Drexel's Writer's Room receives a Big Read Grant from the NEA
Submitted on July 29, 2016 - 12:24PM
This September, Drexel's Writers Room, a literary arts program designed to bring the Drexel community and its neighboring residents together, will use Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God as the basis for a series events supported by a NEA Big Read grant.
Writers Room will partner with The Free Library of Philadelphia as well as other partners across the city to use both writing and art to create a community from a wide range of people throughout Philadelphia. Events will vary from book discussions and writing sessions to a second line parade through campus and a demonstration of soul food cooking by Drexel Alum chef Brian Lofink.
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Dean's Update: Framing Drivers for Change
Submitted on July 12, 2016 - 4:14PM
[The Dean's Update is a reoccurring column introducing the Libraries' monthly newsletter In Circulation.]
In recent months it seems that more and more people are bringing to my attention their new discovery that 'libraries must really be changing.' They ask me to have coffee, seeking my impressions of what goes on in libraries or sharing newspaper articles, blog posts or other communications. For those of us in the midst of the change, this isn't news, it is simply a continuation of our work. Libraries have seen many changes over the years and we continue to project what drives the need for change and to make sense of transformations that occur.
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Liaisons Participate in Open Access Discussion
Submitted on July 8, 2016 - 11:56AM
On Tuesday, June 6, 2016 liaison librarians Shannon Robinson and Jay Bhatt participated in a panel discussion with the ExCITe Center's podcast series, ExCITeCast, speaking about open access and research.
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Libraries Celebrate the Legacy of Drexel President William Walsh Hagerty
Submitted on July 8, 2016 - 11:14AM
On Friday, June 10, 2016 the Libraries hosted a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of former Drexel president William Walsh Hagerty. Hagerty was a transformative president who laid the groundwork for the institution that Drexel is today.
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Exploring Qualitative Research Software
Submitted on July 8, 2016 - 10:43AM
Qualitative research methods, traditionally associated with social scientists, are increasingly being used across disciplines to support results from quantitative analysis. This mixed-methods approach provides a richer and more nuanced output, but it can be complicated to design. Drexel librarians are exploring tools to help support the process.
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Dean's Update: Celebrating William Walsh Hagerty
Submitted by Danuta A. Nitecki on June 1, 2016 - 11:14AM
[The Dean's Update is a reoccurring column introducing the Libraries' monthly newsletter In Circulation.]
Anniversaries provide us with an opportunity to reflect upon and celebrate milestones. They become significant when shared among those most affected by their impact and when they disclose new insights. Next Friday, the Libraries will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of William Walsh Hagerty who served as Drexel's president from 1963 to 1984.
While Dr. Hagerty's birthdate falls during a particularly busy day of commencement exercises, we hope members of our community, visiting parents, families, and friends will be able to join some of the festivities on Friday, June 10th from 1 - 2:30 p.m. in W. W. Hagerty Library. The event will feature a talk, an exhibit, and a custom Cake Boss cake in the shape of the Hagerty Library building. For more information, please visit our event listing.
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New Health Sciences Guide Showcases Free Resources
Submitted on May 26, 2016 - 10:57AM
The Libraries has a new Library Guide that showcases free health sciences resources and is accessible to the entire Drexel University community and members of the general public.
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2016 Staff Celebration Awards
Submitted on May 6, 2016 - 1:07PM
On Thursday, May 5, 2016, the Libraries recognized six staff and two student workers at the sixth annual Library Celebration Awards. The Library Celebration Awards recognize individuals or teams who embody the characteristics of the Libraries organization; including providing exceptional service, championing and embracing change, contributing to the profession and employing user feedback to guide decisions.
The Libraries staff provides critical support for the University's mission of teaching, research and community engagement. Awards are given to individuals or teams who have advanced these values through exceptional accomplishments that surpass expectations and serve as a model for other staff.
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Dean's Update: Strengthening communities around access to information
Submitted on May 4, 2016 - 3:45PM
Access to information is a public good. It enables us to make informed decisions and improve lives. On a global level, communities that have timely and relevant information are better positioned to take advantage of the economic, social, and educational opportunities that access can provide. At Drexel, access to authoritative information and strengthening the community's ability to use it, position the University to improve economic growth, strengthen civic engagement and add to the world's knowledge.
Worldwide, libraries are trusted institutions that reinforce and strengthen communities. By first preserving and organizing information, libraries have created places for people to access knowledge. But, libraries go beyond ensuring access to information. They guide people to find information to make better-informed decisions to improve their lives, which subsequently makes for a better society.
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Join the Libraries and #ChoosePrivacy this Week
Submitted on May 4, 2016 - 3:41PM
Our privacy is increasingly threatened as technology, social media, mobile computing and 'big data' analytics continually expand and become more sophisticated in connecting and exposing us.
The recent Pew Research Center project on Privacy and Information Sharing reports that more than 90% of adults 'agree or strongly agree that consumers have lost control of how personal information is collected and used by companies.' A majority express a 'consistent lack of confidence about the security of everyday communication channels and the organizations that control them.' Hacking, key-logging, phishing and malware attacks make us all vulnerable.
Libraries, and librarians as a profession, are dedicated to providing access to information while defending the individual privacy and civil liberties of their patrons
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PAR and the Libraries
Submitted on May 4, 2016 - 3:37PM
Drexel is beginning a new cycle of Program Alignment and Review [PAR] and the Libraries is a source of information for multiple aspects of the reviews.
The Libraries offers to identify scholarly works produced by faculty in each program. Librarians are able to provide comparative metrics, such as citation counts and impact factor, for publications by Drexel faculty as well as faculty at peer and benchmark institutions. Using InCites, we help to identify research subjects that are areas of excellence for the program. The example provided is a graph of publications over the last five years for five U.S. research universities that compares the amount of output from each institution, Drexel liaison librarians assist in further uncovering and analyzing available data about faculty publications by a specific department.
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Computable Knowledge Base and Symbolic Coding Platform Comes to Drexel
Submitted on May 4, 2016 - 3:29PM
Drexel now enjoys a site license to the Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica products as a result of a new collaboration between Engineering, LeBow, the Math Department in COAS, and Drexel University Online (DUO).
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Seventy-six Authors & Editors Recognized at Fourth Annual Celebrating Drexel Authors Event
Submitted on May 2, 2016 - 1:42PM
On Wednesday, April 27, 2016 the Office of the Provost and Drexel Libraries honored Drexel faculty, staff and students who wrote or edited books that were published in 2015. The fourth annual Celebrating Drexel Authors event was hosted in the A. J. Drexel Picture Gallery.
Books this year included textbooks, children's books, works of fiction, and stories told through photographs. In total 76 authors and editors were recognized at the 2016 event.
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Privacy and Justice in the Digital Age
Submitted on May 2, 2016 - 10:55AM
Why do stories of Secretary Clinton's emails keep popping up in the news or the government's request of Apple to create a backdoor for their encryption? Why should we care? Email and texting have changed the ways we communicate and the ways our government can surveil its citizens in the name of national security, causing ripple effects throughout our justice system.
This issue and others related to e-discovery, will be the topic of a documentary film and panel discussion at a May event hosted at Drexel University.
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Announcing Drexel's Participation in DLF E-Research Network
Submitted on April 13, 2016 - 9:33AM
Drexel University Libraries has been selected as a member of the 2016 Digital Library Federation (DLF) eResearch Network, a research data management community in practice. The cohort of institutions included in this program are focused on implementing research data management services, and engaging in shared skill development, networking, and collaboration.
Among the members of this year's cohort are the Universities of Pennsylvania and California-Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, New York University, Rice University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the National Institute of Health.
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Drexel's Libraries Gain NACO Independence
Submitted on April 8, 2016 - 9:49AM
In January of this year, the Libraries was approved for membership in the Library of Congress' Name Authority Cooperative Program [NACO] after successfully participating in the training and review process. This membership allows Drexel's library catalogers to directly contribute Name Authority Files to the Library of Congress - establishing national standards for consistent use of names, places, topics and more.
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world by collection size and is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Though it officially serves the United States Congress, it is considered the national library for the country.
The NACO program allows participants to contribute authority records for people, corporations and jurisdictional names. Libraries staff can now add new authority files to uniquely identify researchers, authors, colleges and locations at Drexel, for Philadelphia and beyond.
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Free Textbooks and other benefits of Open Educational Resources
Submitted on April 8, 2016 - 9:43AM
Open Educational Resources, OER, are a popular topic in the educational press right now. But what is OER? Who is producing OER and where can they be found? What institutions are using OER and what kind of impact are they measuring?
Explore these and other questions with our new Library Guide, Open Educational Resources.
UNESCO, an early proponent of Open Educational Resources, defines OERs as: 'any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation.'
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Beyond Lecturing: Online Instruction & Demonstrations
Submitted on April 7, 2016 - 1:00AM
Online tools have become an increasingly valuable and efficient vehicle for the Libraries to reach online students for instruction and research guidance.
Providing high quality instructional sessions in an online environment can be daunting - especially as library instruction often includes theoretical content alongside practical demonstrations of specific information tools and resources. The liaison librarians in the Library Academic Partnerships division at the Libraries have many years of experience teaching and working with students online.
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New Popular Books
Submitted on March 29, 2016 - 2:30PM
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Dean's Update: Library of Congress Nomination
Submitted on March 2, 2016 - 3:42PM
[The Dean's Update is a column introducing each issue of the Libraries' monthly e-newsletter In Circulation.]
Recently President Obama nominated Carla D. Haden for the position of Librarian of Congress. The action likely went unnoticed by many watchers of this year's political theater, but for a minute it shed light on libraries during diverse speculations about their future. Reflecting on the country's oldest federal cultural institution poses the mind-boggling question of what it takes to lead the largest library in the world. I do not presume to know what the 'right stuff' is, but thought some of our readers might be interested to put academic libraries with which they are more familiar, in context against our country's--and the world's--leading research enterprise.
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Membership in BioMed Central Provides Discounts for Drexel Authors
Submitted on March 2, 2016 - 3:29PM
Since 2012, Drexel University Libraries has maintained a membership in BioMed Central (BMC). BMC is a publisher of open-access journals heavily focused in life sciences, clinical medicine, science, and technology. Over 180 of BMC's journals are peer-reviewed and ranked by Thomson Reuters in the Journal Citation Report.
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Dan Taylor to Speak at March ScholarSip
Submitted on March 1, 2016 - 12:44PM
Think about a recent trauma that someone has experienced: perhaps an unsettling or unresolved argument, a car accident, the loss of a job, or the passing of a loved one. These experiences often haunt the person long after the time when they occurred. People may experience lingering stress, anxiety or sadness, or they may change how they make decisions about their actions, sleep or diets.
So what happens when young people experience trauma and how does this experience impact their lifelong health?
Daniel Taylor, DO, an associate professor at Drexel's College of Medicine, will present his research on how trends in child poverty and early childhood stressors impact short- and long-term health at the Libraries' quarterly ScholarSip event on March 14, 2016.
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