Did you know that Cincinnati’s Main Library downtown is “America’s Busiest Library”? It’s true! According to a Public Library Association statistical report, American’s Busiest Library is right here in downtown Cincinnati. Read more at the Public Library’s eLinks.
Tag Archives: Library News
Electronic Reserves are Available through Blackboard
With this service, once a course page is made visible to students, any library electronic reserves material will be visible on that page, providing one-stop access to these course materials through Blackboard. Information on how to add electronic reserves to Blackboard is available online.
Books Good Enough to Eat?
The Libraries celebrated the 8th annual International Edible Books Festival April 1. See the entries online.
Introducing the new CECH Library
On November 6, 2008, CECH Dean Lawrence J. Johnson and Dean and University Librarian Victoria A. Montavon hosted an open house to celebrate the renovation of Teachers College, home to the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (CECH) and the new CECH Library.
The massive two-year overhaul of 60,000 square-feet of Teachers College/Dyer Hall revealed facets of the college’s original Georgian architectural grandeur that had been hidden for decades. In addition, modern amenities and inviting spaces outside the classrooms for students to gather and study were added to the building.
One of the most spectacular examples of blending the new with the old lies within the new CECH Library, the former site of a computer lab. Years before, the space was the Annie Laws Auditorium, which held a stage for performances, an area discovered again in the renovation. The restoration involved the removal of a dropped ceiling, revealing the original art deco, 22-foot-high ornate plaster ceiling and a Juliette balcony that now overlooks the CECH Library.
The library contains the holdings of the former Curriculum Resources Center that were housed in Blegen Library, and has broadened its focus to serve the needs of the college’s criminal justice and human services students and faculty. The upper level of the library contains the circulation desk, a group-study room, current periodicals, journals, and professional education books. On the lower level, visitors to the library will find a computer lab, production lab, video viewing space, and curriculum library materials.
“I’m thrilled that the renovation of Teachers College presented the opportunity to create this excellent library space to serve the needs of the entire CECH community,” said Victoria A. Montavon, Dean and University Librarian.
“This is not just a place to check into a classroom and leave anymore,” said Nelson Vincent, Associate Dean of CECH. “Seating areas line the hallways and we have group study areas with comfortable, inviting furniture. Now, there’s not a space in this building that does not have natural light. There’s even the beginning of an outside reading garden that would accommodate as many as 50 people.”
Vincent adds that the library renovations also brought back a 110-year-old grandfather clock restored by Douglas Rife, a senior lab associate and instructor for the mechanical engineering technology department in the College of Applied Science.
Formed in 1905 in partnership with the Cincinnati Board of Education, the University of Cincinnati’s College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (CECH) has provided more than a century of service. Before construction began on a permanent home for the college, classes were held in old McMicken Hall and in Beecher Hall (now the site of University Pavilion), with construction first beginning on Teachers College in 1930.
For more on the CECH Library, visit their Web site at www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/cech.
Recent Library Acquisitions
New in the Cohen Enrichment Collection…
The Cohen Enrichment Collection is located on the fourth floor of Langsam Library. The collection contains books in all subject areas including cooking, popular fiction, history, and art. It is designed to “enrich and strengthen the educational experience at the University of Cincinnati” with special shelving for the books that encourages browsing and comfortable seating.
The Collection is funded by a gift in 1978 from Julie Cohen in memory of A. B., Dolly, and Ralph Cohen, her father-in-law, mother-in-law, and husband.
Cohen Fiction
Over and Under by Todd Tucker. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2008.
A bitter 1979 labor strike at southern Indiana’s Borden Casket Company serves as the volatile backdrop for this haunting coming-of-age novel from nonfiction writer Tucker. With their fathers on opposite sides of the dispute, Andrew Jackson Gray and Thomas Jefferson Kruer, both 14, learn there is more to life than exploring caves, shooting targets with their prized M-6 Scout rifles and sneaking out on starry nights to run through the woods.
Langsam Cohen PS3620 .U33 094 2008
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng. Weinstein Books, 2008.
This remarkable debut saga of intrigue and akido flashes back to a darkly opulent WWII-era Malaya. Phillip Hutton, 72, lives in serene Penang comfort, occasionally training students as an akido master “teacher of teachers.” A visit from Michiko Murakami sends him spiraling back into his past, where he grows up the alienated half-British, half-Chinese son of a wealthy Penang trader in the years before WWII.
Langsam Cohen PR9530.9.E54 G54 2008
Cohen Non-Fiction
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt. Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.
Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the everyday activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us.
Langsam Cohen TL152.5 .V36 2008
The Toothpick: Technology and Culture by Henry Petroski. Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Contents include: The oldest habit — Artifacts and texts — Sucksacks and whiskers — Poor goose! — The nasty instrument — Woodpeckers and other dispensers — Talking round a toothpick — The fatal martini — Improving on perfection — The butler did it — and more.
Langsam Cohen GT2952 .P48 2007
Look for these soon-to-be-released titles…
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker. Grand Central, 2009.
In an upstate New York backwater town, Truly, massive from birth, has a bleak existence with her depressed father and her china-doll–like sister, Serena Jane. Truly grows at an astonishing rate—her girth the result of a pituitary gland problem—and after her father dies when Truly is 12, she is sloughed off to the Dyersons, a hapless farming family.
The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee. Viking, 2009.
Former Elle editor Lee delivers a standout debut novel dealing with the rigors of love and survival during a time of war, and the consequences of choices made under duress. Claire Pendleton, newly married and arrived in Hong Kong in 1952, finds work giving piano lessons to the daughter of Melody and Victor Chen, a wealthy Chinese couple. While the girl is less than interested in music, the Chens’ flinty British expat driver, Will Truesdale, is certainly interested in Claire, and vice versa.
UC Faculty: Submit Your 2008 Published Works to “Authors, Editors & Composers”
On Thursday, April 23, 2009, the University of Cincinnati Libraries will once again recognize the publishing and creative accomplishments of UC’s faculty at the annual “Authors, Editors & Composers” event. Scheduled for 3:30pm in the Russell C. Myers Alumni Center, “Authors, Editors & Composers” will celebrate the 2008 scholarly and creative works of UC’s faculty with a reception, presentation of selected works, bibliography, and exhibit.
To submit works published in 2008 for inclusion in “Authors, Editors &
Composers,” faculty should complete the online form at
www.libraries.uc.edu/information/aec/.
Faculty may submit multiple works, but are limited to three submissions per category including: books or book chapters, scholarly articles, musical scores, original works in electronic or digital media, service as editor of a journal, photographs, artwork, etc.
All submitted works must have been published in 2008. The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 27, 2009.
If you have questions regarding the criteria or the submission form, contact Melissa Cox Norris at melissa.norris@uc.edu or by phone at (513)556-1558.
Information about last year’s “Authors, Editors & Composers,” as well as a bibliography of the submitted works, is available online.
World Digital Library Set to Launch on April 21
This sounds interesting:
The Library of Congress (LC) said this week that the World Digital Library (WDL) , an online partnership between LC, UNESCO, and 32 partner institutions to share cultural materials, will launch on April 21. A reception will be held that day at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters for partners and other special guests attending the semi-annual meeting of UNESCO’s executive board.
LC officials said the first edition of the site will include a wealth of manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, and prints and photographs, all available free to the public, browseable and searchable in seven languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish) but with content offerings in “dozens of languages.”