It's Academic

Stress Relief for All

December 27, 2022

The end of the fall term is always a stressful time in my library, as students hustle to get in their final papers and projects on time. Staff is also a bit frazzled by this time of the year, as well. While our public printer on the first floor is the most used on campus, it’s surely showing its age and routinely breaks down at the most inopportune times. By December, everyone on campus is ready for winter break, battling against time to wrap up finals, papers, and projects.

Earlier this semester, a group of volunteers with Canine Partners for Life brought several dogs in their service training program to campus to offer some socialization opportunities. These dogs currently live with inmates who participate in the training program at two nearby prisons and will go on to receive further training to complete their service dog certification. The volunteers take the dogs out regularly to expose them to real-life situations and scenarios, including them on doctor’s visits, shopping trips, eating at restaurants, and other similar ventures out in the community. When the dogs visited the library, they got to enjoy interacting with new people and places, and also offered some much-appreciated cuddles to the students, and staff as well. It was a win-win for everyone!

Their visit to the library in October was so well attended that it made sense to schedule the group back in December, just before Finals Week. I shared the December visit on social media and through posters on campus, and to my surprise, students started arriving about ten minutes before the dogs were even scheduled to arrive! After planning programs earlier in the term that had not garnered much interest on campus, it was nice to see students in the library who rarely, if ever visit. If dogs can initially get them into the library, maybe the next time they need research help, they will come back for assistance. At any rate, both therapy dog events this semester were successful for all involved and we hope to continue this program next term.

Has your library had success with therapy dogs or other stress relief programs? We also put out puzzles, coloring sheets, squishy animal toys and mini-Rubic cubes, and other creative outlets for students around finals. Sometimes students just need a break. Hopefully, they realize the library is not just a great place to study, but also a place to relax as well.

The HistoryMakers: The Digital Repository for the Black Experience

December 21, 2022

tags: digital archives, Digital Humanities

by Darren G. Poley

For many Americans at this time of year their attention turns to football, but how many people take the time to consider the enormous contribution African Americans have made to the sport? Is anyone documenting the central place of African-American athletes in a pastime that looms so large in the national consciousness? Well, earlier this year the National Football League and NFL Films announced a partnership with The HistoryMakers.

As Julieanna L. Richardson, Founder & President of The HistoryMakers said at the announcement of the collaboration, “Our goal since our inception has always been to document the African-American experience across a variety of disciplines and this commitment will ensure that the stories of African American football legends and African-Americans who have played a critical role in NFL history will now become part of this nation’s patrimony.”

In fact, in addition to SportsMakers there are several other distinct subject categories, such as CivicMakers, BusinessMakers, ArtMakers, and ScienceMakers, who’s oral histories have been recorded by The HistoryMakers.

The HistoryMakers is a nonprofit educational institution, founded In 2000. It has collected the largest collection of African American video oral histories. It provides a robust primary source research database, with a rich dataset for Digital Scholarship exploration and experimentation.

Prior to The HistoryMakers, there was only one other large-scale, methodic attempt to document African American history in the first-person – the WPA Slave Narratives. Now, The HistoryMakers has carried this tradition from the 20th century forward to the 21st century, joining the stories of the enslaved with the stories of their descendants permanently at the Library of Congress.

Projecting Storage Facility Capacity

December 14, 2022

by Charlotte M. Johnson

Even storage facilities fill up eventually. Part of my work this past year has been to figure out the capacity of our storage facility here at Pitt. We have two high bays, one which is at capacity at just under 3 million volumes, and the other with plenty of growth space. As the research collections coordinator, it’s my responsibility to keep tabs on how we’re using this space, because it is very unlikely we will be able to build another facility when this one is full.

Here, the best practices of shelf space planning go out the window, because we’re not just working in linear feet with a general average of 1” per book. Suddenly we’re working in three dimensions, taking into consideration the varying densities shelves of different sized books can have and keeping in mind there’s no surefire or easy way to figure out what’s coming into storage down the line. Because high density storage is concerned with height and width and depth of books in order to use our shelf space in the most efficient way possible, that’s three aspects of a book that we would have to know in advance.

To make things easy, there are five standard sizes of trays: A, B, C, D, and E, and each book’s size is determined by its width across the front. Our facility also keeps books of similar height together, so we might have a B tray for books 9” high and another B tray for books 10” high. Each shelf only gets one type of tray size/height. My colleagues and I attempted once to figure out whether there was any correlation between the measurement of a book in our catalog and the size tray it went in. There was not. The best I can do with the information we have access to is to figure out the distribution of tray sizes we’ve used in the past and use that to make an educated guess about what we will receive in the future.

I went about collecting data about our collection, such as the average density of each tray size, aided greatly by the reporting capabilities of CaiaSoft, our inventory management software. I am perfecting a formula to figure out how many more books our facility can hold if our collection throughout the other libraries is similar to that of what’s already here. I could further refine this educated guess by learning more about the collections that are not in storage yet. For example, if we no longer have any oversize material in our other libraries, and have no plans to purchase any more (especially if we have an e-preferred policy), then I would not have to take oversize materials into consideration in my formula.

It is an interesting project that I’m excited to be working on, and one that will help me greatly in the future when making decisions about what we accession into our storage facility.

I hope everyone has a happy new year!

Latest Issue of Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice

December 13, 2022

by Alex K.

The latest issue of Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice is now available at palrap.org

Articles include:

In the PaLRaP Spotlight: Susan Banks, MLIS
Format Agnostic Archival Processing: Using One Standard for All
An Introduction to Pennsylvania Legal Research for Academic Librarians and Researchers
Experiential Learning in the Archives: Case Studies in Digital Humanities Pedagogy for Undergraduate Research
Noteworthy: News Briefs from PA Libraries

Bryan McGeary & Danielle Skaggs, Co-Editors

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Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice (PaLRaP) is a peer-reviewed, open access journal, sponsored by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association. PaLRaP provides an opportunity for librarians in Pennsylvania to share their knowledge and experience with practicing librarians across Pennsylvania and beyond. The journal includes articles from all areas of librarianship, and from all types of libraries within Pennsylvania.

Virtual Journal Club December

December 12, 2022

by Alex K.

I hope you can join us for the second meeting of the Fall 2022 series of the Virtual Journal Club, sponsored by the College & Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association. We will meet next Thursday, December 15th, 2:00-3:00. This series is focusing on libraries and literacy. We will discuss:

Dewan, P. (2019). Reading in the age of continuous partial attention: Retail-inspired ideas for academic libraries. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 58(3), 177–187. https://doi-org.arcadia.idm.oclc.org/10.5860/rusq.58.3.7045

Here’s the Zoom link for our meeting:

https://kings.zoom.us/j/93660828235?pwd=MmxaNUszSEZEUTFOcWk0Y3RBUTZnZz09

Please feel free to reach out with any questions – correllm@arcadia.edu