On Monday May 7 at 8:00 pm, take a break from your studying in the library and have some pizza! Free soda, snacks, and pizza will be available in the Phelan room, Level A in the library.
Category: Library News (Page 5 of 6)
In our conversations with faculty over the past several years, concerns were expressed about the dearth of opportunities for sophomore and junior students to develop the research skills necessary for success in their majors. To address these concerns, the Research Education department recently piloted a peer-to-peer learning model that builds on the foundational research skills introduced to students in their first year by focusing on research in a specifically disciplinary context.
On March 29th, we hosted the first student-led research workshop with students in the Psychology program. Over lunch, three senior thesis writers engaged twelve of their peers in a lively conversation aimed at strengthening the research skills and confidence of the recently-declared majors. Drawing on their personal experiences with academic research, the thesis writers familiarized their peers with the resources and strategies fundamental to research in their major.
Our hope is to expand this model in the fall and beyond. If your department is interesting in participating, contact Rob Walsh (robert.walsh@trincoll.edu). These workshops will reinforce discipline-specific research skills, foster a sense of community among students in connection with their research, and encourage students to see themselves as scholars.
National Library Week April 8 – 14.
National Library Week is celebrated April 8 to 14 this year, and its theme is Libraries Lead. Libraries have been leaders in many areas: freedom of speech, privacy, and digital literacy, to name a few. Help us to celebrate libraries on April 12: Stop by and have a cupcake, and while you visit us take a moment to write down where libraries have led you. All entries will be entered in a drawing for a $20 Amazon gift card.
We’ll be in LITC at the library’s entrance, 3pm on Thursday April 12. See you there!
Dear Faculty,
On Thursday April 5 in LITC Room 181, Information Services will host a Common Hour discussion on the features of Kaltura, which will be our new delivery mechanism for course video assignments beginning Fall 2018. Kaltura will be able to do everything Trinflix has done, and more! We hope to answer your questions regarding this upgrade, review some other subscription content packages the Library subscribes to, as well as introduce you to some additional tools Kaltura offers for classroom use.
A list of Frequently Asked Questions is available, and you may also direct any concerns to Katie Bauer at Kathleen.bauer@trincoll.edu
A light lunch will be served. We hope to see you there!
Information Services is pleased to present student research on the ethical, legal, and technical dimensions of digital information privacy and security. The event will take place on Thursday, March 22 during Common hour in the Joslin Family 1823 Room, Library and Information Technology Center. Of course, we will serve a nice lunch! For questions, please contact Erin Valentino at erin.valentino@trincoll.edu.
The student staff working for Digital Collections & Services has been busy this semester completing two projects: the George Watson Cole Postcard collection, and the Trinity College Bulletins, housed in Watkinson. Students have digitized hundreds of postcards this semester, with just a few hundred remaining which will complete Trinity’s digital collection of Cole’s 10,000 postcards. The postcards already digitized and cataloged are available for view in Shared Shelf Commons and Artstor. George Watson Cole was a librarian and bibliographer, friend and contemporary of famous librarians Melvil Dewey and Charles Cutter, who traveled through France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and England in the early 1900s and collected every postcard he could find. As a result, Trinity houses one half of his 20,000 postcards, primarily depicting pre-WWI Europe and some of California. These postcards show a slice of life: people, towns, maps, and churches as they appeared at the turn of the century and before two world wars devastated Europe.
The Trinity College Bulletins are also nearly complete, with a few volumes left from the 1940s and 50s, on which the students are currently working. During Fall 2017, the students completed digitization of Bulletins from the early 1990s to 2010.
The Bulletins include annual reports of the College President, Treasurer, and Librarian, the yearly library catalog and curriculum, necrology lists, faculty publications, photographs, summer school and graduate school information, among other booklets. The digitized bulletins stem from 1829 and are available to view on the Digital Repository. To get to the digital repository, visit the college library catalog –> Digital Collections –> Digital Repository –> College history, archives, and publications.
A biography of James Williams (1790 – 1878), who served as janitor to Trinity College for over 50 years, is also now available in the Digital Repository.
Italian Family Seeking Lost Luggage, Ellis Island, 1905, Lewis W. Hine
Sometimes described as the “Gutenberg Bible” of photographic printing, Photographs from the Collection of the Gilman Paper Company #1173 reproduces 200 photos from the highly regarded collection of the same name acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005. Illustrating the history of photography, the photogravure images were hand-printed by Richard Benson, Dean of the Yale School of Art, and range from 1800s daguerreotypes to 20th Century photos by Robert Frank and Diane Arbus. Trinity College’s Raether Library is fortunate to have been chosen to receive this volume from Nathaniel Gibbons, photographic artist and friend of Richard Benson, and supporter of Yale University Art Gallery’s program to share remaining copies with select educational and cultural institutions.
It is the hope of Mr. Gibbons that our volume will be appreciated for its collection of photos, but also as an example of fine printing and bookbinding, and that it will prove to be a valuable resource for Trinity College students. The book will be housed within our Watkinson Library, and will be accessible to Trinity faculty and students as well as interested outside users.
-
- Planning the Capture of Booth and Herold, 1865, Alexander Gardner
-
- The Ascent of Mont Blanc, 1861, Bisson Freres
-
- Calf-Bearer, the Acropolis, Athens, 1865, unknown photographer
Over the past year, the CTW Digital Projects Group, which encompasses staff from Connecticut College, Trinity College, and Wesleyan University, came together to consider how the three schools might collaborate on digitizing and publishing archival or other materials owned by each school.
For its pilot project, the group selected student-made scrapbooks from multiple eras: those of Linda Abel, a student at Connecticut College from 1965-1969, Lynn Smith Miller, a student at Wesleyan from 1910-1914, and Phillip DeWitt Phair, who attended Trinity College from 1890 – 1894. The scrapbooks offer a glimpse into college student life during these periods through ephemera such as playbills and athletic event tickets, dance and social cards, artwork, valentines, invitations and letters, newspaper clippings, menus, and miscellaneous objects.
Utilizing the University of Southern California’s open-source platform, Scalar, members of the group scanned and uploaded an image of each scrapbook page, jointly decided on metadata fields, and added metadata and descriptions for each page, as well as a biography and introduction to each scrapbook.
“Connecticut Connections” was recently presented at the CTW Retreat in downtown Hartford and is publicly available online at: http://scalar.usc.edu/works/ctwscrapbooks.
The Enders Ornithology Lantern Slides Collection comprises over 800 hand-tinted glass plate photographs, produced by Herbert Keightley Job from 1896 to 1925. Job was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1864 and was a minister, lecturer, author, ornithologist, and pioneer wildlife photographer.
Job’s slides are digitized and make up part of the Ostrom and Alice Talcott Enders Ornithology Collection, a comprehensive collection of over 5,000 items including books, original artwork, periodicals, and more in the Watkinson Library.
While many of Job’s slides are of birds, he photographed this deer in Canaan, CT jumping over a fence on March 12, 1908! Other slides include scenes of everyday life as well as architecture, landscapes, and animals, some of which were taken throughout Connecticut. What you find may surprise you!
Visit the Digital Collections page and select “Enders Ornithology Lantern Slides” under “Image Collections in Shared Shelf Commons” to view the collection. Learn about lantern slides here.
Late in the fiscal year, the Library reviews ‘wish list’ requests, and makes decisions based on available funds, relevance to student assignments, and faculty teaching & research. A one-time purchase is preferred, even though it may require an annual service fee.
In Spring 2017, purchases included Caribbean Studies in Video: the Banyan Archive and the Digital National Security Archive.
Current ‘wish list’ items include China Academic Journals (East View; subscription), Communication & Mass Media Complete (EBSCO; subscription) and the Digital Sanborn Maps (ProQuest; subscription or one-time purchase). All are currently available as a 30-day trial subscription via the A-Z Database list.
For questions or comments about e-resources or journal subscriptions, please contact Jennifer van Sickle at Jennifer.vansickle@trincoll.edu
1885 map of Rockville, CT, from the Sanborn map collection