December 2010 Archives

VCU yearbooks and alumni publications from both campuses are now available online. The VCU Libraries has digitized yearbooks and alumni publications published by Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) from both the Monroe Park Campus and the MCV Campus and from its predecessors Richmond Professional Institute (RPI) and the Medical College of Virginia (MCV).

Funded by the VCU Libraries, this exciting project was made possible in part through the LYRASIS Mass Digitization Collaborative, a Sloan Foundation grant-subsidized program that has made digitization easy and affordable for libraries and cultural institutions across the country.

Through the Collaborative's partnership with the Internet Archive, all items were scanned from cover-to-cover and in full color. You can choose from a variety of formats, page through a book choosing the "read online" option, download the PDF, or search the full text version.

Yearbooks in the collection are:

• The Wigwam (RPI, 1931-1955)
• Cobblestone (RPI, 1956-1968; VCU, 1969-1973)
• Cobblestone yearbook, 1956-1973 (VCU, commemorative volume issued in 1974)
• Commonwealth (VCU, 1979-1980)
• The Rampages (VCU, 1989-1990)
• The X-Ray (MCV, 1913-2010)

There were no VCU yearbooks from 1974 to 1978 or from 1981-1988. After 1990, the VCU yearbook was no longer published. The MCV yearbook ceased publication in the spring of 2010.

Alumni magazines in the collection are:

• VCU magazine (1971-1993): alumni magazine for the Monroe Park Campus
• Shafer Court connections (1994-2010): alumni magazine for the Monroe Park Campus
• The Scarab (1952-2010): alumni magazine for the MCV Campus

To view the collections, go to http://www.archive.org/details/virginiacommonwealthuniversity. From there, you can browse by subject or keyword to get to the exact publication you want. Additional locally digitized publications are available fromVCU Libraries Digital Collections, a growing resource for the VCU and global communities.

   

VCU's predecessors were the Richmond Professional Institute and the Medical College of Virginia. Explore the story of RPI in A History of the Richmond Professional Institute, written by Dr. Henry Hibbs, longtime leader of the school. Published for the RPI Foundation in 1973, the heavily illustrated book traces the development of RPI from its beginnings as the Richmond School of Social Economy in 1917 to its affiliation with the College of William and Mary in 1939, ending with the school's consolidation with MCV in 1968 to become Virginia Commonwealth University. 

A History of the Richmond Professional Institute is part of the VCU Libraries Digital Collections, a growing resource for the VCU and global communities.

In a vote at its December 7 meeting, the VCU Faculty Senate passed the following resolution urging Promotion and Tenure Committees to consider the value of open access publishing in the evaluation of faculty scholarly efforts:

Whereas, the faculty of Virginia Commonwealth University are dedicated to achieving the greatest public good by making their research and scholarship as widely available as possible;

Whereas, commercial publishers of scholarly journals have drastically increased subscription prices to many of the journals where VCU faculty now publish their research and scholarship beyond the affordability of many individuals and institutions; and

Whereas, faculty have many options for publishing their research and scholarship in open access journals, hybrid journals, or in open access repositories so that the world can have free access to it if they negotiate to retain their copyright of their work;

Therefore, the Faculty Senate of Virginia Commonwealth University recommends:

VCU Promotion and Tenure committees should recognize that publication and editorial effort in open access, peer-reviewed journals or republication of peer-reviewed articles in an open access repository offers added value and greater public good than scholarship made only available in expensive journal publications.

VCU Libraries has arranged trial access to three new databases and seeks your evaluation of these resources. Visit the Trial Databases page for more information and access to the following databases:

• Scopus - an extensive abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and web sources
• Access Medicine - more than 60 ebook titles, case files, diagnostic tools and self-assessment questions
• MD Consult - Medical Education eBooks - browse or search in a selection of leading textbooks