Beverage Break and Poster Session

This poster will review the data collected from a survey of Special Collections and Archives departments throughout the United States regarding the roles and responsibilities of undergraduate student employees. The survey was conducted in the spring of 2015 to better understand how undergraduate student employees were contributing to such departments and the profession. The data in this survey could help to identify a constituency of researchers and future professionals in the field: student employees. This information contributes to our understanding of ways to bring undergraduate student employees into Special Collections departments and provide them with not only work experience, but a better understanding of the importance and function of our profession. If we are able to look at the different roles and responsibilities that undergraduate student employees undertake, the special collections community could engage in conversations regarding the value of undergraduate student employees to work our reading room desk, process collections, and provide reference.

Presenter: Sarah M. Allison, New Mexico State University

How Textbooks of the Past are Opening Doors for the Students of Today

Students in Dr. Toke Knudsen’s upper-level Introduction to the History of Mathematics course have had the privilege and pleasure of visiting the Alden Room, home of Milne Library’s Special Collections and Archives, three to four times a semester to research the Early Textbook Collection. Spanning American textbooks from the late 1700s to the 1990s, this collection contains many textbooks originally used when the College began as the Oneonta Normal School. My collaboration with Dr. Knudsen (Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Statistics) for the last five years has resulted in variations on the assignment and has also evolved into independent studies as well. Ten independent studies projects have included research on Vera Sanford, revered mathematician, author, and former faculty member; digitizing and transcribing math notebooks from the early 1900s; and creating a comprehensive catalogue of the entire math collection in the Early Textbook Collection. The poster will include comments from students in the Intro class as well as photos of students perusing the collection. It will also highlight pictures of exhibits, scans of materials, snippets of the comprehensive catalogue, and other creations from the independent studies.

Presenter: Heather Beach, SUNY Oneonta

Milne Library’s “Hortus Conclusus”: The Tree of Knowledge and Diderot’s Encyclopédie – Interdisciplinary Paths of Enlightenment

The conference theme of “Opening Doors to Collaboration, Outreach and Diversity” is thrilling to me, and I wish to submit a poster based on the collaboration of faculty, students and librarians who have worked together on different interpretations of the rare mass-market edition of Diderot’s & d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1771-1781). Our edition is a semi-legal pirated copy, “lifted” from the original. This copy led to wider distribution, which was in the interest of the original authors, who deplored the previous edition’s elite readership. By authorizing the printing of the lifted copies, they hoped to widen access to knowledge. We have developed numerous ways to continue the authors’ legacy by working with disciplines across campus, using the Encyclopédie to demonstrate the relevance of different interpretation theories. As the poster illustrates, the Encyclopédie is interdisciplinary in nature, offering boundless opportunities for future scholarship and outreach, and has inspired us to create a “Philosopher’s Café” where opportunities for lively conversations and animated discourse are encouraged.

Presenter: Molly Brown, SUNY Oneonta

Assigning Rights Statements to Legacy Digital Collections

This poster will outline a project at the University of Miami Libraries to evaluate the rights status of legacy materials that have been digitized for online access in the UM Digital Collections, including photographs, manuscripts, publications, and maps from the Libraries’ Cuban Heritage Collection, Special Collections, and University Archives. The majority of the Libraries’ digital collections contains little rights-related information in their metadata. Adding rights information will enable us to contribute our content to DPLA, and will also, we hope, empower our users to understand how they can use our digitized content, in traditional and nontraditional ways. We undertook a systematic review of our digital collections and assigned rights categories based upon the “Specifications for International Rights Statements” prepared by DPLA and Europeana. Our first step was to review relevant deeds of gift to better understand the rights landscape for each collection. We then assessed the content in each digital collection to determine applicable rights categories and apply an appropriate rights statement to each item’s metadata. We are also documenting the rationale behind our decisions, due to the challenges of determining rights ownership for orphan works, especially undated manuscript materials where little is known about the creator.

Presenters:
Laura Capell, University of Miami Libraries
Elliot Williams, University of Miami Libraries

Springshare’s LibGuides: Fad or Investment?

In 2007, Springshare debuted LibGuides, its new reference service software. Numerous libraries have invested in Springshare’s LibGuides program, but many have overlooked whether or not they actually need this program. If they do in fact need it, they should implement a strategy that maximizes the potential of LibGuides. Much has been published for librarians looking for guidance in building LibGuides, but more research should be conducted on whether or not the needs of patrons are being met through these LibGuides.

Presenter: Abigail B. Connick, University of Illinois

#80yrsintheStacks: Sharing, Statistics, and Special Collections from the Stacks

This poster illustrates how Brooklyn College Library used its circulating holdings, publisher’s bindings, and Instagram as part of larger outreach efforts to connect departments and its diverse student population (of over 16,000 students, 60 percent of which self-identify as members of minorities) to special collections materials. Brooklyn College (BC) was founded in 1930; the Library opened in 1936, making 2016 its 80th anniversary year. The first public coeducational liberal arts institution in New York City, the College has a longstanding reputation for serving working-class students, many of whom are the first in their families to enroll in post-secondary education. As of 2014, popular majors at BC include business, sciences, and history; the Library’s collection includes over 1 million volumes, with substantial holdings in English and American literature as well as Art History. Engaging students from the English and Art departments via collaboration with faculty, the project detailed in this poster showcases publisher’s bindings via regular Instagram postings, increases visibility for these resources, and encourages use of established hashtags like #circulatingcollection and #publishersbindings. The project’s results, an examination of the College’s demographics over time, and how publisher’s bindings were used to inspire students and teachers will be revealed in this poster. As per the Brooklyn College motto, Nil sine magno labore (Nothing without great effort).

Presenter: Diane Dias De Fazio, Brooklyn College

Exploring Rare Books Collection at the Brazilian National Library Foundation

The Rare Books Division of the Brazilian National Library Foundation holds pieces from the 15^th to the 21st century. Rarity and preciousness were the major criteria to create the collection, which came from other collections of the institution. The variety of subjects and richness of the materials instigate multiple constituencies. In order to guarantee access to this large source of culture and history, the Division engages and interacts with society in many ways. The staff promotes technical visits to introduce some special pieces for the library´s professionals, librarianship students or other fields of study, such as graphic design, journalism or history. Thematic exhibitions attract general public and encourage a sense of pride and belonging. Brazilian and foreign professionals from different areas of knowledge can submit a scholarship project proposal to research the rare books collection as a resident funded by a national support program for researchers. The goal of this poster is to demonstrate and illustrate how Rare Books Division of the Brazilian National Library Foundation is contributing its knowledge and disseminating it in order to preserve cultural heritage.

Presenters:
Adriana Gonçalves, Brazilian National Library Foundation
Joyce Lacôrte, Brazilian National Library Foundation
Letícia Provenzano, Brazilian National Library Foundation
Valéria Werneck, Brazilian National Library Foundation

Collecting a Cuban Heritage: Fine Art at FIU Special Collections

During the summer of 2015, Florida International University (FIU) Special Collections Department acquired a large fine art collection by Cuban artists that includes rare and unique paintings. While the collection offers enormous potential for teaching and research, it also presented some challenges. This poster presentation exemplifies how the Special Collections Department at FIU is collecting new cultural heritage formats and material that years ago were considered part of museums rather than of Special Collections resources. Following the acquisition of this collection, the Special Collections staff confronted three major challenges: security, space and access. This poster presentation summarizes the motivations behind the acquisition of this collection as well as the challenges and opportunities this art collection offers to FIU’s students and researchers. Finally, it offers possible solutions that can be used by other libraries seeking to provide access to their art collections.

Presenter: Annia Gonzalez, Florida International University

Campus Connections: The Black Campus Movement Project at Kent State University

This poster speaks to the very heart of this year’s conference theme of collaboration, outreach and diversity. During the fall of 2013, the Department of Special Collections and Archives at Kent State University decided to launch one of its first initiatives to address a gap in its historical record pertaining to under-documented communities, more specifically the development and evolution of the African American student population at Kent State. After doing an assessment of the department’s archival holdings, a scarce number of records revealed that the university was part of the national Black Campus Movement, which took place largely in the late 60s. Therefore, Special Collections and Archives at Kent State launched the Black Campus Movement project with the goal to acquire historical documentation (photographs, correspondence, oral histories, artifacts, student organizational records, etc) highlighting black student life at Kent State (1968-1971) during this transformative period for the campus and the country. The poster will provide an overview of the department’s outreach efforts as it works to diversify its archival holdings and will underscore some of the most recent outcomes since the launch of the initiative.

Presenter: Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, Kent State University

Vision and Revision: Student Curated Exhibitions and the Collaborative Process

In 2014 UNC’s Wilson Special Collections Library hosted its first large-scale student curated exhibition. The semester-long project brought together Eliza Richards’s course “Imagining the U.S. Civil War” with library staff and resulted in a display of rare books, manuscripts, and photographs, researched and designed by undergraduates. The experiential nature of the course enabled students to write and design their work for a real audience, to work together to meet deadlines and standards, and to learn through analysis and research with material objects. For the past two years we have been planning our next student-curated exhibition, opening in April 2016. Over the course of the spring semester, Laurie Langbauer’s students will curate “Corruption of the Innocents: Four Centuries of Cultural Alarm over Popular Children’s Books.” In preparation, we have revised our approach and crafted policies to guide this complex collaborative process for library staff, faculty, and students. This poster will feature our lessons learned from the first student-curated exhibition and the policies we put into place to guide the second. We will also showcase graphics depicting the roles and responsibilities of all collaborators; timelines for librarian, faculty, and student work; an assessment rubric; and student feedback. Our goal is to provide a guide for other institutions considering similar collaborative projects.

Presenters:
Emily Kader, University of North Carolina Wilson Special Collections Library
Rachel Reynolds, University of North Carolina Wilson Special Collections Library