Eduards Tomas – Page 2 – Boston College Libraries Newsletter

New Fifth Floor O’Neill Study Space

The old computer server room on O’Neill Library 5th floor has been remodeled as a new study space!

If you have recently walked around the 5th floor of O’Neill Library you may have noticed a drastic change: where closed doors used to hide a large disused data storage room, there now exists a remodeled space intended to accommodate students.

The space, originally the server room for university computing, featured a Halon system designed to suppress the spread of fire without compromising computer data. In 2006 the servers were moved to St. Clement’s. The space was empty for a long time because the expense of uninstalling the suppression system prevented it from being repurposed without a definite goal in mind.

Not that the space went unnoticed. Space Planning, a department of the university in charge of managing space-related projects, was aware of the room’s potential in light of its focus on student formation on campus. Space Planning began looking at several areas around campus in an effort to meet the need for more student spaces, with thoughts around available spaces on Newton campus as well as on Hammond Pond Parkway. Out of a range of different possible futures for the abandoned server room (such as ITS’s aims to consolidate its services there), the library’s plan to transform it into student space eventually received funding.

From this summer into the beginning of the current semester, you may have noticed noise and work crews in O’Neill as Capital Projects worked with outside vendors to remove the system and make the space habitable.

As of mid-October, the room is ready for use. Temporary rental furniture provides a basic level of accommodation appropriate to the first phase of the project as library staff investigates how students use the space. Once usage and purposes are clear, phase two will bring furnishings and a layout that accommodate observed needs.

Two signs advertising the newly designed space also invite suggestions from students, in keeping with O’Neill’s dedication to creating flexible user space adapted to library users’ needs. (You can submit comments via this form.) Feedback about noise, for instance, has already led to the installation of white-noise generators. Library staff needs to understand the priorities of library users.

With growing pedagogical use of group-oriented projects, areas adapted to collaborative work have been subject to high demand. At the same time, students still need spaces for quiet solo work, and as the popularity of programs like Brain Break and the therapy dogs demonstrate, students also need spaces where they can unwind and recharge.

Looking ahead, there are many possibilities for additional work to be done to the room. For the moment the space is a white-walled room with no outside view, so installing windows seems like a logical next step. If funded, such an undertaking would likely not see fruition until 2021.

Other ideas for the library include expanding and updating instructional spaces, as well as relocating more of the collection from the 5th floor to warehouse storage to make space available for studying.

Like other academic libraries, O’Neill has been a dynamic building, responding to changes in needs. The library’s space has undergone many changes. In years past, the government document collection was moved to warehouse storage to make way for study and gallery space on the first floor, the reserves collection was relocated to behind the circulation desk to make way for the Reading Room, the entry was added on the 1st floor, another added on the second, and the old media center was renovated to become the Digital Studio. As University Librarian Tom Wall makes clear through the initiatives and projects he endorses, O’Neill has been and will continue to be a place that adapts to the BC Community’s evolving needs. The remodeling of what was once a server room represents one moment in the larger trajectory of change that will continue to move us along.

For the time being, this means we have added additional study space for students. It also means we can collectively rejoice–gone are the weeks of construction noise, limited elevator access, and blue-taped corridors!

A slightly different version of this article is also being published in Keywords, the staff newsletter of BC Libraries.

BC Libraries, Montserrat, and the Connell School of Nursing

BC Libraries staff worked with Connell School of Nursing faculty to help reduce costs for students in the Montserrat program.

Academic libraries are involved in providing support and information access for all students, faculty and staff. Over the years the Boston College Libraries have worked with the staff at the Montserrat Office to actively support our high financial need students. Some of the services offered include a lending program of items such as textbooks, ipads, laptops, calculators, headphones, software, and so much more. Additionally, utilizing many of the library-subscribed resources and open access materials, librarians often partner with faculty to assist in curating course materials at low or no cost to students.

This fall, because many students enrolled in the Connell School of Nursing are Montserrat students, the Libraries intentionally worked with the School of Nursing faculty to assist students in making sure they had their course materials on the first day of classes. This work included thinking strategically about how to use a variety of resources such as ebooks, book chapters, and journal articles in order to keep the student cost of course materials down.

We are so thrilled to have that support from the CSON and Library department. Through their efforts, we have been able to stay on top of our readings and assignments in a timely manner. They truly made a difference for us, and we are extremely grateful!
Connell School Nursing Student

For more information about these services and programs, contact Margaret Cohen, Head Librarian, Educational Initiatives and Research Services.

Contribute to Crowd-Sourcing Projects at CrowdCafe

Join Boston College and Boston University Libraries at CrowdCafe. Participate in crowd-sourced projects on the third Friday of every month,1 pm – 3pm. Join online via Zoom or in-person in the Digital Studio, room 205, O’Neill Library.

Gabe Feldstein, Digital Publishing and Outreach Specialist, interviewed Sarah Melton, the Head of Digital Scholarship and co-coordinator of CrowdCafe.

When did CrowdCafe start? Was there a particular campaign that inspired this model for getting things done as a large group?

We were particularly inspired by humanitarian relief projects that mobilize volunteers in the wake of disasters. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, for example, crowdsources data that is used to improve maps of areas that have been affected by disasters, giving responders a better sense of on-the-ground, real-time conditions. Map-a-thons after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico helped provide the Red Cross with navigation information, even when existing maps were missing roads, buildings, and other geographic data.

CrowdCafe began in 2018 as a collaborative initiative between digital scholarship staff at Boston College and Boston University Libraries. Led by Sarah Melton, BC’s Head of Digital Scholarship, and Vika Zafrin, BU’s Digital Scholarship Librarian, the monthly event aims to provide a loose infrastructure for people wishing to contribute to crowdsourced projects.

Additionally, with more and more cultural heritage materials available online, we wanted to encourage local participation in crowdsourcing projects on a regular basis.

New Testament Abstracts, 1956-84, now online for the first time

The recent digitization and online release of the first thirty years of New Testament Abstracts into the public domain represents a partnership of several agencies at BC, as well as the longstanding commitment on the Libraries’ part, to collect and share the academic heritage and Catholic mission of Boston College.

Contributing unique content to the global library of online information is an ongoing activity and priority of the Boston College Libraries. So, when Dean Thomas D. Stegman, S.J., of the School of Theology and Ministry (STM), proposed a collaboration to digitize and make openly available roughly 30 years of New Testament Abstracts (NTA) content, University Librarian Tom Wall was pleased to confirm the partnership.

New Testament Abstracts (NTA) has been a premier scholarly publication for study of the New Testament and related fields for more than 60 years. Originally a product of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology (WJST), the publication moved with the WJST to Boston College in 2008, upon the founding of the University’s School of Theology and Ministry (STM). Since then, the BC Libraries have benefited greatly from this partnership, particularly the Theology and Ministry Library (TML), which is the annual recipient of hundreds of donated books and journal titles courtesy of NTA.

Happy Open Access Month!

BC Libraries is celebrating Open Access Week for the whole month of October with displays in the O’Neill Library lobby that emphasize equity of access.

Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results—to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives.

International Open Access Week is from October 21-27 this year. Every year, the coordinating organization, SPARC, chooses a different theme on which to focus. The theme for 2019 is, “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge.”

Why We Love Zotero

The open-source citation manager Zotero can help organize and streamline your research. Here’s how.

Giving your sources credit is one of the things that makes scholarly writing different from other kinds of writing. The mechanics of how to do it change from discipline to discipline, and sometimes from journal to journal. Trying to keep all the details clear and build citations and bibliographies can be time-consuming and aggravating. As librarians, we’ve watched researchers’ first encounters with Zotero many times, and we always delight in their expressions of relief.

Here are a few things we enjoy demonstrating:

When you find a source, one click on a browser icon can import all of its bibliographic information, and another two clicks can add it to your document, fully formatted as a Chicago-style footnote:

Heyer, Kristen E. “Bridging the Divide in Contemporary U.S. Catholic Social Ethics.” Theological Studies 66, no. 2 (2005): 401–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/004056390506600208.

With a few more clicks, you can change it–and every other citation and bibliographic entry in your paper–to APA format:

Heyer, K. E. (2005). Bridging the divide in contemporary U.S. Catholic social ethics. Theological Studies, 66(2), 401–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/004056390506600208

You can add the record to a folder to organize it, and/or add it to a group and share that group with anyone from a small collaborative team to just about any arrangement of public or private group.

Print Power! Debuts in the O’Neill Library Level 1 Gallery

Now showing in the Level 1 Gallery is Print Power! volume 5, an intercollegiate exchange portfolio of 60 persuasive posters co-organized by Art, Art History and Film Department faculty Brian Reeves and University of Southern Maine faculty Damir Porobic.

Now showing in the Level 1 Gallery is Print Power! volume 5, an intercollegiate exchange portfolio of 60 persuasive posters co-organized by Art, Art History and Film Department faculty Brian Reeves and University of Southern Maine faculty Damir Porobic.

Participants were asked to create fifteen or more of their own propaganda poster prints on behalf of, or against ideas, cultural practices, or institutions of their choice. Media ranges from screen prints and hand-carved relief prints, to a laser-cut stencil, and digital offset prints from BC’s own Eagle Print services in Carney Hall.

Gargan Hall Stained Glass Audio Tour

Library staff has created a self-guided audio tour of the stained glass windows in Bapst Library’s Gargan Hall.

The next time you are in the Bapst Library, check out the new audio tour of the Gargan Hall stained glass windows. Glass artist Earl Edward Sanborn designed the windows based on correspondence with then president, Father James H. Dolan, who established the theme of the curriculum of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. He finished them in 1928. A book about all of the stained glass at BC–Transforming Light: The Stained-Glass Windows of Boston College, by Virginia Chieffo Raguin and Gary Wayne Gilbert–is available at the Bapst Library information desk.

In addition to the website with the complete tour, each window has a descriptive sign with a QR code. Just point your phone’s camera at the QR code, and the text and audio about that window will open. Don’t forget your headphones, they will keep you from getting displeased looks from those who are studying nearby!

The idea for this tour started with our planning for Parents Weekend. Rather than offer guided tours which require people to show up at a specific time, we thought a self-guided approach would be logistically easier. Having the tour online also provides the same information to anyone who visits Gargan Hall. So, if students need a distraction from their studies, they can open the tour and learn about the stained glass window next to them, which might picture a whimsical frog or a man seeming to summon lightning.

Much of the information came from existing guides to the Bapst Library windows. During the summer, those narratives were enhanced (and sometimes corrected) by library staff. The team that worked on this project includes Nina Bogdanovsky, Sonia Ensins, Laurie Mayville, Steve Runge and Scott Britton.

Digital Scholarship Workshops, Fall 2019

This fall, the Digital Scholarship Workshops will engage with emerging digital humanities technologies using census data to gain digital and data strategies, and also to present a picture of how digital scholarship research can engage with social justice issues.

Abstract background image

Every semester, the digital scholarship team launches a series of workshops to assist students and faculty with Library resources and tools. This year, as the campus and BC Libraries take a sharper look at social justice issues, our workshops will use race and diversity data (e.g. US Census) to explore the affordances and constraints of tools and strategies for transforming data into narratives and images. Our first two workshops, which take place in September, will provide introductions to digital exhibitions and Geographical Information Services (GIS).

As the year kicks off, our workshops will focus on acclimating students to the new digital arsenal they have access to. See the table below for quick reference. More detailed descriptions follow.

(NB: SEPTEMBER 12 WORKSHOP WILL BE RESCHEDULED, DATE TBA)

Continue reading “Digital Scholarship Workshops, Fall 2019”

Decades of Historic Boston Newspaper Now Online and Searchable

BC Libraries has digitized 80 years of the Pilot. Learn about the publication’s history of different titles and editions, and get an inside look at the digitization process.

Whether in the business of creating fake or real news, every outlet is constantly looking for its base – a group of people with combined or similar interests who may see objective realities from particular perspectives. This was very much the case with the Boston Pilot. As Irish immigrants arrived in droves in the years leading up to and through the famine and troubles, the burgeoning Irish Catholic working class was struggling to find its way in Boston, much less America. The Boston Pilot served as a beacon for this community, spreading political and social ideas, while also providing a resource for reconnecting families, divided by cross-continental travel.

In 1829, The Jesuit, or, Catholic Sentinel, started publication as a periodical for Irish immigrants, and under the guidance of the Archbishop of Boston, Joseph Fenwick, Jesuit started to find its identity, eventually changing its name to the Literary and Catholic Sentinel in 1835, before becoming the much more well known Boston Pilot in 1836. Readership rose and fell as the decades brought the paper through the famine, troubles, and American Civil War until the archdiocese took over the paper officially in 1908.

Continue reading “Decades of Historic Boston Newspaper Now Online and Searchable”