News and announcements
✨🖥️ 🖼 The AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library secured a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation to boost its ongoing HBCU digitization initiative. This two-year funding will expand the library’s capacity to digitize, preserve, and share archives from Historically Black Colleges and Universities via the HBCU Digital Library Trust. Partnering with HBCUs, the AUC library hosts a growing portal that already features collections from over 30 institutions.
🎶🎙️🌍 The Archives of Traditional Music (ATM) at Indiana University preserves more than 250,000 hours of recordings in formats from wax cylinders to vinyl and VHS. Many materials are now digitally accessible via streaming. ATM’s collections are shaped by donor gifts, shifting research emphases, and archival vision, and today they support work in language revitalization, ethnomusicology, and cultural memory.
🔍💾🤝 The University of Chicago Libraries launched “SHARED” (Secure Hub for Access, Reliability, and Exchange of Data), a new data platform backed by NSF funding to support research collaboration and discovery. It offers scalable, secure storage and integrates with UChicago’s Knowledge@UChicago repository as well as national networks like the Open Science Grid. This project will support the full research data lifecycle and enable faculty to comply with federal data-sharing mandates.
🧠📄⚖️ Berkeley Library created an FAQ to help ensure compliance when scraping or using AI with its electronic collections. Which is good because violating license terms could risk campus-wide access to critical resources and lead to legal liabilities.
📚🏛️🎉 Knight at Night at the University of Oregon is a late-evening event for first-year and transfer students with live music, games, DIY crafts, trivia, mini-gold, and social space in the library. What an amazing open house style event!
🗞️🧱✍️ Northwestern University Libraries’s conservation lab treated 22 tightly folded 18th-century parchment documents (1705–1730), from a collection that included deeds, wills, and seals from the 14th through 20th century. Damage included creases, tears, and wax flaking, and conservators worked to safely unfold and stabilize these fragile legal records. (pictured above)
📖🌐👩🏫 Gonzaga University welcomed Katia Passerini as its 27th president back in July and celebrated her scholarly contributions via a new research guide. The LibGuide showcases her publications, honors, and interdisciplinary impact across education, global development, and innovation. This is a pretty cool way to celebrate university leadership.
Notable mentions
- John Carroll University Library hosted a workshop on making pillow cases.
- GIS, Python, and R: Columbia University Libraries is hosting “Data Club.”
- LSU Libraries has selected four scholars for its special collections research grants.
- Explore the global reach of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” through Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries (pictured above).
- Students at Fordham University can get a NYPL card. Related news from Villanova. Also related from Emory. (Hm, I should reach out to LAPL)
- Robert Redford’s mysterious, and little-known, tie to Boston University.
- In “other duties as assigned” news, Texas A&M University Libraries helped preserve a giant stuffed collie plushie.
- The University at Colorado Boulder Libraries hosted an open access upload-a-thon.
- Iowa State University Library has received a gift to endowed its dean of library services position.
- Vanderbilt’s Heard Libraries plans to allow Google to digitize 260K of its volumes.
Many libraries pulled together resources and recommended readings for Latine Heritage Month, including; USF’s Gleeson Library, University of Utah’s Marriott Library, Binghamton University Library, University of Virginia, University of Dayton, UC Irvine Libraries, Syracuse University, San Diego State University, Loyola Marymount University, Emory University, and American University.
On social
This was a trend for a hot minute, and FSU Libraries jumped on it with a perfect iteration, showing how to fix a common frustration students have entering the library. (FSU also jumped on the Alexander sneaking out meme)
My favorite part of this trend was getting to hear a song that I will never tire of. OK State Library executed it seamlessly.
A few libraries jumped on the “Unfortunately I do love…” meme, including Penn Libraries, Fondren Library, and EKU Libraries.
Finally… why, Instagram? WHHHHYYYYY?