Megan Norcia Joins LTS as CLIR Humanities Fellow
News Flash: Lehigh Named 2004 Winner of prestigious EDUCAUSE Award
Lehigh University has been named the 2004 winner of the most
prestigious EDUCAUSE institutional award, the Award for Systemic
Progress in Teaching and Learning. The award recognizes transformative
improvements in the campus teaching and learning culture that are
replicable, sustainable, technology-based programs and practices.
Specifically cited in the award is the Lehigh Lab, a campus-wide
initiative to foster best practices in teaching and learning. Vice
Provost for Library and Technology Service Bruce Taggart will represent
Lehigh University at the awards ceremony in October in Denver,
Colorado. For more information, see www.educause.net
(EDUCAUSE
Award Winners for 2004) and the next issue of this newsletter.
Login and Love
It: The MyLibrary Portal
by Tim McGeary
Library and Technology Services released MyLibrary @ Lehigh into the Campus Portal in August. MyLibrary is a portal application that allows users to personalize electronic library subscriptions and research databases that they use on a regular basis or pertain to their discipline of study. Lehigh is one of the first academic institutions in the country, if not the first, to release a fully customized production level MyLibrary portal. The portal is designed to help users cope with the complexity and general "information overload" of the current rich resource environment, a concern noted by respondents to the spring 2003 LibQUAL survey on campus.
By clicking on the MyLibrary tab in the Portal, users can login to MyLibrary. Users will initially see a default set of library resources chosen by the reference librarian who manages library resources for that discipline. For instance, Jean Johnson made the default selections for Education. By clicking on the "Edit" button in each resource area, a user can add to the list of resources from either an A-to-Z list or lists designated by discipline. Users can also remove a resource simply by clicking the "Edit" button. The "Bookmarks" area is available for URLs of resources that the library does not subscribe to but a user wants to include in the customized MyLibrary.
Users can change their default discipline by going to MyProfile and selecting a new profile with the drop-down list. Users who have more than one discipline of study are given the option to merge their customized lists with another discipline. Other options are replace which replaces a customized list with the default list of the new discipline and keep which keeps a customized list without any additions based on the newly selected discipline.
In a future release of MyLibrary users will be automatically signed onto MyLibrary when they login to the portal. Please contact your LTS College Team librarian or the LTS Help Desk for more information.
IBM Workstations Boost
Scientific Computing
by Gale Fritsche
During the past three years, Library and Technology Services (LTS) has been working with faculty and a scientific computing committee to determine the proper level of scientific computing hardware to acquire and maintain at Lehigh. During this time, Lehigh's central scientific computing power was tripled by the acquisition of a 32 processor SGI (Silicon Graphics) 3800 compute server and a 96 processor Beowulf Cluster. Another part of the strategy was to reduce the number of public accessible SGI workstations located in public labs in order to reduce costs associated with the systems not being used. The remaining SGI workstations (twenty two) have been in operation for over six years now and are becoming obsolete.
Therefore, in August 2004 Library and Technology Services replaced twenty two of the public accessible SGIs with new IBM Intellistation workstations. The majority of the new workstations run Fedora Linux; for campus locations, see: www.lehigh.edu/computing/linux/models.html. These IBM workstations give a much needed boost in computing power for the scientific computing user who requires a single or dual processor UNIX based system. Students, faculty and researchers can now access these systems locally or remotely to perform computing functions that just recently demanded the power of the SGI 3800 compute server.
The overall capacity of the new workstations has increased
significantly as compared to the SGI workstations. Questions regarding
these systems or general scientific computing at Lehigh may be
addressed to Gale Fritsche, Team Leader for Desktop and Scientific
Computing at gdf2@lehigh.edu or please visit the Research Computing
WebPages at www.lehigh.edu/computing/research.html.
Books Added from
Holz Bequest, Books & Bricks Drive
A generous bequest from the Gertrude Holz estate has resulted in the addition of more than 50 chemistry books to the Lehigh University collection, including a major reference work, the 7 volume Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations II, to be published in November. Books were selected by Science Librarian Brian Simboli in conjunction with the Chemistry Department faculty.
The "Books & Bricks" campaign added over 70 more books in honor
of graduating seniors. Given by Class of '04 parents, these books were
in the student's major field. The "bricks" portion supported the Senior
Class gift and provided for the inscription of the student's name on a
brick for the renovation of the "Green" in front of the University
Center.
Computer Site and Classroom Upgrades
During summer 2004 almost 200 new computers were installed across campus in public sites and classrooms. Most systems are Pentium 4, 2.8GHz, 512MB, with CDrw/DVD, 40GB drive, 15" LCD panel, etc. For full information check the LTS website at: www.lehigh.edu/classrooms.
Linderman Renovation Update
by Jean Farrington
The Linderman Library renovation project continues to make good progress with the milestone of completing the schematic design phase reached in late July. During this phase, the Linderman planning group working with the architects, MGA Partners, determined what functions will be in which spaces within the building including mapping out locations for the mechanical and telecommunications infrastructure.
The next phase is design development. Library and Technology Services leadership and selected LTS staff and faculty will be working with the architects in late August and September on the specifics of the various spaces to determine equipment and furniture needs and layout for each. At the same time, there will be a wide-ranging communications effort to provide staff, faculty and students with the latest information on the Linderman renovation and to alert them to evolving plans for providing library service during the anticipated 18-month Linderman Library closure. Also during the summer, LTS librarians began to review the collections in Linderman to consider what volumes should be relocated to Fairchild Martindale Library (primarily Dewey 00s) or the Library Materials Center, and to weed unneeded duplicate items from the collection.
The target date for the start of construction is May 2005. This phase will take approximately 18 months, and the goal is to have the renovated Linderman Library "open for business" at the start of the spring semester in January 2007. Detailed plans are in the works to provide additional study space on campus (most likely in the Johnson Room in the University Center), to offer timely delivery of materials from the Library Materials Center to the Asa Packer campus, to retrieve materials from the Linderman collection for patrons whenever possible, and to identify ahead of time materials from Linderman that will be needed for courses during the closure so that they may be housed in Fairchild-Martindale Library.
Fund-raising for Linderman is ongoing with this fiscal year being a
key time for identifying, cultivating and soliciting potential major
donors. Gifts and commitments have already been received for some of
the named spaces. To stay current on overall progress on the project,
check out the Web site where additional information (including
graphical material) will be added as it becomes available:
http://www.lehigh.edu/lts/linderman.
American Periodicals
Series (APS) Online, 1740-1900
This new treasure of electronically accessible information contains digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals that originated between 1741 and 1900. Featured are over 1,100 titles ranging from popular magazines like Vanity Fair and Ladies' Home Journal to periodicals documenting the political history of the nineteenth century, such as the abolitionist movement and the Civil War era, as well as literary magazines of note. The service will eventually cover 400 additional titles.
Researchers can see all of the original content, typography, drawings, graphic elements, and article layouts exactly as they were originally published. This primary source material will be helpful in a wide range of courses in the humanities and social sciences disciplines. The database is fully searchable with the ability to limit by both article type (for instance, letter or obituary) and content type (including ad or comic). Durable links can be made to individual articles and periodicals. A complete list of periodicals covered is available from the APS site.
A web-based training session on the APS, provided by Proquest, will be held on September 27 at 3pm. Please contact Humanities Librarian Kathe Morrow (kem6@lehigh.edu) to enroll; you can either go to an on-campus training site or participate in your office using both your telephone and PC. The American Periodicals Series can be accessed from the Library Services web page, and through the MyLibrary portal. This major resource was purchased with support from the College of Arts and Sciences.
Ed Gallagher Named 2nd Lehigh Lab Faculty Fellow
Megan Norcia Joins LTS as CLIR Humanities Fellow
Dr. Megan Norcia joined Library and Technology Services on July 1st for one year as a Council on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR) Fellow. Norcia holds a PhD in English literature from the University of Florida in Gainesville. Her undergraduate degree in English is from Villanova University.
With the support of both LTS and the Provost's Office, Lehigh University is one of eleven institutions hosting CLIR Fellows, including Bryn Mawr, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, University of Virginia, Yale and others. The program was initiated to educate new scholars about the challenges and opportunities created by new forms of scholarly research and the information resources that support them, both traditional and digital. It includes an intensive two-week seminar that will bring all the fellows together for training, discussions, and workshops on the changes in research methodologies, the creation of new scholarly resources, and the evolving demands that these changes require libraries and archives to address. During her year at Lehigh, Norcia will collaborate with faculty and LTS staff in areas such as information literacy, digital library projects, global citizenship, and Special Collections.
At noon on Tuesday October 5th in Linderman Library, Dr. Norcia will present a Friends of the Libraries' talk titled Victorian Women Map the Empire based on her dissertation. Using geography primers and other materials like children's puzzles and games at the University of Florida and the British Museum, Norcia examined how women writers subtly introduced their ideas about women's roles in the far-flung British Empire. Norcia can be reached at extension 84932 or via email at men204@lehigh.edu.
Buttoning Up the Election, Lobby, through November 2nd
History Professor Roger Simon's collection of campaign buttons and posters, dating from the 1896 presidential election, is displayed.
On the Heavenly Spheres: Works on Early Astronomy at Lehigh, to October, Bayer Galleria
Organized around Copernicus' solution to the problem of planetary motion, the exhibit displays his 1543 work, Tycho Brahe's1602 Instruments, and works by Kepler, Galileo, and other early astronomers. At noon on Thursday, September 23rd, in the Linderman Humanities Forum (room 200), faculty and LTS staff will present a related program on "Teaching the Digital Copernicus".