Search
Loading
January 27th, 2025
In honor of Black History Month, Purdue Libraries and the Black Cultural Center invites you to attend a lecture by Sheryll Cashin titled, “Residential caste: How West Lafayette can transcend segregation and opportunity hoarding” on Wednesday, February 19, 10:30–11:30 AM in STEW 202.
About the lecture
How does a community with a history of segregation and disenfranchisement move forward to heal, repair, and transform?
West Lafayette is not different from other cities where Black migrants landed. As a professor of law at Georgetown University, Cashin has experience applying her theories to the particulars of multiple communities, with examples of hope, transformation, and repair from other cities. Repair requires building a multiracial coalition that supports policies that include and lift up vulnerable people. Dismantling and repairing residential caste requires perfecting local mulitracial democracy, or what W. E. B. DuBois called abolition democracy.
About Sheryll Cashin
Author of works centered around race relations and inequality in America, Sheryll Cashin is a professor of law at Georgetown University. Her latest book “White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality” published in September 2021 shows how the government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of U.S. inequality, while issuing a call for abolition.
Cashin is an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council; worked in the Clinton White House as an advisor on urban and economic policy, particularly concerning community development in inner-city neighborhoods; and served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, where her parents were political activists, and currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.
View her website to learn more about Cashin and her work.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsSeptember 27th, 2024
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.—Purdue University Archives and Special Collections (ASC) is pleased to announce the digitization of paper transcripts used by Neil Armstrong for his public addresses and select speeches. The nearly 500 transcripts—totaling 7,700 pages—were generously donated by his wife, Carol Armstrong, in 2011. The speeches are available for public viewing, text-searchable, and accessible on Purdue’s online archives platform, e-Archives.
The speeches are annotated by Armstrong with comments, quips, and jokes, or with arrows in the margins suggesting changes to word or phrase order. Jo Otremba, Barron Hilton Archivist for Flight and Space Exploration and clinical assistant professor at Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies, said Armstrong frequently added information that provides readers with additional context of the speech.
“He often added notes on the speeches sharing the date and location the speech was given, which is an interesting feature for the readers to consider,” Otremba said.
Some of the most notable speeches were given at Purdue University events such as the dedication of Grissom and Chaffee Halls and Armstrong’s acceptance of an honorary doctorate degree in 1970. The halls are named after two Purdue astronauts who both lost their lives in a NASA pre-launch fire at Cape Kennedy in 1967—the late Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, one of the original NASA Project Mercury astronauts and the second American to fly in space, and Roger B. Chaffee, a Navy pilot and NASA astronaut.
The Neil Armstrong papers continue to be one of the most accessed collections for research requests and instructional usage through ASC. Increasing ease of access to the archival collection through digitization has been a goal since the acquisition of the speeches in 2011. Work to digitize the speeches, funded by the Purdue Research Foundation and Carol Armstrong, began in 2022. The digitization process itself is lengthy and requires that each speech be described, vetted for third-party copyright, and uploaded to e-Archives.
“This project highlights the continuous effort required to make these resources accessible, and it’s wonderful to celebrate the speeches’ public availability through our e-Archives,” said Otremba.
Building this digital collection would not have been achieved without the detailed and steady collaboration between ASC’s Otremba; graduate assistant Camryn Beeman; Neal Harmeyer, Archivist for Digital Collections and Initiatives, Interim Head of Archives and Special Collections, and clinical associate professor; Sammie Morris, former Head of Archives and Special Collections and former director of the Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center; and members of Purdue Libraries’ Digital Programs team—Cliff Harrison, operations manager; M Lewis, digital collections photography assistant; and Samuel Wilson, digitization project assistant.
Purdue University Archives and Special Collections
Purdue University Archives and Special Collections, housed within Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, aims to support the discovery, learning, and engagement goals of Purdue University by identifying, collecting, preserving, and making available research records and papers of enduring value created or received by the university and its employees.
To learn more, visit lib.purdue.edu/spcol.
Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, general, News and AnnouncementsApril 10th, 2026
On April 9, Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies held its annual awards celebration, honoring the outstanding achievements and dedication of its faculty and staff. The event recognized individuals and teams who have demonstrated exceptional service, innovation, and commitment over the past year.
The recipients of this year’s awards are as follows:
Dagnese Award for Excellence in Service
John H. Moriarty Award for Excellence in Library Service
Dean’s Individual Award
Dean’s Team Award
James L. Mullins Award for Outstanding Contributions
Award for Excellence in Teaching
Award for Excellence in Research
Congratulations to all the award recipients, and thank you to everyone who continues to contribute to the success and mission of Purdue Libraries and the School of Information Studies. Your hard work and dedication are truly appreciated. To learn more about each award, visit the Libraries website.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsApril 8th, 2026
On April 7, Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies hosted its first annual Digital Humanities (DH) Day, bringing together students, faculty, and researchers for a morning of engaging presentations, thoughtful discussion, and community building. Held in Stewart Center, the half-day event showcased the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of digital humanities work across campus.
The student panel included students enrolled in the certificate program and highlights a wide range of innovative projects spanning disciplines such as literature, communication, linguistics, history, anthropology, and education. Presenters explored topics including digital approaches to language and culture, historical analysis through computational methods, and emerging questions around technology’s role in shaping research and society. A Q&A session followed, giving attendees the opportunity to engage directly with presenters and discuss their methods and findings.
The students who presented include::
The event concluded with a keynote address by Ryan Cordell, associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In his talk, “Anemoia, AI, and Skeuomorphism: The Material Turn in Digital Humanities,” Cordell examined the growing interest in analog and tactile practices—such as printing presses and typewriters—as a response to today’s increasingly AI-driven digital landscape. He emphasized how these hands-on approaches can deepen critical engagement with digital tools, highlighting the importance of human choice, design, and agency in technological environments.
DH Day 2026 underscored the vibrancy of DH scholarship at Purdue, fostering meaningful conversations about the intersection of technology, humanities research, and creative practice. The event not only celebrated student work but also encouraged ongoing collaboration and exploration within the DH community.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsApril 8th, 2026
Students of Michael Witt recently collaborated with public safety leader and Purdue alumna Amy Hess to design and build an investigative-themed escape room as part of the Executive in Residence (EiR) program. The EiR program—part of Residential Academic Initiatives within University Residences—brings distinguished alumni back to live on campus and mentor students, participate in classroom discussions, and share insights from their careers.
Director Hess graduated from Purdue in 1989 and worked for 29 years in various roles for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), from special agent to executive assistant director, including the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing and capture of Timothy McVeigh in 1995. She is currently the executive director of homeland security for the state of Kentucky.
Witt, a professor in Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies, works with many of the visiting executives to create experiential education opportunities for the students in the Engineering in the World of Data Learning Community, such as last month’s escape room.
In her consultation with Witt and his students, Hess presented four types of cases that she worked on in her career that might be suitable for an escape room: robbery, domestic terrorism, ransomware attacks, and kidnapping.
What scenario did the students choose for their escape room?
Purdue Pete and the men’s basketball coach, Matt Painter, have been kidnapped! Much of the team’s recent success on the court could be attributed to the development of PeteGPT—an artificial intelligence tool that can predict what plays an opposing team will run in a game. A ransom note demands the source code to PeteGPT or else the kidnappers will compel Painter to switch teams and coach for rival Indiana University. The consequences for Purdue Pete are unclear but equally ominous.
Following the engineering design process
The students elected a team leader and proceeded to apply the engineering design process to the challenge: defining the problem, brainstorming different designs, selecting a design to develop into a prototype, and then iterating to evaluate and optimize it. In the course of doing research for the project, the team visited Mission: Breakout Lafayette and played two of their escape rooms to gather ideas and work together from a shared experience. They were also able to interview the owner and game room designer, Eric Simons, and to continue to consult with Hess as they developed the storyline and design for their escape room.
“It was energizing,” Hess said about the collaboration. “It was so fun to watch them put together puzzles that other people could solve.”
Students took the initial concept and developed it into a fully immersive experience, incorporating clues, red herrings, and misleading leads to mirror the complexity of real investigations. Hess noted that solving investigative puzzles rarely happens quickly or easily, making the students’ thoughtful design and attention to detail especially impressive.
Although Hess provided guidance and shared insights from her career, she emphasized that the students did the hard work of designing the narrative, building the puzzles, and bringing the escape room to life. For her, the most rewarding part of the experience was seeing how the students transformed a simple investigative scenario into a complex and engaging challenge.
Staff from University Residences and Libraries and School of Information Studies participated in a playtest of the team’s prototype before the escape room opened for two days for other students in the learning community to play.
It’s not all fun and games
The experience was “more fun than a barrel of monkeys,” said Witt, “but it’s important to emphasize the pedagogy behind the fun we were having.” He outlined and incorporated learning objectives for both the design team and the students who played the escape room. “My students took ownership of the project and made all of the important decisions in the process. They started with eight different ideas and narrowed it down to one that they developed and successfully implemented.”
The escape room project is one example of experiential education and a growing movement at Purdue to enable students to gain knowledge and skills through direct experience, the application of theory to practice, and reflection. Residential Academic Initiatives and EiR Director Bryan Austin explains, “While it’s fun on the surface, this kind of experiential learning helps students connect what they’re learning with the real-world insights and experiences of our visiting executives.”
Learning objectives for the design team:
Learning objectives for players:
April 7th, 2026
Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies faculty Samantha LeGrand, Jing Lu, and Zoeanna Mayhook have been honored with the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Instruction Section (IS) Innovation Award, recognizing creative and impactful approaches to information literacy. The trio received the award for their Partners for Algorithmic Literacy (PAL) project, an initiative that pairs instructors and students to design meaningful, collaborative approaches to teaching and learning about AI and algorithmic systems.
Presented by Instruction Section, the award celebrates projects that demonstrate innovative and effective methods in information literacy instruction and programming. Nicole LaMoreaux, Chair of the IS Innovation Award Committee, praised the project’s strong emphasis on collaboration and its thoughtful integration of AI into human learning.
In response to the recognition, the awardees shared, “PAL has created a venue for open dialogue within the neutral third space of the library through a partnership pedagogy model. Bringing students and instructors together as co-learners fosters mutual understanding and collaborative problem-solving around the opportunities and tensions AI presents in the classroom. We look forward to continuing this work and encourage others to approach AI literacy through a partnership lens.”
PAL reflects Purdue Libraries’ continued leadership in advancing information literacy in a rapidly evolving technological landscape, helping prepare learners to critically engage with emerging tools and systems.
For more details and a full list of award recipients, visit the ALA website.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsApril 6th, 2026
Celebration of Teaching is an event that recognizes the achievements of Libraries, University, and external teaching award winners from the 2025–26 academic year. This year, 13 Libraries and School of Information Studies faculty members presented lightning talks on their innovative teaching methods, and 10 award winners were recognized at the event for their contributions to teaching.
The following people presented at this year’s celebration:
This year’s teaching award winners were also recognized, including:
Teaching for Tomorrow Fellowship Awards Program
The Teaching for Tomorrow Fellowship Awards Program fosters continued excellence of teaching and learning, and facilitates the development of faculty members’ teaching potential. Junior fellows’ goals are to improve their teaching and develop mentorship skills in the program, and senior fellows are tasked with mentoring junior fellows and working with them to craft a plan that will help them to grow as educators.
Junior fellows: Victoria Dawkins, Rachel Fundator, Innocensia Owuor | 2024 awardees honored: Chao Cai, Thomas Gerrish, Wei Zakharov
Senior fellow: Bethany McGowan
Teaching Leadership Award
The Teaching Leadership Award aims to foster a culture of teaching excellence and leadership by supporting instructors in designing and implementing developmental activities within their respective departments.
Recipient: Samantha LeGrand
Libraries Teaching Award Winners
Recipients: Melissa Chomintra, Michael Witt
Celebration of Teaching provided a fantastic opportunity to connect with faculty across the unit, gain insights into their innovative teaching efforts, and honor the well-deserved award recipients. It was a memorable event highlighting the dedication and passion driving education forward.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsMarch 25th, 2026
You’re invited to join us for Digital Humanities (DH) Day, hosted by Libraries and School of Information Studies, on Tuesday, April 7. The event will run from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM, with a featured talk at 10:30 AM in Stewart Center, Room 202.
This half-day conference celebrates creative and critical approaches to digital scholarship. Topics will range from online discourses around AI and disability to reconstructing complex networks of historical diplomacy and bilingual education.
Agenda
This year’s keynote speaker, Associate Professor Ryan Cordell (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), will present “Anemoia, AI, and Skeuomorphism: The Material Turn in Digital Humanities.” His talk explores a growing interest in analog and “dead media” practices—such as printing presses, typewriters, and other tactile forms—as a response to today’s increasingly AI-driven digital landscape. Rather than resisting technology, this “material turn” highlights hands-on, creative practices as a way to think critically about digital tools and emphasize human choice, design, and agency.
We hope you’ll join us for a morning of ideas, discussion, and community!
About Ryan Cordell
Ryan Cordell is an associate professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Cordell primarily studies circulation and reprinting in nineteenth-century American newspapers, but his interests extend to the influence of computation, digitization, and machine learning on contemporary reading, writing, and research. Cordell collaborates with colleagues in English, History, and Computer Science on the Viral Texts project, which uses robust data mining tools to discover borrowed texts across large-scale archives of nineteenth-century periodicals. Cordell serves as a senior fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School and also directs UIUC’s Skeuomorph Press & BookLab.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsMarch 11th, 2026
The Purdue Libraries Student Video Contest 2025–26 challenged undergraduates to answer one key question: “What do incoming students most need to know about Purdue Libraries to succeed?” After a brief hiatus, the contest returned with strong, creative submissions and impressive winners.
Winners:
Each winner impressed judges with a combination of creativity, clarity, and helpfulness. From uncovering hidden study spots to highlighting research resources, these videos provide incoming Boilermakers with guidance that will make their first year smoother and more successful.
These student creators have made a lasting impact, sharing insights that will support Purdue students for years to come. Congratulations to this year’s video contest winners!
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsMarch 5th, 2026
College life can be exciting, inspiring—and at times, overwhelming. Between exams, projects, meetings, and everyday responsibilities, finding a quiet place to unwind can be a challenge. That’s why Purdue Libraries has introduced a new space designed with student well-being in mind: the sensory room in the Wilmeth Active Learning Center (WALC), room 1134.
A space designed for calm
The sensory room is thoughtfully designed to be a calming, relaxing, and stress-free environment for all. Whether you need a break between classes, a reset during finals week, or simply a peaceful moment in your day, this room offers a supportive space to recharge.
With a capacity of six people, the room can be used by individuals seeking quiet reflection or small groups looking for a shared calming experience. However, it’s important to note that this is not a group study room. The focus here is wellness, relaxation, and sensory-friendly comfort—not collaborative academic work.
What makes it special?
The sensory room features a variety of elements carefully chosen to promote comfort and relaxation:
These features allow visitors to tailor the environment to their needs—whether that means dimming the lights for a moment of quiet or using one of the available activities to decompress after a busy day.
Easy and flexible reservations
The sensory room is reservable for as little as 30 minutes or up to 2 hours, giving students flexibility to fit wellness into their schedules. While those with reservations have top priority, the room may also be available for walk-in use.
To check availability or inquire about using the space without a reservation, simply stop by the second-floor information desk at WALC.
Reserve the sensory room on the Libraries website.
Supporting student well-being
The addition of the sensory room reflects Purdue Libraries’ commitment to supporting not just academic success, but overall student well-being. In a campus environment that values productivity and achievement, it’s equally important to provide spaces that encourage rest, mindfulness, and balance.
If you haven’t visited yet, consider stopping by the 2nd-floor desk and checking out the key to WALC 1134. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is pause, breathe, and reset.
Your well-being matters—and now there’s a space on campus designed just for that. For questions, contact Amanda Gill, lead operations manager.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsMarch 5th, 2026
Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies is pleased to announce that Dr. Nicole Kong will serve as the next associate vice provost and dean of the unit, effective Monday, March 16, 2026.
A longtime member of the Purdue community, Dr. Kong has served as associate dean for research since 2021 and joined the faculty in 2012. She also serves as the geographic information systems (GIS) specialist for Libraries, with research expertise in geospatial information retrieval, geospatial data management, integration, visualization, and spatial analysis.
Her interdisciplinary research in geospatial information science, data stewardship, and digital scholarship has attracted more than $25 million in sponsored funding from federal agencies including the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dr. Kong has received multiple honors at Purdue, including the John H. Moriarty Award for Excellence in Library Service (2020), the Libraries Excellence in Research Award (2018), and a Purdue Seed for Success Award (2018). She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Peking University and completed her Ph. D. at Pennsylvania State University in 2006.
Under her leadership, Libraries and School of Information Studies will continue advancing innovation in information literacy, data management, digital scholarship, and collaborative learning environments, while supporting the university’s goals in AI, scholarly communication, and interdisciplinary research partnerships.
Filed under: general, News and AnnouncementsMarch 3rd, 2026
Sarah Reifel, instructional designer at Purdue Libraries, has been named the 2026 Focus Award (Staff Category) recipient at Purdue University—a prestigious honor recognizing outstanding contributions to disability accessibility and inclusion.
Presented annually by the Purdue University Office for Civil Rights during Disability Awareness Month, the Focus Awards celebrate individuals who make meaningful, lasting impacts on campus accessibility. Sarah was selected for her extensive and continuing contributions to the Purdue community.
Through her work with Libraries, Sarah has helped strengthen access to information, services, and spaces, ensuring that libraries remain welcoming and usable for all students, faculty, and staff. Her efforts support equitable learning experiences and reflect a deep commitment to inclusion.
Upon receiving the award, Sarah said, “I am very honored to receive the 2026 Focus Award. Bringing awareness to some of the challenges faced by the disability community is a humbling and invaluable experience. Advocating for improved accessibility is such a small way that I can contribute to increasing access to resources, information, and experiences for everyone, and I am happy to be doing so.”
Sarah will be honored at the Disability Awareness Month reception at the Purdue Memorial Union. Her recognition highlights the vital role staff play in shaping an accessible campus and celebrates the everyday efforts that promote inclusivity.
Filed under: general, News and Announcements