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August 2011 Archives

Vote for VCU and support preservation efforts

Here's a new way to support Virginia Commonwealth University and VCU Libraries: Vote in Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts campaign. This public awareness campaign is designed to show the importance of preserving artifacts in care at collecting institutions such as museums, libraries and archives.

"It is important to save and preserve these artifacts and other items that comprise our material culture because they hold much symbolic, research and educational value," says Jodi L. Koste, archivist at Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences.  

VCU Libraries has nominated two artifacts in need of preservation that tell significant stories about its special collections. They are:

  • Matriculation Book of the Medical College of Virginia, 1838-1871. In this book all the names of students were recorded along with the student's address, preceptor and previous schools attended. Student entries are annotated when the individual graduated. The book is of high value for the information it provides on early students. It is also an interesting artifact because it includes the signatures of several Union soldiers who left their "mark" in the book during the occupation of the college's building after the Civil War.
  • The office door of pioneering cartoonist Billy DeBeck featuring an oil painting of Barney Google and his equine sidekick. William Morgan DeBeck, 1890-1942, was a giant in the "comic strip" art form. To readers in the Jazz Age and Depression era, his characters were as beloved as Superman, Peanuts and Doonesbury became to later generations. Dialog from Barney Google became part of the cultural syntax. Catchphrases from his strips included: "Horsefeathers!" "Heebie-jeebies;" "Jeepers Creepers!" "Bus' Mah Britches!" and "Time's a'wastin'!" DeBeck invented the moniker "Google" for his character.

These two artifacts are examples of the content of VCU Libraries' special collections. Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences houses archives, artifacts, books, manuscripts, photographs, portraits and prints related to the history of health care in Virginia. The archives for the Medical College of Virginia campus are also located in the library on the MCV Campus. On the Monroe Park campus, James Branch Cabell Library is home to significant collections in comic and graphic arts, artist's books, modern Richmond history and culture, oral histories, literary manuscripts, and documentation of Central Virginia minority and activist communities.

To vote: www.vatop10artifacts.org/p/how-do-i-vote.html Voting is online and there are two ways to vote. One is to go to the photo album, create a free account in the Picasa platform, and "like" your favorite artifact. Or, you may prefer to choose from a drop-down box in a Google spreadsheet. Links to both voting methods.

If you have difficulty voting, send your choice by email to srobinson26@vcu.edu Use Internet Explorer.

Voting ends Sept. 20. Public voting will be considered by an independent panel of collections and conservation experts who will select the final Top 10. That list will be announced in November.

Follow on Twitter: #vatop10 

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Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts is a program of the Virginia Collections Initiative, which is a project of the Virginia Association of Museums, made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services. The IMLS is the primary source of federal support for the nation's 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums.     

New at VCU Libraries: Extended Starbucks hours, new doors, more resources

Visitors to VCU Libraries will notice some high-profile changes this academic year. Starbucks has extended its hours to match most hours that the doors at James Branch Cabell Library are open. Both the Cabell academic commons and Starbucks now operate 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily Monday through Thursday. Starbucks also is open until 4 p.m. on Friday afternoons, 6 p.m. Saturday (until the library building closes) and until 11 p.m. Sunday nights. Library and coffee shop hours

Additional improvements to VCU Libraries include:

  • Also at Cabell, the back-to-the-'70s heavy and stubborn doors are gone, gone, gone. In their place are sliding atrium-style doors. The old doors posed enough of an aggravation, and a safety hazard, that students started a Facebook page to vent about the doors.
  • Hanging in the new, breezy walk-through space are posters featuring Rams Head Basketball Coach Shaka Smart and VCU President Michael Rao. Smart is the star of an image campaign promoting VCU Libraries.
  • VCU Libraries acquired 140,000 new electronic books that are now available online, along with 30,000 print books. 
  • New software is available on all of the library workstations for statistical work (SAS, Mathematica, JMP). This is a partnership with VCU Technology Services), image editing (GIMP GNU Image Manipulation Program), and plugins for students taking the INFO16X series of courses (MyITlab).
  • Renovations at Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences on the MCV Campus provide new collaboration and group study space.
  • New gallery exhibition space in the main reading room at Tompkins-McCaw gives students an opportunity for a break from study and reflection. On view now is "Watercolors" by VCU School of Pharmacy Dean Victor Yanchick. An earlier show was "Bedpan Elegance: Celebrating the Beauty of an Everyday Object." 
  • New equipment in Cabell includes a public fax machine (first floor), two overhead scanners, one on the third floor and one on the first and two headsets available from the Circulation desk. These headsets are combined earphones and microphones for use when Skyping.
  • New for Researchers: Fall collections wrap-up

    VCU Libraries, serving the Monroe Park Campus and the MCV Campus, offers major new collections of e-resources (e-books, streaming audio, streaming video, and databases).

    A comprehensive list of new collections--acquired during 2010-11--and available now is posted. All databases in the A-to-Z Guide.
    Some notable additions to the collections include:

    • Eighteenth Century Collections Online
    • Methods in Enzymology
    • New England Journal of Medicine
    • American History in Video
    • Classical Scores Library
    • Classical Music Reference Library
    • African American Music Reference
    • Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online
    • Berg Fashion Library
    • International Bibliography of Art
    • Stratfor
    • The Left Index
    • Alternative Press Index
    • Index Islamicus
    • Designinform
    • Access Medicine
    • Access Science
    • Access Engineering
    • Material Connexion
    • SPIE Digital Library
    • Grzimek's Animal Life encyclopedia
    • Underground Comics & Graphic Novels
    • World News Collection
    • LWW Nursing Health Assessment Video Series

    Inaugural Library Fest welcomes new students with tours, giveaways, food samples and advice from librarians

    For the first time, VCU Libraries, Dining Services and Technology Services will stage Library Fest, an open house tied to Welcome Week, a group of orientation activities for new students. Library Fest will be held Monday, Aug. 22 from 2 to 4 p.m. in James Branch Cabell Library.

    A "Welcome New Students" banner will be flying and some 500 attendees are expected. Attendees will have opportunities to:

    • Sign up for an iPad giveaway
    • Sip Starbucks samples at a station located behind the Ask Us desk
    • Sign up for a drawing to receive a poster of Rams basketball coach Shaka Smart
    • Get bookmarks featuring Rams basketball coach Shaka Smart
    • Sample foods from VCU Dining Services in Room 250
    • Meet research and instructional services librarians and other library staff 
    • Tour the building and get an overview of resources and services
    • Join the Friends of the Library, on the fourth floor
    • See Special Collections exhibitions in the fourth floor gallery
    • Pick up information sheets at some tables
    • Ask questions of librarians and Technology Services, Dining Services and Campus Learning Center representatives 
    Continue reading Inaugural Library Fest welcomes new students with tours, giveaways, food samples and advice from librarians.