As part of our ongoing efforts to provide more comfortable and functional spaces for research and study, Bird Library's Team Rooms and Technology Rooms were recently outfitted with new carpeting, tables, and chairs. They look like new spaces and are much more comfortable.
Check them out and let us know what you think!
In an effort to help protect your laptop from theft -- and yourself from resulting data loss and identity theft -- the SU Library now has laptop security cables available for loan at the Technology Support Desk. The cables, for use with your own laptop or one of ours, circulate for up to six hours at a time.
When using the security cables, be sure to tether your laptop to a strong, unbreakable object that won't move, such as the anchor bolts found on many tables in Bird.
Make a habit of locking your laptop, even when you're working on it, regardless of where you are. Do not leave your laptop unattended and use the cables for added security.
Security cables and locks are also available for purchase at the SU Bookstore.
Brought to you by SU Library and SU Department of Public Safety!
Syracuse University Press staff have a new office location at 548 Bird Library. The Press Director, Acquisitions Editors, and Marketing Team will meet with faculty and students interested in exploring the publishing process and discussing opportunities for working with the Press. Press staff will also offer assistance in developing strategies for approaching publishers regarding book project proposals.
This central location in Bird Library offers a convenient space for the Press staff to meet with SU series editors, campus organizations, SU subject librarians, and others.
Current hours are Monday 1-2 p.m. (Director), Tuesday 2:30-4:30 p.m. (Acquisitions), Wednesday 2:30-4:30 p.m. (Marketing), or by appointment. For more information about Syracuse University Press, visit their website.
In the course of organizing the Grove Press archive in the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library, a project funded by a Hidden Collections grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), archivist Susan Kline discovered the first page of a letter that Malcolm X wrote to Alex Haley during a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964. The page, which had been missing for decades, was found in a box of miscellaneous materials related to the Evergreen Review, Grove's monthly magazine. It may have been misplaced during one of the many moves of the Grove office or otherwise separated during the book publication process.
The letter belongs in the editorial files of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. On September 22, 1965, Grove editor Dick Seaver stated that Grove Press considered the Autobiography to be "one of the most important books we have ever published." It went on to sell millions of copies worldwide and was judged by Time magazine in 1999 as one of the 10 "most important non-fiction works of the 20th century," confirming Seaver's earlier assessment.
The seven-page letter, hand written on hotel stationery, is significant in that it outlines Malcolm X's softening views on race based on his experiences in Mecca. On the newly discovered page, Malcolm writes, "this pilgrimage to the Holiest of Cities has not only been a unique experience for me, but one which has made me the recipient of numerous unexpected blessings beyond my wildest dreams."
The first page of the letter is important because it provides the precise date and time Malcolm X recorded his thoughts to Haley: Friday, April 25, 1964, 9 a.m. While the last page of the letter mentions the Autobiography and Malcolm X offers his best wishes to Haley's wife, the first page also directly indicates the letter was addressed to Alex Haley.
Library Dean Suzanne Thorin said of the find, "This discovery is a perfect example of the very real value of CLIR's Hidden Collections grants. We may never have located this historic item without the funding we received to process the Grove Press collection."
The intact letter helps complete the picture offered to scholars who wish to research the development of this book. By reuniting the pages of the letter, researchers can now study the letter in its entirety, which may enable them to shed additional light on Malcolm X's experience during his pilgrimage to Mecca and the relationship between Malcolm X and Haley.
The fact that this item was located at long last underscores the importance of devoting attention to archival materials like these. The CLIR grant project will make this letter and the other discrete materials in the Grove Press archive discoverable and available for research, contributing to a greater understanding of this period in history.
Sound Beat, a public radio program originating in the Belfer Audio Archive at the Syracuse University Library, was awarded a $15,000 Arts on Radio and Television grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Sound Beat is a daily 90-second public radio show and companion website that uses historic sound recordings from the 1890s through the 1960s, along with entertaining back-stories, to educate listeners about the arts and history. These forgotten recordings tell us what Americans listened to and laughed at, what they enjoyed and what they valued. Sound Beat is a daily 1½-minute glimpse into the American cultural experience that is now being carried by 63 stations nationwide.
The raw material for Sound Beat is Syracuse University Library's Belfer Audio Archive, which holds approximately 500,000 historic audio recordings. Of particular note is the Savada Collection, a recent donation of 200,000 78s from the family of Morton Savada that comprised the holdings of his Manhattan retail store, Records Revisited. Classical music performances, operatic works, film scores, and spoken-word recordings are well-represented, as are those from distinctly American musical forms like jazz, bebop, country, and bluegrass. In addition, Sound Beat features recordings of political leaders, poets, philosophers, and actors, as well as early radio broadcasts and unreleased tracks from major recording companies. Nearly all are out of print and largely unavailable today.
The latest round of NEA funding for fiscal year 2011 totaled more than $88 million awarded through 1,145 grants to not-for-profit national, regional, state, and local organizations nationwide. Arts on Radio and Television grants support the development, production, and national distribution of radio and television programs on the arts. In this category, 64 grants out of 145 eligible applications were recommended for funding, for a total of $4 million. The full listing of awardees is located here.
To hear Sound Beat episodes, visit soundbeat.org. For more information, contact Sound Beat project manager Pamela McLaughlin at 315.443.9788 or pwmclaug@syr.edu.
A new grouping of 20 computers and a printer is now available in a quiet area on the 2nd floor of Bird Library. Located on the east side of the building behind the current periodicals, these workstations are available for use by SU-affiliated students, faculty, and staff. The new cluster is a joint effort between Campus ITS and the Library and provides the same software applications as other ITS computing labs on campus.
New workstations include Microsoft Visio, Project, and Visual Studio, in addition to the suite of applications available on other Library workstations. Based on the outcome of this pilot, the Library hopes to add these applications to the remaining public computers in the Library in order to provide a consistent computing experience for library users.
The push for sustainability on campus is getting a boost from a new gadget that is now available for checkout at Bird Library's Technology Support and Loan desk. The iPod-sized apparatus, known as Kill A Watt, displays power usage and cost for individual household appliances. While utility meters installed by power supply companies show overall household energy usage, the Kill A Watt allows consumers to see how much an individual appliance contributes to energy costs.
Syracuse University's Sustainability Division is promoting the Kill A Watt system as a way to spur awareness of household energy consumption and hopefully alter wasteful practices. Richard Martin, a sustainability analyst for the Sustainability Division, believes the system has real potential to increase energy awareness. "Users of the system will understand what aspects of their current behavior are using the most energy," said Martin. "Those are the aspects I hope they will rethink."
The system is easy to use, and for anyone who can set a digital kitchen timer, setting up the Kill A Watt is just as simple. Simply unplug an appliance, plug the Kill A Watt into the vacant socket and reconnect the appliance to the Kill A Watt. After entering the cost of energy, the system begins tallying usage and cost. The Kill A Watt will also project the appliances' power consumption and energy cost up to one year.
To ensure the most accurate reading and prediction, Martin suggests measuring the usage of a single appliance for seven days. "In terms of filtering out variability due to our behavioral patterns," said Martin, "a week is good representative time slice." This means that during the two-week checkout time from the Bird Library, students and faculty can accurately measure the usage and cost of two appliances.
"There are definitely a lot of people who are thinking about the future, thinking about energy use," said Ted Traver, a project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group. He sees a definite intellectual market for the Kill A Watt on campus. "To gain a cost awareness and have an environmental impact - people would love that."
Even though household appliances are usually marked with power ratings, it's difficult to monitor power consumption without a meter like the Kill A Watt. Appliances like toasters, microwaves and light bulbs are typically marked with the maximum possible power consumption, although that's not always the amount being used. Gauging is also difficult for automatic appliances like air conditioners and refrigerators because the amount of daily run time is not recorded. Items like cell phone chargers and computer cords draw power even when disconnected. The Kill A Watt mediates all of these issues.
"All the stuff that you don't even realize takes energy - it does," said Traver. "And it's really good to have a system in place to monitor how much energy you're actually using."
WAER broadcast the inaugural episode of Sound Beat, a new 90-second public radio module that highlights recordings from the Belfer Audio Archive, on Tuesday, March 1 at 3:30 p.m.
Sound Beat is a quick trip through the history of recorded sound. Each episode focuses on one particular recording from the archive and provides a back story detailing its place in recording history. Featured recordings come from a wide range of periods and genres. Popular and classical music performances, operatic works, and film scores are well-represented, as are those from distinctly American musical forms like jazz, bebop, country, and bluegrass.
And it's not just music. Sound Beat also features recordings from some of the great thinkers, political figures, and luminaries from the late 19th and early- to mid-20th centuries. People like Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, and Theodore Roosevelt, to name just a few.
Producer Jim O'Connor, Bob Hodge and others have been mining the Belfer holdings for interesting recordings. Others involved in the project include host Brett Barry, a Newhouse alum. Credit for the original idea for a radio show focusing on Belfer collections goes to SU Magazine's David Marc. Theme music was written by Grammy-nominated composer David Wolfert, who also has SU connections.
Ron Ockert, program director at WAER, had this to say, "I love Sound Beat! There's nothing else like it out there. It is equal parts history and fun and makes a great complement to WAER's lineup."
If you just want to listen in, every Sound Beat episode will be available, along with other interesting facts and features, at soundbeat.org. WAER will carry it in the 3:30 p.m. daily time slot.
Six newly designated "Team Rooms," located on the 3rd and 4th floors of Bird Library, are available for group work or projects requiring the use of technology. Team Rooms with Technology can be used for presentation practice, web conferencing, and other group project work.
Each room is equipped with a large LCD screen, desktop PC, and a media control panel. Rooms can be customized with additional technology, including:
Team Rooms are available to SU students, faculty and staff by reservation. Rooms that have not been reserved are available on a first-come, first-served basis. For more information or to submit a reservation, see http://library.syr.edu/services/space/team_room_form.php.
To sign out a key, obtain additional equipment, or inquire about room use, visit the Technology Support & Loan desk on the first floor of Bird Library or call 443-4160.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $505,000 to Syracuse University to support the positions of director and sound archivist for the Library's Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive. The Library will work closely with the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Visual and Performing Arts, the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and, the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs to integrate Belfer resources into their scholarly work and to make it easier for scholars to discover and use audio resources in a digital environment. The award also provides funding to equip a smart classroom in the Belfer facility.
Vice-Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina spoke with enthusiasm about the initiative, saying, "Syracuse University is grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for this generous grant. By rebuilding the leadership, we will rekindle the involvement of faculty here and nationally in this exemplary research archive. This award will enable us to reach our goal of making Belfer's treasures broadly available for teaching, research, and listening."
The Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive at Syracuse University is a significant research repository that documents the history of American recorded sound. The collections have grown to more than 500,000 recordings, making it one of the nation's foremost audio archives. Belfer's extensive collections and playback equipment represent a wide range of audio recording history, from the earliest experimental recordings on tinfoil, to cylinders, Edison Diamond discs, 78-rpm and 45-rpm recordings, and a variety of audiotapes. The collections are especially rich in popular vocal and instrumental music, and include classical, jazz, marches, novelty, comedy, folk, country, ethnic, and experimental genres.
In addition to music, the Belfer collections also contain recordings of political leaders, poets, philosophers, and famous actors, as well as early radio broadcasts and unreleased discs from major recording companies. Famous voices include Thomas Edison, George Bernard Shaw, Amelia Earhart, Albert Einstein, Margaret Bourke-White, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Albert Schweitzer, and Benjamin Spock.
The Director, who will teach in one or more of the Belfer's constituent academic departments, will promote the innovative use of the collections in research and teaching and will have an established reputation in the history of recorded sound and/or in the policy, law, and economics governing the use of recorded sound. The Archivist will be responsible for providing access to Belfer's recordings, selecting appropriate discovery tools (including MARC cataloging, EAD finding aids, and new methodologies) and devising new delivery methods.
The Dean of the Library, Suzanne Thorin, commented that the new state-of-the-art classroom will help to ensure that the Belfer Archive becomes a recognized campus center for research and teaching in the history of recorded sound. Mellon funds will be the catalyst for University investment in renovating this space, which will double the capacity of the existing classroom and make available technologies that will enable faculty and students to experiment with historical and new recorded sound.
Want to make a difference in improving Learning Commons' services? Don't have much time, but still want to have an impact? Now is your chance to volunteer as a Learning Commons student advisor!
Image courtesy of American University of Beirut.
Early in July, the Library began to de-accession journals in the Sci-Tech Library for which we purchased online equivalents earlier this year. You may see several staff members removing print journals from the Sci-Tech Library over the course of the summer.
This de-accessioning provides much needed room for the ongoing growth of the print monograph collections in Sci-Tech. In addition, the purchase of these backfiles means that online access to this historically valuable record of 20th century science is now available to SU students and researchers anywhere, anytime.
This project originated as the Library began addressing a space crunch and announced plans to relocate some materials offsite. As an alternative to offsite storage, the Library trialed several online backfiles of the most significant science journal packages and sought input from faculty and academic departments.
From March 1 - March 31, 2010, the Library arranged with 4 major science publishers for trial access to older runs (backfiles) of chemistry and physics journals. In total, over 300 journals from 7 different backfile packages were evaluated. Librarians were sensitive to concerns about the image quality, legibility, and accessibility of this content and only purchased those collections that received no negative feedback from any departments or faculty members.
For complete information about this project, please contact Scott Warren, Bibliographer for the Sciences and Technology, at (315) 443-8339, email sawarren@syr.edu, or visit the Sci-Tech De-accessioning Project webpage.
Visitors to the Syracuse University web site now have the option of taking a virtual tour of campus. The SU virtual tour includes panoramic photos of a variety of campus locations, including 3 library locations. Click on the links below to view the photos (requires Quicktime).
Information from two recent "What is a Library?" forums is now available at http://tiny.cc/xp8tb. The page includes notes from both sessions, questions and answers, and a number of related articles.
The detailed notes taken during the December 9th What is a Library forum are now available:What is a library forum notes.pdf.
The date of a followup session to be held early in the spring semester will be announced soon.
Also available is the Text of petition.pdf submitted to Dean Thorin by Concerned members of the student body.
For more information, please contact Charlotte Hess at 315 443-5528 or hess@syr.edu.
In the spring semester, Syracuse University Library will unveil a dynamic new research and scholarly communication tool for faculty and SU researchers. SURFACE, or Syracuse University Research Facility and Collaborative Environment, is an online database that provides open access to the extensive and diverse array of scholarly output produced at SU. SURFACE will gather, organize, disseminate, and preserve the cultural and scholarly record of the University and is designed to increase the accessibility and visibility of individual author's works, maximize research impact, facilitate interdisciplinary research, and provide access to local, regional, and global communities. Making the richness of SU knowledge available to the world through free and open access is the very essence of fulfilling the mission of education as a public good.
The Library is currently in the process of identifying University colleges, schools, departments, and university centers that have articles, working paper series, conference papers and proceedings, grant reports, technical reports, documents on collaborative projects, exhibitions, concerts, recitals, and other high-quality materials that document SU cultural and scientific scholarship. The library will also provide assistance in the curation of these materials. To participate or for more information, please contact Charlotte Hess, Associate Dean for Research, Collections, & Scholarly Communication, at (315) 443-5528 or hess@syr.edu.
To ease a serious space shortage, the Library was exploring the option of sending less used material to a commercial offsite shelving facility. Based on recent feedback received from faculty and students, the Library has put those plans on hold and is now exploring alternatives to sending materials offsite.
Possibilities under consideration to ease the space crunch include the relocation of some collections within the library, the installation of additional shelving in some areas on the upper floors of Bird Library, and the purchase of additional online journal backsets.
The Library will share new details as they become available.
