Bird's Eye View

UK Libraries partners with Judaic Studies Program for Hebrew Journals Pilot Project:

• The Collections and Technical Services Division (CTS) of UK Libraries, in collaboration with Dr. Oliver Leaman and the UK Judaic Studies Program, has announced it will participate in the JSTOR Hebrew Journals Pilot Project. The project, resulting from the ongoing efforts of the University of Haifa Library and the National Library of Israel to digitize, preserve, and expose core journals published in Hebrew, is intended to better meet the needs of scholars throughout the world engaged in scholarship in the Hebrew language. The journals involved in the pilot project include:

o Horizons in Geography: covers all aspects of geography in Middle East and surrounding areas

o Megamot: a behavioral sciences journal publishing in disciplines such as psychology, sociology, social work, and other fields

o Tarbiz: a leading Jewish Studies journal

o Zion: a journal of history, published by the Historical Society of Israel

• The CTS and the Judaic Studies Program will provide feedback to JSTOR about the digitized journal content—including issues of display, navigation, and preservation—in order to help make scholarly resources in Hebrew more accessible to students and researchers in the future.

• JSTOR is a not–for–profit service that provides a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive of more than 1,000 academic journals and other scholarly content.


Weekly LibGuide Feature:

• UK Libraries’ faculty and staff currently have 142 published LibGuides on a variety of topics. Our first featured guide, created by art librarian Meg Shaw, highlights the Lucille Little Fine Arts Library's collection of Artists’ Books. It is a wonderful guide which demonstrates how LibGuides can be used in a variety of ways, not simply for the traditional subject guide. http://libguides.uky.edu/artistsbooks


Landscape Scenes of Kentucky Showcased in Archival Collection:

• The Stereoscope, "Gems of Kentucky Scenery," by Carpenter and Mullen Collection, is now available for research. The collection consists of twenty-one albumen process stereograph cards of various landscape scenes of Kentucky. The Collection was processed and the finding aid written by Sarah K. Piester under the supervision of Jason Flahardy.

• A complete finding aid and images are available on the KDL: http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-dx?c=kyead;cc=kyead;q1=stereoscope;rgn=main;view=text;didno=2010av006


University Senate Council Sponsoring Three Town Hall Meetings:

• The Senate Council decided that it would be helpful to solicit faculty opinions regarding the most important qualities for selecting UK’s next president, and that it would be best to have such input available as soon as possible. Therefore, the Senate Council is sponsoring three “town hall meetings” in which faculty are invited to attend and offer opinions on what UK needs in its next president.

• Town hall meetings will be held at the following times/dates/locations:

o Friday, November 5, 9 – 10:30 am (Willard Medical Education Bldg., MN 263 – use elevators outside Medical Center Library)
o Monday, November 8, 1:30 – 3 pm (Auditorium, W. T. Young Library)
o Tuesday, November 9, 4 – 5:30 pm (Center Theater, Student Center)


Weekly Tech Tip from UK Libraries Desktop Support:

• URL shorteners: Long URLs are not only impossible to remember or type, they can also break across lines in an email causing the link to fail. There are several free websites that you can use to create short URL re-directs, to use in email or print publications. One example is http://bit.ly/. Just paste your long URL in the box on the main page, and the site will generate a much shorter alternative that will re-direct back to the original page. You don't need to create an account, although if you do then you can track "hits" to your short URL or even create a more memorable custom URL rather than an auto-generated code.


University Senate Library Committee Holds First Meeting of 2010-11:

• Dr. Tracy Campbell, Professor of History, was elected Chair of the University Senate Library Committee during its first meeting of the year. Other members of the committee are:

• Blair Kidwell – BE/Management
• Richard Andreatta – HS/Rehabilitation Sciences
• Thomas Zentall - PSY
• Terry Conners - AG
• Brian Murphy – ME/Internal Medicine
• Beverly Hilton - LI
• Armando Prats - AS
• Margaret Bausch – ED/Special Ed & Rehab Cnsl
• Terry Birdwhistell, ex officio

Charter - Senate Rules 1.4.2.4
The Senate's Library Committee (SLC) is charged with the responsibility for recommending to the University Senate policies to promote the educational interests of the University as a whole with respect to the Libraries, the faculty body of which is equivalent to the faculty of a college (GR VII.A.1). The SLC is responsible for consultation and advising with faculty of the Libraries or the Dean of Libraries, on such matters as are referred to it by the by the Libraries faculty, by the Dean, or by other University personnel, which pertain to improving the effectiveness of the Libraries as a part of the broad academic program of the University of Kentucky.


Harlan Hubbard’s Paintings Added To The Kentucky Online Arts Resource:

• After a lot of persistence, photographing, listing, fact checking, digitizing, converting, writing, composing, contacting owners of paintings, recontacting owners of paintings, and finally, persuading owners of paintings to sign agreements, Harlan Hubbard’s paintings are finally a part of the KOAR, the Kentucky Online Arts Resource.

• Betty Lyn Parker, at the J.B. Speed Museum in Louisville, worked with Meg Shaw for over a year to achieve this result. The paintings are selected from the exhibit at the Hopewell Museum that I created during my sabbatical and include works from the exhibit that predate 1950, the cutoff for KOAR inclusion.

• Although individuals are not credited in KOAR, the photographs and biography are Meg’s work, and the information about the paintings comes from the Harlan Hubbard Image Collection database compiled by Meg. This is a major step forward in the inclusion of Harlan Hubbard in the canon of Kentucky artists, and provides vital information to researchers about the cultural life of the commonwealth.

• To see the results of all this effort, click on http://www.koar.org/simpleSearch.page.do and type the word hubbard in the search box.


Richard Maiti Joins Digital Library Services:

Richard Maiti has been hired as a grant-funded Server Administrator/Programmer I in Digital Library Services, Library Technologies Division. In addition to extensive computer programming experience, he has a B.S. in Computer Science, a Masters of Applied Computing, and an MBA. Richard began his position in UK Libraries November 1.


Assessment In and Around UK: Using Rubrics for Assessment of Information Literacy Learning Outcomes, by Debbie Sharp and Judy Wiza (Sizzle: What’s Hot in Assessment (Volume 2, Issue 7, October 2010)

• Information literacy is the set of critical thinking skills necessary to locate, evaluate, and use information effectively. Because information literacy skills are important for students’ success in their college coursework, in the workplace, and for lifelong learning, information literacy has been included as part of the University’s new Gen Ed courses. Teaching faculty help their students achieve information literacy in their chosen fields through collaboration with librarians who provide instructional sessions and online research guides. When students learn the difference between scholarly and general interest sources and learn how to search databases to find scholarly resources, they produce better assignments.

• During the spring 2010 semester, UK librarians developed rubrics to assess each of the Libraries’ information literacy learning outcomes. With the collaboration of faculty and instructors in 18 classes of primarily first year students, the Information Literacy Coordinator designed brief assignments which were completed by 318 students and assessed using the rubrics.

• Although the number of assignments evaluated was relatively small when compared to the total number of first year students at the University, some useful findings emerged from the assessment data. It appears that many students come to the University without any information literacy skills gained during their secondary school experience and consequently, instruction must be offered at a very basic level. We discovered that although most first year students are computer literate, their knowledge does not extend to online databases beyond Google, and they generally do not understand how to begin a research project.

• It also became clear from the data that librarians must be very selective in choosing what can be taught in one 50 minute session, the standard amount of time librarians are allotted for teaching information literacy for each course. Focusing on a few key concepts allows students to more readily learn and use the information presented in the session. Where possible, the Libraries will make use of online tutorials and other basic instructional materials to cover core content consistently for all first year students so that later courses can build on the core content.

• The rubrics have been revised slightly and an assessment of information literacy outcomes on a larger scale will take place during the fall semester.


The UK Libraries Weekly Review is also available as a blog: http://uklibrariesbirdseye.blogspot.com/

Thanks to Meg Shaw, Beth Kraemer, Heath Martin, Sue Smith, Katie L.B. Henningsen, Judy Sackett
Debbie Sharp and Judy Wiza for their contributions to the Weekly Review.


Terry Birdwhistell
Dean of Libraries