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September 29th, 2018
On Saturday, September 29th beginning at 5:00pm Eastern, the Libraries will be performing security and maintenance updates on the servers that support our access to electronic resources. Please expect intermittent downtime when attempting to log into our electronic resources using your Purdue Career Account. This maintenance period is expected to last about two (2) hours.
If you experience issues while trying to access our electronic resources during this time, please try again.
Filed under: Alerts: ExpiredSeptember 28th, 2018
Purdue University Libraries Professor Sammie Morris and Assistant Professor Nastasha Johnson are part of a Purdue University interdisciplinary team that received a grant from the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC) “to provide training for archivists across the country by developing and facilitating the Archives Leadership Institute (ALI) for the next generation of archivist leaders.”
Last month, the Purdue Polytechnic Institute announced the award.
The announcement, below, appears here courtesy of Purdue Polytechnic Institute Director of Marketing and Communications Melissa Templeton.
Mesut Akdere, associate professor of human resource development (HRD) and director of HRD Virtual Lab at the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, along with professors in Purdue Libraries and the Center for Intercultural Learning, Mentorship, Assessment, and Research (CILMAR), received a grant from the National Historical Records and Publications Commission (NHPRC) to provide training for archivists across the country by developing and facilitating the Archives Leadership Institute (ALI) for the next generation of archivist leaders. The new program, ALI@Purdue, will provide advanced training for archival leaders in the United States, giving them the knowledge and tools to transform the profession in practice, theory and attitude.
Other members of the multidisciplinary project include Sammie Morris, professor and director in the Purdue University Libraries Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center; Nastasha Johnson, assistant professor in Purdue Libraries; and Kris Acheson-Clair, associate director of intercultural pedagogy and scholarship at CILMAR.
The grant’s three-year funding will enable the use of virtual reality, an immersive learning technology new to the field of archives, to train 20 archivists each year from across the country. The project will create more interculturally and technologically competent leaders in the archives profession who are prepared to advocate on behalf of their institutions as well as the broader archives field.
“This is really about incorporating future learning technology into the field of archives,” Akdere said of the project. “Virtual reality provides hands-on, immersive experiences which supports the development of trainees’ cognitive abilities.”
Akdere also highlighted various capacity enhancement opportunities associated with the ground-breaking use of virtual reality technology, which will allow ALI trainee archivists to conduct various workshops in their respective institutions. Trainees will also learn how to develop and share their own virtual reality training simulations.
“Our virtual reality training has the potential create a powerful cascade effect, making it possible for even more archivists to learn, transform and share their work,” said Akdere.
Learn more about ALI@Purdue at polytechnic.purdue.edu/ali.
Filed under: Faculty E-Newsletter, faculty_staff, general, SPECSeptember 27th, 2018
Purdue University Libraries will once again sponsor the Library Scholars Grant Program in 2018-19. The grant-award program supports access to unique collections of information found around the country and the world, and untenured tenure-track faculty members and associate professors tenured effective July 1, 2016, or later, from the Purdue West Lafayette, Fort Wayne, IUPUI, and Northwest campuses, and the Statewide Technology Program are eligible. Awards of up to $5,000 will be made for this purpose, with grant-supported activities to be completed by December 31, 2019.
Applicants are required to have a conversation with a librarian, who must write a letter of support for a proposal. Applicants who are members of Libraries’ faculty must consult with their supervisors regarding the time and effort involved in the activities reflected in the proposal and include a letter of support from a supervisor/FRC.
All proposals must be submitted by email to Libraries Administration, libinfo@purdue.edu, with the Subject: Library Scholars Grant, no later than 5 p.m., Friday, November 9, 2018.
Additional information about eligibility and submission guidelines is available at www.lib.purdue.edu/scholars/.
For questions about the Library Scholars Grant Program, contact D. Scott Brandt, interim associate dean for research, at techman@purdue.edu.
Filed under: general
September 27th, 2018
Due to construction work, Hicks Undergraduate Library will be closed from 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5 through 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Oct 10. No access will be provided by swiping a Purdue University ID card during this time.
Filed under: generalSeptember 26th, 2018
On Monday, the Purdue University Teaching Academy inducted Purdue University Libraries Associate Professor Ilana Stonebraker as a new Teaching Academy Fellow.
Last spring, the Purdue University Teaching Academy selected and announced 12 inductees for 2018.
Faculty members are selected in recognition of their outstanding and scholarly teaching in graduate, undergraduate, or engagement programs. Candidates were identified by their individual departments or colleges/schools based on evidence of excellence in teaching, innovation in teaching methodology, teaching-related service, and scholarship in teaching and learning.
The Teaching Academy’s mission is to enhance and strengthen the quality of teaching and learning at Purdue University.
More information about the 2018 inductees is available at www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2018/Q2/purdue-university-teaching-academy-announces-2018-inductees.html.
In June 2018, Stonebraker was one of 10 individuals selected by the Tippy Connect Young Professionals (TCYP) in the organization’s 2018 TCYP Top 10 Young Professionals Under 40 Award program. This past summer she was also recognized by the ALA Library Instruction Roundtable as an author of one of the Top Twenty Library Instruction Articles of 2017.
Filed under: Faculty E-Newsletter, faculty_staff, generalSeptember 20th, 2018
Due to scheduled maintenance, IEEE Xplore users may experience intermittent access issues from 2:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET (6:30 – 8:30 UTC) Friday, Sept. 21. They anticipate that the site may be unavailable for a portion of this time.
Filed under: Alerts: ExpiredSeptember 20th, 2018
For the full announcement from Purdue University, please visit www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2018/Q3/purdue-to-initiate-dean-search-for-libraries.html.
Jay Akridge, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and diversity, has announced the start of a national search for the next dean of Purdue University Libraries.
“Purdue Libraries faculty and staff are known for being creative, collaborative and innovative,” Akridge says. “In addition to their many current contributions, the talented members of this unit will play a key role in our campus-wide Integrated Data Science Initiative and undergraduate research under the direction of the new dean. To better reflect the broader contributions they make to the campus and their future direction, the Libraries faculty and staff are in the process of identifying a new name for the unit. We will be looking for a leader who will help take our (renamed) Libraries to even higher levels of excellence and impact.”
David Reingold, the Justin S. Morrill Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, will chair the search. Rhonda Phillips, dean of the Honors College, is continuing her service as interim dean of Purdue Libraries.
The search committee members’ names are listed in the Sept. 20 edition of “Purdue Today.”
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, press_releaseSeptember 14th, 2018
A revised and expanded paperback edition of Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Time of Gus Grissom by George Leopold will be released on September 15th. In preparation for the release, the press interviewed Leopold to find out more behind his inspiration in writing the book, some thoughts on the book’s subject, and more.
Q: What inspired you to write a book? How did you come across Gus Grissom as a subject?
Leopold: The standard narrative of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union is divided into two parts: before and after what came to be known simply as The Fire, the catastrophe that killed Gus Grissom and his Apollo 1 crew. After NASA recovered, the contributions of Gus Grissom were mostly forgotten—misremembered, really, when Tom Wolfe published The Right Stuff. Wolfe’s depiction of Grissom in his book and especially in the film version is a cartoon character. Wolfe got it wrong.
This struck me and many others as unjust. I determined to correct the record by writing a biography of Gus Grissom that places his life and career in the context of history of manned spaceflight.
I resolved to write his biography while standing before Gus Grissom’s grave in a lonely section of Arlington National Cemetery.
It only me took seven years.
Q: You have mentioned in previous interviews that you feel Grissom is underappreciated. Given his importance to early space exploration, how do you feel this happened?
Leopold: Part of its was Grissom’s unwillingness to toot his own horn. Gus always said the pre-flight press conferences were harder than the actual space missions. Another factor was the serendipitous nature of the early Project Mercury crew assignments. Most remember Alan Shepard’s first flight and John Glenn’s orbital flight. Grissom was remembered mostly for losing his first spacecraft.
And there was little reward or notoriety outside of his own peer group for the long hours at the factory doing the tedious testing required to get the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft into orbit. Grissom was engineering test pilot by training. All he really wanted to do was to go faster and higher—all the way to the moon and back. He cared not a whit about personal prestige, but he worked tirelessly to ensure the United States was first on the moon. Without Grissom’s contributions, I’m convinced we would not have made it by the end of the 1960s as we so declared.
Q: What do you imagine the space program would look like today if the Apollo 1 mission had been a success?
Leopold: It’s hard to say. Space exploration is a deadly business. If the Apollo 1 fire had not occurred on the launch pad, an accident in space would have been worse because investigators would know next to nothing about the precise cause(s). One of the cruel ironies, the central paradox of the Space Race, was that a launch pad fire actually saved the Apollo program. The reason was the evidence of what had been overlooked in Grissom’s ship—the faulty wiring, the leaking coolant, the lack of flame-retardant materials in the spacecraft, the clumsy inward opening hatch and, most important of all, NASA’s misguided engineering decision to use pure oxygen under pressure on the launch pad—all of it was there for the investigators to sift through.
To its credit, NASA rose from the ashes and built a great machine that took 24 humans to the moon.
Q: What are some things you believe the average person would be most surprised to know about the early age of space exploration?
Leopold: What a risky enterprise this was and the price the astronauts’ families paid. That, and the fact that Grissom and the early astronauts were test pilots who did not fly by the seat of their pants. They accepted risks, but they always sought to minimize them and come back alive. Gus Grissom is widely quoted as saying the rewards outweighed the risks (I never did track down the precise origin of Grissom’s iconic “worth the risk” quote, but he did say something close to this.) Hence, my thesis is that Grissom calculated those risks, dangers that every astronaut had to accept, and determined to proceed.
That decision cost him and his Apollo crew their lives, and shattered their families.
Q: What were some of the changes made for the new edition of the book? What makes it worthwhile for the person who has already read the original?
Leopold: For starters, the new Afterword describes how NASA finally provided a measure of closure for the Grissom, White, and Chaffee families. It’s an account of the 50th anniversary observance of the Apollo 1 fire. Gus Grissom’s brother Lowell did me the honor of an invitation to attend the ceremonies at Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA at long last did right by the crew, mounting a permanent Apollo 1 exhibit at the Kennedy Space Center that includes the scorched hatches. The NASA exhibit also includes photos of Gus Grissom first published in Calculated Risk.
I and others have long argued that some part of the spacecraft should be displayed in a dignified way to remind future generations of the sacrifices of the early astronauts. NASA did just that. The exhibit was long overdue.
Further, we believe the updated version is more readable, and benefited from the kind of crowdsourcing that occurs when a book on an important subject is published. A scholarly peer review process, enabled by social media, identified a few areas for improvement. The result, we firmly believe, is the authoritative account of Gus Grissom’s life and career.
Q: You have spent countless hours researching and interviewing for this book. What is your favorite story that didn’t make it in?
Leopold: Not left out, merely overlooked until recently. When the Apollo 1 crew assignment was announced during a press conference in Houston in March 1966, a reporter asked about the protocol for deciding which two astronauts on each three-man crew would land and walk on the lunar surface during later Apollo missions. A NASA manager started in with a long technical answer.
Grissom listened for a moment, smiled and jumped in—getting right to the point: “If it was this crew, it would be me and somebody else!”
Q: Do you think that Grissom’s reputation has improved? Are there steps you would like to see taken to ensure his place in space history?
Leopold: I’d venture to say Gus Grissom is beloved, especially by those who knew him and understood his competence, dedication, and willingness to work and sacrifice. Those contributions to manned space exploration are certainly more appreciated now than, say, the late 1970s and early 1980s when The Right Stuff narrative held sway. The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 1 fire, for which the release of this biography was timed, also contributed to greater appreciation of Grissom’s central role.
My subject would undoubtedly be amused by all the fuss….
I am currently working with a group seeking to place a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery to honor the Apollo 1 crew. Gus Grissom and his crew mate and fellow Purdue alumnus Roger Chaffee are buried at Arlington. Surprisingly, there is no monument there commemorating the crew’s sacrifice—as there are for the astronauts lost in the two Space Shuttle accidents. The Apollo 1 memorial at Arlington National Cemetery was authorized by Congress, and we hope to have one in place during a future NASA Day of Remembrance for the Apollo 1 and shuttle crews.
Q: If you could ask Gus Grissom himself one question, what would it be?
Leopold: I would ask about his state of mind in the last weeks of his life, which must have been hell. He knew he had a faulty spacecraft on his hands, but he and the others figured they could fix it as they had done before. In that respect, Gus Grissom was a fatalist.
George Leopold is a veteran technology journalist and science writer who has covered the nexus between technology and policy for over thirty years. Leopold has written extensively about U.S. manned spaceflight, including the Apollo and space shuttle programs. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Scientist, and a variety of other science and technology publications. He resides in Reston, Virginia. Follow him on Twitter!
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Filed under: general
September 13th, 2018
The Purdue University Libraries, in partnership with the Native American Educational and Cultural Center (NAECC) at Purdue, is hosting the traveling exhibition “Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness.” The exhibit was developed by the American Library Association (ALA) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and it focuses on the interconnectedness of wellness, illness, and cultural life for Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians.
The exhibition will be on display in the Humanities, Social Science, and Education (HSSE) Library from Friday, Sept. 14-Wednesday, Oct. 24 in the Periodical Reading Room (first floor) and is open during the HSSE Library’s hours. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
The U.S. NLM developed and produced the exhibit, and the ALA Public Programs Office, in partnership with NLM, lends the exhibit to libraries across the U.S. Ann O’Donnell, library assistant, applied to host the exhibit in 2015, and she was notified the same year that Purdue Libraries was selected as a host site. Purdue Libraries is only one of the two locations in Indiana that will run the “Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness.”
A series of programs will supplement the exhibition, with the kickoff opening event featuring Terese Marie Mailhot, author of the 2018 New York Times’ best-seller, “Heart Berries: A Memoir.” Mailhot, who is currently a Tecumseh Postdoctoral Fellow at Purdue University and serves as a faculty member at the Institute of American Indian Arts, will deliver “Heart Berries: A Reading with the Author” beginning at 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20 in the HSSE Library, room 142.
The series will also include Purdue faculty presentations and a screening of the documentary, “Don’t Get Sick After June: American Indian Healthcare.”
Details for each program in the series are listed below.
The traveling exhibition includes six informative panels that feature stories drawn from both the past and the present, exploring how the determinants of health for Native People are tied to community, the land, and spirit. Each panel also has interactive iPads to complement and enhance the banners. The content in “Native Voices: Native Peoples’ Concepts of Health and Illness” provides a robust selection of videos, imagery, and personal stories that delve into several themes, including the impact of epidemics, federal legislation, the loss of land, and the inhibition of culture on the health of Native individuals and communities today.
For more information, contact O’Donnell at atodonne@purdue.edu or at (765) 494-9844.
Filed under: general, HSSESeptember 13th, 2018
The Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR) at Purdue University is now part of the Purdue Libraries, creating a partnership between two vital resource areas for undergraduate students, faculty, and staff at Purdue.
Now located in the Hicks Undergraduate Library, the OUR is easily accessible and continues to serve as a central resource to promote and expand experiential learning for undergraduate students through research experiences, creative endeavors, and scholarship with skilled mentors.
“The partnership between OUR and Purdue Libraries creates an ideal foundation for undergraduate research across our University,” said Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Diversity Jay Akridge. “This is the next step in the development and expansion of undergraduate research experiences at Purdue, and it will build on the successful launch of OUR by integrating the resources of Purdue Libraries into OUR programming and support.”
According to OUR Director Amy Childress, OUR connects students with opportunities to learn beyond traditional classroom activities and gain skills applicable to both research and non-research careers. Studies show that undergraduate students who engage in research are twice as likely to graduate, five times more likely to go on to graduate school, and have more successful careers after graduation.
“This increased collaboration with Libraries faculty and staff, who provide students with the research tools necessary for so many disciplines and publish the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research, complements the work of the OUR to deliver research support to students,” Childress explained. “It will expand upon the biweekly research seminars that have been sponsored by the OUR and Libraries for the past three semesters. The collective activities of the OUR and Libraries faculty strengthen the University’s commitment to providing high-quality experiential learning opportunities for undergraduates and encouraging mentorship from Purdue’s broad range of researchers and scholars.”
Dean of the Purdue Honors College and Interim Dean of Libraries Rhonda Phillips noted that linking OUR, which is a newer unit at Purdue, with Libraries will facilitate enhanced access to information and skills for knowledge building across the spectrum of inquiry.
“The Libraries faculty and staff are experts in information literacy, and this new partnership will benefit both by connecting vital capacities in information literacy and research-skill development with OUR’s programming and service to students, faculty, and staff across campus,” Phillips said.
“The purpose of the OUR is to foster strong faculty-student mentorships, which aids in student retention, helps students to clarify their career goals, reduces the amount of time it takes for them to earn their degrees, enhances their interest in graduate school, and further develops critical-thinking skills necessary for lifelong success,” Childress added.
According to Purdue Libraries Head of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education, and Business (HSSEB) Division Erla Heyns, the faculty and staff of the Libraries have a long history and a strong commitment to supporting undergraduate inquiry.
“With the merger of OUR and the Libraries, Purdue University will be able to play a vital role in furthering the education of students as researchers. The Hicks Undergraduate Library, where the OUR is now located, has been identified as the focal point for supporting undergraduate research,” Heyns noted. “To support this collaboration between the OUR and Libraries, Associate Professor Clarence Maybee is spearheading a Libraries’ initiative to create space in Hicks for undergraduate researchers to engage in specialized consultations and interactions with Libraries faculty and staff, as well as a place for students and faculty mentors to come together as a community. He will teach a for-credit course devoted to undergraduate research and the consultation space will play a critical role in supporting this initiative.”
The OUR was launched in July 2017 and serves as a central resource for faculty and staff to coordinate and promote undergraduate research experiences (UREs). By providing this programmatic assistance, faculty, and administrators can better focus their time on more effective URE efforts and priorities. This infrastructure includes a portal for researcher and student recruitment through OURConnect, wraparound educational support in the form of online courses for current and prospective undergraduate researchers, promotion of research-based best practices, and development of a campus-wide community of practice for faculty and staff.
The OUR staff oversees multiple initiatives designed to recognize student research and scholarly achievements, including the annual OUR Scholarship, fall and spring undergraduate research conferences held each semester, a summer poster symposium, and research and travel grants.
For more information and to register for the OUR newsletter, visit www.purdue.edu/undergrad-research or contact Childress at childres@purdue.edu.
Filed under: general, press_release, Uncategorized