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A Note from the Dean: Reappointment as Dean and University Librarian
Editor’s Note: We were extremely pleased this summer when the University of Cincinnati Board of Trustees approved the reappointment of Dean Xuemao Wang for a term of five years effective July 1, 2017. Every five years, per board rule, university deans participate in a decanal review. This is a thorough procedure that evaluates their leadership as perceived by their fellow deans, UC leadership, and their respective college’s faculty and staff. In enthusiastically recommending Dean Wang’s reappointment, the librarian and staff review committees recognized his outstanding leadership, advocacy, and vision for UC Libraries to become the globally engaged, intellectual commons of the university—positioning ourselves as the hub of collaboration, digital innovation,…
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Announcing the Establishment of UC’s First Digital Scholarship Center
The University of Cincinnati Libraries, in partnership with the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), is establishing UC’s first Digital Scholarship Center. To be located in the Walter C. Langsam Library, the Digital Scholarship Center will provide a place for faculty and students to explore digital scholarship (DH/DS) in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as cross-disciplinary teaching and research. The mission of the Center will be to serve as a catalyst for creative hybrid forms of research and teaching, bringing together humanistic methods with technical innovations to test paradigms and to create new knowledge at the boundary between disciplines as they are conventionally imagined in the…
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Making a Good First Impression: Recent Entrance Renovations
Recent renovations involving the entrances of two UC Libraries locations are providing improved visibility and ease of service to users. February 12 saw the completion of the renovation to The Desk@Langsam, a project to combine two service desks into one, thus simplifying point-of-service for users. The renovation is part of other Langsam 400 level projects currently underway, which include the updated Learning Commons, a central space for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County’s Popular Reading Collection, dual-boot public computers, more BYOD space, wrapping of the concrete columns to provide additional way finding and a Starbucks café. It was a joint initiative of the Office of the Senior Vice…
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A Note From the Dean: Finding the Talent
Finding the Talent: Building Capacity through Organizational Strategy and Partnerships with the Broader University Community One of the objectives of our Strategic Plan is to “develop a diverse workforce that…possesses broad and varied knowledge and skill sets, job categories, backgrounds, ideas and perspectives that create opportunities to engage colleagues and institutions within and beyond UC Libraries and the university in support of our mission and vision.” In 2014-15, UC Libraries welcomed 11 new staff members. Some of these positions were created to drive our Libraries’ strategic directions forward, while others support the core functions and responsibilities that keep our libraries running. Finding and recruiting this new talent to UC Libraries…
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Finding the Talent: Q&A with Hong Cheng and Bob Freeman
Over the past several years the University of Cincinnati, with the support of the Office of the Provost, has made a concerted effort to diversify their faculty positions and hiring practices. This is most evident in the Cluster Hiring Initiative launched in 2014, and the Strategic Hiring Opportunity and Dual Career Assistance programs, which have assisted in the recruiting and funding of faculty across campus since 2013. UC Libraries, in the execution of our Strategic Plan, has embraced these programs and allowed the spirit that drives them – a desire to recruit the best and brightest while cultivating collaborative partnerships with other colleges and departments – to inspire the way…
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Scholar@UC is Open for Self-Submissions
UC faculty and researchers are invited to self-submit their research, creative and scholarly works to Scholar@UC, the university’s enterprise-wide, cutting-edge digital repository. A digital repository makes accessible, enables re-use, stores, organizes and preserves the full range of an institution’s intellectual output, including all formats of scholarly, historical and research materials. Faculty and researchers can use Scholar@UC to collect their work in one location and create an Internet-enabled, durable and citable record of their papers, presentations, publications, data sets or other scholarly creations. The global influence, impact and recognition of the faculty and researchers’ scholarly work and research are both enhanced and preserved securely. With sponsorship from a faculty member, undergraduate…
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Dean Wang Joins SPARC Steering Committee
Xuemao Wang, dean and university librarian, has been selected to serve on the Steering Committee of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), a group that advocates for open access, open education and open data. SPARC is a global coalition of 200+ academic and research libraries that works to enable open sharing of research output and educational materials in order to “democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery and increase the return on investment in research and education.” To achieve this mission, SPARC collaborates with authors, publishers, libraries, students, policymakers and the public to build opportunities and promote changes to make open access the default for research and education. “SPARC’s…
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A Note from the Dean: An Update on UC Libraries’ Strategic Initiatives
Last May, the University of Cincinnati Libraries launched our Strategic Plan. Strategic plans are common in organizations today, both in the public and private sector. They set priorities, create a strategy and help companies identify a common direction to pursue. And while the thoughtful creation of a strategic plan is incredibly important, so is its implementation. For the first year of UC Libraries’ Strategic Plan we set ambitious goals, including last fall the launch of 10 strategic initiatives. These initiatives are managed by faculty and staff across our library system, and are created with the sole purpose of fulfilling our mission to “empower discovery, stimulate learning and inspire the creation of knowledge…
