Library News

Howard Bond, a renowned photographer and former student of Ansel Adams, will give a free lecture at Syracuse University. The lecture, “Photography as Art: Trends Since 1839,” is Thursday, September 10, at 5 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons on the first floor of Bird Library (222 Waverly Ave., Syracuse). The event kicks off the SU Library Associates 2009-10 lecture series. It coincides with an exhibition, entitled “Luminous Construction: The Photography of Howard Bond” in the Special Collections Research Center at Bird Library, running September 8, 2009 - January 14, 2010. Free parking for the lecture is available in Booth Garage, on the corner of Waverly and Comstock avenues. The event is followed by a reception, during which Bond will sign copies of his exhibition catalog. Lecture sponsors include the SU Humanities Center, as well as the SU Library and its Special Collections Research Center.

For more information, contact Pamela McLaughlin at (315) 443-9788 or pwmclaug@syr.edu.

Continue reading "Photographer Howard Bond kicks off 2009 Syracuse Symposium, SU Library Associates lecture series" »

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 9:00 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

Syracuse University Library's Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), in conjunction with this year's Syracuse Symposium and its theme of "migration," will present a fall exhibition titled "Dawn of a New Age: The Immigrant Contribution to the Arts in America."
The exhibition, which is free and open to the public, runs Sept. 8-Jan. 20 in the SCRC gallery on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., except holidays. For more information, call (315) 443-2697.

"Dawn of a New Age" tells the story of five artists who immigrated to the United States during the first half of the 20th century: Adolph Bolm, a Russian dancer and choreographer who performed with the Mariinsky Ballet and Ballets Russes; William Lescaze, a Swiss architect who was one of the pioneers of modernism; Louis Lozowick, a Russian printmaker known for his Art Deco and Precision lithographs; Miklós Rózsa, a Hungarian composer of more than 100 film scores, including "Ben Hur"; and John Vassos, a Greek illustrator and industrial designer. The exhibition draws from the rich holdings of SCRC and showcases more than 50 of the artists' personal papers, manuscripts, photos and artifacts.

"In keeping with the theme of 'migration,' the exhibition traces each person's humble beginnings and the process by which he immigrated to the United States and later shaped modern culture," says co-curator Nicolette A. Dobrowolski. "These artists, individually and collectively, created a dynamic new vision for America."

With more than 100,000 printed works and 2,000 manuscript and archival collections, SCRC is home to some of SU's most valued treasures, including early printed editions of Gutenberg, Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton, as well as the library of 19th-century German historian Leopold Von Ranke. Twentieth-century holdings are particularly strong and include the personal papers and manuscripts of such luminaries as artist Grace Hartigan, inspirational preacher Norman Vincent Peale, author Joyce Carol Oates, photojournalist Margaret Bourke White and industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague, as well as the records of organizations including avant-garde publisher Grove Press. SCRC regularly hosts exhibitions, lectures and classes, and offers fellowships and internships in library instruction and conservation. More information is available at http://scrc.syr.edu.

Syracuse Symposium is a semester-long intellectual and artistic festival about interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating, presented by The College of Arts and Sciences for the Syracuse community. More information on lectures, performances, exhibits and other special events is available at http://syracusesymposium.org.

Posted by Kathleen White at 8:36 AM | Permalink

Syracuse University Library Associates invites members and friends to a lecture, "Out of the Sky: 9/ll, a Tribute," presented by Werner Pfeiffer, sculptor and book artist. The event will take place at 4 p.m. Thursday, September 11 at the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, First Floor, Bird Library, Syracuse University.

Free event parking is available in Booth Garage on the corner of Waverly and Comstock Avenues.

Pfeiffer, a native of Germany who emigrated to the United States in 1961, witnessed the tragedy first-hand. His book is a sculptural tribute to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the lecture, he will assemble "Out of the Sky" while commenting on the technique and inspiration behind it.

For more information on this lecture, please contact Anne Roth at 685-6832.

Posted by Kathleen White at 8:56 AM | Permalink

The Syracuse University Library and Renée Crown University Honors Program are presenting Invasion! The Culture of Fear in America, a student-curated exhibition of books, manuscripts and art from the Special Collections Research Center. A gallery reception will be held on Tuesday, April 29, at 5 p.m. on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library. The exhibition runs through Sept. 5. It is free and open to the public.

During the Spring 2008 semester, students from the Renée Crown University Honors Program taking the course American Fear, taught by Sean Quimby, director of the Special Collections Research Center, explored the history of fear in American life by immersing themselves in the Library’s primary resource collections.

The students worked diligently to produce an exhibition that accurately illustrates the concept of fear in the United States. They felt that the theme of “invasion” underlies many of our historical anxieties relating to race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and a host of other issues. The idea that different people, aliens or even epidemics, like the AIDS virus during the 1980s, might infiltrate society and bring about sweeping change has been cause for extreme fear in the American experience. Fundamentally, the exhibition raises questions of identity, and the class hopes that visitors will “understand their differences and be less discriminating in their actions.”

Among the exhibited works that illuminate the roots of our culture of fear are a 1651 edition of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, Cotton Mather’s 1693 account of the Salem Witch trials, the literature of the Red Scare, a variety of pulp science fiction magazines and Werner Pfeiffer’s sculptural tribute to the victims of 9/11, Out of the Sky.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 9:14 AM | Permalink

Visit the new Biblio Gallery on the 4th floor of Bird Library, now showing the artwork of Elena Peteva, MFA candidate in Painting in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. The show will run through June 30, 2007.

The Biblio Gallery web site is located at http://library.syr.edu/information/finearts/SULibraryArtExhibits.html.
For more information, contact Melinda Dermody, head of Arts and Humanities Services at 443-5332 or via email at mderm01@syr.edu.

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 3:42 PM | Permalink

Students, stop running around during this busy time of year. Take advantage of a special series of open research workshops at E.S. Bird Library. Come to one of these Crunch Time at 9 sessions to get personalized research help from a librarian on your final papers and projects. Sessions are March 27, 28, and April 4 from 9:00 - 10:30 p.m. and March 28 from 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. in the Electronic Training Center, Room 046, E.S. Bird Library. Contact Michael Pasqualoni for more information at 443-3715 or email mjpasqua@syr.edu. No RSVP necessary. Drop in when you can, stay as long as you need. For additional research help at other times, remember to visit the Library's "Ask Us" Reference & Research Assistance page at http://library.syr.edu/information/reference/index.html

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 11:47 AM | Permalink

The Library will offer training sessions for international students on library resources and services as well as important information literacy skills such as evaluating sources and avoiding plagiarism. The sessions will be held in February, March and April in the Slutzker International Center. The complete schedule is available at: http://library.syr.edu/instruction/Internationalstclasssp07.html

An introductory web page specificially for international students is also available on the Library's website at: http://library.syr.edu/instruction/international/welcome.htm

Posted by Pamela McLaughlin at 2:14 PM | Permalink

Thursday, June 10, 2004
3:00-4:30 p.m.
E.S. Bird Library
1916 Room

Institutional repositories (IRs) represent a rapidly growing movement in scholarly communication to collect, preserve, and provide access to the digital resources of scholarly research. This live, interactive Web presentation brings to you information about IRs and their increasing importance to scholarly communication. By providing you with direct access to hands-on experts, this Webcast gives library staff, campus faculty, and administrators an opportunity to explore this topic in a shared learning environment.

Rick Johnson, SPARC Enterprise Director, will begin this session with an introduction to the Webcast, followed by three panelists who will discuss institutional repositories' benefits, uses, and users. In addition, the panelists will address concerns and answer viewer questions as a means to begin or further discussion on campuses.

Panelists

Susan Gibbons, Assistant Dean for Public Services & Collection Development, University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries

Daniel Greenstein, Associate Vice Provost for Scholarly Information,
University Librarian for Systemwide Library Planning and the California
Digital Library (CDL)

Kathleen Shearer, Research Associate, Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL)

Target Audience

* College and University Faculty and Administrators

* Librarians who want to stay current with developments in scholarly communication, particularly those who work with faculty and researchers

Posted by at 8:54 AM | Permalink

Join Mariana Lebron, Director of SU's Orientation and Transition Services, and Professor Jerry Evensky, SU's Faculty Assistant for the First- Year Experience, for a Peer to Peer discussion entitled:

Shared Reading Programs for First-Year Students: A Role for Libraries

Peer to Peer Library Dialog
Wednesday May 5
Noon - 1pm
1916 Room - E.S. Bird Library

In recent years, colleges and universities have begun to give special attention to first-year students, often introducing summer reading projects tied to the first-year experience. For example, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill chooses a book to be read by all incoming freshman, the goals being "to enhance students' participation in the intellectual life of the campus through stimulating discussion and critical thinking around a current topic, to enhance a sense of community between students, faculty and staff, and to provide a common experience for incoming students" (See UNC-CH Website listed below.).

In 2003, Syracuse University, too, established a summer reading program for entering freshmen. We will focus on ways in which libraries can contribute to initiatives for enriching students' first-year experiences.

You may wish to consider the following articles and Web sites (Articles are available via SUMMIT Catalog-online course reserve-"LBR 100."):

Rodney, Mae L. "Building Community Partnerships: The 'One Book, One Community' Experience." College and Research Libraries News. (March 2004), 65 (3), p. 130-132, 155. http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews/backissues2004/march04/communitypartnerships.htm

O'Connor, Erin. "Misreading What Reading Is For." Chronicle of Higher Education. (September 5, 2003), p. 20.

Cornell University Library's Web site, "Antigone: 2003 New Student Reading Project: Library Resources": http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/antigone/

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Web site, "Carolina Summer Reading Program" (already featuring the selection for 2004): http://www.unc.edu/srp/

Web site of the Policy Center on the First Year of College: http://www.brevard.edu/fyc/

Hope to see you there. Light refreshments provided. Bring a lunch. All are welcome!

Peer to Peer Library Dialog is a staff initiated program of monthly discussion about trends and current topics of interest in librarianship. Send comments or questions to Lydia Wasylenko lwwasyle@syr.edu

Posted by at 8:36 AM | Permalink

"On the Spot" with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist Marguerite Higgins, 1920-1966. The exhibition features correspondence, writings, photographs, and other memorabilia from the Marguerite Higgins Papers housed in the Special Collections Research Center.

The exhibition is on display from April 6 through August 13, 2004, Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the 6th floor gallery of E.S. Bird Library.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peter D. Verheyen
Preservation & Access Librarian / Conservation Librarian
Special Collections Research Center
pdverhey@syr.edu

Posted by at 1:19 PM | Permalink

On Thursday, April 15, 2004, at 4 p.m. in the Hillyer Room on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library, Robert Phillips will give a talk and a reading from his forthcoming collection of poems, Circumstances Beyond Our Control (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Phillips (M.A., Syracuse University, 1962) is Rebecca and John Moores Professor of English at the University of Houston, where he also served as director of the graduate creative writing program from 1991 to 1996. A prize-winning poet, fiction writer, and critic, Phillips is the author of more than 30 books, including poetry collections Spinach Days and Breakdown Lane, and short-story collections News About People You Know, Public Landing Revisited, and Land of Lost Content. Notable among his critical works are editions of the letters of William Goyen and Delmore Schwartz.

Phillips�s honors include a Pushcart Prize, an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, an Enron Teaching Excellence Award, a New York State Council on the Arts CAPS Grant in Poetry, MacDowell Colony and Yaddo fellowships, a National Public Radio Syndicated Fiction Project Award, membership in the Texas Institute of Letters, and a Syracuse University Arents Pioneer Medal for distinguished alumni achievement.

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served.

Note: Immediately following Phillips�s talk and reception, there will be a special program, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in the Schine Student Center�s Goldstein Auditorium, to honor Chancellor Kenneth A. Shaw and Mary Ann Shaw for their 13 years of dedicated service to the University. All are welcome.

CONTACT
Mary Beth Hinton
Syracuse University Library
315-443-2130
mbhinton@syr.edu

Posted by at 8:39 AM | Permalink

Friday, April 2, 2004
4pm
Hillyer Room
E.S. Bird Library

J.P. Carley, Distinguished Research Professor at York University in Toronto, will lecture on April 2, 2004, at 4 p.m. in the Hillyer Room on the sixth floor of E.S. Bird Library on the Syracuse University campus. His lecture is titled "The Libraries of King Henry VIII: The Ones that Got Away."

Celebrated for his magnificence, daring in his defiance of papal authority, and restless in his choice of wives, Henry VIII was also one of the most intelligent and widely read monarchs of the Renaissance. In the wake of the destruction of the monasteries, he acquired a vast quantity of books, and with them filled the shelves of his palace libraries. His is one of the foundation collections of the British Library-though, over the centuries, many interesting items escaped to the New World.

J.P. Carley specializes in the late medieval and early modern period. His previous work has included editions of texts from Glastonbury Abbey and a general history of the Abbey. He has co-edited a collection of essays on the Tudor translator Henry Parker, Lord Morley; and he is one of the editors in the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues series published by the British Library; The Books of King Henry VIII and His Wives is a companion piece to his volume on The Libraries of King Henry VIII in this series.

This event is part of The History of the Book Seminar Series at Syracuse University, sponsored by the University Library; the Dean's Office, College of Arts and Sciences; the Departments of Anthropology English, History, Philosophy, and Religion, and of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics; and the School of Information Studies.

This event is free and open to the public.

Posted by at 9:17 AM | Permalink

Thursday, April 8th, 2004
2:30 - 4:00pm
E.S. Bird Library, 1916 Room

Find out how to identify external and internal threats to your institution's cybersecurity, overcome system vulnerabilities, and act aggressively to establish cyber-defense. If you're nervous about your institution's vulnerability to hack attack or your system being used to attack others, you have good cause. Higher education is especially susceptible because of its extensive computing power, the large amounts of information it has on hand, and the relatively open access that is part of its culture. Indeed, the "it can't happen here" attitude has all but disappeared in light of an increasing number of system violations and cyber crimes by external hackers as well as dishonest, disgruntled, irresponsible or un-informed students and staff.

According to one expert, simply using the procedural and technological safeguards that are available now would make systems much more secure. Indeed, one study says that 90 percent of cyber attacks in the near future will take advantage of vulnerabilities for which a patch is already available. Of course cybersecurity must involve all users, not just system administrators.

By participating in this teleconference, college administrators and technical staff will gain essential information on:

• doing risk assessments
• identifying the most common vulnerabilities
• dealing with an attack if it occurs
• the importance of creating, implementing and policing an institutional policy
• that raises awareness of the problems and gets essential information to all users

Produced in cooperation with the American Association of Community Colleges.
Co-sponsored by Syracuse University Library and Faculty Computing & Media Services

Posted by at 12:44 PM | Permalink

Wednesday, March 3
Noon - 1pm
1916A Room - E.S. Bird Library

Join Yuming Tung, Head of Syracuse University Library's Information Systems Division, and SU Library systems staff, for a Peer to Peer discussion entitled: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Library's Network and Computer System...But Were Afraid to Ask.

Stop by for a brief explanation of the servers and computer networks we use at SU Library everyday, followed by discussion of topics such as: What are the Pros and Cons of Decentralized vs. Centralized Computing? Why the Different Configurations for Public vs. Staff Workstations? How are we Responding to Viruses, Security Holes and Spyware? Which Specific New Technologies are Impacting Academic Libraries and Campuses Most (e.g., wireless networking, etc.)

Those interested in reading more about this topic are also welcome to review the following online articles:

Bradley Mitchell's "About" page on Wireless/Networking
http://compnetworking.about.com/

Crawford, G & Rudy, Julia A. (2003). Fourth Annual EDUCAUSE Survey Identifies Current IT Issues. EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 26(2), 12-26.
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0322.pdf

Canadian Broadcasting Company (2003, July 23). Beware Using Public Computers.
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/07/23/Consumers/Internet_030723

Peer to Peer Library Dialog is a staff initiated program of monthly discussion about trends and current topics of interest in librarianship. Send comments or questions to Michael Pasqualoni mjpasqua@syr.edu

Posted by at 11:34 AM | Permalink

Thursday, March 4
4:00pm
6th Floor Gallery
E.S. Bird Library

On Thursday, March 4, 2004, at 4 p.m. in the sixth-floor gallery of E.S. Bird Library on the SU campus, William La Moy will offer an introductory talk and guided tour of the exhibition titled Paper-Type-Image: Elements of the Fine Press Book, which is currently on display in the Special Collections Research Center. According to La Moy, fine press books are collaborative productions "in which the individual components have a unity that overcomes their disparateness." His selection of primarily recent works from the Center's holdings includes books to which local artists contributed, among them printers Michael and Winifred Bixler of Skaneateles, and the Library's conservators, Peter Verheyen and Donia Conn. The exhibition can be viewed Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through March 26, 2004.

La Moy joined Syracuse University Library's Special Collections Research Center on December 1, 2003. Previously, he was James Duncan Phillips Librarian and director of publications of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. He has been involved in large-scale scholarly editing projects, including the catalogs of the Harvard-Yenching Library and The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence. La Moy holds a B.A. in English language and literature from Yale University and an M.S. from Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

CONTACT
Mary Beth Hinton
Syracuse University Library
315-443-2130
mbhinton@syr.edu

Posted by at 11:33 AM | Permalink

Cost is not just a matter of dollars and cents. Discover the hidden costs of creating online courses "on the cheap," how to calculate the true costs, the resources needed to develop effective online courses, and ways to control costs without degrading quality.

"Thanks, but we already know our costs," you may say. But in the same way that developing and teaching courses online requires new paradigms and methods, "costing" methodology for online courses also requires new approaches.

Colleges and universities understandably want to compare the costs of online and face-to-face instruction, but the way budgets are often built and tracked may make it difficult to know all the real costs.

To make the most of your resources--and achieve your goals--you must understand the true costs. Whether your institution is new to online courses, wants more accurate financial data for the online courses it already offers, or needs tips on how to spend its distance education dollars more effectively, this teleconference will help you discover and understand the true costs and make more informed decisions.

You'll examine:

• ways of calculating fixed and variable costs
  
• methods for reducing fixed costs
  
• the impact of "unbundling" instructor functions
  
• the importance of scalability
  
• ways the "learning curve" can be a cost factor in converting traditional courses to an online format
  
• why poor course quality and low retention rates can be a major cost
  

Panelists
Katherine Cobb is President of the Brevard Community College Virtual Campus in Cocoa, FL, where her responsibilities include overseeing the creation and implementation of over 300 online courses enrolling over 9,000 students each year.

Brian Finnegan plays a key role in evaluating, budgeting for and supporting instructional technologies to be used in online and other courses at all 34 public colleges and universities in the University System of Georgia.

Dennis Jones played a major role in the development of the Technology Costing Method, which is widely recognized as the most authoritative approach to establishing and analyzing the costs of distance education courses.

Continue reading "The REAL Cost of Online Courses: Critical Challenges in Higher Education Series a teleconference to be held February 26, 2:30pm in E.S. Bird Library" »

Posted by at 10:59 AM | Permalink