From the Dean 
The latest class of Tigers has arrived at LSU, intently focused on the next four years of their lives, or maybe just the next four days. Either way, we'll leave them to it; they have enough on their minds!
In time, however, they will come to understand that their undergraduate years are just the initial stage of an LSU experience that will last a lifetime. The heart of this experience is a commitment to lifelong learning: intense and all-consuming in these student years, but consistent and meaningful thereafter. From now on, these students will bring their talent and hard work to a stimulating environment dedicated to perpetual discovery and intellectual development.
The LSU Libraries is central to the Universities' commitment to lifelong learning. It provides a compelling slate of events, lectures, and exhibits, as evidenced by the events section of this newsletter. We offer world class collections, all of which are available on campus, and many that are also available from a distance.
The Libraries faculty teach students information literacy; finding and choosing the best possible information for the problems at hand. Our staff of subject specialists are available to anyone, helping individuals access patent information, identify business-oriented data and information, and assisting in any other subject area. Here again, all of these services are available on campus, and many are available over the phone or online.
The Libraries encourages LSU students and alumni to feel a sense of ownership in what we do. The LSU Libraries is their library, a place that stimulates, serves and supports its community across the lifelong LSU experience stretching before them.
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LSU Libraries Welcomes New Faculty and Staff
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| Peggy Hoon joined the LSU Libraries as Director of Copyright Policy and Education. Hoon is an accomplished copyright expert with a JD from the University of Washington and a BS in nursing from the University of Colorado. Prior to working at LSU, she was the Scholarly Communications Librarian for the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and before that, the Special Assistant to the Provost for Copyright Administration at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and the NCSU Libraries Scholarly Communication Librarian. She worked with the Center for Intellectual Property at the University of Maryland University College for many years and was their Intellectual Property Scholar from 2011-2013. Read more. | |
| Randa Lopez joined the LSU Libraries as the Agricultural Support Librarian in early May, after working for two years as a graduate assistant in Middleton Library's Research and Instruction Services Department. As the Agricultural Support Librarian, she is the LSU Libraries' liaison to the College of Agriculture and the AgCenter, assisting students and faculty with research needs, from finding journal articles to advising students who are formulating research plans. Read more. | |
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Rachel Tillay was hired as the LSU Libraries' Digital Projects Librarian. She holds a bachelor's of arts in music from Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi; a master's of theological studies in practical theology from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University; and a master's degree in library and information science from LSU. As the Digital Projects Librarian, she will assist in coordinating the design, creation, and maintenance of LSU Libraries' Louisiana Digital Library collections and other digital initiatives. Read more.
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| Meghann Wollitz joined LSU Libraries Special Collections as a Manuscripts Processing Archivist in May, after working most recently as a college archivist in her home state of Illinois. As a graduate student, she also gained experience in archives at the JFK Presidential Library, Lincoln Presidential Library, and through participation in the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria.
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Books 2 Geaux
This fall, Middleton Library introduced a book delivery service that is a vailable to faculty and staff who are registered with the Libraries, in good standing, and have an LSU departmental address. Books may be requested for check out and delivery to departmental mailboxes. Requested material will be delivered within three to four business days.
The book delivery request form is available on the Libraries' website under "Services." Information about eligible material and other details can also be found on the website or by emailing libcirc@lsu.edu.
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Louisiana Railroad Depot Photograph Collection
Train stations and railroad depots were at the center of community social and economic life during the twentieth century. They were scenes of comings and goings in towns across Louisiana, and hubs for their commerce. Images of these important buildings are featured in a newly available digital collection Louisiana Railroad Depot Photograph Collection, via the Louisiana Digital Library.
The collection comprises images of 129 stations in Louisiana from Houma to Bastrop and points in between, and dates from 1905 to 1984, reflecting the heyday of rail travel to its decline. The railroads represented in the collection include the Illinois Central, Kansas City Southern, Louisiana and Arkansas, Missouri Pacific, Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, Texas and New Orleans, and Texas and Pacific, among others.
The project is the most recent collaboration between
LSU Libraries' Special Collections, where the originals are housed, Resource Description and Metadata Services (formerly Cataloging Department), and Digital Services.
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Digitizing Louisiana Newspapers
Six Year Project Comes to a Close
August marked the end of three consecutive two-year grants awarded to the LSU Libraries by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for the digitization of Louisiana newspapers, and their addition to the Library of Congress's Chronicling America website. Louisiana is part of a cohort of 37 other states participating in this national effort to provide better access to historical newspapers. The Digitizing Louisiana Newspapers Project includes more than 300,000 pages of newspapers from 128 titles in three different languages, representing broad geographic coverage of Louisiana . The newspapers were selected by an advisory board of historians, librarians, archivists, and educators who worked with the project staff.
The project includes historical essays about each digitized newspaper, providing contextual information on editors, places of publication, political affiliation, and major topics of reporting. The essays' author, LSU librarian Michael Taylor, discovered many surprising, untold stories related to the history of journalism in Louisiana, such as Unionists who fought secession, and examples of press-related violence, including dueling editors. "Our state has an incredibly colorful and in some ways distinctive journalistic history," Taylor remarked. "I hope these essays and digitized papers are a starting point for people who want to learn more."
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In Memory of Lisi Oliver
LSU Libraries Special Collections Acquires Facsimile Edition of Medieval Manuscripts
 The Libaries recently lost one of it dearest friends, Dr. Lisi Oliver of the LSU English Department, who passed away on June 7, 2015. An expert in early English law and linguistics, Oliver frequently visited Special Collections with her classes to work with medieval manuscripts and other rare books. Through an electrifying mix of learning and laughter, she never failed to spark her students' interest. Putting the raw materials of history into their hands was one of her many passions. In her memory, LSU Libraries' Special Collections has acquired a facsimile edition of one of the most remarkable medieval manuscripts ever produced, the Black Hours. Oliver saw the facsimile, and expressed an interest in it earlier this year, when Giovanni Scorcioni, an Italian bookseller, visited LSU.
The original manuscript, now owned by the Morgan Library in New York City, was produced in Flanders in the late fifteenth century. Known as a book of hours, it is a collection of Christian prayers to be said at the canonical hours of the day. The book also contains a calendar of feast days. A wealthy layperson, possibly a woman, for whom many books of hours were made, would have used it in his or her private devotions. Read more.
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Faster, Greener, and More Reliable
Online Catalog Upgrade Delivers Support for More Languages, and Better Performance
 LSU Libraries recently upgraded its online catalog and related library systems by moving them to new servers on the cloud. The move was part of a statewide migration conducted by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network, which had been hosting the services on the LSU campus. The systems are now hosted by a dedicated cloud facility in Atlanta, Georgia.
The migration offers many advantages. Greek symbols and diacritics are supported, and diverse languages, such as Chinese, Hebrew, Cyrillic, and Arabic, can now be used to describe and display the materials in the catalog. The catalog is also much faster, which means better searching capabilities and quicker online renewals.
LSU Libraries uses software developed by SirsiDynix, and by moving to their SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) hosting, the Libraries are able to take advantage of the economies of scale. The move saves time, money, and the environment, because the dedicated facilities use less energy and space than local servers. The facility is more secure, with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) security certification and standards. Disaster recovery is even more robust than before, which is important in hurricane-prone areas such as south Louisiana. And historically, SirsiDynix SaaS hosting has a network uptime of better than 99.9%, so that the catalog will be available whenever it is needed.
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Libraries Web Migration
Content Management Systems Implemented
 This summer, the Libraries migrated the website to the Drupal content management system. This change provides a significantly improved user experience, and a more robust platform for the Libraries' many website resources. Moving to Drupal will meet present and future needs with an open-source and extendable system what will allow the Libraries to easily add new functionality in the future. Coinciding with the migration of most of the website to Drupal, the Libraries launched LibGuides. LibGuides is a web content management system for libraries that enables sharing library resources and information by topic. LibGuides is hosted on the same platform the Libraries have been using for the Ask Us service, and to reserve classrooms.
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Special Collections Implements SCRS: Special Collections Request System
Personalized Research Profiles and Online Requests Facilitate Scholarship
LSU Libraries Special Collections went live with SCRS ("Seekers"), a patron and resources management software system on July 16, 2015. This system allows the Libraries to respond to and manage requests for material much more efficiently by closing the typical gap between "discovery" and "delivery." Researchers are able to register and manage personal information, place reading room paging requests, photo-duplication and digitization orders, and track requests, all online. Previously, registration and requests were done manually, while on-site. LSU joins several top special collections libraries in the United States that use the Aeon system, including Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, University of Michigan, the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, and Harry Ransom Center at UT-Austin. Read more.
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Save the Dates
Upcoming Events, Workshops, and Talks
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Until Sept.
26
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Until Sept.
12
| In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, LSU Libraries presents the exhibition "Tempests," featuring historical materials from statehood in 1812 to the mid-2000s, in a variety of formats and languages, including personal correspondence, political papers, literature and audio excerpts from oral history interviews. The exhibition is on display the Hill Memorial Library lecture hall.
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Sept.
2
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Tempests Talks: Storms in the Archives, an Exhibition Program SeriesWednesday, Sept. 2, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Hill Memorial Library Lecture Hall Brown bag: Citizen driven policy Dr. Craig Colten, Carl O. Sauer Professor, LSU Department of Geography and Anthropology Dr. Amy Lesen, Research Associate Professor, Tulane-Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research
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Sept.
8
| Tempests Talks: Storms in the Archives, an Exhibition Program Series
Tuesday, Sept. 8, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Hill Memorial Library Lecture Hall
Film screening: The Telling Tide
Darcy Wilkins, Community Resilience Extension Associate, Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department, LSU AgCenter | |
Sept.
22
| New Faces under Old Masks: Race, Gender, and the Future of Superheroes
On September 22 at 4 p.m., three distinguished figures from the world of comics and comics scholarship will bring their unique insights to bear on intriguing and complex questions surrounding the evolving treatment of race and gender in superhero comics and film: Jonathan Gray, associate professor of English at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Conseula Francis, professor of English and associate provost at the College of Charleston; and David Walker, filmmaker, author, and acclaimed comics writer of series such as Shaft and Cyborg. The event is sponsored by LSU Libraries, the LSU Office of Diversity, the LSU College of Art & Design, the LSU School of Art, the LSU Departments of English and African and African American Studies, and the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts program, and will take place in the Hill Memorial Library lecture hall.
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Sept.
23
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Teaching with Copyrighted Materials: How to Analyze Any Copyright Question in 5 Steps FTC Coffee TalkPeggy Hoon, LSU Libraries Director of Copyright Policy and Education, will present a talk for faculty and staff working with courses, especially online, about how copyright law and fair use affects course content. Determining when it is permissible to use someone else's work can be difficult and confusing. Join us for information that will give you an organized and consistent approach to reaching a reasonable decision.
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Oct.
1
| Join LSU Libraries' Jessica Lacher-Feldman on Thursday, Oct. 1 at 6 pm at the West Laville Library. She will be on a panel of LSU faculty members discussing Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee's "lost novel." She will be joined by Michael Bibler (English) and Matt Dischinger (English) to debate this "lost" novel and what its revelations reflect of race relations in contemporary American society.
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Oct.
21
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As both users and creators of copyrighted materials, understanding your rights and responsibilities is crucial to your teaching and scholarly efforts. What can you use in your class? In your theses/dissertations? Alternately, who holds the copyright to works you create and/or publish? Join LSU Libraries Director of Copyright Policy and Education Peggy Hoon, for an informational session and discussion of these topics. | |
Oct.
28
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It Came From the Library, the LSU Libraries annual open house. Visit Middleton Library from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. to meet our staff, learn about resources, and to enter for a chance to win prizes. Stop by Hill Memorial Library to see a selection of spooky special collections.
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Retirements
This fall, we wish several of our long time employees happy retirements:
Steve Bensman,
Judy Bolton, &
Kim Shows
We will miss their wisdom, experience, and most of all, their camaraderie and friendship.
Congratulations!
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STAY CONNECTED WITH LSU LIBRARIES  
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LSU LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
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September 2015
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