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Fall 2007 |
A Newsletter for Friends of the UMD Library |
Volume 11, Issue 1 |
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STUDENT VIDEO CONTEST NIGHT @ THE LIBRARY - DEC. 4
UMD Library, UMD Stores, and Apple Computer have teamed up to sponsor a student video contest featuring films about the UMD Library. The purpose of this contest is to channel students’ often impressive talents and rich imaginations into projects that the library can use for promotional purposes.
After being judged by a panel of art faculty, Library staff, and students with an interest in film, the award-winning contest entries will be screened at a free event at 7 p.m. on December 4 in the Library’s fourth floor Rotunda Reading Room. Popcorn will be served.
To enter, students have until the end of November to complete videos according to a short list of rules. Videos must be about the Library and set in the Library; under seven minutes in length; produced in accordance with UMD policies and copyright law; and created entirely by students.
Students will win substantial prizes in a number of categories, including “Best Overall,” “Best Promotional Video for the Library,” “Best Instructional Video,” and “Most Entertaining.” Some of the suggested themes include:
- How to do something in the Library
- Where things are (Resources)
- Pilot for a sitcom
- How the Library changed my life
- How I found love at the UMD Library
- Dream that takes place in the Library
- Supernatural mystery of the Library
The video contest deadline is November 27. Entries, including an entry form and a disk containing the video, should be turned in by 9 p.m. at the Library reference desk.
For more information or to obtain an entry form, contact Arts & Humanities Librarian Rory Litwin at rlitwin@d.umn.edu.
NEMBA CALL FOR NOMINATIONS
Nominations for the 20th Annual Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards (NEMBA) will open December 1, 2007, and close on February 1, 2008.
The Awards recognize books published in 2007 that substantially represent northeastern Minnesota in the areas of history, culture, heritage, or lifestyle. To nominate a book, visit the NEMBA Web site at www.d.umn.edu/lib/nemba, complete a nomination form, and send it along with one copy of each nominated title to Brenda Bonnema, UMD Library, 416 Library Drive, Duluth, MN 55812. For more information, call 218/726-6843 or e-mail bbonnema@d.umn.edu.
The NEMBA Awards Celebration will be the afternoon of Sunday, May 18, 2008, at UMD. This event is free and open to the public.
The ITSS Multimedia Hub has moved to a new location in Library 119, a former computer lab. This is one of the first steps toward offering a learning commons menu of services that will be available to students in the Library, where they study.
One of the most exciting areas of development in education today is the integration of multimedia into teaching and student assignments. According to Mary Olson-Reed, coordinator for the Multimedia Hub, “The way the world is going, every day there are more technologies, and everyone needs multimedia knowledge.”
At the Hub, UMD students, faculty, and staff can learn to incorporate video, sound, images, text, and/or animation into a presentation, lecture, or class.
Best of all, assistance at the Multi-Media Hub is free for students, faculty, and staff of UMD and does not require full-computer lab access. Consultants are ready and willing to provide guidance on how to do CD/DVD burning and duplication; streaming media; transfer of VHS, DV, or DVD to a digital format; music production; help with digital photography and video formats; etc. However, if you don’t have time to learn these tasks yourself, services can be purchased, subject to staff availability.
The Multi-Media Hub has a welcoming atmosphere, with posters on the walls, music playing softly in the background, and a relaxed food and drink policy. Olson-Reed says that students often work long hours on their projects and appreciate the comfortable ambience. The space also works well for collaboration, and sometimes instructors bring classes in to get ideas about how to capture content for media projects.
The new location inside the library allows more space for the center’s growth, plus longer hours and weekend operation, which will be a plus for students. For more information, email mmedia@d.umn.edu, or call 726-6087.
CHECK OUT
THE LIBRARY'S VIDEO & DVD COLLECTION
A little-known resource in the UMD Library is its large and growing collection of DVDs and videocassettes. At the time of this writing, the collection consists of over thirteen hundred DVDs and over forty-seven hundred VHS tapes. Most of these are educational videos, but almost one thousand are feature films. Popular documentaries and filmed productions of stage plays are additional portions of the collection that may be of interest to the community.
The emphasis in our collection of feature films includes classic movies that we have acquired to support the film study curriculum, foreign films to support the foreign language program, and classic musicals to support the musical theatre program. In addition, a healthy collection of films by women directors and on feminist themes supports the Women’s Studies program.
Our DVDs and videocassettes are available for anyone in the Duluth community to borrow free of charge, with a loan period of one week (renewable).
To browse feature films in the collection, go to the UMD Library home page
at http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/ and click on “Collections” in the left
navigation panel. Choose “DVD/Video,” and then click on “Feature
Films on DVD and Videocassette.”
BERMAN POLITICAL MEMORABILIA
at the unveiling of the Berman Political Collection Exhibit.
On September 14, the UMD Library unveiled a major exhibit on its fourth floor—the Michael S. Berman Political Collection, a compilation of over one thousand artifacts, including photographs, political convention publications, bumper stickers, campaign buttons, posters, jewelry, and other items.
This important collection, donated by 1961 UMD alumnus Michael Berman, provides insight into American political history as well as its social and cultural past.
“I’m honored that UMD is providing such a substantial display,” said Berman. “I didn’t expect the presentation to be so impressive.”
Library Director Bill Sozansky welcomed the collection, "The artifacts are cultural gems," he said. "They present a unique opportunity for the public to view important moments in U.S. political history. We are grateful to Michael Berman for giving the library this wonderful collection and to Chancellor Kathryn A. Martin for helping us mount the exhibition."
Berman served as counsel and deputy chief of staff to Vice President Walter Mondale, who attended the September event at UMD, and Berman has played an active role in every presidential campaign from 1964 to the present. The Berman Collection reflects Berman's extensive involvement in the U.S. political arena.
As a student, Berman appeared on the UMD stage a number of times, most memorably in “Guys and Dolls.” He was the editor of the Statesman; he won a state debate championship; and what his classmates remember best is his work as the UMD Rooter.
“Provost Ray Darland called me to his office one day,” said Berman. “He wanted a new football stadium because at that time the UMD team had to play at Denfeld High School. He knew the Duluth community would support the stadium plan if the student body was behind it. Darland asked me to build school spirit.” Berman’s first task was to form a Stadium Rooter Club.
“I recruited the seven most attractive women on campus,” he said. “One woman, from Esko, was the state cheerleading champion, so she taught the squad the cheers. At the beginning of every football game, I would come out first, wearing a letter sweater, a raccoon coat, a beanie, and riding my sister’s bicycle. The cheerleaders would follow. I used a megaphone to lead the cheers. We built school spirit. I did my job," he said. “And as everyone knows, we got the stadium.”
After graduating from UMD in 1961 and law school at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in 1964, Berman became active in Minnesota politics.
Berman volunteered to help turn out the voters in a tough district, and Walter Mondale rewarded him with a job the Monday after the election. As Mondale’s Special Assistant Attorney General of the State of Minnesota, Berman’s primary assignment for the first six weeks was to serve as Mondale's driver. Later, Berman represented the State Commission Against Discrimination and brought and tried before a jury the first fair housing case in Minnesota.
When Mondale went to Washington, Berman went with him and became a fixture behind the scenes in every Democratic presidential election.
The display of Berman’s political memorabilia runs through December 14. For more information, contact Special Collections Librarian Tom Ambrosi, 218-726-7861.
A Memo from the Director
New information technologies continue to change our personal and work lives.
This is especially true for those of us who work in libraries. Keeping up with
one’s daily job while staying current with new information technologies,
however, is not always easy. Liz Benson Johnson, Assistant UMD Library Director,
read about an innovative staff training program developed by Helen Blowers at
the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County (PLCMC) that addressed
this issue. Blowers created an entirely online program, called Learning 2.0,
utilizing blogs, wikis, and podcasts to teach 23 Web and technology-related things
to the PLCMC staff. The program was designed to be completed in a self-paced
manner over a two-month span. Staff members were encouraged to individually complete
the program, including a series of assignments, and incentives were offered to
add an extra dose of motivation.
While the PLCMC program was geared toward public library staff, many elements of the curriculum are also applicable to academic libraries. Helen Blowers gave libraries permission to use or adapt her program at no charge as long as acknowledgement is given to PLCMC. With that in mind, UMD Library created a project team to work on adapting the PLCMC curriculum and to develop a process for our library to implement the program. The goal was to give staff members an opportunity to learn about new technology tools and have fun at the same time. The project was approved, and under the guidance of Liz Benson Johnson and Computer Work Team Manager Darlene Morris, team members Jodi Carlson, Mary Carlson, Dan Filipiak, Heather McLean, and Sue Trettel devoted time in early summer adapting the program for our library.
On July 31, 2007, the library had an all-staff training day. In the morning, the UMD Library Learning 2.0 Team presented the program and gave some initial instruction. In the afternoon, staff members started the program and were able to consult with team members if they ran into problems. Librarians and other staff members learned about blogs, social networking, wikis, podcasts, and much more. New units in the program were released every several weeks so that staff members would not be overwhelmed. The last assignment was released in early November. Staff members who successfully complete all of the units by November 30 will receive an Apple iPod.
At this point, we don’t know how many people will complete the program, but the initial feedback on the usefulness of this training has been positive. I want to thank the Learning 2.0 Team for its hard work.
ADELE KRUSZ RETIRES
younger than today.
It has been 35 years since Adele Krusz began working at the UMD Library as a student employee in the serials bindery department. Her first day was January 4, 1972, and she retired on October 1, 2007.
Friends, family members, coworkers, and campus colleagues gathered for a retirement party for Adele on Wednesday afternoon, September 26, in the Library fourth floor Rotunda Reading Room. A wine and appetizer reception and a program honored Adele’s devoted career at UMD.
Things were different in the Library back in 1972. Adele remembers working without computers, when students and other library users collected information with pencils and paper, when the card catalog was the heart of the library, and when checkouts were accomplished by mechanically imprinting cards and filing them. When she started working, the old library facility had been recently expanded (in 1968), but the Annex had not even been constructed yet.As a student, Adele sampled many subjects in the “open university” system then available. She was interested in English, philosophy, as well as Russian studies, but she knew that, most of all, she loved books. After meeting her husband, Dan, in April 1972, she decided to stay in Duluth and pursue her career right here at the UMD Library. Adele was hired full time in July 1974 after receiving her undergraduate degree in English, and she later became manager of the bindery department, enjoying her job there for many years.
In 1994, while attending a Minnesota Libraries Association annual meeting, she learned of the University of Wisconsin’s distance program for its master’s in library science degree, and she decided to enroll.
After receiving her MLS, she became a member of the UMD Library management team in December 1998 as head of Circulation Services, overseeing the interlibrary loan, reserve, distance education, and circulation functions.
She says that circulation and libraries have become very different through the years. “We have become a very complex institution. I think that we do so much more than anybody ever sees.” She cited the intricacies of interlibrary loan and keeping up with the constant changes in data management systems as examples of the work that goes on behind the scenes.
She has a quote from John Wesley on her personal Web page that has helped to keep her motivated: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
She has tried to remember that it isn’t the business that’s most important but “the people reporting to you and the people on the other side of the counter.”
Her plans for retirement include getting back to the things that she loves about living in the country—being in the woods, gardening, cooking, reading, and just sitting by the fire on a winter’s day.
She has been an active volunteer through the Friends of the Duluth Public Library and plans to look for more opportunities to give of herself. “There is a lot you can do in a city the size of Duluth, which has limited resources and relies so much on volunteerism,” she says.
Her advice to others is to “find a way to include the things that are important in your life. Remember that this is the only time we’ve got, and retire early if you can!”
CONSUMER REPORTS:
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP
Are you planning to make any purchases in the
next couple of months? If so, you may want to check out UMD Library’s subscription
to Consumer Reports (CR).
Published monthly by Consumers Union, CR features review articles on household and consumer products ranging from automobiles to vacuums. CR is unique in that the Union does not accept advertisements or free products, and they have a no-commercial-use policy (this means companies can’t use the contents of CR in their advertising). The Consumer Reports Buying Guide is published annually, compiling previous CR reviews and objective advice.
Consumer Reports at the UMD Library is available in both electronic and print versions. Our current print subscription can be found on the third floor with the rest of the current print periodicals. Print periodicals are arranged alphabetically by title, or you can use the call number (PER 1656.0000).
UMD Library’s electronic (online) subscriptions are available to all current students, faculty, staff, and community walk-in users. Our electronic subscriptions include the years 1988 to the present. Off-campus access to full text is limited to current UMD students, faculty, and staff, who can use their UMD username and password (x.500) to authenticate. Community users may search online resources by visiting the UMD Library and using a public computer workstation.
One of the best ways to search the online version of Consumer Reports is through a subscription database called Academic Search Premier (ASP). To search Academic Search Premier, follow these instructions:
Go to the UMD Library home page at http://www.d.umn.edu/lib.
Click on “Databases,” and then select “Academic Search Premier.”
In ASP, click on “Publications,” and browse to Consumer Reports.
Check the box next to Consumer Reports, and click “Add.” You
will now be able to search within Consumer Reports.
Alternatively, you may go to the URL http://tinyurl.com/2bwsdj. This URL will take you to preselected searches in Academic Search Premier of three CR magazines (Consumer Reports, Consumer Reports Buying Guide, and Consumer Reports on Health).
For more information about searching Consumer Reports, please visit http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/ref/events or
contact Sunshine Carter at scarter@d.umn.edu or
218-726-6693.
Staff News
Reference librarians Jodi Carlson and Martha Eberhart, and Library Director Bill Sozansky attended the Minnesota Library Association Annual Conference October 24-26 in Mankato. The theme was “All the World’s a Stage: Becoming the Lead Player You Were Meant to Be.”
Tom Zogg, geography librarian, attended the Annual Meeting
of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in San Francisco in April, which
included programs by UMD faculty members Larry Knopp and Tongxin Zhu. Tom will
celebrate his thirtieth year as an AAG member next year.
LEARNING
WEB 2.0 LINGO
By Peggy Johnson, University of Minnesota Libraries,
Editor of “Technicalities” &
“Library Resources & Technical Services”
Library users and people everywhere are experiencing rapid changes on the Internet, and having a basic understanding of the new terminology can be helpful.
Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of isolated Web sites to a full-fledged computing platform serving Web applications to end users, i.e., the next "enhanced" version of the Web. It is also used to describe the social phenomenon that is seen online—open communication (blogs, etc.), social networking, online gaming, and so on. The term Web 2.0 is also sometimes applied to enhanced organization and categorization of content, emphasizing deep linking (hyperlinks that dynamically link to a specific document, page, or image elsewhere on the Web).
Library 2.0 takes the ideas behind Web 2.0 and applies them to the library environment. "The heart of Library 2.0 is user-centered change. It is a model for library service that encourages constant and purposeful change, inviting user participation in the creation of both the physical and the virtual services they want, supported by consistently evaluating services. It also attempts to reach new users and better serve current ones through improved customer-driven offerings. Each component by itself is a step toward better serving our users; however, it is through the combined implementation of all of these that we can reach Library 2.0.…Technological advances in the past several years have enabled libraries to create new services that before were not possible, such as virtual reference, personalized OPAC interfaces, or downloadable media that library customers can use in the comfort of their own homes. This increase in available technologies gives libraries the ability to offer improved, customer-driven service opportunities" from "Library 2.0: Service for the Next Generation Library," by By Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk, (September 1, 2006); http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6365200.html.
Social tagging or social bookmarking: A social tagging system permits users to store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are either accessible to the public or to a specific network. Other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. It permits users to categorize resources by the use of informally assigned, user-defined keywords or tags (called folksonomy). Most social tagging services allow users to search for bookmarks that are associated with given "tags" or labels, and rank the resources by the number of times they have been bookmarked. Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords and the relation of keywords to one another. Among the most familiar sites are:
flickr http://www.flickr.com/ (sharing photos)
YouTube http://youtube.com (sharing videos)
del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/ storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks
PennTags http://tags.library.upenn.edu/ is a library application of social tagging You can see the resources tagged by Beth Picknally Camden (AUL for Technical Services at the University of Pennsylvania) at http://tags.library.upenn.edu/bethpc. The resources she is tracking appear in a "tag cloud" at the top of the page.
LibraryThing http://www.librarything.com/ could be considered part of social tagging and social networking. LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. It also connects people with the same books, and comes up with suggestions for what you might like to read next.
Calendar of Library Events
| Library Student Video Contest Screening Library 4th floor Rotunda Reading Room |
Dec 4, 2007 7:00 p.m. |
Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards Speaker & Awards Presentation at Weber Music Hall Both of these events are free and open to the public. |
May 18, 2007 May 18, 2007 |
ABOUT OUR NEWSLETTER
The UMD Library Connection is published each semester by the Communication & Events Team of the UMD Library. The goal of the publication is to improve communication both within the University and externally.
Contributors to this issue include Charlene Brown, Jodi Carlson, Sunshine Carter, Doreen Hansen, Peggy Johnson, Rory Litwin, Cheryl Reitan, Bill Sozansky, Jim Vileta, and Tom Zogg.
To reduce paper consumption, this newsletter is made available on the Web at http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/newsletter/index.htm.
UMD Library
416 Library
Drive
Duluth , MN 55812
Phone: 218-726- 8102
Fax: 218-726- 8019
E-mail: cbrown@d.umn.edu
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The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer
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