You can now charge your laptop or other electronic device by using the new outlets on the tables in the Reference Area of the Library. No more tripping over cords or dealing with worn down batteries. There is also a charging station near the Reference Desk where you can plug-in your iPad, laptop or phone.
Need a break from Studying? Join the Fun at Library Game Night!
The Library will be hosting a Game Night November 7, 2011 8PM-11PM. There will be plenty of fun games to play including Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros, Rockband, Wii Fit and more! Refreshments and snacks will be served. There will also be a chance to win an Amazon Gift Card! So come take a break from studying and join the fun!
New Associate Director for the Center & Teaching Learning Excellence (CTLE) Begins on Nov. 15.
I am very pleased to announce that the search for CTLE Associate Director – Instructional Curriculum Designer has ended with the successful selection of Mr. Brian Snapp. Brian has been at Lehigh Carbon Community College since 2007 as instructional technologist. In that position, Brian has collaborated with faculty to design and develop new and updated online courses. He also has provided individualized instruction and mentoring of faculty for the pedagogically-driven integration of technology into teaching. Brian holds an M.S. in Instructional Technology from Bloomsburg University and a B.S. in Telecommunications/Networking form Rochester Institute of Technology. Brian will start on November 15, 2011. Please join me in welcoming him to campus.
Thank you,
Eugeniu Grigorescu
CTLE Director
Schemel Forum 10/25 Change of Topic & Presenter
Dr. Annie Cohen-Solal is unable to join us on the 25th. Instead the following lecture will take its place:
Museums as Civic Architecture: A Global Perspective
Museums are proliferating world-wide. As foreign architects design for sites in the US and American firms design for institutions overseas, museum architecture now exhibits a broad range of formal composition and aesthetic sensibility. Regardless of their programmatic or economic objectives, contemporary museums range from the harmonious and reposeful, e.g. Tadao Ando’s Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth to the visually discordant, e.g. Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin, to the iconic, e.g. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
This illustrated presentation will explore these differences and their implications for the creation of a global civic architecture.
Gregory Keane Hunt, Dean of the School of Architecture, Marywood University, formerly Dean of the School of Architecture, Catholic University
Collegiate Hall at Redington
LUNCHEON FEES:
$20 per luncheon per person
$30 per luncheon per couple
$90 per series of 5 per person
$140 per series of 5 per couple
*Free to Schemel Forum Members
To register contact: fetskok2@scranton.edu
New Assistant Dean of the Library Joins us on Jan. 2nd.
I am very pleased to announce that the search for Assistant Dean has concluded with the successful recruitment of Jean Lenville. Jean has been at Harvard College Library since 2001, most recently working on a special project to combine JSTOR holdings from the 12 Harvard Libraries for a single copy retention. At Harvard, she also served as Head of Acquisitions for E-Resources, Serials and Government Documents and as Head of Serials Services. Prior to working at Harvard, Jean held positions of progressive responsibility at the University of Richmond in Virginia–from Serials Librarian to acting head of Technical Services to Head of Bibliographic Access. She holds and MLS form Simmons College and a B.S. in Speech from Emerson College. Please join the Library staff in welcoming Jean to campus.
Exhibit Program: “The Genre and Its Place in the History of American Music”
Ricky Ritzel, internationally renowned raconteur and cabaret artist, will tell tales of “The Genre and its Place in the History of American Music” from his perch at the keyboard. His focus will be on the songwriters featured in the library’s current exhibit, “A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs, 1910-1965.”
Tuesday, October 11, 6-7:30 P.M.
Heritage Room– 5th floor of the library
The event is free and open to the public.
Visit Current Exhibits at the Library to find out more.
To RSVP and for further information, contact Michael Knies at 570-941-6341 or kniesm2@scranton.edu
“A Fine Romance” is visiting 55 sites throughout the U.S. in 2011-2012. It was curated by David Lehman and developed by Nextbook, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Jewish literature, culture, and ideas, and the American Library Association Public Programs Office. The national tour of the exhibit has been made possible by the Charles H. Revson Foundation, the Righteous Persons Foundation, the David Berg Foundation, an anonymous donor, and Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life. A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs is also a book by David Lehman, published by Nextbook/Schocken.
The Library’s Fall Newsletter is now available online
The Library’s fall edition of Information Update is now available online. Take a moment to read about our Library’s services and events. You will not be disappointed!
Changing Channels: The Next Generation of Television
It’s just about time to kick off another year of Technology on Your Own Terms, a series of workshops presented by the Weinberg Memorial Library and the Center for Teaching & Learning Excellence.
On Tuesday, October 18 from 12pm-1pm, Jason Oakey from the Office of Instructional Technology will present on Changing Channels: The Next Generation of Television. In this workshop, we’ll look at new options in home entertainment and media, from HDTV and BluRay to streaming video. We’ll talk about what consumers should look for when purchasing new television screens and introduce new streaming services like Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Apple TV.
All faculty and staff members are welcome, but seats are limited, so if you’d like to come please register at www.scranton.edu/ctleregistration (under Technology On Your Own Terms). We’ll meet in WML305, and a light lunch will be provided. See you there!
Princeton, Open Access, and the Evolution of Scholarly Communication
Yesterday, the faculty of Princeton University unanimously voted to adopt a new policy for scholarly publications (PDF). In support of open access, the policy prohibits faculty members from signing away exclusive rights to publishing companies. Instead, the policy assigns to the University a nonexclusive right to copy and provide access to faculty publications. The policy only covers journal and conference articles (not unpublished works, books, or other scholarly works), and faculty members can request that this policy be waived for articles, on a case-by-case basis. With this vote, Princeton joins a growing coalition of higher education institutions that have enacted open access policies.
What does this mean for the Weinberg Memorial Library? This increasing support for and interest in open access has a lot of important implications for academic libraries. Princeton’s new policy (and the media attention it’s getting) may be a harbinger of major change in the world of scholarly communication. As Karin Trainer, university librarian at Princeton, noted to the Chronicle:
“Both the library and members of the faculty, principally in the sciences, have been thinking for some time that we would like to take a concrete step toward making the publications of our extraordinary faculty freely available to a much larger audience and not restricted to those who can afford to pay journal subscription fees.”
We, too, have high hopes that movement towards open access will make scholarly works more accessible and more affordable for our University community. So tomorrow at our Library Advisory Committee meeting, we’ll be starting a conversation about open access with our faculty members to hear their questions, concerns, and suggestions.
Princeton’s report also points out another significant implication for libraries:
“Although it makes sense to adopt such a policy even if the University does not establish an open-access repository of its own, we believe that the University and its faculty will benefit most from this policy if it does establish such a repository… An open-access policy without a ready means for faculty to post their scholarly articles and an equally ready means of retrieval would be of very limited value.”
In some fields, well-integrated open access repositories already exist – like arXiv.org for physics, math, and computer science. But in other disciplines, especially the humanities, these types of repositories are unusual. So universities all over the country have started to create their own institutional repositories to host the scholarly works of their faculty and students, and academic librarians with expertise in information organization and preservation have stepped up to create, manage, and maintain them. Here at the Weinberg, we’ve been thinking about an institutional repository over the past few years – but when we asked our faculty about it, we didn’t hear much demand for that kind of service. Now, after Princeton’s announcement, it seems like a good time to ask again.
To join in our campus conversation about open access, post a comment here or talk with a UofS librarian. We hope to hear feedback from our students, faculty, and community.
Open Access resources:
- Open Access Overview (by Peter Suber, a leading open access advocate)
- Hot Topics: Open Access (from the University of California-Berkeley Library)
- Campus Open Access Policies (guidelines from SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition)
- Repository Resources (also from SPARC)
- Institutional Repositories (articles, papers, and guides from EDUCAUSE)
- OA Librarian (open access resources and news)
- Open Access Week (coming up on October 24!)
- Directory of Open Access Journals
Free Tickets to Pages & Places!
Scranton’s annual Pages and Places Book Festival is coming up next Saturday, October 1st. It’s a wonderful day of interesting events, held all over downtown Scranton.
To encourage our students to attend the festival, this year the Weinberg Memorial Library is giving away 60 free all-access passes (which ordinarily cost $75!). If you’re a University of Scranton student, just ask for a ticket at our 1st floor circulation desk. You can also pick up a second ticket for a student friend. The passes will be given out first come, first served, so make sure you stop by the Library soon to get yours!
Many thanks to the University’s Office of Community Relations for sponsoring the tickets and for helping our students explore their adopted city.