Digital Newspaper Initiative Receives NEH Grant:

UK Libraries has been awarded a unique fourth award in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) that funds digitizing of Kentucky’s historic newspapers. The $175,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities will allow Program Manager Kopana Terry to create the highly successful film-to-digital institute – meta
morphosis – as an online series of learning tutorials for NDNP recipients across the United States. UK Libraries was the only original (of six) NDNP participant to receive a fourth award.

The National Digital Newspaper Program is a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/


Gift Will Help Provide Access to Women’s Collections:

A recent gift from former UK Professors Carolyn Bratt and Susan Scollay will allow UK Libraries Special Collections to make a large amount of archival materials available to researchers. Specifically, UK archivist will use the gift to arrange, describe, and, when appropriate, digitize collections relating to the UK Senate Council Ad Hoc Committee on the Status of Women. The committee’s original report issued in 1990 and the ten-year update in 2001 addressed critical gender equity issues at the University of Kentucky. Professor Bratt chaired the original committee and Dr. Scollay chaired the committee for the ten-year update.

Professor Bratt was the W.L. Matthews Professor of Law and the Executive Associate Dean at the University of Kentucky College of Law, where she taught for 33 years.

Dr. Scollay's career as a professional educator spanned service as a faculty member at several different colleges and universities, including 15 years as an Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky with joint appointments in the Departments of Educational Leadership Studies and Educational Policy Studies & Evaluation.

Following their retirement from UK, Professors Bratt and Scollay began life as sailors on their boat Sojourner’s. You can follow their adventures here: http://sojournerky.wordpress.com/about/

Thank you Carolyn and Susan! Wishing you smooth sailing.


Novelist Francine Prose to Headline Women Writers Event:

Bestselling novelist Francine Prose will be the featured keynote speaker at the 33rd annual Kentucky Women Writers Conference this September. As the headliner of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, Prose has handpicked fiction writer Danzy Senna to join her for the conference's Hardwick/Jones Reading, a mentor/mentee keynote address, scheduled for 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 17, at University of Kentucky's Memorial Hall.

The free public reading is modeled after the influential relationship between writers and Lexington natives Elizabeth Hardwick and Gayl Jones. The Hardwick/Jones Reading honors the roles of influence, mentoring and friendship in women writers’ lives. The premier event, co-sponsored by University of Kentucky Libraries, brings a renowned established writer into conversation with the emerging writer of her choice.

Registration for the Kentucky Women Writers Conference is September 15-18 and information on these authors is available on the conference website. For more information on any of these events, contact Julie Wrinn, conference director, at (859) 257-2874.


Terry Birdwhistell
Dean of Libraries

Weekly Review

UK Librarians Participate in Kentucky Rural Health Association Annual Meeting:

Jane Bryant, Health Literacy Librarian, made a presentation on Health Literacy at the annual Kentucky Rural Health Association meeting in Bowling Green July 21-22. She also demonstrated the new online CE program for healthcare professionals entitled "Health Literacy 101."

Mary Congleton, Southern Kentucky AHEC Librarian (Area Health Education Center) presented an exhibit of National Library of Medicine and UK Medical Center Library services and resources.

The Kentucky Rural Health Association (KRHA) educates providers and consumers on rural health issues and advocates actions by private and public leaders to assure equitable access to health care for rural Kentuckians.


2011 Phonathon:

UK Libraries’ phonathon will run from July 31 through August 18. UK students will be calling friends and supporters of UK Libraries asking for donations for the UK Libraries Enrichment Fund. This fund provides support for special programming and other initiatives that are very important to UK Libraries. Last year’s phonathon set a new record for contributions to UK Libraries.


Jennifer Garrett Completes Career Enhancement Fellowship:



This week marks the completion of Jennifer Garrett’s Association of Research Libraries CEF Fellowship with UK Libraries. A graduate student in Library Science at the University of British Columbia, Jennifer spent the summer working with Robert Shapiro in the Medical Center Library and with Katie Henningsen in Special Collections. We wish Jennifer well as she returns to Vancouver to complete her degree.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Judy Sackett, Cheri Daniel, Katie Henningsen, Robert Shapiro and Rick Brewer for their service on the ARL CEF Fellowship Committee.


Advisory Board Meeting Set for October 28:

UK Libraries National Advisory Board fall meeting will be held Friday, October 28 in the Hilary J. Boone Center. During the meeting the Board will review Board activities and goals and hear updates about UK Libraries initiatives. The Board will also select the 2012 UK Libraries Medallion for Intellectual Achievement recipient.


Trina Altman Leaving Medical Center Library:

Trina Altman has resigned from her Library Technician position in the Medical Center Library Interlibrary Loan unit. She has been employed with UK Libraries nearly five years and her last day will be July 28. We thank Trina for all the good work she has done for UK Libraries and Medical Center Library users and offer our best wishes for the future. She and her family are relocating to Maryland.


Thanks to Judy Sackett and Janet Stith for their contributions to the Weekly Review.


Terry Birdwhistell
Dean of Libraries

Weekly Review

Director of Archives/University Archivist to Begin September 1:

Ruth Bryan has accepted the position of Director of Archives/University Archivist in Special Collections. Her archival experience includes her current position as Archives Program Manager at the Ruth Mott Foundation, Flint Michigan, and previous position as Head of the Collections Processing and Encoding Section, Technical Services Department, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library. Ruth holds Master degrees from North Carolina State University and the New School for Social Research. We are looking forward to her arrival this fall.


Henningsen Presents at KCA User Group Meeting:

Last week Katie Henningsen presented "Implementing Archivists' Toolkit at U.K." for the Kentucky Council on Archives Open Source Software User Group. Following the presentation the group attended a Society of American Archivists Webinar, hosted by UK Libraries, on the lifecycle of records entitled, "Archivists' Toolkit™: Shortening the Path from Accession to Researcher."


Director of Digital Scholarship Position Search Underway:

The position announcement for the Director of Digital Scholarship, Collections and Technical Services Division is ready to distribute. Volunteers from both inside and outside of CTS are needed for this important faculty position. Faculty and staff volunteers are welcomed. Please send a message with your interest to me no later than July 22.


Steve Wrinn Will Be Keynote Speaker at Faculty Retreat:

The UK Libraries Faculty retreat will be held August 11 at The Signature Club in Lexington. This year’s keynote speaker will be Steve Wrinn, Director of the University Press of Kentucky since 2002. A graduate of Kenyon College he did his graduate work at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Civil Rights in the Whitest State: Vermont's Perceptions of Civil Rights, 1945-1968 (University Press of America, 1998). He is a former editor at Rowman & Littlefield. Steve will discuss the work of the University Press of Kentucky and current trends and challenges in academic publishing.

The University Press of Kentucky's editorial program focuses on the humanities and the social sciences. Its commitment to film and military studies has earned it a national reputation in recent years. The press has broadened its appeal to readers in Kentucky and Appalachia with publications of special regional interest. In the 1970s it produced the Kentucky Nature Series and the forty-seven-volume Kentucky Bicentennial Bookshelf. The press publishes classic novels by Kentucky authors including Harriet Arnow, Janice Holt Giles, John Fox, Jr., James Still, and Jesse Stuart. Other publications include The Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992), A New History of Kentucky (1997), Atlas of Kentucky (1998), and Encyclopedia of Louisville (2000).


KYVL Implements Reorganization:

After over a year of strategic planning, the Kentucky Virtual Library implemented a new organization. The former KYVL Advisory Board has been reconstituted as the KYVL Alliance comprised of 12 members from participating libraries and two ex-officio members. It will act in an advisory capacity on all issues of importance to KYVL. I serve as UK’s permanent representative on the Alliance and am serving as Chair of the Alliance for 2011-2012.


Crawfish Bottom Available This Week from University Press of Kentucky:

Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community, is the story of a small neighborhood in northern Frankfort, Kentucky, located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw’s” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with the city’s Capital Plaza in the mid-1960s.

Doug Boyd, Director of UK Libraries Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, traces the evolution of the controversial community that ultimately saw four-hundred families displaced. Using oral histories and firsthand memories, Boyd not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also demonstrates how this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort police officer describes Craw’s residents as a “rough class of people, who didn’t mind killing or being killed.” In Crawfish Bottom, the former residents of Craw acknowledge the popular misconceptions about their community but offer a richer and more balanced view of the past.

Find more information @ http://www.kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=2599


ASERL Creates FDLP Steering Committee:

This year I will be serving on the Association of Southern Research Libraries’ Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) Steering Committee. Chaired by Judy Russell, Dean of Libraries at the University of Florida, the committee will oversee the implementation of ASERL’s Guidelines for Managing FDLP Collections in the Southeast Region.

ASERL is gathering commitments from ASERL libraries to adopt agencies/sub-agencies as their “center of excellence” for this effort. The list of libraries and the agencies selected is maintained on the ASERL website. UK Libraries’ federal agency is the Works Progress Administration.

UK Libraries is a regional depository and through the leadership of Sandee McAninch, Regional Depository Librarian, UK Libraries has played an important role in government documents planning nationally.


Thanks to Deirdre Scaggs and Judy Sackett for their contributions to the Weekly Review.

Terry Birdwhistell
Dean of Libraries

Weekly Review

Mary Beth Thomson Chairs ALA Task Force:

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Transforming Collections Task Force met recently at the American Library Association Annual Meeting to present an update to the ALCTS board.

The task force is charged with providing leadership in the transformation of libraries and library services in a dynamic and increasingly global digital information environment. Mary Beth Thomson, UK Libraries Associate Dean for Collections and Technical Services, chairs the task force. A report on their recent meeting can be found here: http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/ala-members-blog/new-transforming-collections-task-force-outcomes


Nunn Center Focus of Story in Chronicle:


A story in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education features several initiatives in the UK Libraries Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. Nunn Center Director Doug Boyd, Eric Weig, Director of Digital Library Services, and Michael Sloan, Programmer in Digital Library Services, have developed a method for indexing audio and video recordings, making it easier for researchers to call up precise sections of oral history transcripts without having to listen to hours of recordings. They hope to make their new search tool, an open-source software solution, available free to other libraries.

The story can be found here: http://chronicle.com/blogs/players/new-tool-could-help-researchers-make-better-use-of-oral-histories/28855?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en


Former ARL Career Enhancement Fellow Joins Ohio State University Libraries:

Brian Leaf, who spent part of last summer with UK Libraries as an Association of Research Libraries Career Enhancement Fellow, recently accepted a position with Ohio State University Libraries as Instructional Design Librarian Resident. Brian received his graduate degree in Library and Information Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Congratulations Brian.


Judi Quire Begins New Position in Special Collections:

Judi Quire, former administrative assistant to President Lee Todd, joined UK Libraries last week. In Special Collections, Judi will work on both President Todd’s official UK papers as well as his personal collection of papers that document President Todd’s entire life and career. Judi will also assist with UK Libraries initiatives leading up to the university’s sesquicentennial celebration in 2015.

Welcome Judi.


Terry Birdwhistell
Dean of Libraries

Weekly Review

Thank you President Todd and Welcome President Capilouto:

I want to take this opportunity to thank President Lee T. Todd for his support of UK Libraries over the past ten years. During President Todd’s tenure the Science Library opened, we celebrated Dr. Thomas D. Clark’s 100th birthday and UK’s 3 millionth volume, and we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the William T. Young Library, Also, President Todd featured several UK Libraries initiatives in his weekly radio broadcasts, UK Perspectives. Thank you Dr. Todd for your support of UK Libraries

We welcome President Eli Capilouto and wish him well as he begins this important chapter in his career and the University of Kentucky


Debbie Sharp Chosen to Participate in ACRL Program:

Debbie Sharp, Information Literacy Librarian, has been chosen to participate in the Association of College and Research Libraries Immersion ‘11 Assessment Track. ACRL noted that the “quality” of Debbie’s personal statement “in conjunction with evidence of strong institutional support distinguished your application.” ACRL's Immersion Program provides instruction librarians with the opportunity to work intensively on all aspects of information literacy.


Stacey Greenwell Receives Outstanding Division Member Award:

The Special Library Association’s Academic Division presented its first Outstanding Division Member Award to Stacey Greenwell at its national conference last month in Philadelphia. Stacey served as the Division’s first chair and was the person who initiated the creation of the Division in 2009. In addition to being a highly regarded member of the Division, she has served on the boards of both the Kentucky Chapter of SLA and the SLA Instructional Technology Division, as well as numerous other workgroups, committees, and commissions. She is an SLA Fellow and received the Lyrasis NextGen Librarian Award for Leadership in 2009 as well as the Dow Jones Leadership award last year.

In addition, SLA named the award in Stacey’s honor and will be known as the Stacey Greenwell Outstanding Division Member Award.


Mary Molinaro Named Co-Chair of ASERL Group:

The Association of Southeastern Research Libraries Board has named Mary Molinaro the next co-chair of ASERL’s IT/Digitization Initiatives Interest Group (ITDIIG) for a two year term. Jason Battles, University of Alabama, will serve as the other co-chair.

Established in 2009, the ASERL Information Technology and Digital Initiatives Interest Group (ITDIIG) is charged with exploring cooperative ventures between member libraries and to implement mechanisms for sharing knowledge and best professional practices in the fields of library information technology and digital libraries and archives. The ASERL ITDIIG will identify areas of interest for research and exploration, investigate potential collaborative/cooperative ventures based on that research, and periodically recommend specific ventures to ASERL’s leadership for implementation.


Keeneland Partnership Continues:

UK Libraries’ partnership with Keeneland began its second year today. Becky Ryder is assigned to the Keeneland Library for another year where she will direct several important initiatives. We continue to seek private funds to establish an ongoing partnership in which UK Libraries manages the Keeneland Library as a major component of our Special Collections.


I hope that everyone has a safe and fun holiday weekend.


Terry Birdwhistell
Dean of Libraries