Library 2.0: the new UB library

It’s a home, a university square where students and faculty will work together. It’s designed to inspire both individual research and collaboration. Kyle Fierstien

The library is certainly home to us! With only a week before the highly anticipated move begins, we're packing, marking boxes, inventorying, and taking count of the lasts for Langsdale.

The last Final Finish.
The last birthday party celebration.
The last student appreciation event.
The last learning and success workshop.
The last Coffee Break.

What will the new UB library look like? Well, we're not sure--and that's kind of the point.

Learn more about the new library, its flexible space, and what we hope will be the new heart of the university at the Library 2.0 blog.

Apply to Inspired Discoveries: Undergrad Symposium of Research & Creative Works

Apply now to present at the 9th annual Inspired Discoveries, a symposium of undergraduate research and creative works! One of Langsdale Library's missions is to recognize, encourage, and celebrate research and academic achievements.

Take this opportunity to share your hard work with the University of Baltimore community! Projects may include individual or collaborative research as well as creative works like video games or design projects. Presentations can take the form of

• Poster sessions
• Exhibits
• Panel presentations
• Presented papers

The best project in both areas will receive a $500 scholarship and their work will be submitted to UB's institutional repository.

Student applications are due by Friday, April 6th and must be accompanied by a faculty letter of recommendation. The event will be held on Friday, April 27th in the Learning Commons Town Hall.

Access the application and more information at the Inspired Discoveries website at http://langsdale.ubalt.edu/inspired-discoveries.

JHU Students Explore Langsdale's Special Collections on Baltimore 'Gayborhoods'

Langsdale’s Special Collections was recently featured in Johns Hopkins University HUB after their students took great advantage of the wealth of resources at home in UB’s Learning Commons: “Students sift through archives to uncover the history of Baltimore’s ‘gayborhoods’”.

Johns Hopkins students of the Intersession course “Gayborhood” Histories visited Langsdale’s archives to learn both the history of Baltimore’s “gayborhoods” and to learn how to work with archival resources.

Special Collections is the home to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland’s archives. The GLCCB is committed to “uniting and empowering sexual and gender minorities in Baltimore and Central Maryland and advocating for a better quality of life the entire community” (GLCCB). The center recently celebrated its 35^th anniversary and is working with MICA on their LGBTQIA History Project.

This is the second time the course has been taught by JHU doctoral student Mo Speller. The class incorporates a breadth of unique experiences to expose students to the history of Baltimore’s gay community. These experiences include neighborhood tours, readings, short reflections, and an explorative group project.

Request an appointment with Special Collections today to explore the archives and learn about Baltimore’s ‘gayborhoods.’

RED Talks: Research Engagement Day

RED Talks, Research Engagement Day, is next Tuesday and Langsdale can't wait to celebrate the research and creative works of UB's faculty and graduate students!

RED Talks is an opportunity for faculty and graduate students to share their research with the UB Community through highly-focused 5 minute presentations. The program is now available online so you can learn more about their presentations and pick and choose which you want to attend.

We encourage you to stay for all!

Free Workshops for UB Students

Langsdale is gearing up for the Spring 2018 semester with FREE workshops for UB students! Langsdale's Achievement & Learning Center (ALC) offers around 200 workshops for the UB community every year. Whether you're looking for course preparation (happening now!), computer skills, or writing and communication--the ALC has it!


The full workshop selection is available online and all of Langsdale's events can be found here.

Spend your study break with Langsdale this semester!

Final Finish Strong

Final Finish Strong

                  Do you find yourself looking for a place to study late night on campus to get ready for finals?  Are you looking for a one stop shop where you can get academic support?  If you answered yes to either of these then Final Finish is the event for you!  Don’t be a procrastinator this semester, come to this event and let it be the jumpstart you need to start your finals preparation. 

            On Wednesday, November 29^th Langsdale Library will stay open until 1:00am for the Final Finish event.  There will be writing consultants, tutors in many disciplines, academic coaches, and librarians to provide you with academic support as you prepare for your finals or final projects.  The event starts at 6:00pm which is when you can start dropping by to see any of the services listed above.   Writing consultants will be able to help you with all of your writing needs such as brainstorming, reviewing various drafts, help with structure, organization, punctuation, grammar, style, etc.  Be sure to bring any papers or outlines that you may need help with.  Tutors will be able to help you with content specific questions regarding your classes.  Be sure to bring your notes, textbooks, and any other class resources so that your tutor can best help you.  Academic coaches will be able to help you with time management techniques, studying strategies, setting goals, getting organized, etc.  Coaches can help you set your final exam and project study schedule so you will most likely to succeed.  The librarians will be able to assist you with your research needs.  They are knowledgeable about the databases and other resources available to UB students.

            If you are planning to attend this event it would be helpful to start thinking about what it is that you are trying to achieve with each service.  The more specific your questions are to the various service the better help you will receive, so help the consultants, tutors, coaches, and librarians help you by preparing before the event.  We hope to see you there!

                 

Langsdale is Back

Langsdale Library is back in business! We hope you're well rested from the holidays and ready to get back to work with us. Our hours for the Winterim are below:

We'll be closed this Thursday and upcoming Monday, but we can't wait for the semester to kick in full-swing. To get you ready for your spring semester, Achievement & Learning Services (ALS) are running course preparation workshops for Math, Statistics, and Adobe Creative Suite. You can check out the details on the Langsdale website.

Also, consider signing up for a single session or recurring visits with an Academic Coach at ALS. They can help set you up for success with organization, time management, study skills, focus, and more!

Langsdale Holiday Hours

Here are Langsdale's holiday hours to help you plan your study schedule this week. We'll be back in full swing on Monday. Have a great holiday!

Baltimore Poetry Library comes to Langsdale

In the Winter of 2015, the University of Baltimore’s Klein Family School of Design became the new home of the Baltimore Poetry Library, the largest independent collection of poetry in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

In an effort to expedite campus-wide transparency, Langsdale Library recently partnered with the Baltimore Poetry Library to catalog the impressive collection consisting of thousands of volumes of poetry. 

Cataloging the collection will provide a proper accounting of what is in the collection, identify unique titles not yet available at Langsdale, and it will allow it to be searched online. The purpose of which will allow the collection to be accessible to the UB community and wider Baltimore community interested in special collections and poetry titles.

This process is currently underway, with approximately 10% of the titles cataloged. Due to the large and comprehensive nature of the collection, it is estimated that the project will be completed within a year and a half. That is a lot of poetry. The searchable WorldCat List of current titles and their contents can be found here.

Currently, a sampling of the Baltimore Poetry Library is on display in Langsdale Library. An assortment of handmade books, zines, and broadsides serve as examples of the broad definitions that “book,” and “poetry” can take. While some pieces are Xeroxed and glued together, there are also perfect bound collections from local and regionally diverse small presses.

 

Read the press release to get a better sense of what the collection includes and its broader purpose. To access the collection, contact Lyndsay Bates (LAP 107, lbates@ubalt.edu, 410.837.6038). It is located in UB’s Liberal Arts and Policy building, room 303.

Check us out... online

Did you know that we have more than just books? Many still believe that libraries only have books. Yes, even today in our wondrous world of technology people still think this is true. In fact, we have over 35,000 full-text journals available through our library in electronic form that is convenient, searchable and much easier to work with in your research. The American Library Association is also trying to raise awareness with their recent posting of The E’s of Libraries.

Come in and check it out for yourselves! We have over 90 computers on our 4^th floor. including 10 iMac’s, and a gaming room with PCs and iMacs. We also have laptops and iPads that you can check out and use inside the library.

Are you required to do a presentation? Do you want to practice beforehand? We can also help with that. There are 2 presentation rooms that are specially set up for this purpose. Walk-ins are welcome on a first come–first serve basis if the room is available, and students in select professor-approved classes can reserve these rooms online for up to four hours per day. See our practice room reservations page for more information.

And, if you need help with that research paper you’ve been postponing until the last possible moment, our reference librarians are always happy to help.

Check out our hours and then come check us out!

Happy Birthday, "Pink Flamingos"

From the University of Baltimore's 1972 yearbook, page 11

Exactly 42 years ago today, John Waters's feature film, Pink Flamingos, premiered at the Langsdale Library auditorium. The event was sponsored by the 3rd annual Baltimore Film Festival. The following is from an article from the University of Baltimore's Student Press dated March 15, 1972:

"The film festival was originally called the Maryland Film Festival when it was started by Hopkins, Goucher, and the Maryland Institute. The University of Baltimore took it over in 1970 and renamed and expanded the festival under Harvey Alexander of the English department, coordinator for the project." 

According to Harvey Alexander's obituary in The Baltimore Sun, November 30, 2012, the Baltimore Film Festival and the premiere of Pink Flamingos took place at Stephens Hall at Towson University in 1972. However, it is worth noting that The Sun is far from infallible and there are several articles from The Baltimore Sun dating from March 12 and March 26, 1972, that name the University of Baltimore as the host of this historic event (Proquest Historical Newspaper Database).

Langsdale Library auditorium, circa 1970s

Student Press articles (high quality copies on Flickr)

President Bogomolny on WYPR's Humanities Connection

On the drive home tonight, I listened to a compelling argument for a broad liberal arts education from UB's President, Bob Bogomolny. He acknowledged that the world today is changing at such a rate that students must prepare for not one career but a lifetime of multiple careers. No one can predict today what the critical jobs will be in 2040 any more than anyone could predict today's positions in web development and social media as little as 20 years ago.

President Bogomolny articulately argued the importance of the humanities in education and the value of critical thinking and problem solving across the curriculum. Listen to his full essay on WYPR or learn more about the series, Humanities Connection at the Maryland Humanities Council.

Welcome to A Few New Faces!

This summer Langsdale is fortunate to be joined by two budding librarians, Lindsay and Rachel. You may have seen their faces at the reference desk over the last few weeks or months. Now is your chance to learn a little bit more about them and what they’re doing here:

Lindsay has a master’s degree in library science from the University of Maryland. She has been loving her time at Langsdale and appreciates the variety of questions students ask at the reference desk because she gets to learn something new every shift. Lindsay currently works full-time at another career and we’re lucky to have her one night a week. She hopes to transition into the library field and wants to continue working with students in higher education or high school. When Lindsay is not at Langsdale or working at her other career she stays very busy. She plays rugby for the Chesapeake Women’s Rugby Football Club in Baltimore City. She has played for eleven years and been playing for the Chessie for more than five years. She finds that it’s a great community of athletes and a home away from home.  Please stop by and say, “Hi,” to Lindsay if you see her at the reference desk!

Rachel is dangerously close to receiving her master’s in library science from Drexel University. One of her final hurdles is completing her practicum at Langsdale, though we’re trying not to be too hard on her.  She has been enjoying her time at Langsdale thus far and has enjoyed meeting the students, library guests and librarians. Rachel is interested in librarianship because it allows her to support research, learning and curiosity. She loves research and trying to figure out how to make it easier and more effective. Her experience at Langsdale gives her the opportunity to apply what she has learned in school to the “real world.” When she leaves Langsdale, Rachel hopes to become a full-fledged librarian at a college or public library somewhere in the Baltimore area. If you see Rachel at the reference desk, please stop by and say, “Hi,” or ask her a challenging reference question!

Get to Know: Phil DeLoria

With such success last summer finding out information about the staff of Langsdale Library, we are bringing you four new faces from our library staff for you to "get to know."

This past winter, Phil DeLoria, the University Archivist in our Special Collections library, shared with the staff some of his bookbinding talents. Now we can share some of his art with our library users.

Q: We asked Phil about how his interest in bookbinding started. Here is his response:

I have always appreciated fine books, but while I was an undergraduate Classical Studies student, I had a job with the University of Michigan Papyrus Collection where I got to know the Senior Conservator, Leyla Lau-Lamb, who was also a bookbinder. She encouraged me in my interest, and directed me to a few books that outlined the process of bookbinding. The following year, I had an internship with Jim Craven, a master bookbinder with over 50 years of service to the University. Since, I have enjoyed binding books, journals, and sketchbooks for my personal use and for select acquaintances.

Congratulations UB Graduates!

In honor of commencement season, and more importantly, our own UB graduation ceremonies this week, take a peek at some performances of the traditional Graduation march "Pomp and Circumstance"


Congratulations Graduates. March on!

Assessment in Action at Langsdale

The University of Baltimore has been selected as one of 75 institutions to participate in the Association of College and Research Libraries’ (ACRL) program Assessment in Action: Academic Libraries and Student Success.  The schools selected to participate in the program represent all types of institutions of higher education and come from 29 states and 3 Canadian provinces. UB’s campus team, led by Langsdale librarians, will develop a project to assess the impact of the University's information literacy education on student success.  UB will be engaged in planning for, collecting and analyzing assessment data as part of this program for 14-months. 

Our campus team includes:

Catherine Johnson

Natalie Burclaff

Mike Kiel

John Goshert

Beverly Schneller

Paul Walsh

Learn more about the Assessment in Action program here: http://www.ala.org/acrl/AiA

UB Post Available Online

Langsdale Library’s Special Collections has been working in partnership with the UB Post staff and student workers to make a collection of back issues of the student newspaper kept in the university archives available online. Recent digital back issues and digitized versions of older issues are available from 1981 to the present day. Special Collections will continue to work on making older issues available on an ad hoc basis until the entire collection has been digitized. The oldest issue held in the university archives dates to 1933, so another 50 years of the paper have yet to be completed.

The collection should be of particular interest to UB alumni and former faculty, administrators, and staff. This resource is an excellent representation of the history of the university though the eyes of its students and a reflection of how the student body responds to contemporary issues. They are also a nice way to get a sense of how the campus and university traditions, like the block party, have developed over time.

Those who would like to volunteer to help with continued digitization should contact Philip Deloria, university archivist at pdeloria@ubalt.edu

By Philip Deloria

Annual Report 2012

Open publication - Free publishing - More 2012

Find out what Langsdale has been up to for the last year.

UB Faculty publish Baltimore '68

UB Faculty members Jessica I. Elfenbein, Thomas L. Hollowak and Elizabeth M. Nix recently published Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City.

This book offers chapters on events leading up to the turmoil, the riots, and the aftermath as well as four rigorously edited and annotated oral histories of members of the Baltimore community. The combination of new scholarship and first-person accounts provides a comprehensive case study of this period of civil unrest four decades later.

This engaging, broad-based public history lays bare the diverse experiences of 1968 and their effects, emphasizing the role of specific human actions. By reflecting on the stories and analysis presented in this anthology, readers may feel empowered to pursue informed, responsible civic action of their own.

Baltimore '68 is the book component of a larger public history project, "Baltimore '68 Riots: Riots and Rebirth." The project's companion website (http://archives.ubalt.edu/bsr/index.html) offers many more oral histories plus photos, art, and links to archival sources. The book and the website together make up an invaluable teaching resource on cities, social unrest, and racial politics in the 1960s. The project was the co-recipient of the 2009 Outstanding Public History Project Award from the National Council on Public History.

Open Access: What is it and why does it matter?

Attention students, faculty, staff, and administrators: Do you know about Open Access and how it relates to all of us in the UB community?

"Open access (OA) is a worldwide movement wherein full-text scholarly articles are completely free and unrestricted to all users to read, copy, download, and distribute over the World Wide Web."
(Western Carolina University's Glossary of Library Lingo)

Specific interest groups, including the scientific research community and academic librarians, have been grappling with OA issues for years. Increasingly, however, conversations about open access are occurring across departments and divisions on college and university campuses. All members of the UB community have a vested interest in being aware of the issues associated with access to scholarly publications, including faculty who publish in peer-reviewed journals to further scholarship in their fields and advance their careers, librarians who acquire and provide access to these publications in print or online, students who use these resources in the pursuit of education, and administrators who make policy and budgetary decisions.

For a quick and entertaining introduction to the OA movement, check out this video: Open Access Manifesto. Peter Suber, an Earlham College philosophy professor turned OA policy strategist, provides a more comprehensive overview.

Want to see some OA journals? The Directory of Open Access Journals will connect you to thousands of scholarly and scientific journals which are available in full-text for free. Browse the DOAJ's listings (currently 4570 journals!) by subject category.

Open access issues are currently making news headlines as a result of the Obama administration's interest in public access to taxpayer-funded research. The President's Office of Science and Technology Policy is currently hosting a Public Access Policy Forum on its blog, and the deadline for comments and responses from the public is extended through January 21st, 2010.

If you'd like to know more about the OA movement, you're in luck -- there's a wealth of information available through the web. Here are a few highlights:

The Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook
Are you a student? Administrator? Researcher? OASIS has customized information for each of these categories based on what type of user you are.

Open Access in 2009: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
This blog post by Richard Poynder is exactly what it sounds like -- a year-end review about all things OA.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
SPARC is a one-stop shop for news, articles, videos, and links about the effort "to correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system."

ACRL's Scholarly Communication Toolkit
The Association of College and Research Libraries created this toolkit as "an educational resource primarily directed to librarians," but it provides useful overviews of interrelated issues, including authors' rights, journal economics, open access archiving, and new models of publishing.