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A Note from the Dean: A Busy Year in Review
The 2014-15 academic year has been one of exploration, innovation and collaboration for UC Libraries. The launch of the Strategic Plan has contributed greatly to our success with its ten initiatives along with a wide range of events and activities created and sponsored by library faculty and staff throughout our libraries. The initiatives are all focused on the same goal, to make UC libraries the globally connected intellectual hub of the university. Below is a small sampling of those successes. More information on the ten strategic initiatives is available online. ____________________________ Scholar@UC One of the ten strategic initiatives was to create the next generation digital repository. Named scholar@uc, it successfully…
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Enhancing Library Spaces
One of the four pillars of UC Libraries Strategic Plan is Space. The goal of this pillar is to “transform the concept and use of learning spaces managed by the library.” Through the work of our Strategic Plan, UC Libraries will be recognized as the intellectual hub for students, faculty, researchers and scholars by providing engaging digital and physical environments, as well as powerful new tools and services that spark inquiry, support analysis and ignite discovery and scholarship as well as prepare emerging generations for lives of ongoing discovery. This summer, several construction projects are underway that will allow UC Libraries to create exciting and innovative ways to deliver library…
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UC Libraries and IT@UC Contingent Participate in National CNI Annual Meeting
Six representatives from the University of Cincinnati Libraries and IT@UC participated in the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) annual membership meeting in Seattle, Washington on April 13-14, 2015. This is the largest UC contingent, and first to include multiple units presenting together, ever sent to this nationwide gathering of institutions working in “digital information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity.” The UC participants in the annual meeting were Nelson Vincent, vice president of information technology and CIO; Linda Newman, head of digital collections and repositories for UC Libraries; Ted Baldwin, director of the science and engineering libraries; Josette Riep, associate director of information…
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Explore UC Libraries’ Digital Collections
UC Libraries is steadily building a diverse archive of digital content with critically received collections covering Neil Armstrong’s life and UC career, the fabled Cincinnati Subway project, the remarkable Albert B. Sabin, unique recorded Elliston poetry readings as far back as 1954, Cincinnati medical oral histories and much more. The strength of the Archives and Rare Books Library in Cincinnati history and genealogy is now reflected in our online archives, which include the Cincinnati Birth and Death Records (1865-1912), the Cincinnati House of Refuge (1850-1902) and the recently added Hamilton County Morgue Records (1887-1930). Please visit the Digital Collections site and re-visit often! The Neil A. Armstrong Commemorative Archive contains…
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Next Up in the Digital Humanities Speaker Series: Alex Gil
UC Libraries is thrilled to welcome Alex Gil to campus Monday, April 6, 2015 as the second expert in our Digital Humanities Speaker Series. He will present a series of talks, all free and open to the public, to be held in 480 Langsam Library. 10:00-11:30am: “Setting up Playgrounds for the Digital Humanities: Strategies to Foster and Support Digital Humanities Activities and Communities” (followed by a lunch reception) 12:45-1:45pm: “Breaking the Code: The Developing Librarian Project at Columbia University Libraries” (targeted for library faculty and staff, but all are welcome) 2:00-3:30pm: Keynote: “Hacking Light, Crossing Borders: Building Transnational Communities in Digital Scholarship and the Case of GO::DH” Alex Gil is…
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Announcing Scholar@UC
It is with great fanfare that we announce the name of UC’s Next Generation Digital Repository: Scholar@UC. A digital repository makes accessible, enables re-use, stores, organizes and preserves the full range of an institution’s intellectual output, including scholarly, historical and research materials. Scholar@UC is part of UC’s emerging Research Hub and is being developed in partnership with UC Libraries and UCit. Scholar@UC initially will support direct deposit by faculty and staff of digital materials and data that are a result of their scholarly work and research, as well as deposit of faculty-approved student work such as theses and senior capstone projects. Scholar@UC is now in an early-adopter phase. Fourteen UC…
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A Note from the Dean: Recent Activity of the Mellon Grant Project
In late 2012, the University of Cincinnati Libraries were awarded a $58,000 Scholarly Communications and Information Technology Program planning grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to define and describe the key skills and competencies required to support a robust digital scholarship program. The grant project, entitled “Knowledge & Skill Capacity for Digital Scholarship: A Global Benchmarking Study,” is a joint collaboration with co-principle investigators University Librarian Vivian Lewis of McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada), Dean of Libraries Jon E. Cawthorne of West Virginia University, Lisa Spiro, the Executive Director of Digital Scholarship Services at Rice University, and myself. This is UC Libraries first Mellon Grant and more can be…
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Exploring Digital Humanities at UC
By Arlene Johnson, Associate Senior Librarian, Digital Humanities Strategist, Selector and Liaison for the Romance Languages and Literatures Department Exactly what is digital humanities? Many definitions have been expressed in scholarly publications (see http://www.libraries.uc.edu/digital-scholarship/digital-humanities-social-sciences.html), but a simplistic definition is that digital humanities represent the intersection of traditional humanities research and digital/computer-based technologies. As of fall semester 2014, there is a group at UC exploring this very question at the university. In May 2014, the University of Cincinnati Libraries launched a Strategic Plan. As an outcome of the collaborative planning process, ten strategic initiatives have been identified to be undertaken in the 2014/15 academic year. Exploring Digital Humanities/Digital Scholarship (DH/DS) is…
