. C.: Republican national committee, 1938.)

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The UC Clermont College Library has election resources:

Ask a librarian if you need help!

Kathleen Epperson
Reference Librarian

Jacobean-Jacobite? Dated and Confused

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Sydney Vollmer, ARB Intern

The Works of Benjamin Johson, title pageI was so confused.  For weeks, Kevin and I have been talking about the Jacobites.  –Before I get into this conversation, it’s extremely important for me to note that neither my grade school nor high school spent very much time on the subject of history.  We excelled in language arts, but not so much the stuff I would one day have to write about.—  So, Kevin recently showed me a collection we received from Virginius C. Hall on the Jacobites.  Not having any idea who they were, I looked them up.  The internet gave me the gist of information I would need to know, so between that and our collection I have been able to piece some things together—until today.

Continue reading →

Notes on Some Jacobite Beheadings

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By:  Sydney Vollmer

Among the items recently received from the Virginius C. Hall Jacobite Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library is a watercolor of the “Beheading of the Rebel Lords on Great Tower Hill.”  Unfortunately, the image is not one-of-a-kind.  It is an incredible work, though.  Depicted in this scene is an endless crowd surrounding a scaffold.  On the platform, one man has his head down on the chopping block as an ax is raised over his neck.  This execution took place in 1746 after the Jacobite Rising in 1745.

Jacobite Beheading Continue reading →

UCBA Librarians Attend ALA Annual Conference

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by Heather Maloney and Kellie Tilton

UCBA Library Director, Heather Maloney and Instructional Technologies Librarian, Kellie Tilton headed to Orlando, Florida for the American Library Association Annual Conference.

Heather Maloney attended a pre-conference session on Transforming the Contributions of Student Employees in Your Library and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the passionate opening session speaker, Michael Eric Dyson. The exhibit floor was filled with the familiar and the new and probably a few too many giveaways…but how do you say no to a free book?!

Kellie Tilton spent a good chunk of time at ALA sitting in a, thankfully, air-conditioned hotel conference room for her super-secret Alex Committee meetings. She also managed to check out the fireworks at Epcot (sorry, IllumiNations) and had a blast wandering the exhibit hall. Swag she was most excited about? The Ruth Bader Ginsburg tote bag she will add to her collection.