University of Scranton Commencement Programs

Commencement Programs

The Weinberg Memorial Library is excited to announce our newest digital collection – University of Scranton Commencement Programs – which includes programs from commencement exercises and related activities (like Class Night and Baccalaureate) held by the University of Scranton and its predecessor, St. Thomas College. Dated from the 1910s through the 1970s, the programs generally list names, degrees, and awards received by that year’s graduating class. Some programs also include biographies of honorary degree recipients.

We’re still working on digitizing programs from the 1970s to the present – but due to privacy restrictions related to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), we are unable to provide public access to programs dated after August 1974 that include student names. (For more information regarding FERPA, please contact the Office of the Registrar.) The original, printed programs are still available in the Library’s Special Collections and University Archives, where they may be viewed by appointment.

We hope that the collection will interest our alumni as well as our current students, faculty, staff, and friends.  Please let us know at digitalcollections@scranton.edu if you have questions or suggestions for us, and make sure you take a second to browse through our other digital collections.

Seniors – Vote for Teacher of the Year!

Our colleagues over in the Center for Teaching & Learning Excellence asked us to share this announcement:

VOTE FOR:

 TEACHER OF THE YEAR

ATTENTION:  GRADUATING SENIORS

2013 University of Scranton

Teacher of the Year Award

Each year the Graduating Senior Class selects its “Teacher of the Year.” Beginning Monday, April 15th, please vote for the faculty member who you believe best exhibits the following characteristics:

  • Maintains the highest standards of academic excellence and fairness.
  • Inspires interest in the discipline through personal enthusiasm and dedication.
  • Is consistently effective in communication.
  • Is available outside of the classroom.

The award will be presented during Class Night on Friday, May 24th, 2013.

HOW TO VOTE:  To cast your electronic ballot, access www.scranton.edu/toy

WHEN TO VOTEMonday, April 15th, 9:00 a.m. – Friday, April 19th 5:00 p.m.

Remember a Faculty Member Whose Teaching Has Inspired You!

University of Scranton Basketball Collection

University of Scranton Basketball Collection

Here’s something we’ve been working on for a while as part of our ongoing digitization of materials from the University Archives: The University of Scranton Basketball Collection. We haven’t yet digitized the whole archival collection, but we thought we’d go ahead and make the part that *is* done available to all of you – especially with the University’s 125th Anniversary coming up!

So far, the digital Basketball Collection includes more than 600 photographs and documents, dating from 1917 through 1979, that relate to basketball at St. Thomas College and the University of Scranton. The collection includes team and player photographs, game programs, rosters, and selected newspaper clippings. Most of the material is from the 1920s-1950s, but we’ll be adding content from more recent years as we’re able to digitize it. Don’t forget, of course, that the original photographs and documents are available in the Library’s University Archives and can be viewed by appointment.

We hope that the collection will interest our alumni as well as our current students, faculty, staff, and friends.  Please let us know at digitalcollections@scranton.edu if you have questions or suggestions for us — or if you recognize one of our unidentified photographs! If you like what you see, make sure you take a second to browse through our other digital collections.

Archiving the University Web

archive-it

Thanks to combined support from the University of Scranton’s Academic Affairs and Planning and Information Resources divisions, the Weinberg Memorial Library has partnered with Archive-It (a subscription service from nonprofit Internet Archive) to capture and preserve University-related websites for the enduring future.

Part of the Weinberg Memorial Library’s mission is to “preserve and promote the history of the University,” and our University Archives has long collected and preserved photographs, documents, and other records from the past.

Increasingly, though, our students, faculty, and staff communicate using dynamic digital media instead of paper or film. For example, the University’s undergraduate catalog is no longer a print publication but a database, and instead of finding printed newsletters in our mailboxes, we get our weekly University news digitally via Royal News. And unfortunately, this kind of web content is surprisingly vulnerable to digital degradation and loss over the long term.

We could preserve a paper version of that dynamic information (say, by printing out Royal News each week) or take a PDF or image screenshot of it, but in doing so we’d lose its interactivity and searchability. Ideally, in the future we’ll want to be able to access archived web content the same way we access it now — that is, by browsing and searching.

That’s where web archiving comes in. Archive-It’s web archiving service allows us to crawl and capture web pages in ways that preserve their dynamic and functional aspects – including active links and embedded media like images, videos, animations, and PDF documents.

We’re certainly not the first ones to recognize the importance of web archiving in higher education. 97 other colleges & universities have already signed on with Archive-It, including fellow Jesuit universities Georgetown, Creighton, and Marquette, and fellow Pennsylvania schools Penn State, Drexel, and Bucknell. Several universities have created web archives that document important topics or events, like the American University in Cairo’s January 25th Revolution project or the University of Virginia’s collection of web and social media content relating to the resignation and reinstatement of President Teresa Sullivan.

Here at the Weinberg we plan to focus our early web archiving efforts on our own University web content (like our main website and our athletics site) and the University-related social media sites (like our YouTube channel and many Facebook pages) where our community shares its stories. Over time, as we develop expertise (and hopefully secure recurring funding!), we’ll work with faculty to identify and explore the possibility of collecting external websites relevant to current and future scholarship at the University of Scranton.

Our first step, though, is to seek input from our campus community regarding what is most important to preserve for the future. We invite members of the University community to send us questions, concerns, or suggestions. Take a peek at our first experimental crawls, and let us know if you’d like to be involved in web archiving at the University of Scranton!
uofswebsite-Aug2000

Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has some snapshots of the University website dating back to 1998. With Archive-It, we can periodically and systematically capture and preserve the entire University website – and any other related web content our community needs.

The Proud Art of Beautiful Writing: Limited Edition Moleskine® Notebooks

This holiday season, the Weinberg Memorial Library is selling a new line of limited edition Moleskine® notebooks, inspired by the calligraphic and ornamental masterworks preserved in the Library’s Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection.

Featured on each notebook is “The Proud Art Shall Conquer,” a peacock flourish by master penman Fielding Schofield (1845-1924). Schofield’s work references the motto of 19th century professional penmanship journal The Teacher of Penmanship:

“The Proud Art of Beautiful Writing Shall Conquer the Hearts of All Men.” 

On campus, the notebooks are available for purchase at the Weinberg Memorial Library‘s 1st floor Circulation desk for the price of $20.00 per set (cash or check). Off campus, the notebooks are available for order at $20.00 per set plus shipping and handling. You can either fill out and send in one of our order forms (to pay by check) or contact our Special Collections library at 570-941-7002 to put in a credit card order.

All proceeds benefit the care, preservation, and digitization of the Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection.

These Moleskine® Large Cahier notebooks are 5″ x 8.25″ with 80 acid-free pages and are packaged in sets of two — one in black with ruled paper, and one in craft with blank paper.  Graphic artist April Francia, a University of Scranton sophomore double majoring in Political Science and Philosophy, created the notebook covers and decorative paper bands (as well as the Zaner-Bloser Collection logo) by manipulating digitized images of ornamental penmanship in Adobe Illustrator.

(Updated November 15, 2012 with off-campus ordering information)

Library 20th Anniversary Celebration Video

This past Saturday, the Friends of the Weinberg Memorial Library honored award winning poet, biographer, fiction writer and educator Jay Parini, Ph.D., with the 2012 Royden B. Davis, S.J., Distinguished Author Award. We also kicked off the Library’s 20th anniversary celebration with another honored guest, American Library Association President Maureen Sullivan.

The evening was a wonderful success, and we’re so grateful to our event sponsors, the event planning committee, all of our Friends, and the many Library and University faculty and staff members who have contributed to our 20th Anniversary festivities.

The celebration is far from over, though – check out our calendar of events and join us for lectures, conversations, and our first ever wine-tasting fundraiser!

Vendor Day

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Vendor Day, a set on Flickr.

As part of the Weinberg Memorial Library’s 20th Anniversary Celebration, several of our vendors visited to share information and new services with the students, staff and faculty. We also raffled prizes provided by our vendors.

Technology on Your Own Terms – Fall 2012 Workshops

On behalf of the Weinberg Memorial Library and the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, we invite University of Scranton faculty and staff to our Fall 2012 Technology On Your Own Terms (TOYOT) workshops. Here’s what we’ve got planned for this semester:

Digital Photography: Part 1
Thomas Leong (CTLE Math Specialist) &
Brian Snapp (Associate Director of CTLE, Instructional Designer)
Tuesday, October 16, 2012 – 12PM-1PM in WML305

How serious are you about your digital photography? Which device or camera fits your needs?
Brian Snapp and Tom Leong from the CTLE will provide an overview to help you make these decisions. In this workshop there will be a short review of current digital devices and common uses; best practices for taking digital pictures including subject, lighting, composition and shutter speed; and creative uses in digital photography. A light lunch will be provided.

Digital Photography: Part 2
Sheli McHugh (Cataloging and Metadata Librarian)
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 – 12PM-1PM in WML305

Traditional photo-sharing sites, like Flickr and Picassa, have been studied in previous Technology on Your Own Terms sessions. In this session, we will explore the next generation of digital photo sharing with apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic; the photo blogging site Tumblr; and the virtual/visual bulletin board, Pinterest. Sheli McHugh, Cataloging and Metadata Librarian, will provide an overview and introduction to these sites, while demonstrating their various features and functions. A light lunch will be provided.

Both sessions are open to all University faculty and staff, but seats are limited, so please let us know you are coming You can register at www.scranton.edu/ctleregistration – under Technology on Your Own Terms.

Pinterest, Posterity, and the 125-Year History of the University of Scranton

 

This summer, we’ve been experimenting with new ways of displaying and sharing all of the interesting items from the University Archives that we’ve uploaded into our digital collections. With the University’s 125th anniversary coming up next year, we’re especially looking for fun ways to share our campus history with University of Scranton students, alumni, and friends.

The Library’s Digital Services department has been putting together Pinterest boards to highlight some of our favorite photographs – and even our favorite Aquinas headlines – from the last 125 years. We’re still experimenting, so check out our pins and let us know what you think!

Follow Me on Pinterest