Center for Colorado & the West
The Library has received a gift of $106,000 from the Kenneth King Foundation for a digitization project. This gift will fund the purchase of digitization equipment, the annual Alliance Digital Repository (ADR) fee, and a King Prospector Fellow’s honorarium. In the first year, digitization efforts will focus on primary research materials owned by Professor Tom Noel (aka Dr. Colorado).
The first Fellow is Jacqui Ainley-Conley, a graduate student in UCD’s Public History and Preservation Department. She brings a wealth of knowledge about Colorado history to the project.
Efforts are also underway to apply for recognition as an official UCD Center named The Center for Colorado and the West at Auraria Library. Official designation would permit us to successfully apply for grant funding.
The Auraria Library Essay Contest (formerly Read/Succeed)
This year's essay contest will continue to recognize two students from each of the 3 schools that we serve. However, instead of $600 prizes, each student selected will receive $1,000!
The contest is co-sponsored by the Auraria Library Development Board and the Auraria Campus Book Store. This year’s new Chair is Board member and MSCD Professor, Dr. Pamela Troyer.
Please mark your calendar for an Awards Ceremony and Reception on Wednesday, March 18th at 2:00 PM in the Jackson ELC. All are welcome.
Public Service Updates:
In order to move forward with Public Services initiatives, several Task Groups and sub groups have been formed, including:
Combined Service Desk Task Group - to create a service desk to meet multiple user needs including information, interlibrary loan/document delivery, reserves, and checkout. Members: Ev, Meghan, Judith (chair), Diane, Supak. Update: Task Group met Jan. 12 and reviewed AHEC’s 3 draft proposals for a combined service desk.
Self-Checkout Sub-Task Group - to investigate the feasibility of implementing self-checkout at Auraria Library. Members: Ev, Niraj, Rick B., Meg (chair), Nicole. Update: Met Jan. 9 to Share information about magnetic strip and encoding challenges.
Merged ILL, Reserves, and Media Processes and Operations Sub-Task Group -to determine how to integrate ILL, Reserves and Media processes with cross-trained Combined Service Desk staff. Members: Cindy M. (chair), Kathy, Sherry, Meghan, Judith. Update: Upcoming BCR consultation will produce workflow, software, and hardware recommendations.
Research Consultancy Service Task Group - to create a research consultancy service pilot to answer in-depth research and reference questions through on-call, by appointment, by telephone, or online (email, chat, IM, blog). Members: Louise (chair), Eric, Ignacio, Tobey.
Disciplinary Teams Task Group-- to create a Disciplinary Teams pilot for liaising with the academic schools, colleges and departments on campus. Members: Ellen M (chair), Lorrie, Orlando, Nikki, Linda, Karen, Elaine.
Diversify Your Syllabi
On Thursday, January 15th, the library hosted the 2-hour “Diversify Your Syllabi” workshop for 12 UC Denver faculty in the ELC. It was co-sponsored by the Auraria Library, UC Denver Ethnic Studies, and UC Denver Center for Faculty Development. Mary Dodge and Orlando Archibeque were part of a 4-person team that put together the workshop; Resa Cooper-Morning and Paul Encinias from UC Denver Ethnic Studies were the other team members.
Twelve faculty members submitted a course syllabus in late December 2008 and it was the team's goal to infuse diversity into the course. The team identified appropriate library and internet resources for each of the syllabi. At the workshop each participant reviewed the team's recommendations, searched various diversity databases, and asked questions about library resources and services. This was followed by a brief presentation by each of the faculty members describing how he/she might incorporate this newly found information into higher education curricula.
Such a workshop will be presented prior to the Fall 2009 and Spring 2010 semester. One improvement for the Fall 2009 workshop will be the development of a web page to facilitate access to all documents and to make the information accessible to a wider range of scholars and others who want to infuse diversity into higher education.
Lando
New Group in the Library: Special Projects. This group will work on the Library’s ‘carrying capacity’ and digitization projects. Members include Marit, Farhad, Mozhdeh, Bill, and Jerry. Marit is coordinating the ‘carrying capacity’ project, working with bibliographers and reference librarians to implement evaluation criteria which will open up new library spaces for collaborative student learning.
Mary S is coordinating the digitization project, which is funded by the King Foundation award. Farhad and Mozhdeh will support slide and text digitization efforts, as well as website maintenance. Bill will provide project management and financial oversight
Removing Resource Records from Skyline
At the end of February 2008, the Auraria Library acquired and implemented Innovative Interfaces’ Millennium Electronic Resources Management (ERM) Module. The software was purchased to help manage e-resources, licenses, and contacts. However, instead of assisting with back office management, a problematic implementation resulted in resource records displaying in the Skyline catalog. These records are very time consuming to maintain and the efforts expended exceed patron benefits. Therefore, with approval from the Electronic Resources Committee, the Technical Services department will be suppressing resource records in the Skyline catalog. We will provide further details before the resource records are suppressed. For an example of a resource record see: http://skyline.cudenver.edu:2082/record=e1000180
