Welcome to the Brookens Library at the University of Illinois Springfield Faculty Focus Blog. Here you will find important information specifically for faculty members on the campus of UIS. You can expect information about resources and services, updates to our website, copyright compliance and much more. Subscribe today and stay connected!
The library has recently expanded its offerings of online videos by acquiring the Black Studies in Video collection from Alexander Street Press. This recent acquisition expands the library’s holdings in the area of Black History and Literature adding video content to the existing Black Thought and Culture collection. You can get access to Black Studies in Video by going directly to:
http://blst.alexanderstreet.com
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The Black Studies in Video collection is a seminal video collection consisting of archival footage, powerful interviews with leading figures in the civil rights movement, and documentaries examining the black experience in the arts, politics, public and private life, and much more. The collection was developed in partnership with California Newsreel, the oldest nonprofit social issue documentary film center in the United States, and the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) which provided streaming to its Legacy Video Collection.
At present, the collection contains over 140 videos from 1969 – 2011 totaling 141 hours and upon completion, the collection will contain 500 hours of film covering African American history, politics, art and culture, family structure, gender relationships, and social and economic issues. The database will also draw from the NAACP archives, archives from select Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the Hatch-Billops Collection, a critically acclaimed archive of primary and secondary resource materials focused on black American art, drama, and literature.
There are numerous access points for locating content as users can browse by people, themes, topics, filmmaker, country of origin, production date, producer, and other features. The service provides synchronized, searchable transcripts that run alongside each video. Users can also search all video transcripts, liner notes, bibliographic data (including series, title, country of origin, publication date, narrator, production staff, and more), and many other indexed fields, including person discussed, year discussed, and all of the browse options listed above.
Ann Fessler, author of The Girls Who Went Away is coming to UIS on Thursday, March 21st at 7pm for a film screening and discussion about the documentary she produced and directed, A Girl Like Her in Brookens Auditorium. A reception will immediately follow the screening and discussion (Light refreshments will be provided). The ECCE event is being co-sponsored by: Friends of Brookens Library, UIS College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UIS Women & Gender Studies, UIS Sociology/Anthropology & UIS History.
This is a great event for students, faculty and staff. We hope to see you there!
A GIRL LIKE HER reveals the hidden history of over a million young women who became pregnant in the 1950s and 60s and were banished to maternity homes to give birth, surrender their children, and return home alone. They were told to keep their secret, move on and forget. But, does a woman forget her child?
The film combines footage from educational films and newsreels of the time period about dating, sex, “illegitimate” pregnancy, and adoption—that both reflected and shaped the public’s understanding of single pregnancy during that time—with the voices of these mothers as they speak today, with hindsight, about the long-term impact of surrender and silence on their lives.
For more information about the film please visit: www.agirllikeher.com
The University of Illinois Springfield Archives/Special Collections & Illinois Regional Archives Depository (IRAD) is in the process of updating their website. Between Monday, February 18, 2013 and Sunday, March 3, 2013 you will be giving the option to choose between the current version of the website and the new updated version of the website with a prompt. Effective Monday, March 4th the site will officially switch over the NEW website.
The first image is the CURRENT website – consider this the BEFORE. The second image is the NEW website – in other words the AFTER. We hope you like the changes.
The AFTER is Below:
FACULTY: Brookens Library has reserved LIB 141A, in the Media Services area, for the Understanding Public Access to Publicly Funded Resources webinar at 3:00 on Thursday, Feb. 21.
Understanding Public Access to Publicly Funded Resources Webinar
The Internet, increasingly affordable computing, open licensing, open access journals and open educational resources provide the foundation for a world in which a quality education can be a basic human right. Yet before we break the “iron triangle” of access, cost and quality with new models, we need to develop sustainable open business models with open policies: public access to publicly funded resources. – eBib
Join us with Dr. Cable Green from Creative Commons, as we discuss specific initiatives for open educational resources. Dr. Green is Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons. He previously served as Director of eLearning & Open Education for the Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges.
Sarah Sagmoen – February Employee of the Month at the University of Illinois Springfield
We are so proud to share the news that our very own Sarah Sagmoen was selected as the University of Illinois Springfield February Employee of the Month! Many of you may already know her; she works tirelessly to be accessible to students, faculty and staff on campus. Since joining UIS in 2009 Sarah has made many important relationships on campus, making her an invaluable part of our staff.
The University wrote an excellent blog post on the Employee of the Month Blog you might enjoy reading. We also featured Sarah in our Know A Librarian Series on the What’s New at Brookens Blog. There you can learn more about Sarah’s unique interests and get a sense of her dynamic personality.
Alistair Croll, technology marketing entrepreneur and writer, gave a presentation on “The Implications and Opportunities of Big Data” at the OCLC Symposium on January 25 during the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting. Big Data, or datasets that are too large to manage using traditional hardware and software, can nevertheless provide levels of analysis that were previously almost impossible. While the uses of big data can be beneficial, uses can be envisioned that have serious implications for privacy and security. Mr. Croll explores these issues in a thought-provoking manner.
As librarians we are asked questions…lots and lots of questions. These questions range from “Where is the bathroom?” to “I’m doing a research paper on single nucleotide polymorphisms. Can you help me find some articles?” The bathroom is down the hall, but single nucleotide polymorphisms – what? One quick Wikipedia search later and we know that single nucleotide polymorphism is a DNA sequence that is often referred to as SNP. This may not seem like much, but in the library world, it’s just enough. We now know that you need to search our science databases or point the student to our Biology Research Guide for further exploration and research.
We are all familiar with Wikipedia’s weaknesses, but its strengths are just as great. Wikipedia provides concise articles on a multitude of topics – nearing 4 million – including references and links for further research. There are over 17 million users and almost 1500 administrators. That makes for a lot of content generation and a lot of eyes watching, editing, and adding to said content. In fact, this process of content generation is itself useful in teaching the research and writing process.
Is Wikipedia an authoritative source? Emphatically no! Is Wikipedia a good place to familiarize oneself with the unfamiliar, a place from which to jump, a free resource available to all sans publishers and hefty subscription rates, a resource from which to teach the research and authority process, a resource our students are already using? Why yes!
Here’s an example of how one group of faculty are using Wikipedia to promote their students work and teach the research and writing process:
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/2011/12/21/why-smart-profs-want-students-to-use-wikipedia/
Here’s an article on how students are already using Wikipedia:
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2830/2476
Faculty: Do your students need a refresher on what Brookens Library offers? If so, send them on a Library Tour! We’ve scheduled both on-campus Tours and online Virtual Tours for Spring semester. The Tour covers where to find books and articles, how to access resources from off-campus, where to get research help, and more!
See the links below for dates, times, and registration. Registration is encouraged but not required for individual students; they can just drop-in! No need to worry about verifying attendance: we will send you an email with the names of your students who attended.
If you would like a tour or other library instruction during class time, contact your Library Liaison to schedule. (We do online instruction, too.)
- Dorothy Hemmo -
Have you ever heard of Aaron Swartz? If you’ve heard of Reddit, you are at least familiar with his work. Aaron Swartz had done many newsworthy things in his short career. He worked on the early architecture of Creative Commons, co-authored RSS and even co-founded Reddit. More amazingly, he did it all before he was 21.
In 2011, Swartz was arrested after downloading almost 5 million articles from JSTOR. Most recently, Swartz has been in the news after taking his life on January 11th, 2013. Discussion about whether or not overzealous federal prosecutors had anything to do with Swartz’s decision to end his life followed closely behind. The federal prosecutors held that Swartz had violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 and deserved jail time. Aaron Swartz was 26.
But there’s a much bigger picture to consider beyond the alleged theft of the JSTOR articles that led to all of this. The case pursued against Swartz - pursued entirely by the United States Attorney’s Office rather than by the wronged parties (MIT and JSTOR – both took no action) - raises some serious doubts about the laws that govern intellectual property in America. Or at least additional doubts as we face down an academic publishing crisis complete with hyperinflation of access costs and increasingly aggressive litigation by publishers.
Aaron Swartz was instrumental in shutting down 2012′s SOPA bill, but there’s still a long way to go before our 20th century intellectual property laws actually reflect the realities of technology and information in the 21st century.
Brookens Library will have reduced hours & special closures this holiday season & throughout intersession. View a complete list of our hours HERE
