Library Scholars Grant Program Celebrates 25 Years!

The Library Scholars Grant Program was established in 1985 by the 50th anniversary gift of members of the Class of 1935, and the class has been continuously supportive of this fund for the past 25 years. This program supports access to unique collections of information around the country and the world for untenured and recently tenured Purdue faculty in all disciplines, from the West Lafayette, Calumet, Fort Wayne, IUPUI, and North Central campuses. The grants cover the expenses associated with the cost of transportation, lodging, meals, and fees charged by the library or other collection owner. The Class of 1935 marks their 75th anniversary in 2010.

Recipients for this year will be recognized at a luncheon on Monday, March 29.  Last year’s recipients will also make presentation about how the grant helped their research.

2010 Winners:

Kory Cooper, assistant professor of anthropology, is an archaeologist whose research includes the investigation of hunter-gatherer technology and ancient metallurgy. His current research lies at the intersection of these two interests and is focused on the prehistoric use of copper by indigenous groups in northwest North America for making tools and prestige objects prior to the arrival of Europeans. He was awarded $5,000 to travel to British Columbia and Northwest Territories in order to access both electronic archaeological site databases maintained by provincial governments and the grey literature used in compiling these databases. This material is associated with cultural resource management activities and most of it is unpublished.

“This opportunity will allow me to expand my research geographically,” says Cooper, “mapping the use of copper across time and space, and will provide a foundation for more detailed studies in the future, as well as providing comparative material for discussing technological innovation among hunter-gatherers more generally.”

Catherine Dossin, assistant professor of art history, was awarded $4,450 to conduct research in Belgium this summer to review the archives of Michel Seuphor (1901-1999), the first and foremost historian of abstract art, which are housed at the Letterenhuis of Antwerp. She has two research objectives: to examine documents related to the history of Cercle et Carré, a group of international artists based in Paris in the early 1930s, and collect information on Seuphor’s partaking in the revival of geometric abstraction in the early 1960s.

“The material contained in this archive – more than 27,700 letters, dozens of manuscripts and scrapbooks – can only be accessed at the Letterenhuis, which acquired them in the year 2000,” says Dossin. “Not only have these documents never been published but they are largely untouched. A review of their content will therefore bring new data and new insights regarding the artistic developments in the 20th century and geometric abstraction in particular.”

Maren Linett, associate professor in the department of English, was awarded $1,400 to travel to Austin, Texas, to examine the manuscript of a 1935 Bowen novel, The House in Paris. In that novel, an angst-ridden Jewish character, Max, commits suicide after impregnating the protagonist. Maren’s research specializes in modernist British literature, and for this study, she is researching the interrelationships among notions of national belonging, personal identity, and language in the work of these two major twentieth-century British novelists. “Consulting the manuscript searching for deleted aspects of his characterization will allow me to judge how Bowen meant us to view Max and what that says about her conceptions of Jewishness, nation, and belonging,” says Linett.

Maren’s first book, Modernism, Feminism, and Jewishness was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007. She is currently working on her second monograph, tentatively titled Dead Currency: Nation and Identity in Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf.

Dawn G. Marsh, an assistant professor of history specializing in the history of indigenous peoples from the local to the global, was awarded $4,750 to travel to the reservations in New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Ontario, Canada in order to research tribal archives and conduct interviews. Dawn’s current book-length project examines the experience of an eighteenth-century indigenous woman, Hannah Freeman, a Lenape/Delaware woman whom the local settler population deemed the ‘last of her kind.’

“Hannah Freeman’s life experiences are a story of cultural survivance during a period when the colonizing populations sought to dispossess indigenous peoples of their lands, identities and cultures,” says Marsh. The tentative title of her manuscript is Hiding in Plain Sight: Hannah Freeman, a Lenape Woman in Penn’s Peaceable Kingdom. Marsh also received a Library Scholars Grant in 2007-08.

All Staff Meeting Celebrates Purdue Press, Updates on Budget, Faculty Roles, and IT Changes

Led by Scott Brandt, associate dean for research, the all-staff meetings held on March 16-17 covered a variety of important updates for Libraries faculty and staff.

The meeting started with a cake celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Purdue University Press, which was founded in 1960 as “Purdue University Studies.” Charles Watkinson, director of the Press, outlined some celebrations that are planned throughout the year, including a series of 12 author interviews with WBAA, the digitization of Shofar, a Jewish Studies journal founded at Purdue, and another event still to be determined in mid-September to celebrate the official birthday of the Press. He also outlined improvements planned for the Press’s website, with plans to have all Purdue Press titles available online by the end of the year (approximately 500 titles).

Jim Mullins, dean of Libraries, provided an update on the University budget and how the Libraries are moving forward. He reviewed that the Libraries have met reductions by eliminating vacant positions. This covered the 2% reduction for FY10. In order to balance the overall University budget no raises were awarded throughout the University for FY10. However, the Libraries did receive a $500,000 base budget increase to the materials budget to pay continuing bills In December,  in response to Purdue’s need to cut $10 million from one-time funds, the Libraries was informed it would need to return a little over $70,000 in one time funds and this was accomplished through two vacant faculty/professional staff lines that came open during FY10.   

Dean Mullins also reiterated that there is little specific information about the FY11 budget (to begin July 1st) at this point, but that the Libraries should learn in April about what percentage cut may be required by the schools/colleges/libraries. Information about support for the materials budget will probably be available in May or June, or even later in the summer. As a reminder, a New Synergies forum with Al Diaz and Ken Sandel of the executive vice president and treasurer's office will be held on April 1 from 3:00-4:00 p.m. in the PMU North Ballroom. All staff are encouraged to attend and ask questions.

The dean also encouraged staff to review the work of Planning and Operations Council (POC), which is making great strides on the Libraries strategic initiatives this year. Unit and Council goals and progress reports are available on the Intranet at http://intranet.lib.purdue.edu/display/POC/Unit+Plans+FY10.

A panel of faculty librarians, including Marianne Stowell Bracke, Charlotte Erdman, Sue Ward, and Jane Yatcilla each discussed how their roles have changed as faculty and current projects they are undertaking. Several projects are highly collaborative in nature and are changing the way librarians interact with the campus faculty they serve.

Following the panel, Paul Bracke, associate dean for digital programs and information access, discussed Libraries’ initiatives in IT, including becoming a founding partner in the international cooperative DataCite. The Libraries will be undertaking a pilot program with HUBzero in Discovery Park to work on assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to datasets to make them easier to cite and use in future research. Ultimately, Purdue’s involvement in DataCite may mean that assigning DOIs is a service that the Purdue Libraries will provide to Purdue and the country.

Paul also discussed significant changes to the Libraries photocopiers, which will all be replaced with equipment that has scanning functionality. Photocopies will continue to have the same process, but now patrons can also use the machines to scan in full color to a USB drive or to send in an email for free. The timeline for installation of the new equipment was tentatively scheduled for this week, but has now been delayed. Staff in DPIA will provide updates as soon as a schedule is finalized. In the meantime, an intranet site has been created with some training materials from Toshiba: http://intranet.lib.purdue.edu/display/ITRS/New+Public+Access+Copier+and+Scanner+Devices.

Also this semester, all Libraries public work computers will be replaced with new PCs, with most being ITaP-managed stations. Rollout of this change is tentatively planned for May, and is being funded by the Provost’s office as one-time funding. Guest-access, catalog only, and other special computer stations will still be managed by Libraries IT.

For questions about any of the material covered in the Libraries all-staff meetings, please contact the appropriate associate dean.

MEL Hosts Media:scape for Demo Through April 9

The Management and Economics Library is hosting a special installation of media:scape, a collaborative workstation from Steelcase that allows multiple users to connect laptops to large monitors for easier display.

The station was designed for a “walk-up and connect” experience for laptops. Groups can use the equipment by opening the media well and removing a Puck™, connecting the Puck™ to the user’s laptop, and sharing what’s on the laptop by pressing the Puck™. Multiple users can share screens at once.

As part of Phase Two of the MEL renovation, five new media:scape stations will be added to the Management and Economics Library. This special three-week demo is being held so that staff in the library can observe how students use the equipment, and also to introduce students to the technology.

The media:scape will be available for use through April 9. Questions or comments about media:scape can be directed to the Management and Economics Library at kranlib@purdue.edu.

Grant Awarded for Digitization of Indiana Farmer Magazine

The Indiana State Library has awarded a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) sub-grant of $19,825 to the Purdue Libraries Digital Initiatives. The sub-grant is designed for digitizing Indiana’s historical records with a primary goal of developing content for Indiana Memory, a digital library for Indiana residents.

Purdue’s application, entitled The State of Hoosier Agriculture in the Pre- and Post Civil War Years: Digitizing the Indiana Farmer was one of 14 applications. Each grant application is reviewed by a panel of academic and public historians and Indiana State Library staff.

Vicki Killion is the principal investigator (PI) and worked with Jan Addison and Carl Snow to write the proposal. The project will begin this summer.

Because so many decisions related to sustainability in the Libraries and University happen way above most of our heads, it is good to know that the subject is receiving administrative attention. One indication is the January forum to gather data toward creating Purdue’s sustainability strategic plan.

The January report –an analysis of where we are now and directions for future planning is now online:  http://www.purdue.edu/sustainability/

A few highlights:

• Purdue has used an external measure, the Green Report Card , for four years and currently has  an overall grade of B-
•  You can see the component grades  here: http://www.greenreportcard.org/report-card-2010/schools/purdue-university 
• The Green Report Card home page (http://www.greenreportcard.org ) shows revolving photos of “A” universities and highlights significant accomplishments
• Those interested in more detail can find description of several benchmark measures starting on p. 11 and starting on p. 24, an appendix showing the rankings of other Big Ten schools on the Green Report Card, and an analysis of effort needed to improve Purdue scores
• The interviews and forum are described and analyzed, pp. 6-10
• The “Gap Analysis” (p. 16 ff) points to blocks to progress that were revealed and will be addressed in the Sustainability Strategic Plan
• For those interested in the finer detail, the unedited overviews of the various areas of concern begin at p. 32. These overviews provide more specific detail of what is already in place and proposals for moving forward.

Watch for the initial draft of the Strategic Plan this coming Earth Day.