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August 3rd, 2023
Purdue Libraries and Libraries Speakers Consortium have partnered to present a series of free virtual talks featuring bestselling and award-winning authors from around the world. The featured writers and thought leaders will cover a wide range of fiction and nonfiction genres. Participants will have an opportunity to ask questions and discuss the author’s work in more detail.
August 1st, 2023
In collaboration with the university presses and libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA), Purdue University Press has launched the Big Ten Open Books project. Big Ten Open Books creates e-book collections that aspire to the highest standards of discoverability, accessibility, durability, and flexibility, all while being made available to read and download at no cost.
This project furthers Purdue’s long-standing commitment to make information and research widely accessible and the university has contributed a dozen of its open access titles to the initiative. “Purdue University Press is thrilled to join this important collaboration. Our goal is to not only publish high-quality scholarship, but to ensure that scholarship is widely available and easily accessible. We firmly believe knowledge is a public good. The BTAA partnership recognizes that and generously provided the funding to make 100 books open access,” said Justin Race, director of Purdue University Press.
The first 100-title collection is now published and is centered on Gender and Sexuality studies. Many of the works in this collection are being released digitally for the first time. Each title has undergone a rigorous selection and quality certification process that allows readers and users to trust the veracity of the content made available.
The Big Ten Open Books first collection brings to the reader a wide variety of materials in arts, humanities, and social science disciplines that are centered on gender and sexuality themes. The collection’s impact will be seen through its broad sharing of knowledge and high quality scholarship.
Big Ten Open Books creates open content that is immediately and universally available, on open infrastructure, Fulcrum, hosted by the University of Michigan, using open distribution models (including Project Muse, JSTOR, and OAPEN) to envision a robust programmatic future for open monograph publishing.
About Purdue University Press: Founded in 1960, Purdue University Press is dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information. We publish books in several key subject areas, including Purdue and Indiana, aeronautics/astronautics, the human-animal bond, Central European studies, Jewish studies, and other select disciplines. Learn more about Purdue University Press at press.purdue.edu.
About the Big Ten Academic Alliance: The Big Ten Academic Alliance is the nation’s preeminent model for effective collaboration among research universities. For more than half a century, these world-class institutions have advanced their academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty, and served the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs. Governed and funded by the provosts of the member universities, Big Ten Academic Alliance mandates are coordinated by a staff from its Champaign, Illinois headquarters. The fifteen world-class libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance members include Indiana University, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Purdue University, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, University of Illinois, University of Iowa, University of Maryland, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the University of Chicago.
Learn more about the project and access the first collection here: bigtenopenbooks.org
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, News and Announcements, PurduePress, UncategorizedJuly 28th, 2023
Beth McNeil, dean of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, has assumed the role of president of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL). ACRL, a division of the American Library Association, is committed to advancing learning, transforming scholarship, and creating diverse and inclusive communities—values Dean McNeil has also embodied at Purdue.“It is my great honor and privilege to serve as the next president of ACRL. Throughout my career, ACRL has consistently provided me with professional growth opportunities and I have valued the chances to learn from ACRL programs and networking experiences that have led to invaluable mentoring relationships and life-long friends. Having served on several committees and the Board, ACRL has long been my professional home. I look forward to this new opportunity to give back to an organization that has given me so much, while listening and ensuring that all members find their own sense of belonging, community, professional growth, and success through their involvement with ACRL.”
Since becoming a member of ACRL in 1989, McNeil has held a variety of roles within the organization, most recently she served as vice-president. Building on her predecessors’ achievements, McNeil aims to advance equity, diversity, and inclusion in the association and its member libraries as well as recognize and promote sustainable and open scholarship during her one-year tenure. “The move to open science/open scholarship will lead to fundamental changes for higher education and our libraries, and I believe that college and university librarians have a role and a responsibility in changing the model. I trust ACRL can continue to build its support and advocacy in this area, and I look forward to the challenge of helping to shift academic culture towards a more equitable, open future.”
“I am pleased to welcome Beth McNeil to the ACRL Board of Directors,” ACRL interim executive director Allison Payne said. “ACRL is grateful for her many years of service and her valuable contributions to the association, including her service as a past Board member. ACRL members and the profession will benefit from her deep knowledge of our institution, academic librarianship and higher education. I look forward to working with McNeil in the coming years.”
About the Association of College & Research Libraries: The Association of College & Research Libraries is the higher education association for academic libraries and library workers. Founded in 1940 and representing more than 8,500 individuals and libraries, ACRL develops programs, products, and services to help those working in academic and research libraries learn, innovate, and lead within the academic community.
Filed under: faculty_staff, generalJuly 27th, 2023
Humanities, Social Science and Education Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring World’s Fairs and Expositions: Visions of Tomorrow, brought to you by Gale.
Link: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/db/wfe
Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue login and password.
Focus: This database contains primary sources about these landmark exhibits from 1834 to 1940, archiving the spirit, technology, design, and innovations that influenced the modern world. Sources include organizational and administrative records, postcards, Books of the Fairs, watercolors of the exhibitions and more.
Tutorial: Click here see the basics of using the World’s Fairs and Expositions database.
Quick tip: If you look to the top right of the screen, you see a button called Cite. You can use this button to cut and paste the citation to your bibliography or export it to a citation management software. Always make sure to double check the citation. There are occasional errors.
Related Resources:
Other databases you might want to explore are:
World’s Fair: A Global History of Expositions: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/db/wf
JSTOR: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/db/jstor
July 13th, 2023
Parrish Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring Morningstar Investment Research Center, brought to you by Morningstar, Inc.
Morningstar Investment Research Center offers up-to-date information on 20,000 stocks and mutual funds, including Morningstar Ratings, allows screening using a variety of criteria, and includes Morningstar Analyst Reports on 1,000 stocks and 2,000 mutual funds.
The List of Business Databases is the alphabetical list of the databases specially selected for those in a business program of study. Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue Career Account.
Note: This database has a five concurrent user limit. Please log off when you are finished.
Click Getting Started with Morningstar Investment Research Center to see the basics of using this database.
Some other resources you might want to explore are:
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Featured Database comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu. Also let us know if you know of a colleague who would benefit from this, or future Featured Databases.
Since usage statistics are an important barometer when databases are up for renewal, tell us your favorite database, and we will gladly promote it. Send an email to parrlib@purdue.edu.
Filed under: database, general, MGMTJune 22nd, 2023
Humanities, Social Science and Education Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring Graphic Novels Core Collection, brought to you by EBSCOhost.
Link: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/db/gnc
Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue login and password.
Focus: This database highlights over 2,000 recommended titles with descriptive and evaluative annotations (including review excerpts and awards the title has won), plus cover art. All titles are searchable by author, title, subject, genre and grade level.
Tutorial: Click here see the basics of using the Graphic Novels Core Collection database.
Quick tip: If you look beneath the title listing, there might be a button that says FIND IT at Purdue Libraries. Sometimes, an item that you find might not be accessible through the database that you are using, but that doesn’t mean that Purdue Libraries doesn’t have access to the item. If you click on the button, you can find out if there is access through another database, if there is a print copy, or if you might need to request the item through our InterLibrary Loan service.
Related Resources:
Other databases you might want to explore are:
Underground and Independent Comic, Comix, and Graphic Novels: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/db/ucomics
JSTOR: https://guides.lib.purdue.edu/db/db347
June 8th, 2023
Parrish Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring Insider Intelligence, brought to you by Axel Springer SE.
Insider Intelligence includes daily research articles, analyst reports, and a database of e-business and online marketing statistics, aggregated and analyzed from over 2,800 sources. Topics include market research and trend analysis on Internet, e-business, online marketing, media, and emerging technologies.
The List of Business Databases is the alphabetical list of the databases specially selected for those in a business program of study. Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue Career Account.
Click Getting Started with Insider Intelligence to see the basics of using this database.
Some other resources you might want to explore are:
Featured Database comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu. Also let us know if you know of a colleague who would benefit from this, or future Featured Databases.
Since usage statistics are an important barometer when databases are up for renewal, tell us your favorite database, and we will gladly promote it. Send an email to parrlib@purdue.edu.
Filed under: database, general, MGMTMay 9th, 2023
Parrish Library’s Featured Database will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This time we’re featuring Passport, brought to you by Euromonitor International.
Passport provides business intelligence on countries, consumers, and industries and offers integrated access to statistics, market reports, company profiles and information sources.
The List of Business Databases is the alphabetical list of the databases specially selected for those in a business program of study. Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue Career Account.
Click Getting Started with Passport to see the basics of using this database.
Some other resources you might want to explore are:
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Featured Database comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu. Also let us know if you know of a colleague who would benefit from this, or future Featured Databases.
Since usage statistics are an important barometer when databases are up for renewal, tell us your favorite database, and we will gladly promote it. Send an email to parrlib@purdue.edu.
Filed under: database, general, MGMTMay 9th, 2023
Purdue University Libraries, School of Information Studies, and Purdue IT’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC) are pleased to announce that Globus, a fast and reliable service that provides large scale data transfer, is now integrated into Purdue University Research Repository (PURR). The integration of Globus is a significant step forward in supporting larger scale research data sharing at Purdue. This integration allows the transfer of data from Data Depot to PURR, reliably facilitating larger scale data sharing and publication. It provides greater transfer capacity and connection between the high-capacity, secure data storage service and Purdue’s institutional data repository. It also helps Purdue’s many grant-funded research projects comply with federal mandates for sustainable data sharing. The Data Depot and PURR/Globus integration are available to researchers at all Purdue University campuses.
Over the past decade, the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has released two subsequent memos requiring federal funding agencies to implement policies specifying that extramural researchers supported through grants must maximize data sharing and sustainability, specifically providing free and open public access. The most recent OSTP memo from August 2022 states that funding agencies must “update their public access policies…no later than December 31st, 2025, to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release.” This will significantly impact researchers, who are encouraged to proactively plan for how they will satisfy these mandates. When submitting proposals for federal grant awards, researchers must include a data management and sharing plan that addresses how they will handle, disseminate, and sustain access to their data and related materials. The PURR/Globus transfer option gives Purdue researchers a reliable, fast, and secure way to publish their data with PURR to fulfill this new federal requirement.
Here’s how. Faster than Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP), Globus monitors the data transfer process to mitigate problems when network strength is limited. With the widespread use of Data Depot by Purdue researchers and their collaborators, the use of Globus facilitates transfer via web interface, which offers users more flexibility. PURR, in turn, provides a publishing platform for Purdue researchers and their collaborators, allowing them to share their data openly, and at no cost to the user.
As an institutional research core and local support, researchers can easily use PURR to fulfill their need to publish and share data. PURR is compliant with federal funder requirements for open sharing. In fact, it is central to PURR’s continued mission to provide researchers with support throughout the research process and a trusted means to share research data, with the added advantage of PURR’s high quality preservation methods.
PURR began publishing data in 2012. Over ten years later, it continues to grow as an integral service for Purdue researchers. PURR currently hosts over 1525 published data sets and 2223 research projects, and provides sharing and preservation support to many grant funded projects, with the National Science Foundation (NSF) being most common. PURR is also working towards a CoreTrustSeal certification, a global certification based on a universal catalog of requirements that reflect the characteristics of trustworthy data repositories. Currently, PURR is in the process of forming partnerships with additional units across campus to develop a comprehensive suite of support services for Purdue researchers facing new challenges based on the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy and the August 2022 OSTP memo. The PURR/Globus integration is an important step.
“Globus is already available to the Purdue community in conjunction with the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing,” Reid Boehm, research data system manager at PURR, says. “Together, we have opened a door to Data Depot users who wish to deposit data in PURR for publication and sharing. We’ve started in connection with Data Depot, but we hope to continue partnering with RCAC to enable future options for transfer.”
Boehm assures that researchers interested in taking advantage of the new integration will find it to be fairly easy, but there are some requirements and collaboration involved to get started. First, researchers must already be using Data Depot, and they must already have a project created in PURR. Once they have completed these steps, they will then submit a ticket to PURR for the large file transfer. More information on this process is available online.
“To get help creating a project, researchers can visit our guide,” Boehm says, “or get in touch with us at purr@purdue.edu. The more we are able to raise awareness of the repository and demonstrate its potential benefits to researchers, the more we can share the overarching possibilities for data sharing with our diverse communities.”
Filed under: general, press_release, RSRCH, servicesMay 8th, 2023
By: Ayn Reineke
Associate University Librarian for Special Collections at Princeton University, Dr. Will Noel, recently brought his expertise on medieval manuscripts to Purdue’s West Lafayette campus for a lively lecture and workshop hosted by Libraries and School of Information Studies. During this special event, students, the campus community, and interested members of the public were afforded the rare opportunity to view and appreciate medieval manuscripts from Purdue University Archives and Special Collections (ASC) up close, with Dr. Noel and University archivists on hand to answer questions and provide guidance.
Dr. Noel’s visit was made possible with full support from the Libraries’ Digital Humanities Program Fund and the generosity of its donor, Purdue alumnus Stephen Pater (BSAE 1965, MSAE 1966). The idea to invite Dr. Noel to Purdue came from a positive experience Professor Kristin Leaman remembered from her own days as a student, long before she became an assistant professor in Libraries and went on to propose and organize this event.
“When I was a graduate student at Indiana University many years ago, Will Noel came to the Lilly Library to give a lecture and a workshop,” Professor Leaman said. “I attended both and absolutely loved the experience. It drew together people from several different backgrounds and demonstrated how we can all work together to learn more about medieval manuscripts and rare materials. I wanted people at Purdue to have the same valuable experience.”
Collaboration is both an outcome and a theme of Dr. Noel’s work. In his lecture, he spoke of the importance of digitization, the ongoing scientific analysis of medieval manuscripts, and open access to materials. Remarkable connections and discoveries are made when more people have access to rare manuscripts, which can lead to solving long standing historical and scholarly mysteries. In one of many riveting examples, Dr. Noel described how the granddaughter of a book’s former owner was able to identify her grandfather’s signature when she discovered it online, and in doing so, revealed a critical piece of the book’s history that was previously unknown to researchers. When medieval manuscripts are digitally accessible to the public, more people are able to provide potentially valuable information about these materials to the people who study and preserve them.
It is in that spirit of new discovery that medieval manuscripts offer a unique opportunity to tell a story of the past in the context of the present, a story which extends beyond the text, to the history of the manuscripts as physical objects themselves. With new advances in technology, researchers and scholars are now able to learn more about the storied lives of these books than any time since they were first created. DNA testing on manuscipt parchment can determine what type of animal was used to make it, the geographic location of that animal, and the time period in which it lived.
Ink holds additional clues. It can be analyzed to further reveal geographic information about the manuscript’s origins and the time period in which it was created, and sometimes, that it was revised. Through ink analysis, scholars have discovered medieval manuscripts containing illuminations with inks from the 19th century, an indicator that these manuscripts were touched-up relatively recently. Further analysis can also reveal the text behind the text (also known as a palimpsest), where a scribe once scraped off the original text on parchment to write over it. These hidden histories are of particular interest to Dr. Noel, who is well-known among historians for his groundbreaking work on the Archimedes palimpsest.
All of these technologies help today’s scholars better understand the secret lives of medieval manuscripts, trace their journeys through centuries of unknown hands, and identify forgeries. This merging of historical and modern, tactile and digital, came together in Dr. Noel’s workshop, which incorporated a medieval manuscript from ASC’s collections, Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel. Participants uploaded and manipulated images from this manuscript in VisColl, a digital system for modeling and visualizing the physical collation of medieval manuscript codices, data which is then used to create collation formulas. For those unfamiliar with the term, a collation formula describes the sequence of the leaves within the gathering in a codex.
Dr. Noel then worked with the physical medieval manuscript live and in-person, while his colleague, Ms. Dot Porter, the curator of Digital Research Services in the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, worked with the digitized version in VisColl concurrently via livestream. Workshop attendees gathered around Dr. Noel and worked alongside him to help determine the collation formula. They then told Ms. Porter which pages of the digital manuscript to upload to VisColl, so that the gatherings could be digitally visualized. “That was my favorite moment of the event,” Professor Leaman said. “It was a glowing example of why both physical and digitized materials are vitally important to the research we do. We can accomplish so much when we have both.”
The finished product from the workshop can be viewed online, allowing people around the world to see conjugate leaves together. To understand what makes this incredible, consider that before the development of this technology, studies of this nature simply could not happen without the fragile, priceless medieval manuscripts being disbound. Now, scholars are able to learn more about these manuscripts and share them with a wider audience without risking further damage to the fragile materials.
New technologies result in new discoveries, and they are happening all the time. In the course of working on Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezekiel during his workshop, Dr. Noel identified several important things about the manuscript that were not part of its official record. This was a thrilling moment for Purdue archivists and historians because it meant that ASC could add the newly discovered information to the metadata in the manuscript’s catalog record.
As a highly collaborative space for research and teaching, Libraries was the perfect host for this event, which brought people together from digital humanities, book history, library studies, archives and special collections, textual studies, medieval studies, history, English, philosophy, computer science, and engineering. Dr. Noel’s lecture and workshop demonstrated the results and impact of collaborative work among humanities’ scholars, librarians, digital humanities, and STEM. “The event was a wonderful combination of exciting theoretical material and hands-on projects,” said one attendee. “I think the book studies/manuscript community was very pleased, but the event was exciting for lay people, too! A hard balance to achieve.” Or, in the words of one Engineering student, “I never get to do these things in my engineering classes. This is so exciting! Am I allowed to come to the Archives to see the medieval manuscripts again?”
The answer, of course, is yes. If you would like to learn more about medieval manuscripts and other collections in Purdue University Archives and Special Collections, please visit https://www.lib.purdue.edu/spcol or email archives@purdue.edu for more information.
Libraries would like to thank the faculty and staff who contributed to the tremendous success of this event: Kristin Leaman, Adriana Harmeyer, Matthew Hannah, Michael Fosmire, Neal Harmeyer, Cliff Harrison, Allen Bol, Michael Lewis, Mandi Gramelspacher, and Ashley Fawcett.
Filed under: events, faculty_staff, general, HSSE, News and Announcements