The International Film Series Presents: Illegal

Photo courtesy of Film Movement.
Photo courtesy of Film Movement.

 

Please join us on Friday March 11, 2016 at 7 p.m. in Room 305 of the Weinberg Memorial Library for a free presentation of the Belgian drama “Illegal.”

Film Movement describes the film as the story of Tania a former teacher from Russia, living illegally in Belgium with her son, Ivan. One day she is stopped for a routine check by the police and is arrested. Separated from Ivan, who manages to escape, she is placed in an immigration detention center for women and children. While utterly refusing to face expulsion, Tania begins a fight to preserve her dignity, identity and humanity, as well as find her son.

Directed by Olivier Masset-Depasse, “Illegal” is in French and Russian with English subtitles. Dr. Marzia Caporale will lead a discussion following the film.

This event is open to faculty, staff, students, and the public. Please email sharon.finnerty@scranton.edu for more information.

Wednesday, April 8th ~ 2nd Annual Jay Nathan, Ph.D. Lecture

Please register at: www.regonline.com/2015JayNathanLecture

Free & Open to the Public

At the conclusion of the Panel Discussion, artists from Mongolia will perform traditional music and dance. Reception to follow. Reservations encouraged.

The Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series

The Jay Nathan, Ph.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture Series invites international scholars from economically challenged and politically suppressed nations to visit the University of Scranton to address issues that will enlighten and benefit students, faculty and the community-at-large. Its purpose is to enrich the intellectual life or share a cultural exposition in the arts or music for both The University of Scranton and our Northeastern Pennsylvania community. This annual lecture initiative will highlight the research and contributions of guest scholars of international repute who will visit the University to discuss timely and timeless subjects. While visiting campus, scholars will deliver presentations on topics of interest to the academic community and meet informally with attendees, students and faculty.

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Drone Days of Summer: Flying High at the Library with Access Aerial

One of our goals here at the Weinberg Memorial Library is to encourage thoughtful exploration of new technologies – we see experimentation as an important part of thinking and learning. Also, sometimes we just like to play with cool new toys. For both reasons, we were delighted to receive a visit earlier this summer from local drone photography team Access Aerial, who gave us the Library’s very first drone flyover along with a demonstration of their equipment.

We’ll confess – we had an in! Access Aerial’s two pilots, Lee DeAngelis and John Culkin, are also staff members in the University of Scranton’s Information Resources division. In their day jobs as Senior Systems Administrators, Lee and John help us keep the Library’s infrastructure running smoothly. Off hours, though, they’re out flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) over community events, giving us a new perspective on our local landscape. Back in June, Lee used his drone to capture aerial footage of the Scranton Cooperage fire, demonstrating the potential value of drones in local journalism (and even getting a mention in Fortune). In July, Access Aerial photographed the construction of the brand new library at nearby Marywood University (we’ll admit that a tiny bit of librarian jealousy may have prompted us to set up our own appointment).

At the end of August, Lee and John brought over one of their Phantom drones for a demonstration at the Library. Their Information Resources coworker Ray Frey, also a UAV enthusiast, brought his own homemade drone along for the fun.

The PhantomDrone Flyover with Access AerialIMG_4291RayFlying down the Commons IMG_4282

The results were phenomenal: a beautiful video of our Library and campus and gorgeous drone’s-eye-view photographs.

Monroe Ave side   Commons sideCampusDCIM100MEDIA

As an added bonus, Lee and John came back to see us a few days later to do a “fly through” promotional video for our new Reilly Learning Commons!

We may have cheated a *tiny* bit. Shhh!

Reilly Learning Commons fly-in    Reilly Learning Commons fly-in

Overall, the experience has left us feeling quite majestic. From all of us here at the Weinberg Memorial Library, huge thanks to Access Aerial! We can’t wait to see what you’ll photograph next.

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P.S. Feel like you missed out on the fun? Lee and John will be bringing a drone back to the Library on November 13, 2014 at 12pm for “Everything You Wanted To Know About Drones, But Were Afraid to Ask!” They’ll be giving a presentation and demonstration (weather permitting) as part of the Library’s Technology On Your Own Terms workshop series. Faculty and staff can sign up at www.scranton.edu/ctleregistration.

 

Break a Leg, Players!

It’s opening night for the University of Scranton Players’ production of the musical She Loves Me, with the Weinberg Memorial Library’s own David Hunisch performing the role of Ladislav Sipos and Ian O’Hara playing in the pit.

To the entire cast and crew, from your friends and fans at the Library: break a leg!

Open Access Week is October 21 – 27

oa week

Today marks the beginning of International Open Access Week, a celebration of access to scholarship. Open Access is a movement in scholarly publishing which endeavors to sidestep or bypass the traditional barriers that block people from accessing scholarship. The most common barrier is the cost of subscription journals which are usually too expensive for individuals to own and have increasingly become a burden on academic libraries as well. Generally speaking, academic libraries and librarians consider open access to be a worthwhile or virtuous endeavor, because librarians are the people most aware of the ever increasing costs of scholarly journals. Librarians have long realized that under the current scholarly publishing model, libraries will not be able to sustain the journal collections that scholars need.

Open Access comes in a few different forms, but the common characteristic that unites all types of Open Access is that scholarship is accessible. That is to say, scholarship is not written in laymen’s terms or overly simplified, but rather articles that are made to be Open Access or articles published in Open Access journals are freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Open Access is more equitable, allowing all individuals to have the same access to the scholarship traditionally only accessible by those with the financial means to purchase multiple expensive subscriptions.

Since its inception, Open Access publishing has continuously been under attack. Some individuals do not recognize the value of Open Access publishing and tend to discriminate against publications in open access journals. Though this seemed to have been on a decline with Universities such as Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and UPenn signing open access mandates supporting scholars who publish in open access venues (http://roarmap.eprints.org/). However, the debate seems to be on the rise again with the rise of predatory open access journals. These journals seek out scholars encouraging them to submit materials to their “peer reviewed” journal, accept the articles without undergoing peer review, and then charge the author a publication fee (the-scientist). These journals are simply exploitative of the open access movement and do not truly represent the vast, high quality scholarship that is being published in legitimate open access journals.

Recently, a sting on “open access” journals published in SCIENCE has given the anti-open access cause some ammunition (sciencemag). However, the study is not without considerable backlash from open access proponents who have noted, among other things, that the sting was selective about which journals the author chose to submit and the tone of the article was misleading about open access in general (blogs.law.harvard; Peter Suber’s plus.google.comscholarlykitchen).  It is also worth noting that the source of the “open access sting” article (SCIENCE), is the same subscription based peer reviewed publication that published a fake article in the past. This is of course a similar peer review indiscretion that the sting article sought to illuminate (michaeleisen).

Predatory Open Access journals are a real concern to the advancement of open access publishing, but there are resources for determining which journals are legitimate peer review and which are predatory. The Directory of Open Access Journals is an index of Open Access Journals. Currently, the Directory is undergoing a reevaluation to assure open access journals found in the directory are all legitimate peer reviewed journals (doaj). In addition, Beall’s list of predatory Open Access Journals lists journals and publishers that the blog’s author, a scholarly initiatives librarian at the University of Colorado Denver, deems to be predatory in nature (scholarlyoa). However, it is important to note that the Directory of Open Access Journals was found to have a few predatory open access journals in its index, this is primarily the reason it is currently undergoing internal evaluation, and Beall’s list was found to list journals that deny publication to articles based on recommendations from peer reviewers.   The best safety measure is to ask colleagues their thoughts about specific journals, research the journal and the articles that it has published, and consult a librarian for their recommendation.

It is true, there are open access journals which do not have high peer review standards and seek to exploit the movement. However, the same can be said for subscription journals as well. In and of itself, Open Access does not make a journal low quality. Though Open Access has a long road ahead of it, it is only going to grow from here. The ideals of Open Access are important to scholarship and will continue to rise as more scholars become aware of the goals of Open Access and become attuned to picking out predatory open access journals. This will take a considerable amount of time to fight the misconceptions that surround Open Access publishing (theguardian).

In closing, there is a reason libraries support the Open Access movement, it is because it is for the advancement of knowledge and it is for equality. For example, there have been position statements by the Canadian Library Association (cla), the Association of Research Libraries (arl), the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a coalition of more than 800 libraries (sparc), and the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association (ala).

For more information on the specifics of Open Access please see the University’s research guide on Open Access (http://guides.library.scranton.edu/openaccess).

Call for Artists

squirrel

 

The library will be hosting the 3rd Annual Environmental Art Show during the University’s Earth Week Celebration (April 18-25). The purpose of the Art Show is to showcase the artistic talents of our students, staff, and faculty while promoting sustainability and the environment.

As always the Art Show is comprised solely of University of Scranton student, staff, and faculty submissions, so the success of the show relies on the number of submissions we receive. All types of artwork are accepted for display in the Art Show, but they must be your own creation, and they must be environmentally themed. Our definition of “environmentally themed” is understood very liberally and includes: nature scenes, animals, environmental degradation, sustainability messages, recycled goods, and so on.

Please consider submitting to the show before April 12 and attending the Art Show’s Reception on Monday April 22 from 5-7 pm. All submissions will be returned to the artists before the end of the Spring semester.

Earth Week 2011 Wrap-up and Green Team First Year in Review

This year marked the second year the library celebrated Earth Week in order to raise awareness about sustainable issues…

Even though I’m happy to report our structural engineering skills have improved from 2010; unfortunately, our sustainable use of paper did not. However, the increase paper usage is likely because all computer labs on campus have eliminated student printing. Considering almost all students (excluding personal printers) were sent to the library to do their printing, its probably safe to say our “paper awareness” and educational outreach efforts  throughout the year had probably payed off.

The good news is that immediately after Earth Week we installed double sided printers throughout the building. Part of the credit for double sided printers should be given to the anonymous student who wrote on our 2010 Earth Week student suggestion page which asked “How should the library Go Green in 2010?”

For Earth Week 2012 we fully expect the paper tower to be a fraction of the size of it’s ancestors thanks to a combination of duplex printing and outreach by the Green Team.

The “wasted paper” display is a tough comparison for a number of reasons. In 2010, we didn’t have the clearly labeled WedgeCycle recycling bins throughout the building and by and large most people weren’t sorting their recyclables. So, paper that otherwise might have ended up in a trash last year is now being properly placed in a paper recycling bin this year. Also, this year we did 10 days worth of recycling whereas last year we did 7 days.

Speaking qualitatively, it would seem that this years “wasted paper” display was an improvement over last years. It was approximately the same amount of paper, but there was no trash mixed in with the paper.

Curbing the amount of wasted paper, unnecessarily duplicated prints, and print jobs left at the printers is definitely a priority for the Green Team.

New for 2011, we had a Craft Night where students, staff, and faculty had a chance to come to the library to make Origami figures out of reused book covers. Pictured above is a display of some of our masterpieces.

This year we hosted our first ever Environmental Art Show as an alternative way to educate about sustainable issues and to reach out to the community. Considering this was our first time hosting an Art Show, we think it turned out pretty good. We are looking forward to see what Environmentally themed art our Students, Staff, and Faculty will have prepared for next years Environmental Art Show! Click the following link for more pictures from the Reception for the Environmental Art Show.

In this poster we displayed all of the library Green Team’s many accomplishments. Some of which include the selling of Reusable Water bottles at the same price it cost us to make them, the installation of a Water Bottle Filling Station, the installation of double-sided printers, tri-colored recycling bins, the adoption of a section of the LHVA’s Heritage trail, collaborating with the Communications department to make Sustainability PSAs which air on our TVs, and collaborating with students for their poster board session at the University’s Sustainability Fair.

The Green Team knows it has a lot of work to do if we are going to to accomplish as much as we did in our first year, but we welcome the challenge!

Saving our World with Social Awareness

From Left to Right: Allison Maury, Kelly Williams, and Jenna Caserta. (Missing from the photo Brianne Gallagher).

A group of students from Dr. Jessica Nolan’s Social Psychology class stand next to their informational poster. The poster was presented at the University’s Earth Day Fair and the group spread awareness about living sustainably. In particular, the girls concentrated on the use of disposable water bottles and the benefits of purchasing a reusable water bottle.

The students collaborated with the Library’s Green Team and used the “Save Our World” BPA-Free reusable bottles as an example of what can be done to reduce the use of disposable water bottles.

The Library Green Team thanks these students and Dr. Nolan for all their hard work!

Environmental Art Show Reception

The Reception for the Environmental Art Show will be held tonight (Monday April 18) from 7 to 9pm. Please come by the Heritage Room (5th floor of the library) for a chance to meet and greet the artists. The Reception is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served at this event.