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Exciting things are happening at KU Libraries. Since the beginning of 2008, we have made several appointments that have added significant depths to our staff. These positions include two interim assistant deans, four professional librarians who will work closely with faculty in the humanities and in the social sciences, and several new staff members to serve your informational needs.
Additionally, our new Scholar Services program, led by librarians and technology professionals, launched two KU-based scholarly journals that are accessible to readers and researchers throughout the world. Biodiversity Informatics and back-issues of Latin American Theater Review are now available at journals.ku.edu. You can read more about this initiative on page 2.
Thanks to an increase in our collections budget, we have invested in significant acquisitions to support the learning, teaching and research needs of our faculty and students.
We have completed an external review of the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, and we look forward to exploring new collaborative initiatives with campus partners.
Amid these developments, we continue to strengthen our established programs in Instructional Services, Reference and Research Assistance to advance the pivotal work of the Libraries at the University of Kansas and beyond.
I look forward to the year ahead with confidence.
lorraine j. haricombe
Dean of Libraries
Tami Albin (top left) works with an American Studies 550 class
by Dylan Sands
KU Librarian Tami Albin has embarked on a mission as ambitious as it is unique: documenting the oral histories of gay, lesbian, bisexual, intersex, queer and transgender people in Kansans.
As director and founder of the grant-funded project, “Under the Rainbow: Oral Histories of GLBTIQ People in Kansas,” Albin is working with the KU Center for Service Learning and students in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program to create an online collection telling their stories. The site will be the first of its kind accessible worldwide via KU ScholarWorks.
Albin said the task has only gotten bigger, but that’s a good thing.
“My initial plan was to include a small sampling of these oral histories, but more and more people have come forward wanting to tell their stories,” Albin said. “It’s been really incredible.”
More than 30 students in Milton Wendland’s class, “Studies in Lesbian & Gay Cultures in the United States,” are working with archives housed in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library to create individual projects that will contribute to the database.
“The Midwest, and Kansas in particular, are understood as merely sites of oppression that most LGBT people want to escape from,” Wendland said. “The simple truth, however, is that Kansas and the Midwest are home to millions of LGBT people living a variety of lives.”
Wendland also said that researchers using the Under the Rainbow oral history collection will have instant connections to the under-represented history of GLBTIQ people in Kansas and will see the vast richness of the collections held in KU Libraries.
Scholar Services, a program of Information Services at the University of Kansas, has made two KU-based scholarly journals freely available online to readers and researchers throughout the world, thanks to a new program designed to support the online distribution of campus publications.
Biodiversity Informatics and back-issues of Latin American Theater Review are now available at journals.ku.edu.
Brian Rosenblum, scholarly digital initiatives librarian at KU, said the online publication of both journals will contribute to the worldwide exchange of research and scholarship and will raise the visibility of scholarship being published at KU.
“Supporting open access to this content is a way of breaking down some of the barriers to getting this material to as many people as possible and is an example of the evolving role for academic libraries in delivering content to users,” said Rosenblum.
Biodiversity Informatics is an electronic journal focusing on the analysis of information regarding biological diversity. It was launched in 2004 by editor A. Townsend Peterson, curator of ornithology at KU’s Natural History Museum and University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, along with Jorge Soberón and David Vieglais, senior scientists in the Biodiversity Research Center. As an open access, electronic journal, the publication is freely available to users worldwide. Because there is no print version, Biodiversity Informatics can publish articles as soon as editing is complete, making them available to readers almost immediately. Biodiversity Informatics’ partnership with Scholar Services will allow IT professionals to oversee the technical aspects of publishing the journal, ensuring that the journal has a permanent location on the Web and providing oversight for long-term access and preservation, allowing editors to focus on developing content for the journal.
“We are very pleased that Biodiversity Informatics will now be supported by Scholar Services,” said Peterson. “This is a small, highly specialized, startup journal that has been run for a number of years out of the Biodiversity Research Center and has always been a bit hand-to-mouth. Now, with the backing of Scholar Services, we foresee the journal transforming into a more permanent, professional forum for discussions in an emerging field.”
Latin American Theatre Review (LATR) is published twice per year by KU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center of Latin American Studies. Founded in 1967 and edited for 40 years by Professor Emeritus George Woodyard, LATR covers all aspects of Latina/o and Latin American theatre and performance and has grown to be one of the premiere scholarly journals in its field. The new online version of LATR will provide free access to the entire back-run up to 2002, which includes over 1,000 scholarly articles, news items, theater schedules and book and performance reviews. Back issues will continue to be added to the archive as new issues are published.
“One of the goals of digitizing the Latin American Theatre Review is to increase access, particularly in the countries of Latin America, where many readers, scholars and writers do not have convenient access to it,” said Stuart Day, KU associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, and the journal’s current editor.
With the launch of these two journals, Scholar Services is poised to provide increasing support for scholarly publishing. KU ScholarWorks, KU’s institutional repository, already hosts back issues of other KU-based publications, including Slovene Linguistic Studies and Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics, and several other publications are in the early stages of preparation.
“We know there is a lot of scholarly content being created at KU in the form of journals, monographs, conference presentations. Our goal is to help make this content available online in a manner that promotes increased visibility and access, and ensures long-term stewardship of the materials,” said Rosenblum.
KU’s Digital Publishing Services provides support to the KU community for the design, management and distribution of online publications, including journals, conference proceedings, monographs, and other scholarly content. Digital Publishing Services support a variety of software platforms to publish content in different formats, and can assist with moving traditional journal and monograph content to an online environment, as well as with publishing "born-digital" scholarship designed specifically for online publication. DPS also offer tools to help manage and streamline the production and editorial work involved in producing scholarly journals.
For more information about Digital Publishing Services, visit kudiglib.ku.edu/epublishing.shtml.
Published weekly, The Chronicle of Higher Education is the academic world’s top source of news and information. The online version features daily reports on developments in higher education and regularly updated databases of grant opportunities and job announcements.
The full text of the current issue of The Chronicle is available online every Monday morning, following the Friday print publication. The site also features an archive of more than 12 years of The Chronicle.
KU library users can access The Chronicle through the Information Gateway at infogateway.ku.edu, by clicking on C from the A to Z list at the top of the screen to find The Chronicle of Higher Education. When using The Chronicle from the KU campus, a login is not necessary. When off-campus, log in using your KU Online ID and password.
| Web Tip: | Want to bookmark The Chronicle in your web browser? Use this special URL as the bookmark address: |
KU Libraries is now providing electronic access to all Springer monographs published from 2005 to the present. Librarians are working to obtain MARC records for the e-books, which will be loaded into the library catalog. Published content is available in all disciplines, but emphasis is in science and technology. For more information, please contact Rachel Miller at rmiller@ku.edu.
KU Libraries has added more than nine databases across the arts, sciences and humanities to its A-Z listing in the past few months. The additions include ScienceDirect, available through a shared license with the KU Medical Center. More than 320 serial titles are available from 1999 to the present, bringing the total number of Elsevier titles found online to approximately 460. Be sure to check out the complete list at infogateway.ku.edu.
Do you know of a KU student who is planning to become a librarian? If so, please let them know about two award opportunities through KU Libraries.
The Rubinstein/Mason award offers $1000 to a student who has been accepted by a graduate program in librarianship. Preference will be given to students whose primary interest is in special collections librarianship. The application deadline is April 14. For more information, see www.lib.ku.edu/awards/rubinsteinmason.shtml.
The Husic Award to Support Librarianship in Less Commonly Taught Languages offers $1200 to a student who has had in-depth study in at least one less commonly taught language (Slavic, Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Native languages of South or North America, for example) and has been accepted to a graduate program in librarianship. The application deadline is April 1. For more information, please visit www.lib.ku.edu/linguistics/husic_awards.shtml.
Michèle Cloonan, dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the Simmons College in Boston, will speak at two free events on Thursday, April 3rd. In her presentation “Libraries and Human Rights: Iraq in the Crossfire,” Cloonan will discuss the devastating effects of war on Iraq’s libraries. That talk, co-sponsored by the KU Libraries and the Hall Center for the Humanities, will be held at 3 pm in Spooner Hall on April 3rd.
Cloonan will also facilitate a discussion on the skills and education new librarians need. This event, created especially for librarians and prospective librarians in the region, will be held from 10-11:30 am in Alderson Auditorium in the Kansas Union.
Come to the the 52nd Annual Snyder Book Collecting Contest Reception to celebrate the student winners with the KU Libraries. The reception is Friday, April 4, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. in Watson Library.
A cocktail reception and viewing of the collections will begin at 5:30; at 6:30, Dean Lorraine J. Haricombe will award the winners, and Professor Emeritus Robert Collmer of Baylor University, noted collector of John Bunyan’s works, will speak on book collecting.
To attend, please RSVP to mbrooke@ku.edu or 864-3601 by April 2.
AnnotationsAnnotations is published semiannually in September and March by the KU Libraries, a division of Information Services.
Inquiries: Rebecca Smith, rasmith@ku.edu; design: Sarah Kanning.
Copyright © 2008 by the University of Kansas