From the Dean  2016 will be a year of dizzying facilities-related changes to the Troy H. Middleton Library. Some of it will be wonderful, and some of it disruptive and messy. 1. In January, books and shelves were rearranged to make way for a new math lab. The Peabody Hall math lab will relocate to Middleton Library, making it more centrally located and available to the more than 5000 students who use it each year. During construction, students can expect noise and disruption. 2. In February, construction will begin on the second floor. The offices and desks for the Circulation and InterLibrary Loan departments will move to the second floor of Middleton Library to make room for exciting new space on the first floor. 3. The Graduate Reading Room on the second floor has opened. Formerly known as Education Resources, the room has been cleared of stacks and filled with a mishmash of stray furnishings. We are actively seeking financial support to improve this space. 4. The first floor Circulation department will be dismantled this spring. The Circulation and InterLibrary Loan departments on the first floor will be taken down once the services are relocated to the second floor. 5. Beginning July 1st, a beautiful, modern, and quiet reading room will be built on the first floor. This project will be funded entirely by LSU's Student Excellence Fee. 6. Flooding in the basement will require moving books and staff. Library staff with office space adjacent to the leaky perimeter of the building will be relocated. Planning will begin to close basement collections that are affected by flooding. Water intrusion there is chronic, unfixable, and an immediate threat to the library material. The collections will be reopened when appropriate storage space is secured. 7. In February, the Digital Scholarship Lab will open in room 5 in the basement. This interdisciplinary space will provide equipment and software for faculty and students to engage in research and pedagogy projects, along with staffing to advise and assist in digital project creation.
As educators well know, research and teaching has seen dramatic change since the era of card catalogs, and libraries must respond. The changes will be disruptive from top to bottom, but will pave the way for the future. Here's to 2016! Stanley Wilder Dean, LSU Libraries |
Renovation Noise During Spring Semester
Students Should Expect Disruptions This Semester
 There will be noise on almost every floor of Middleton Library this semester, as books are shifted, a math lab is built, new Circulation and Interlibrary Loan offices are installed, and the old ones dismantled. The fourth floor and the Music Resources Center on the second floor will not be directly affected by the projects, and will have some of the quietest study spots during noisy times. Announcements and updates about the ongoing disruptions will be available at news.blogs.lib.lsu.edu/tag/2016_construction/ and on the Libraries Facebook and Twitter accounts.
|
Graduate Reading Room
 In December 2015, LSU Libraries opened the Graduate Reading Room on the second floor of Middleton Library. The Graduate Student Association requested a defined, main-campus space specifically for graduate students to interact, build community, collaborate, and study.
LSU Libraries' Dean Stanley Wilder recognizes that working in interdisciplinary ways that benefit the entire academic community is the future of higher education thinking and strategy. This made his decision to collaborate with the Graduate School an easy one. The establishment of the Graduate Reading Room will help recruit and retain students. Additionally, this space will highlight the role LSU Libraries plays in graduate students' academic and social lives.
The Graduate Reading Room is a 3,000 square foot space that still looks much like it did when the library was built in the 1950s, with cork floors, bulky and uncomfortable furniture, and inadequate technology and lighting.
The vision is a contemporary, beautiful space that will serve a variety of functions including independent and collaborative study spaces, rooms for meetings and presentations, and community areas. The space will give students opportunities to refine their professional skills while learning and discovering outside the classroom.
Providing students with the tools and spaces they need to be successful will require extensive renovations to the current space. The Graduate Reading Room presents a perfect opportunity to invest in students, LSU, and our communities. For more information regarding funding needs or naming opportunities, please contact LSU Libraries' Office of Development at (225) 578-6552 or givetolibraries@lsu.edu, or visit the Giving to the LSU Libraries webpage.
|
Digital Humanities Workshops for Graduate Students
This semester, the Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) will host a series of six workshops about digital humanities, an interdisciplinary field that merges traditional humanities research and teaching with new media, technologies, and computational methods. The series -- itself an interdisciplinary collaboration spearheaded by Andrew Sluyter (Geography) and Lauren Coats (English), run by the LSU Libraries' DSL, and funded by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) -- will give workshop participants hands-on experience with digital humanities tools and methods. The workshops are open to students and faculty, and will be particularly of interest to graduate students in HSS. The workshops will include:
Feb. 16: Getting Started in the Digital Humanities, Lauren Coats (LSU)
Feb. 26: Introduction to Text Mining, Laura Mandell (Texas A&M)
TBA: Text Mining from the Command Line, John Laudun (University of Louisiana - Lafayette)
Mar. 17: Historical GIS, Andrew Sluyter (LSU)
April 15: Historical GIS, Geoff Cunfer (University of Saskatchewan)
TBA: Visualization, Lauren Klein (Georgia Tech)
Contact the Digital Scholarship Lab at dsl@lsu.edu for more information. Times, locations, and registration will be available on the LSU Libraries website as they become available.
|
Upcoming Special Collections Exhibition
Nineteenth Century Japanese Illustrated Books and Prints on Exhibition for First Time
Once isolated and mysterious, Japan captured the world's imagination when it opened its doors to outsiders in the mid-19th century. This colorful new exhibition from the LSU Libraries' Special Collections will feature a wide range of rare books, prints, and photographs that provide a snapshot of Japan at the moment of its transition from a feudal state to a modern superpower. In particular, the exhibit focuses on Japanese artists' influence on the Impressionist and Art Nouveau movements in Europe and America. Books on early Western encounters with Japan are also included. The exhibit will open February 22 in Hill Memorial Library.
|
LSU Libraries Receives National Recognition
Digital Resources Selected for "Best Historical Materials" List
 LSU Libraries received national recognition at the annual Book & Media Awards Ceremony at the midwinter meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) on January 10, 2016. " Free People of Color in Louisiana: Revealing an Unknown Past," a collaborative digital project led by LSU Libraries, was one of only four resources nationwide to make the annual list of Best Historical Materials, announced by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) during the Book and Media Awards Ceremony at the ALA's Midwinter meeting in Boston.
The list of sources is selected by the Historical Materials committee, which seeks to improve the usefulness of bibliographies and indexes in the field of history. Each year, the Committee compiles and publishes its "Best Historical Materials" in Reference and User Services Quarterly (RUSQ), RUSA's research journal. In addition, the Committee evaluates the pattern and effectiveness of coverage in all fields of history, promotes enhanced availability of historical works and information, and serves as liaison among bibliographers, indexers, publishers, and professional associations.
"Free People of Color in Louisiana" is an NEH funded project that digitally brings together archival collections of personal and family papers, documenting the lives of people of African descent who were either born free or who escaped from slavery and lived freely in the United States, prior to 1865. The site provides access to over 30,000 pages of family and personal papers, business records, and public documents dispersed among the LSU Libraries Special Collections and grant partners that include the Louisiana State Museum Historical Center, the Historic New Orleans Collection, Tulane University's Louisiana Research Collection, and New Orleans Public Library. LSU Libraries received the $194,152 two-year grant in 2013, and it concluded in April 2015. Pictured: Portrait of Rosemarie Aldometer Mather, ca. 1899, born in 1851 to free people of color Jane Giddings and George Mather, all of Baton Rouge. ( Dudley Turnbull Family Papers, Mss. 2907, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections)
|
A Legacy of Children's Literature
Remembering Special Collections Benefactor B. Lehman Williamson
 In 1994, B. Lehman Williamson established the Michael Lehman Williamson Collection of Civil War Books for Young People after his son's passing. This collection, housed in Hill Memorial Library, features books published from 1862 to the present and includes more than 900 books about the Civil War written for children, including fiction, non-fiction, and biographical profiles. The collection is significant because it is a unique body of materials that reflects this particular subject, with a focus solely on books geared towards a young audience. Scholars and students researching the history of reading, children's literature, historiography, and a host of other topics will find these materials of particular value. The designs of 19th and early 20th century books are important and interesting, with the Civil War graphically portrayed in book binding design. The sometimes vivid, sometimes graphic, and sometimes very serious images are a reflection of how books were marketed to a young audience at a particular time and place.
It is through the generosity and vision of B. Lehman Williamson, who passed away in September of 2015, that this important collection is available for scholars and students of all ages. As with all of our holdings, visitors are welcome to come and see items from this rich collection.
|
Special Collections Hosts, Co-Sponsors LGBTQ Archives Talk
 On Tuesday, February 23, 2016, LSU Libraries Special Collections, in collaboration with the College of Human Sciences & Education's (CHSE) School of Social Work and School of Library and Information Science, and the CHSE Diversity Committee, will present a public lecture by Dr. Rebecka Sheffield, Executive Director of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. Her talk, Social Justice Struggles for Rights, Equality & Identity: The Role of LGBTQ Archives, will examine the role of archives and archival endeavors, especially community-based archives, in support of struggles for recognition, equality, and civil rights. The doors open at 4:30 pm, with the lecture to begin at 5:15 pm in the Hill Memorial Library lecture hall. This talk is free and open to the public. In addition to the public talk, Dr. Sheffield will conduct two half-day workshops geared towards archivists, students, and faculty relating to the use and collection of LGBTQ archival materials. Additional information is available at slis.lsu.edu/lgbtq.
|
Instrument Drive
LSU Libraries Partners with The Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra
If you have an instrument that you haven't touched since high school gathering dust in the attic or taking up space in that closet, bring it into the Middleton Library for the next musical genius. Carter Music Resources of LSU Libraries is proud to collaborate with the Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra, the Louisiana Youth Orchestra and the Kids' Orchestra as a permanent donation site for musical instruments. The Kids' Orchestra's mission is to bring children of all cultures and backgrounds together using music education as a vehicle to foster teamwork, develop understanding, and emphasize excellence.
So bring it on. We will even accept the dust! Contact Mikel LeDee for more information.
|
|
LSU Cenobium Yearbooks Digitized
LSU School of Veterinary Medicine Yearbooks Available Online
The Cenobium, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine's yearbook, has been digitized and is now part of the LSU Libraries digital collections. In an effort to provide wider access to these records, Lisa Juengling, Archivist at the Veterinary Medicine Library, digitized the yearbooks with guidance from LSU Libraries' Gabe Harrell and Rachel Tillay. In 1977, LSU's School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) graduated its first class, and the first edition of the yearbook, Cenobium, was published. It was aptly named. Cenobium derives from the Greek word, Koinobios, meaning "living in communion with others." In scientific usage, cenobium refers to "a colony of cells or organisms held together by a common investment." It was an especially fitting title for a publication that chronicled the daily life and special events of a relatively small, cohesive group of students. It was published for the last time in 1990. Naturally, animals figure prominently in the pages of each edition and the photos run the gamut from delightful to grim. There are pages, for example, that contain photos of students' pets, complete with their "first and last" names, and conversely, those that depict the stark clinical reality of anatomy labs and cadavers. The books also document a student body that was particularly social. Faculty roasts, talent shows, spring barbeques, crawfish boils, Halloween parties, intramural athletics, and rodeos all show evidence of a group of scholars that recognized the need for respite amid the rigor.
|
STAY CONNECTED WITH LSU LIBRARIES  
|
LSU LIBRARIES SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
|
|
|
|
|
Give to the LSU Libraries