Medical Center Library provides training to high school students interested in health careers

Susan Foster-Harper

Emerging Technologies Librarian Susan Foster-Harper in the Medical Center Library recently provided a training session on the use of databases in the health sciences for a group of 26 high school students.  The students were on campus for the Health Researchers Youth Academy (HRYA) sponsored by the Area Health Education Center (AHEC).

HRYA, a two-week program held at UK, exposes high school students to some of UK's research-related activities including working with graduate students and attending faculty lectures. During their time here, the students develop poster presentations on selected topics. Susan assisted them with literature review strategies related to various databases available for their research projects.

Kopana Terry to represent UK Libraries at National Digital Newspaper Program conference

Kopana Terry

Kopana Terry, oral history archivist in the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, will represent UK Libraries at the September conference, “Beyond NDNP: Planning for Collaborative Federated Newspaper Digitization.” The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) is a joint project between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Begun in 2005, the program supports digitization of out-of-copyright (pre-1923) newspapers from across the U.S.

NEH has awarded grants to universities, state libraries, and historical societies. As digitization of newspapers moves forward, new opportunities for integrating collections and creating access are being planned. UK Libraries is at the forefront of these new collaborative efforts to preserve and utilize newspaper archives.

Reflections and Observations

This week Mary Beth Thomson, Senior Associate Dean for Collections, Digital Scholarship, and Technical Services and I visited with our colleagues at the University of Tennessee Libraries.  Steve Smith, Dean of UTK Libraries and his colleagues shared with us the initiatives underway at UTK as well as some of the shared challenges we face as research libraries.

Mary Beth Thomson and Steve Smith

We hope that this visit will be the first of several between faculty and staff at UTK Libraries and UK Libraries.

Bookmaking students visit Artists’ Book Collection at Little Library, display their works

Part of the Artists' Book Collection

Students in the Art Studio Bookmaking class (A-S 390) led by Robert Dickes incorporated the more than one hundred-piece Artists’ Books Collection at the Lucille Little Fine Arts Library as part of their instruction during the 4-week Summer Session.

 The class spent several hours in the Little Library viewing and handling the books in the collection.  The students' projects will be exhibited in Little Library throughout the summer, along with recent acquisitions purchased with funds from the Donovan Trust.

Students in A-S 390

 Artists whose work is in the A-S 390 exhibit are: Lucinda Chapman, Julie A. Edwards, Mackenzie Haag, Cristina Igelmo, Olivia Lasheen, and Marshall Smith. 

Adrian Ho presents on internationalization at ALA Annual Meeting

Adrian Ho presented a poster at the ALA Annual Meeting

Adrian Ho, Director of Digital Scholarship, recently presented a poster session, “Going Global: The Library as a Critical Player in Internationalizing a University” at the American Library Association Annual Meeting in Las Vegas. The poster offers a quick overview of the recent article published by Toni Greider in the ALA’s publication International Leads, available in UKnowledge.  

Special Collections Research Center hosts UK Summer Youth Program

Students from the UK Summer Youth Program

On Wednesday, July 1, 2014, archivists in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) hosted the UK Summer Youth Program. The archivists shared their work experiences and current projects, while answering the students' questions about what it means to be an archivist by explaining the varied aspects of the field including technology skills, research skills, critical thinking, and data analysis. 


Students toured archival processing areas, the Breckinridge Research Room, and specialized areas like the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History and the Digital Lab.  After their orientation to the SCRC the students performed active learning mini-projects utilizing archival processing skills. 

Coordinated by Chuck Emps, UK HR/Student Employment Office, and funded by the Office of the President, this year’s annual Summer Youth Program consists of a six-week agenda introducing approximately 15 minority high school students to academic and work environments at the University of Kentucky. The students also gain valuable work readiness skills. During the past 13 years, more than 100 young people have participated in the program, with many attending classes at UK following their experiences in the program. Other areas within UK Libraries, Little Fine Arts Library and Shaver Engineering Library,  also sponsored students in the program.

Gear-Up KY Summer Academy bridges history and technology at the Special Collections Research Center

Students in the Gear-Up class worked with
historical methods of communication

June 24 through the 26 the Special Collections Research Center hosted rising tenth graders from across Kentucky participating in the Gear-Up KY Summer Academy 2014. Students rotated through five different learning stations where they compared historical methods of communication and documents (telegrams, postcards, diaries, carte de visites, and pocket travel guides), with social media and current communication technologies (texting, Pinterest, blogs, Flickr, and MapQuest).   

Education and Outreach Archivist Jaime Marie Burton developed the active learning stations and coordinated with Gear-Up organizers to prepare the event.  Special Collections Research Center faculty and staff Ruth Bryan, Sarah Dorpinghaus, Megan Mummey, and Stacie Mari Williams also assisted students during classes.  Students recorded their findings, summarized what they learned during the session, and were provided a prompt for their daily program journal.  The sessions helped Gear-Up students practice their resource evaluation skills and get hands-on experience with historical artifacts and primary sources as part of the larger Gear-Up curriculum.