Note from the Dean
The fall semester has begun, and campus feels more alive than ever as the University of Cincinnati welcomes a record-breaking enrollment of 54,437 students. While the university continues to support a robust cohort of online students, over 83% of our student body remains residential, on-campus students. We’re serving more students than ever in our campus spaces, including our academic libraries. This academic year, we’re excited to welcome our students – and you – into our work.
Beginning this fall, we’re trying something new to help our students feel like they belong in our libraries. We want to engage our student visitors, our “library nerds,” and help them to make our libraries their own. This strategy involved the hire of our student outreach coordinator, Charli Muszynski, who joined the UC Libraries team last summer. In this role, Charli is initiating student pop-up events and programming across our libraries and engaging with students in our spaces to understand their interests. One such example is the Great Library Guess Off, a challenge based on the spy-themed trivia game, Guesspionage, coming next month, and the recent Dolly Day celebration held appropriately on the date 9/25.
We’re also sustaining a successful program from last year, our Library Passport event, which introduces new students to our nine (yes, nine!) library locations. Students visited each library location on campus to collect a unique branded sticker as a “stamp” on their library passport. When the passport was completed, students returned to Langsam Library where they received library merch! We had more participation in this event than last year with over 500 passports distributed and 56 students collecting swag. More importantly, our various library locations reported that they saw an increase of students visiting their library in the first weeks of the semester.
We would like to connect with you this fall as well! We have announced fall events on our website and welcome you to join us. On October 20th, the Winkler Center in our Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library is hosting a lunch and learn session dedicated to medical illustration. This session celebrates the opening of the Daniel S. Young Exhibit, based on a collection of archives featuring hand drawn medical illustration from a field surgeon in the American Civil War. Also in October, the Science Library will be hosting a lecture on Rudy W. Thomas, a demonstrator and restoration specialist who helped to curate the Oesper Collections in the History of Chemistry. And, of course, our Poetry Stacked reading series continues, featuring a program in Langsam Library on October 7th and in the John Miller Burnam Classics Library on November 18th.
You’ll also have an opportunity to partner with us in stewarding our rare books and treasures this winter, with the launch of our Adopt-A-Book campaign. Our library selectors are working this fall to identify a collection of rare books, manuscripts and other one-of-a-kind materials that we need your support to steward. When making a contribution, or “adopting” a book, your name will be recognized within the catalog as a permanent record of your support.
Stay tuned for more information as we kick-off this campaign in February! In the meantime, I hope to see you at a future UC Libraries event.
