Boston College Libraries Newsletter

Exhibit Highlights from John J. Burns Library

Burns Library offers three exhibits each year to highlight the breadth of its unique collections and to spark connections between them and the interests of Boston College’s academic community.

John J. Burns Library continues to highlight its unique collections through a regular series of exhibits installed in our main corridor. A glimpse at this year’s exhibits suggests the breadth of content available for research, teaching, and enjoyment. We invite students, faculty, and the general public to view our exhibits during our regular open hours. We also welcome exhibit proposals and other exhibit-centered collaborations that strongly align with Burns Library content.

From February through June, Burns Library presented The Object in the Archives: Networks and Materiality at Burns Library, an exhibit curated by Rachel A. Ernst, Ph.D. ’18, and longtime Burns Library Reading Room assistant. In her dissertation, “Mattering: Agentic Objects in Victorian Literature,” Dr. Ernst examined objects that have agency within the 19th-century novel and the ways in which those objects reshape their storyworlds. Shifting her lens to the holdings at Burns Library, she chose representative objects from 30 different collections and grouped her selections into four categories: personal, professional, sacred, and leisure. She then asked the visitor to consider how objects move from personal possession to archival artifact, and the relationships and connections that develop between and across objects, collections, and researchers. For a more in-depth look into her curatorial process, see the entry she contributed to our Burns Library Blog.

Our Summer 2018 exhibit is Dreams of Art & Glory: Book Craft by the Roycrofters. Elbert Hubbard founded Roycroft Press as a private press in East Aurora, New York in 1894 when he was unable to find a publisher for his work Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great. The Roycrofters — a community of craftspeople and artists attracted to Hubbard’s philosophies — flourished within the widespread Arts and Crafts movement for several decades, before declining after Hubbard’s death in 1915. The exhibition features volumes from the Boston College Libraries that highlight Roycrofter printing and bookbinding designs, including the modest Little Journeys pamphlet series, beautifully printed and hand decorated texts, and stunning modelled leather bindings. Works from other artists and presses are also displayed, highlighting the worldwide influence of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Also on display this summer, on the Bapst Library landing outside Gargan Hall, is Viewpoints: Reactions from the Boston College Community, a look at how students have responded to the current events of their days. Diaries, letters, photographs, and poetry from the Boston College Archives allow us to cultivate a connection through time by way of BC students who were serving in the military, confronting racial strife, or grappling with difficult choices.

For the Fall/Winter exhibit, Burns Library Archives staff are in the midst of surveying hundreds of linear feet of typescript and manuscript documents to uncover doodles, drawings, sketches, sculptures, and other artwork to demonstrate that there’s so much more to archives than just words.

Stay tuned to John J. Burns Library social media feeds and blog for more information on installation dates and highlights. We hope you’ll visit soon to experience the unique content our collections have to offer.

Bapst Library Receives Multi Volume Encyclopedia of Buddhist Arts

The first comprehensive reference collection of Buddhist art is now available at Bapst library.

In January 2018, Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Temple in Cambridge donated a 22 volume English Language Encyclopedia of Buddhist Art to the Boston College Libraries. The Fo Guang Shan Temple congregation has 250 temples around the world and this encyclopedia represents the collective 12-years long effort of many monks and scholars. The encyclopedia has nearly 10, 000 entries, over 14, 000 pictures, and appears to be the first comprehensive reference collection of Buddhist art in the world. This gift was enthusiastically welcomed by Fine Arts, Theology, and Asian Studies faculty as a valuable and much needed addition to the Boston College Libraries’ collection on Buddhism. Chris Strauber, Julie Hughes, and Fine Arts faculty Aurelia Campbell accepted the gift on January 28^th at the Fo Guang Shan Temple.

Finding “Just Right”: the Organizational Goldilocks Zone

For collaboration and innovation, the Boston College Libraries is just right.

“When Goldilocks went into the home of the three bears, she found that some things were too hot, too cold, too hard, or too soft. But in the middle, things were just right”: the Goldilocks Zone.

The phrase has been widely used in astrophysics and astrobiology in the search for life beyond earth, trying to identify exoplanets that could support life as we know it. Such planets would orbit their suns in a zone that supports liquid water, the building block of organic life, in an area not too hot or cold, but just right for life to thrive, like earth.

Parenthetically, my own current interpretation of this theory is really that we are searching for places where DNA can survive, and that in many respects DNA is actually God’s fingerprint for life, in all its forms. My best guess is that the universe is replete with DNA, and as such, life is probably ubiquitous, and the sum is far greater than the parts.

But although the Goldilocks Zone has been adopted in science, organizations have been slow to realize its implications for their own work. I submit, however, that Boston College generally, and the Libraries in particular reside in an ideal space because of the confluence of factors that allow our University to thrive in innovative ways, without losing our unique identity or mission-based focus.

Based on my experiences in other research libraries, and among colleagues in the Association of Research Libraries, I am continually assured that Boston College is in a sweet spot that allows for big dreams, where anything is theoretically possible, but small enough that we know each other and relationships are meaningful and guided by our common mission.

In fact, BC has been seen as an innovator within the ARL community, through creative spaces, emergent programs (digital scholarship), the engagement of our Burns special collections in undergraduate education, and our organizational culture that strives for inclusion and cross-departmental collaboration on initiatives. In that sense, all parts are essential for the success of the whole. No positions, or people within the BC Libraries are any less important than any other. We are in this together, and we will rise and fall as one.

Among the initiatives that being the right size enables is a horizontally integrated organization. Many large organizations, and libraries in particular, remain in organizational silos. In some sense, silos create a manageable structure. But in my mind, they are intrinsically sterile and predictable. Instead, by being in the Goldilocks Zone, we have been able to engage all our department heads in a coherent decision-making body that intentionally examines how the work in disparate areas is related, and supports open discussion around all decisions. In this way, we make the complexity of our research library as transparent as possible by building trust, appreciation, and understanding across departments. Likewise, when we have an idea that we want to pursue, we involve staff from different departments in teasing out the idea further, before it is vetted by the larger department head group. It may seem bureaucratic, but in fact we are more efficient because we are not too big and cumbersome.

I am grateful that the BC Libraries’ culture represents a microcosm of the larger Goldilocks phenomenon that BC embodies. We are active and willing collaborators, and leaders as appropriate. We are not bigger than the whole, but are essential to the vibrant ecosystem that is BC. It’s an environment where everyone can feel recognized, valued, and that their work and ideas are utilized in the larger mission of “Ever to Excel.”

Boston College remains special for a variety for reasons, but this brief essay is simply a reminder that we are in a Goldilocks place, of being not too big, not too small, where anything is possible, and we all can appreciate how our respective roles fit together, guided by a mission that we can all believe in and support. To be part of this community is to understand that faith, service and knowledge represent something bigger than ourselves, and by sharing this realization we are collectively full of life, with fertile ground for ideas and growth, and the ongoing formation of our students, and ourselves; Boston College, thriving within the ideal organizational ecosystem, our Goldilocks Zone.

Wishing you all a productive and restful summer.

Pow! Zap! Boom! Graphic Novels in the Library

In November 2017, Boston College Libraries expanded our collection of comics and graphic novels and gave them a new home on the first floor of O’Neill Library.

If you’ve passed through the first floor of O’Neill Library recently, you may have noticed some shelves that are suddenly much more colorful. In November 2017, Boston College Libraries expanded our collection of comics and graphic novels and gave them a new home on the first floor of O’Neill Library.

The collection, which includes everything from superhero stories to memoirs, is primarily intended for members of the campus community—and students in particular—to read just for fun. As we add to the collection, we’re paying close attention bestsellers, award winners, timely stories, and titles from major publishers such as Marvel, DC, Image, Fantagraphics, Vertigo, and Drawn & Quarterly.

Looking for something to read in between homework and extracurriculars? A few of our recommendations are below.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. This critically acclaimed national bestseller tells the story of two people who share a house but live in completely different worlds.

Saga. This epic series tells the story of a husband and wife on either side of a brutal war between alien races.

Everyone’s a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too: A Book. Follow the adventures of Jomny, an alien sent to Earth to study the behavior, feelings and ideas of the planet’s creatures.

The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank. If you enjoyed the Netflix series, you might like the comics on which the show is based. In the 2001 series of The Punisher, Frank Castle faces the Russian, now resurrected as a cyborg by stolen S.H.I.E.L.D technology.

The grassroots effort to give new life to our comics and graphic novels collection was led by a group of librarians who are comics readers themselves:

Rodrigo Castro, Head of Access Services, O’Neill Library
Chelcie Rowell, Digital Scholarship Librarian & Bibliographer for History
Carli Spina, Head of Assessment & Outreach
Adam Williams, Senior Reference Librarian & Bibliographer for Psychology & Social Work

Anderson Boone (Evening Reference Services Assistant), Lex Olivo (Evening Reference Services Assistant), and India Pasiuk (Evening Access Services Assistant) also contributed to the development of the collection.

To choose your next read, search the library catalog, or browse the shelves on the first floor. Like other items in our popular reading collection, books can be borrowed for 4 weeks. Not finding what you’re looking for? Add suggestions to the poster next to the collection. We’re always eager to know what you would like to read, and we plan to use these suggestions to build the collection in the future.

CLIR/Mellon Grant Awarded to Boston College Libraries Will Preserve Historic Music Recordings

News on recent funding secured to make Irish and Irish-American cultural heritage available.

In late 2017, Boston College Libraries was the successful recipient of a $30,775 Recordings at Risk grant to digitally reformat a selection of its unique audio collections. Entitled Sounds of Mid-20th Century Irish America: Preserving Historic Music Field Recordings for Research Access, the project focuses on two internationally-known collections in the John J. Burns Library’s Irish Music Archives that support the study of lrish traditional music. Experts from across the BC Libraries, in particular within the Irish Music Archives, Digital Library Team, and Archives, contributed to the proposal, which exemplifies core library values to preserve and make accessible heritage and research collections for the long term.

In the initial stages of planning, the Libraries’ Irish Music Librarian, Elizabeth Sweeney, identified two key archival collections of open-reel tapes of unpublished music—the James W. Smith Irish Music Recordings and Joseph A. Lamont Irish Music Recordings—as candidates for the desired digitization monies. The 1950s/60s music performances captured on the tapes feature some of New York and Boston’s most prominent Irish musicians at the time, and the informal nature and setting of the recordings—noncommercial “jam sessions” in public and private spaces—capture uniquely the time and spirit of this evolving musical genre. The Smith collection was acquired by the Libraries in 1992 and the Lamont collection in 2005, and though scholars have been aware of them, the tapes have not yet been available for listening.

The Sounds of Mid-20th Century Irish America project represents a classic case of high-value research content inaccessible without digitization and preservation. The majority of the recordings are in their original format of open reel-to-reel tapes, and are at risk of degradation and loss without digital conversion, preservation and archiving. CLIR’s highly competitive bidding process included a lengthy “independent, full scholarly and technical review that assessed scholarly value, cost effectiveness and technical competence”. Because the grant monies prioritized the long-term preservation of content, it was essential that a strong digital preservation record and commitment to standards-based metadata production be demonstrated, both areas that have been prioritized by the Libraries. The Northeast Document Conservation Center will be engaged for some digital reformatting services (cleaning, transfers, rewinding, splicing, file naming, and quality control), and staff in O’Neill and Burns Libraries will generate metadata, create finding aids, ingest files to MetaArchive for digital preservation, and ultimately, make arrangements for analog and digital storage and access.

Offering a sustained look at the same time period, the Smith and Lamont collections are distinct from earlier and later recordings of traditional music available elsewhere. When digitized, they will provide unprecedented opportunity to compare music communities in transition in two major urban hubs. The material will be of high value to musicologists, performers of Irish and folk music, and scholars of Irish-American history, cultural anthropology, and folkways of immigrant communities. When the digitized audio is available in late 2018, the Libraries’ announcements will encourage faculty, students, and the broader community to investigate and discover the research potential in these audio collections.

Libraries Contribute to Consortial Resources on Boston Public Schools Desegregation

Exhibits and newly digitized records complement teaching and research resources developed by area institutions.

“At some point, we need to have a conversation about what busing did to Boston and not be afraid of the conversation,’’ Mayor Marty Walsh remarked on the 40^th anniversary of the 1974 federal court order to forcibly desegregate Boston Public Schools. “I know black people that are still angry about busing. I know white people that are still angry about busing. . … They are angry on all sides.’’^[1]

Despite all the strife and struggle, evidence shows that racial imbalances persist in the Metro Boston area, and are even worsening. According to a 2013 report, Losing Ground: School Segregation in Massachusetts, over the last two decades, “the percentage of majority minority schools has more than doubled, intensely segregated schools [<10% white] have increased by more than seven times their original share, and in 2010-2011, a small share of apartheid schools [<1% white] existed that did not exist two decades earlier.”^[2]

To facilitate access to documentation about Boston Public Schools integration in the 1960s and 1970s, and to offer teachers and researchers more resources for studying the effects of busing, several members of the Boston Library Consortium (BLC) launched a project in 2015 to digitize their archival holdings and make them available through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Some also created exhibits based on their materials. The BC Libraries did both.

In October, the Libraries mounted a pair of companion exhibits, entitled Desegregating Boston’s Schools: Crisis and Community Activism, 1963–1977, that examine the controversial busing plan, while bringing to the fore the relevance and value of historical archival research in understanding current events. The parallel displays construct a story from the events around the redistricting and busing mandates, showcasing contemporary manuscripts, pamphlets, books and photographs, while providing insight into the wider context of school desegregation using historical facts and data. Original visualizations charting and mapping the demographics of residents and students over time make the causes and effects of the desegregation policy changes in Boston apparent. Some lesser-known institutional history surfaced from exhibit research. One of the curators, Sarah Melton, commented: “We had been unaware of Boston College’s role to support the new policies. There has been a lot of scholarship about the Boston busing crisis, but when our team started working on the exhibit, we didn’t know that BC partnered with area schools to help improve the curriculum and monitor the desegregation process.” In addition to Melton, Anna Kijas of the Digital Scholarship Team and Eric Weiskott of the Department of English were curators. The exhibits, one in John J. Burns Library and the other in the O’Neill Library Reading Room, close on February 2. A number of students have consulted them in conjunction with their classes, including those enrolled in the Lynch School’s “Diversity in Higher Education” course.

Online access to primary source documents was the second component of BC’s contribution to the Boston Public Schools Desegregation program. While the two exhibitions provide a glimpse of the variety of resources that can inform research into the desegregation process, it was determined that a set of archival holdings could contribute most meaningfully to the corpus of digitized materials posted online by the BLC project. Burns Library holds the records of the Citywide Coordinating Council, the independent, autonomous body created by the courts to oversee desegregation in Boston Public Schools from 1975 to 1978. The documents identified for digitization included daily school questionnaires completed by volunteer observers, school administrators, and students, as well as reports by school monitors. The monitor reports completed a series of records digitized by UMass Boston.

Properly creating and managing a digital, searchable surrogate of the documents online demanded several distinct areas of preparation. Ayoola White, a Simmons College library and information science student, scanned the nearly 700 pages of documents for one of the projects she completed as an ARL/SAA Mosaic Fellow at the BC Libraries. The reports, though in the public domain, required redaction to remove personal information before being made publicly available online. Reviewing each report to identify such and digitally “blocking” that text from the digital access images was undertaken by Gayatri Khosla of the Lynch School of Education. Post-processing of the images was handled according to established Digital Library practices, and the metadata and scanned documents were added to Boston College Libraries’ Special Collections Online. The content is also now discoverable via the Massachusetts Digital Commonwealth index and will soon be available via the DPLA, uniting it virtually with the contributions of other BLC partner institutions’ digitized archival material.

The digitization initiative and exhibits undertaken by the BC Libraries complement resources produced by other members of the Boston Library Consortium, in particular Northeastern University, which spearheaded the collaborative project, and UMass Boston.

Northeastern led the development of common descriptive metadata practices to ensure that materials contributed by each of the partners can be found in the DPLA using a common set of search terms. It has also created a widget that can be added to online syllabi and other websites to launch a targeted keyword search on the DPLA corpus. Thus far, some 3,900 items are available, with more to come as DPLA continues to harvest digital objects supplied by the Boston College Libraries and other area institutions, including Suffolk University, State Library of Massachusetts, Boston City Archives, WGBH Media Library and Archives, and the National Archives and Records Administration in Boston.

In addition, Northeastern has recently announced the launch of a project website that features interactive maps and timelines of Boston public school desegregation documentation and links to online exhibits, such as UMass Boston’s Stark & Subtle Divisions: A Collaborative History of Segregation in Boston, which was produced by a graduate history seminar. The site also includes links to curricular resources on the busing crisis developed by Boston Public Schools. Making primary resources about school integration freely and publicly available for teaching and research has been a chief goal of the collaborative project, which the BC Libraries have been proud to participate in and support.

^[1] Meghan E. Irons, “Talk on Busing Overdue, Walsh Says,” Boston Globe, 13 September 2014. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/12/mayor-walsh-report-mark-anniversary-start-school-under-federal-desegregation-order/KtmDuz1QbfYayGE21SZ50N/story.html, accessed 1/15/2018.

^[2] Jennifer B. Ayscue, Alyssa Greenberg, et al., Losing Ground: School Segregation in Massachusetts (2013). Report available from The Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California Los Angeles. https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integration-and-diversity/losing-ground-school-segregation-in-massachusetts, accessed 1/15/2018.

Citation Management for a Happier (Research) Life

Citation management software lets you spend more time on research, less time worrying about styles.

The days of having to maintain your references on index cards and painstakingly craft bibliographies manually have been over for decades. But not everyone, including many of our students, have gotten the memo about that. And, those of us who have been enjoying citation management software for years may not be aware of the options currently available, and the additional features that have been added over time. They offer the promise of less work organizing and managing your references, and more time to spend on your research and writing. If you don’t currently use citation management software, why not give it a try in 2018?

All the major citation management software options (RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley) allow you to:

Collect references from databases, library catalogs, Google Scholar and other sources. There is more than one way to do this, depending on the system you choose; export directly from databases, download citations and upload into the citation management software, or download a plugin to pull citations off any web page. You can also drag and drop PDFs directly from your computer into the citation management software, and it will harvest the citation information automatically.
Store your PDFs in the software. There may be a space limits in free versions.
Organize your citations with folders, subfolders and with tags
Cite in Word (and in most cases Google Docs), and create references cited lists automatically (with an additional plugin download), as well as creating standalone bibliographies
Share your citations with individuals and groups within BC and beyond, with varying degrees of ease. There will be limitations on sharing full text of articles due to copyright concerns; there may also be limitations on the number of groups you can share with in free versions

So how do you choose? The “feel” of each system is different, and there are some unique features available to each system. The University has a subscription to RefWorks, so we are able to access their generally excellent technical support. RefWorks is also a good choice if you want a citation management software that does not have a large desktop component. Even better, when students graduate they can keep their accounts. EndNote, long the gold standard for faculty, is still popular in some departments, and you may want it for sharing with other researchers. Contact your department to see if they have licenses for it. Papers has great organization features and is low cost. Mendeley fosters discovery and sharing by opening up other users’ libraries. It also has features to read and annotate PDFs within the program. In addition, they provide tools for finding funding and job opportunities. Zotero provides excellent functionality in a free software not owned by large, for profit vendor (EndNote is owned by Clarivate, formerly Thomson Reuter; RefWorks is owned by ProQuest; Mendeley is owned by Elsevier.) The Zotero user community is dedicated, helpful, and knowledgeable. And if you are a dedicated LaTeX user, rather than Word user, you will probably want to use BibTeX/BibDesk.

If you teach undergraduates, your students may be expert users of one or more of the systems, or be familiar with EasyBib or NoodleBib, or they may have had no exposure at all. We would be happy to provide instruction, in your class or at the library.

For more information and assistance with citation management software, please check out our guide, or contact your subject librarian.

Some Thoughts on Print Collections and User Spaces: A Continuing Opportunity

Over the past few decades libraries have evolved from storehouses of books to vibrant user-centered spaces that embrace learning, research and collaboration.

Over the past few decades libraries have evolved from storehouses of books to vibrant user-centered spaces that embrace learning, research and collaboration. By simple historical observation of the O’Neill Library one can see that the Level One area went from a dead-end space that housed obsolete print collections and an equally under-utilized government documents department to an active area that includes a collaboration room, mixed landscape seating with natural light, selected technology and student art. The renovation also created a link between the Library and Maloney Hall. In short, by repurposing the space, the Library facilitated a better learning environment and, by extension, now better serves the formation of our students.

But repurposing spaces does come with a cost. In the vast majority of cases, it’s the onsite book collections that are sacrificed for the new user spaces. We continue to have discussions about what to do with the physical onsite book collections as our spaces no longer accommodate existing collections, let alone growth, which amounts to about 30,000 print volumes per year. As we look into the near future of the BC Libraries, I anticipate that we will soon need some space not just for collections but to meet the growing need for a variety of user spaces.

Every research library is trying to figure out how to manage their print collections, and similarly, what to do with the spaces that are now occupied by books. In most cases, books are relocated to nearby offsite locations where they are easily accessible and retrievable. The key to successful offsite collections is threefold: 1) keep collections in an environmentally safe location, 2) make the collections discoverable, and 3) have a robust, timely and reliable delivery mechanism in place.

Moving large collections will always be complex, time-consuming and potentially political. Typically, libraries begin with baseline data such as circulation statistics. For example, BC Libraries maintain about 1M volumes in O’Neill and Bapst. Of those, about 30% have not circulated in the past 5 years. However, the metric is nuanced by the fact that we already have moved many volumes and boxes of materials to a proprietary offsite facility in Danvers, and, at the same time, a significant part of our collection resides in the Kenny Cottle building on the Newton Campus. Given our experience thus far, moving an additional 250-300K offsite might be reasonable. But just to be clear, no decisions are imminent and we remain open to many potential approaches.

Deciding what to send offsite will not be easy. It is a process that will entail faculty input both by necessity and good practice. We will take into account the needs of our patrons and how we can continue to offer the highest level of service throughout the process. Physically pulling these materials off the shelves is not trivial. Then the books that remain have to be shifted and re-shelved into the remaining spaces. Finally, before shipping them offsite, all the books have to be re-examined for accurate cataloging records to ensure reliable discovery. In high-density offsite facilities, the books are shelved according to size and are accessible by a new item-record. Put simply, moving research collections does not scale down. It’s complex, time-consuming and quite frankly, no fun.

However, identifying and finally relocating collections is feasible and is worthwhile if it allows us to make better use of our spaces. We in the Library are prepared to get this work done in a thoughtful and collaborative way. Decisions about how to use the freed-up space must precede the decision to move collections, because knowing the intention of the space will help in determining how many books might need to be moved. Given the BC Libraries’ track record in responding to and anticipating user needs, I’m confident we can enhance the academic and formative experiences of the entire BC community if given the latitude to design these newly available spaces collaboratively. That said, in our case we would not move more than absolutely necessary, and most people would probably not even notice that selected books are offsite (but still readily available). What would be apparent, however, would be enhanced library spaces for students and faculty. That’s the opportunity.

We in the BC Libraries have tried to stay ahead of this complex dynamic. There is no set timetable, and in fact we’ve been moving items offsite for some time. Looking ahead, we continue to believe that sending some items offsite can be a win-win situation for Boston College because we can continue to create new and interesting user spaces for learning, research, collaboration and formation without giving up our commitment to accessing and delivering content in both print and digital forms. We will continue to keep you abreast of these discussions and developments, but we steadfastly remain committed to providing the best spaces, content, experiences and services for the entire BC community.

Visualizing Our Data With Tableau

The Boston College Libraries are using Tableau to visualize our data and better understand our users’ needs.

The Boston College Libraries are committed to using data to better understand how members of the BC community use the libraries’ services, spaces, and collections and to make informed decisions. While we have long collected data, more recently we have started to use this data to create interactive dashboards that visualize this information in new ways and allow users to explore our data. These dashboards allow library staff to better understand the data that we have collected, but they also given patrons an insight into the work that we do. To this end, we have made several dashboards publicly available on our new Tableau Public profile.

Currently, these visualizations cover library instruction data, information about questions at our reference desks, and visualizations on how spaces are used at both O’Neill Library and the Social Work Library.

We plan to update these as data is collected and add additional dashboards and visualizations to our profile in the future, so check back later to see what we are up to! We’ll also be displaying some of the visualizations on the screens in O’Neill Library, so be sure to take a look next time you stop by.

If you are interested in learning how to create data visualizations with Tableau yourself or would like to integrate Tableau into an assignment for one of your courses, please feel free to contact Data and Visualization Librarian Allison Xu (yaqing.xu@bc.edu) or attend one of our upcoming Tableau trainings:

An Introduction to Visualizing Data with Tableau
February 21, 2018, 3-4:30 pm.
O’Neill Library, Digital Studio, Room 205

In this workshop, participants will get an introductory, hands-on learning experience of Tableau. The workshop will be focused on Tableau key functions, including:

How to connect to data sources
How to create visuals and assemble them into a dashboard
How to publish the dashboard to the Tableau Public server

This event is free and open to the public, but we kindly request that you register.

Mapping with Tableau
February 27, 2018, 3-4:30 pm.
O’Neill Library, Digital Studio, Room 205

Mapping data is one of the many ways Tableau helps people see the information in relevant, insightful ways to make better decisions. In this workshop, participants will learn how to analyze their data geographically, how to plot the data on a map in Tableau, and what types of maps can be created in Tableau.

This event is free and open to the public, but we kindly request that you register.

Why is There a Dog in the Library?!

Ever seen a dog walking through O’Neill Library and wondered why? Here are all the details about our therapy dog visits!

In the past, dogs and libraries haven’t mixed all that much. Whenever a patron with a dog was spotted on one of the floors of O’Neill Library, a conversation would quickly ensue among staff about what the dog was doing there, why the owner thought it was OK to bring a dog into the library, and whether we needed a “No Dogs Allowed” sign on the door.

Recently, all of that began changing. Word got around that other universities had puppy rooms or petting zoos during stressful times in the academic year. Since we like to be innovative in all ways (except for the current library sleeping pod trend-we draw the line there!) we looked into the possibility of having dogs visit our libraries.

Our program began as a small joint effort three years ago between the Social Work Library and O’Neill Library and has grown tremendously since then.

This past semester during study days and finals we had 11 dogs visit. Over 1100 people (mostly students but a few staff) came to de-stress with them. This was our most ambitious end-of-semester schedule so far and it was driven by student request.

Also, this past year we started a program called Dog Day Afternoons which featured well-attended monthly dog visits “just because”. Students are now asking for weekly dog visits and are also saying “We should just have a library dog.”

At our Brain Break event, held on the night of November 29^th, the dogs had 250 visitors.

The libraries arrange for dog visits through Therapy Dogs International (TDI) which was founded in 1976. Dogs certified by TDI have met their rigorous standards of behavior and are insured. They are not, as some people have asked, campus employees’ pets.

The dog visits are beloved by our students for two main reasons. First, many of them have dogs at home and miss them a great deal. A common sentiment is that they miss their dogs more than their parents because dogs aren’t good Skypers or texters.

The second reason is that our TDI dogs are natural stress relievers. To be good therapy dogs they have to be naturally calm, friendly, and able to share empathy with humans. Joe, one of our visitors, loves lying on the floor while several individuals pet him, but he also just naturally gets up whenever a new person arrives and looks them in the eyes so they know they’re welcome. This kind of skill can’t be taught. Another of our dog visitors, Tex, can pick out the most stressed individuals in the crowd. He then goes over to them and “hugs” them with his front paws. Students love watching the dogs obey commands and do tricks but they most value just sitting on the floor and touching them.

This coming year just happens to be the Lunar Year of the Dog so naturally, we will be taking advantage of it and hosting many dog visits. We advertise our dog events via social media and on the library website. We will also have printed schedules of the Year of the Dog events at the circulation desk in February.

Please try to stop by and interact with one of the therapy dogs this coming semester. When you see the students’ faces, you will have the answer to the question, “Why is there a dog in the library?!”