Library News

The Library "Green" Team announces the launch of a new Library Green Guide website. The site includes information about both Library and SU's Green UniverseCity sustainability initiatives, as well as links to information about similar programs across the country. The site also has a suggestion box where users can also post their green ideas.

The Library Green Team was established to research green initiatives and recommend actions that will contribute to positive environmental change within the Library and on campus. Committee members are Tasha Cooper (chair), Paul Bern, Michele Combs, Tom House, Tom Keays, and Eli Liquori. For more information, contact Tasha Cooper at nacoop01@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 10:12 AM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library, in partnership with Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts and the Syracuse City School District, is now presenting “An Alphabet in Your Own Backyard”, an exhibition of handmade accordion books.

The exhibition is currently located in the new display case on the first floor of Bird Library until the end of the February. It will then move to the sixth floor exhibition space where it will remain until the end of spring semester. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

The exhibit showcases books created by students from Henninger High School and Syracuse University. In the fall semester, VPA professor Gail Hoffman's freshman ‘Foundation 2-D Creative Processes' class worked with Henninger High School art teacher Lori Schneider's class of advanced design students. SU students were paired up with Henninger students and the teams used cameras to capture natural images resembling letters, such as a ladder resembling an “A”, to create the alphabet in images. Students used the images to create an accordion book.

“An Alphabet in Your Own Backyard” exhibition is the first stage of a two-year collaborative community project. Funded by SU's Enitiative with funds from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the project will connect Syracuse University with the broader Syracuse community, educate both Syracuse University and Syracuse City School District students about the book arts, and teach Syracuse University students entrepreneurial skills related to creating, marketing, and managing a new product. From this exhibition of handmade books, a jury of design faculty will select twenty six letters to create a final alphabet accordion book that will be professionally printed.

For more information on this exhibit, please contact Peter Verheyen, pdverhey@syr.edu or 443-9756

Posted by Kathleen White at 4:24 PM | Permalink

The Syracuse University Library has purchased Elsevier’s Materials Science backfile, consisting of online content for 108 Elsevier journal titles for years prior to 1995 (years of coverage varies by journal). The library has offered many of these journals from 1995 onward via Science Direct and has others in print. With earlier years of these important journals now accessible through Science Direct, faculty and students have much more convenient access to the articles they need. For example, the journal Polymer is now available online beginning with 1960 issues.

A complete list of titles and years covered is available at http://info.sciencedirect.com/techsupport/journals/bfmatsci.htm.

Materials science is especially important to the Syracuse University Library because it is an excellent example of the innovative and interdisciplinary research taking place on campus. Chemistry, Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, the Biomaterials Institute, Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, the GeoFoam Research Center, and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering are among the departments and research organizations that benefit from these titles.

In addition, the Library also recently licensed additional journals from Sage Publishers. A number of their materials science titles were part of that arrangement, with access back to 1999.

Both the Elsevier and Sage materials science titles are available via the E-journal locator.

Large backfile purchases, such as the Materials Science package, represent an excellent investment for the Syracuse University Library since they are a one-time purchase, rather than an ongoing commitment. In effect, the Library now owns this content rather than leasing it.

By pursuing innovative strategies like this to acquire online content at substantial savings, the SU Library not only stretches its dollars, but reaffirms its commitment to simultaneously providing the maximum amount of scholarly material and the highest quality journals to SU students, faculty and researchers.

For more information or assistance with the Materials Science backfile titles, contact Scott Warren at 443-8339 or sawarr01@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 3:39 PM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library’s Belfer Audio Archive now offers Web access to its collection of cylinder sound recordings. Cylinders were the earliest form of commercially produced sound recordings, popular from the late 1880s through the 1920s. Belfer’s collection of 22,000 cylinders represents 12,000 unique titles and is the largest of any private institution in North America. The collection includes a wide range of performances, including orchestral, vocal, folk and dance music, as well as spoken word such as speeches, poetry and dramatic readings.

The Belfer Cylinders Digital Connection now contains about 300 items and will eventually include 6,000 cylinder recordings that have not been available on the Internet before. Recordings can be browsed by subject and genre. Search options include title, performer, composer, time period, label and others.

Recordings are provided in both MP3 and WAV formats. The WAV files are larger in size and represent the sound of the original recording as it was played. The MP3s are smaller and have had extraneous sounds removed.

The Belfer Cylinders Digital Connection project was partially funded by a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. The library welcomes additional financial contributions to support the cylinder digitization project, as well as donations of cylinders.

Currently the fourth-largest sound archive in the country, the Belfer Archive holds more than 340,000 items in a climate-controlled facility on campus. With funding provided by Diane and Arthur B. Belfer and the Jon Ben Snow Memorial Trust, the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive was the first building in the world designed and constructed specifically for the preservation of recorded sound collections.

For more information on the Belfer Cylinders Digital Connection, contact Melinda Dermody at mdermo01@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 2:31 PM | Permalink