October 2012 Archives
| Librarian John Glover will teach a one-hour session Monday, Nov. 5, 2 p.m. in Cabell Library Room 319 about how to make the best use of Google Scholar. |
- This workshop will offer an introduction to finding and using
images from VCU Libraries digital image collections and from other
online visual resources. In addition to help with understanding fair use
and image citation, this workshop will cover image search engines, free
resources, and digital image databases available to the VCU academic community,
including ARTstor, AP Images and other less commonly used resources.
For more information please contact Reference Librarian for the Arts Kristina Keogh.
- Nov. 2
- Cabell Library, Room 319
- Noon to 1 p.m.
Many VCU Libraries employees were recognized in October when
Virginia Commonwealth University and the VCU Health System recognized
employees for their dedicated years of commitment at the 41th annual
Service Awards receptions. More
VCU Libraries staff honored were:
40 years of service:
Mary Jane Green, service desk coordinator, Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences
30 years of service:
Barbara Anderson, head of the cataloging department, James Branch Cabell Library
Denise Branch, assistant head of the acquisitions department, Cabell Library
Valencia Jackson, library specialist, Cabell Library
Anita Williams, film specialist I, Cabell Library
25 years of service:
Nell Chenault, research librarian for film and music, Cabell Library
Anita Mallory, library specialist II, Cabell Library
Pam Patrom, administrative office specialist II, Cabell Library
20 years of service:
Donna Coghill, first year student programs librarian, Cabell Library
Jimmy Ghaphery, head of library information systems department, VCU Libraries
15 years of service:
Ken Hopson, manager of media and reserve services, Cabell Library
Marilyn Scott, electronic services librarian, Cabell Library
Angela Worris, library specialist I, Cabell Library
Barbara Wright, reference services librarian, Tompkins-McCaw Library
10 years of service:
Mary Ellen Spencer, social and behavioral sciences collections librarian, Cabell Library,
Antonia Vassar, assistant director for annual giving and donor stewardship, VCU Libraries
5 years of service:
Will Bailey, equipment applications specialist II, Cabell Library
John Glover, reference librarian for the humanities and sciences reference collection coordinator, Cabell Library
Tim Hurley, stacks supervisor, Tompkins-McCaw Library
Kristina Keogh, reference librarian for the arts, Cabell Library
Nia Rodgers, evenings and weekends services coordinator, Cabell Library
Work has been underway since Oct. 15. New furnishings will be installed the week of Oct. 29. It
will be loud on the fourth floor during this work. Students needing quiet spaces might consider the whisper-only third floor or reserving study rooms. Most of the new furniture has plug-ins incorporated into the pieces. Electricians will be working to install additional circuits in the electrical closet and run cabling above the ceiling tiles to the locations where the "wired" furniture will be placed.
Funding for this long-needed project is from the Office of the Provost.
- James Branch Cabell Library will open at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30.
- Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences will open at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30.
Monday, 8 p.m. posted:
In keeping with VCU's plan for Tuesday, Oct. 30, the libraries on both the Monroe Park and MCV campuses will open at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 30.
Monday, 2 p.m. posted:
Due to concerns regarding the weather, the book launch event for "From a Richmond Streetcar," scheduled for Oct. 30 in Special Collections and Archives at Cabell Library, has been postponed.
Sunday, 8:45 p.m. posted:
Due to safety concerns related to the impact of Hurricane Sandy, James Branch Cabell Library will close early, at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 29. The Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences will be closed Monday, Oct. 29. Keep up-to-date about the status of the hurricane on the university on the VCU alert page.
Beginning Oct. 24, the VCU Libraries' systems professionals began the transition to retire the old catalog, parts of which will persist until all the components can be migrated later this year. The new software searches VCU Libraries' collections as well as millions of journals and other resources. It uses unique features such as global data mining to recommend scholarly resources based upon search results.
Changing scholarship, shifts in the publishing industry and new technologies are driving this improvement. VCU Libraries is at the forefront of a group of libraries around the world that is adopting a new technology, named Alma that has been developed by Ex Libris, a leading developer of library technologies. VCU is the first large research institution to launch this new system. The software replaces the system used here for about a decade. That software is nearing the end of its viable life. The new system is hosted in the cloud with a strong emphasis on managing digital resources in cooperation with other research libraries. The system is built on a design that features rapid software development, so the VCU community can look forward to major enhancements over the coming months.
"It is a system that positions VCU Libraries for the future of managing materials in all media and will provide many efficiencies," said John Duke, senior associate university librarian, who has led the technical team.
Changing scholarship, shifts in the publishing industry and new technologies are driving this improvement. "It is a system that positions VCU Libraries for the future of managing materials in all media on an increasingly large scale," said John Duke, senior associate university librarian, who has led the technical team. "A huge benefit of being an early adopter is that VCU Libraries has had considerable voice in refining the software to answer the unique needs of a research library with a large academic health sciences campus. We also received some cost savings in opting in early," noted Duke.
Alma has been created using modern, rapid software development tools. This makes for very quick software production, with managed feedback from users to guide development as it is constantly tested. Alma was designed with partner libraries to help manage the variety of materials a modern library holds, taking advantage of technology and learning from other libraries to reduce costs and speed processing. Over time, it is expected that many internal workflows will change and library leadership envisions new efficiencies and savings that can be invested in enhanced services or improved collections.
Alma is a single, consolidated library system that manages print, electronic and digital collections. It replaces several systems that separately managed different aspects of library operations. The use of business analytics and real-time resource-analysis tools within Alma will allow the library to become much more efficient and provide an opportunity for cost containment. The community zone and the collaboration network leverage the power of libraries to work together to reduce costs and deliver enhanced services.
Alma, used with a discovery layer such as Primo, represents the next generation in information management. Primo is a single search discovery tool that effectively is retiring the old library catalog in favor of a much broader and deeper definition of academic research.
Alma is cloud-based software often referred to as "software as a service" (SaaS). For years, the library has managed its integrated library systems locally on computer servers on campus. The new model moves management of the library system off campus, where it runs on robust servers managed by a third-party vendor. Service is seamless to the library community and available around the clock. The benefits for the university: less expense, less server maintenance, better access, enhanced reliability.
Changing scholarship, shifts in the publishing industry and new technologies are driving these improvements. "It is a system that positions VCU Libraries for the future of managing materials in all media on an increasingly large scale," said John Duke, senior associate university librarian, who has led the technical team. "A huge benefit of being an early adopter is that VCU Libraries has had considerable voice in refining the software to answer the unique needs of a research library with a large academic health-sciences campus," noted Duke.
Alma has been created using modern, rapid application-development tools. This makes for very quick software prototyping and production, with managed feedback from users to guide development as it is constantly tested. Alma was designed with partner libraries to help manage the variety of materials a modern library holds, taking advantage of technology and learning from other libraries to reduce costs and speed processing. Over time, it is expected that many internal workflows will change. Library leadership envisions new efficiencies and savings that can be invested in enhanced services and improved collections.
A team of information management experts, led by University Librarian John E. Ulmschneider, have been working through the myriad of details, tests, feedback and iterations since March, 2012. The new system went live October 24.
the years.Eighty years ago in September, 1932 students entered the Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences for the first time. Simply called the "college library" when the building opened, the facility featured a large reading room with windows on three sides (the current Special Collections and Archives Reading Room, shown here), stacks with steel shelving and study cubicles, some of which are in use today, and five seminar rooms, used today for group study. The interior of the original building included a skylight and walls painted in a shade of gray-green popular with designers at that time.
Today's Tompkins-McCaw is one of the top medical libraries in the nation. It has the largest medical collection in the state and on the East Coast, it trails only Harvard and Yale for the depth and breadth of its collection, which includes extensive journal collections dating to the 19th century. Its recently opened second-floor classroom space is one of the smartest classrooms on the MCV or Monroe park campuses. It features technology for sharing work in small groups and with an instructor or presenter-led session and seats 44, each with individual screens and computer access.
A Web presence details some of the history of Tompkins-McCaw Library.
Branch Cabell Library, VCU, 901 Park Ave. The event is scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. with brief author remarks at 6:30 p.m. There will be books for sale and the author will sign.
Snow's book was the focus of an extensive
Oct. 2 STYLE Weekly cover story that published some of the rare photos of everyday life in Richmond early in the last century and tells the story of Harris H. Stilson, who was a streetcar motorman and an amateur photographer and filmmaker who captured images of Richmond in the 1910s, '20s and '30s.
Kitty Snow, Stilson's great-granddaughter, is the driving force behind the work to save the photographs and films. She told STYLE: "His pictures show how people made a living, where they shopped, where they worked and what Richmond was like in the early 20th century." Some 125 of these rare photos will be published in "From a Richmond Streetcar."
Snow grew up in Bon Air and is a graduate of Huguenot High School. She studied at Longwood College and Virginia Commonwealth University. She owns Home Team, Realtors. (Photo of Kitty Snow by Scott Elmquist for STYLE Weekly.)
VCU Libraries joins scholarly colleagues globally in marking Open Access Week, Oct. 22 - 26. This international observance promotes free access to academic research. It encourages 
academic
publishers to make research available online for free, increasing its reach for
students, researchers and the public.
Open Access Week is sponsored by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition and has participants in almost 100 countries. A self-described catalyst for action, SPARC is made up of some 225 academic and research library members that promote easier and more affordable sharing of scholarship. According to its mission statement: "SPARC believes that faster and wider sharing of outputs of the research process increases the impact of research, fuels the advancement of knowledge, and increases the return on research investments. ... Its pragmatic agenda focuses on collaborating with other stakeholders to stimulate the emergence of new scholarly communication norms, practices and policies that leverage the networked digital environment, expand the dissemination of research findings and reduce financial pressures on libraries."
To reduce barriers to the access, sharing and use of scholarship, the organization's strategy is to educate people about the problems facing scholarly communication, to advocate for policy changes and dissemination of scholarship as an essential component of the research process and to help develop new publishing models that benefit society.
Take a moment during this week to learn more about Open Access publishing.
- Open
Access Week
- VCU Libraries research guide
- VCU Libraries Faculty Organization statement on Open Access
- Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences is hosting the traveling National
Library of Medicine exhibit, "Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War"
from Oct. 22 to Dec. 1 in the Special Collections and Archives Reading
Room.
This exhibit explores the experiences of disabled Civil War
veterans and their role as symbols of the fractured nation. - The perspectives of surgeons, physicians, and nurses are richly
documented in the history of Civil War medicine, which highlights the
heroism and brutality of battlefield operations and the challenges of
caring for the wounded during wartime. Yet the experiences of injured
soldiers during the conflict and in the years afterwards are less
well-known. "Life and Limb: The Toll of the American Civil War" explores
the experiences of disabled Civil War veterans and their role as symbols
of the fractured nation. The exhibition's web site
- ARTstor is a digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities and social sciences. It also includes a suite of software tools that enable users to view and analyze images. In this workshop you will learn how to search and browse the ARTstor collection of images, create an account and manage folders, create and manage image groups, download high resolution images and image groups for use in PowerPoint, and make presentations with the Offline Image Viewer. For more information please contact Assistant Professor Kristina Keogh.
- Oct. 31
- Cabell Library, Room 319
- 11 a.m. - noon
- New to graduate school? Short on time to search for the best online
resources to find scholarly sources, images, and dissertations? This
workshop will provide information on good places to start your research,
tools to manage your citations, tips on how electronic resources work
at VCU and suggestions for how to use free online resources like Google
Books.
- The workshop leaders are assistant professors Reference Librarian for the Humanities and Reference Collection Coordinator John Glover and Reference Librarian for the Arts Kristina Keogh.
No registration is necessary but faculty who intend to bring a class are asked to contact library faculty in advance so we may prepare for you. For more information please contact John Glover (jglover2@vcu.edu) or Kristina Keogh (keoghkm@vcu.edu).
- James Branch Cabell Library
- Room 319
- 2 to 3 p.m. Oct. 29
sensitive topic in medicine: mistakes. In 1999, a landmark study from the Institute of Medicine found that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die from preventable medical errors every year. These findings encouraged medical professionals to re-evaluate their system and look for new ways to keep patients safer--even if it meant looking far outside the medical field. One source of information is Nance, a nationally respected expert on patient safety. VCU Libraries partners with the MCV Hospitals Auxiliary and the VCU Health System to bring him to Richmond this month for a free program.
Nance will give a lecture on "Why Hospitals Should Fly" at the Kontos Medical Sciences Building Thursday, Oct. 18 at 6 p.m. Nance's lecture, derived from his 2009 book of the same name, examines the ways hospitals and medical professionals fail, and what they can do to catch their errors before patients are harmed, using lessons learned from the aviation industry.
The lecture celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Community Health Education Center, the only consumer health library of its kind in Virginia. Please register online.
A pioneer in medical and aviation safety, John J. Nance is a decorated U.S. Air Force and commercial pilot, and a founder of the National Patient Safety Foundation. His ideas about leadership, responsibility, transparency and accountability are part of the national conversation on how a team-centered approach can save lives, make patients safer and strengthen the performance of hospitals and clinics. Nance is the author of many books on best practices in human systems. He will discuss his book, "Why Hospitals Should Fly: The Ultimate Flight Plan to Patient Safety and Quality Care," which many see as a guide to the future of patient care.
A military and commercial pilot with more than 13,000 flight hours, Nance helped reform the aviation field, working to eliminate accidents from preventable errors. He applies the same techniques of increased teamwork, communication and better checklists to the medical field.But Nance said the biggest challenge that medical professionals face is in changing their culture, the belief that they cannot or should not make mistakes. "It's not just communication, it's a willingness to understand our propensity for human failure," said Nance. "Once we accept that these failure rates are a result of being human, and we accept that teamwork is the way to get around it. Then, we believe we can get to zero."
About John J. Nance Jr.: He holds a Juris Doctor and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Southern Methodist University and is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. He is an aviation analyst for ABC News and the author of 19 books. In 1988, he began applying the techniques he used to improve aviation safety to the medical field. His most recent works, "Why Hospitals Should Fly" (2009) and "Charting the Course" (2012) focus on how hospitals can improve their patient care, especially involving medical errors. Nance collaborates with his wife, Kathleen Bartholomew, on his current and most recent work. Bartholomew is a registered nurse with a Masters in Nursing who also writes and speaks on improving patient care. They live in Seattle.
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Featured in the exhibition are vintage papers, ephemera, and other materials pertaining to Robert Browning, widely regarded one of the greatest poets of the Victorian period and a forefather of modern poetry. The exhibition is curated by Ashley Rye, graduate assistant in the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection and a doctoral candidate in art history at the University of Delaware.
On Thursday, Oct. 18, an opening reception will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. in the exhibition space and Mark Samuels Lasner will give an introductory talk at 7:30 p.m. Lasner is senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library, as well as an author, collector, bibliographer, typographer and authority on the Victorian period. Lasner's extensive collection is on loan to the University of Delaware Library.
Special Collections and Archives is open Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will also be open on Saturday, October 20, from noon to 2 p.m. for a special showing of the exhibition for the Victorians Institute Conference. Running simultaneously with the exhibition will be a fourth floor gallery show of steampunk comic books and comic art from the VCU's Comic Arts Collection. Steampunk, a sub-genre of science fiction, is heavily influenced by the industrialization movement of the 19th century, a setting where steam power is the dominate energy source. Stories are often set in alternative histories of the British Victorian or the American wild west eras.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, a significant collection of digital resources about slavery and abolition, traces the history and ongoing cultural impact of slavery. It provides access to thousands of full-text primary source documents and archival records. The online collection includes a small group of images, including the woodcut shown at right of Underground Railroad leader and abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online, according to its web site, is a new multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections "of the first great age of industrialization and technological innovation. ... It was an age of political revolution and reform, nationalism and nation building, the expansion of empire and colonialism, growing literacy and education, and the flowering of culture both popular and high. It was an age that witnessed the development of the power-driven printing press and the massive explosion of written material that dwarfs the output of the centuries that preceded it."
- James Branch Cabell Library
- Wednesday
- Oct. 17
- 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
VCU Libraries announces its 2012-13 VCU Libraries Presents series of programming. The diverse programs, all of which are free and open to the public are:
- John J. Nance, a medical and aviation safety consultant, will speak on Thursday, Oct. 18, at 6 p.m. at the Hermes A. Kontos Medical Sciences Building, 1217 E. Marshall St. He will discuss his ideas on leadership, responsibility, transparency and accountability as outlined in his book, "Why Hospitals Should Fly: The Ultimate Flight Plan to Patient Safety and Quality Care."
- Richmond author Kitty Snow will discuss her book "From a Richmond Streetcar," which features rare historic photos of Richmond, on Tuesday, Oct. 30, from 6 to 8 p.m. in Cabell Library Special Collections and Archives, 901 Park Ave.
- Justin Torres, the 2012 recipient of the Cabell First Novelist Award, will speak on Thursday, Nov. 8, at 7 p.m. in the Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace St. Torres will read from his prize-winning novel "We Are the Animals" and discuss the publishing process.
- Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, and Marvin Anderson, who was exonerated after 15 years in prison through the use of DNA evidence, will speak on Tuesday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m. in the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, 922 Park Ave. Their lecture is titled "Justice for All: Race, Wrongful Conviction and the Innocence Project."
- Jack Spiro, D.H.L., Ed.D., director of the VCU Center for Judaic Studies, will speak on Thursday, April 4, at 7:30 p.m. in the W.E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts, 922 Park Ave. His lecture "Is Life Meaningful? A Jewish Response" will address the Jewish perspective on the search for the meaning of life.
- A panel of Virginia history experts will discuss the impact of a failed Virginia slave rebellion. Details to be announced.
- Carmen Foster, a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, will speak in March 2013. Her lecture "Another Untold Story of Race and Richmond" will reveal the history of Hartshorn Memorial College, a private school for African American women that became a part of Virginia Union University in 1932. Details to be announced.
Additional programs are being planned.
All events are free and open to the public. Parking is available for a fee in the West Broad Street and West Main Street parking decks. Doors generally open 30 minutes before the program begins.
For additional information, visit www.library.vcu.edu/events/
Kitty Snow, Stilson's great-granddaughter, is the driving force behind the work to save the photographs and films. She told STYLE: "His pictures show how people made a living, where they shopped, where they worked and what Richmond was like in the early 20th century." Some 125 of these rare photos will be published in the forthcoming book, "From a Richmond Streetcar." VCU Libraries will be hosting a book launch event Oct. 30.
VCU is on a fast track to build a new library adjacent to James Branch Cabell Library on the Monroe Park campus. The project will create a striking new facility on Shafer Court that will connect with the existing Cabell Library, while also renovating parts of Cabell in order to integrate old and new.
VCU Libraries embarked on the process of designing a new library building in April with the University's issuance of a Request for Proposal for an architect/engineering firm. The RFP was awarded to the team of Shepley Bullfinch and Moseley Architects, and work began in earnest with the first meeting of the architects and the University personnel on August 16. Four all-day meetings have been held with the building team, composed of representatives from the VCU Libraries, VCU Facilities Planning, and Shepley Bullfinch/Moseley. These early meetings have made rapid progress towards final design, thanks in part to space planning study completed in 2011 that identified space and services most needed in a new building.
The Process and the Timetable
The process so far has been organized around two main objectives.
- First, the meetings worked to create a "program" for the new building: how much space to create and how to use that space. The 2011 space study provided a foundation for this work, so the team needed only to refine and confirm the overall space projections in the original study.
- The second objective consisted largely of deciding how and where to create the new space, a process known technically as "blocking and massing." The team has worked through different schemes for where space will be created and where space will be renovated, and how those spaces will be distributed within the new and existing building.
Inside the New Library
- Most of the new building will be dedicated to space for students and faculty. Staff and collections space will be minimal.
- There will be a significant increase in the quantity and variety of study seats to accommodate collaborative and individual work in active and quiet settings. This will include signature reading rooms and reconfigurable labs and group work areas.
- Enhanced, dedicated research space will accommodate faculty and graduate students.
- Media creation space will provide access to current and experimental audio and video content, visual and graphic design and production tools, and other advanced media resources to support academic projects, including high-end computers for video manipulation.
- A significantly expanded Starbucks café will provide more space for study breaks.
- A large, flexible, media-rich presentation and event space for gatherings of the VCU academic community may also include outdoor space.
- Incorporation of artwork, exhibit and event space will showcase VCU's arts programs.
- Teaching spaces that incorporate robust technology and flexible furnishings will support a variety of teaching and learning activities.
- Special Collections and Archives department will have more capacity for collection growth.
- The interior will blend memorable destinations within the library and flexible, efficient spaces that will meet needs for many years to come.
- The balance of collections and readers will evolve over time. As the efficiency of library collection storage is increased through the installation of compact shelving, more space can be freed up for student seating.
From the Street
- The new building will be in the location of the existing loading dock on Shafer Court.
- Green space east of the library will be preserved.
- Glass facades will reveal interior activity, creating a welcoming beacon that draws the VCU community into the library.
- The street levels of the library will provide pedestrian-scaled facades that welcome the campus into the building and engage with adjacent outdoor space.
- Pedestrian flow will be a primary consideration: The building design will minimize obstacles to foot traffic from the new classroom building north to the Compass area, and from the Compass area west and south. The east walking path from Monroe Park should not be affected.
- Options are being explored for additional expansion space along the east side of Cabell, as well as improvements to all facades. The various approaches will be evaluated in context of the budget and all project priorities.
- The building design is targeting LEED Silver certification at a minimum.
- A screened service area for deliveries and trash/recycling pick up will be accessed from Linden Street.
- The amount of space for parking will be significantly smaller than today, lessening impact on the adjacent campus environments.
- The university will explore whether it's possible to close Linden Street, possibly before the new library building opens in 2015.
More
Torres will be on the Virginia Commonwealth University campus Nov. 8 for a reading, book signing, Q&A and sessions with students.
The following week, on Monday, Nov. 12 at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO,
Brooklyn, the National Book Foundation will kick off National Book
Awards Week with a party for this year's 5 Under 35 authors.
Host for the evening will be musician Neko Case, with poet and photographer Thomas Sayers Ellis as DJ. Author Anya Ulinich, a 2007 5 Under 35 Honoree, will moderate a conversation between the young writers. Musician and author Alina Simone will interview all of the authors at the event, to be shared in clips on the foundation's website.The 5 Under 35 program, now in its seventh year, honors five young
fiction writers selected by past National Book Award Winners and
Finalists.
