Category Archives: Library News

In the Duckworth Scholars Studio with Jordan Hample

Posted on by
Jordan Hample

Jordan Hample

Jordan Hample got a taste for gaming at Camden County Community College and then moved on to study computer science at Rowen University. After working in the Camden County Library System’s IT department and establishing an independent gaming company with friends (Semag Company), he saw that Temple was hiring for its digital scholarship start-up. Jordan has now been with the Temple University Libraries since 2015. Once we had all made the

Person using VR headset

A student uses a VR headset

transition to Charles Library in the late summer and fall of 2019, Kristina DeVoe and I decided to interview Jordan to find out what in the heck he does and what’s going on in that Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio (web site / blog). Do they have lightsabers? What about transporters? Are there strange bursts of light and otherworldly sounds emanating from that zone on the third floor? What does all of this have to do with education and research? OK, so maybe it’s an exaggeration to say that Jordan was an international man of mystery, but we were nevertheless a little uncertain about

Demonstrating photogrammatry

Photogrammetry in the Scholars Studio

Jordan demonstrates VR

Jordan Hample demonstrates VR

what he does. It seems likely that in our positions as librarians supporting multiple academic departments that we will need to work more closely with the Scholars Studio in the future. So, not only was this interview fun but it was also important for us.

Both of these engaging and informative interviews provide a nice introduction to the work of the Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio through the eyes of one of its founding members. In the first interview he discusses the Scholars Studio and his role in it (3:54-6:33), the VR / Visualization Studio (6:34-8:35), play and gaming in education, plus eSports (8:50-12:23), and outreach (12:26-22:30), among other topics.

Pouring mixture to make faceshields

David Ross pouring the special sauce

In the second interview Jordan first describes working from home. Then he explains in detail the role that the Scholars Studio played in collaboration with the Tyler School of Art and the College of Engineering to produce personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Temple Hospital System for the COVID-19 emergency (7:55-18:20) (special shout out to David Ross). Though the COVID-19 pandemic has been a terrible tragedy, it is rewarding to know this new organizational structure within Charles Library has been able to play such an important and lifesaving role, which is all the more reason to take some time to listen to Jordan’s experiences and insights.

These interviews took place on January 6, 2020 and June 8, 2020. We’d like to thank Jordan Hample for his cooperation.

Digitizing Art and History: An Interview with Michael Carroll

Posted on by

What started out as part-time employment for erstwhile undergraduate student Michael Carroll has morphed into a fascinating career reviewing, organizing, and digitizing archival collections that move him back and forth through time and space, a medieval manuscript or a Renaissance Italian log of commercial transactions on one day,

Michael Carroll

Michael Carroll

a montage of 20th century Philadelphia street scenes on another, and yet historical and stereotypical images of racial bias on another. Michael Carroll holds a B.A. (2014) and M.A. (2019) in Art History from Temple University and he is currently working on a Masters in Library Science from Clarion University. He began working in Paley Library (R.I.P., 1966-2019)  as a sophomore and continued this part-time position after returning from a junior year abroad program in Italy. He was hired into a full-time position at Paley Library in 2016.

Digital Collections

Temple Digital Collections

Michael currently leads a team of mostly student workers digitizing the amazing collections in the Charles Library Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection. His work combines a close attention to detail and technical expertise with an art historian’s eye for the unusual, the ordinary, and the beautiful. For an overview of what he does in his work, listen to minutes 4:09 to 11:42 of the audio.

 

Humanities librarians Jill Luedke (Art & Architecture) and Rebecca Lloyd (History, Spanish/Portuguese, Latin American Studies) interview Michael Carroll (12/05/2019) in this first Behind the Scenes audio, a series that will highlight the

Rebecca Lloyd and Jill Luedke

unsung heroes of the Temple University Libraries. While students, faculty, alums, and community users generally only see the public-facing staff of the Library, there are many more people behind the scenes who organize and make available our vast physical and digital collections. In their positions Jill and Rebecca regularly depend on the materials Michael and his student workers digitize, so they were eager to learn more about his work. At the very end of the interview, Rebecca, Jill, and Michael talk about the importance of primary sources and the need for students and researchers to become more familiar with finding and interpreting them (33:20-38:09).

When asked about his favorite project, Michael explained that scanning and documenting Temple’s medieval manuscripts came out on top.

medieval manuscript

A Medieval Manuscript

Known officially as Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis, Temple’s contribution to this regional project consists of 43 scanned images, containing 15th century Italian business documents, choral sheet music, a book of hours, and a missal leaf.

Stereotypical Image

Stereotypical advertising image

Another special project that he worked on was the Stereotypical Images Collection, a collection of images, designed for classroom use, that represents racial and ethnic stereotypes in popular culture. (You can hear Michael talk about these projects between 16:24 and 18:47 of the audio.) One additional collection that Michael talks about is the work he did in collaboration with the SCRC and the Digital Scholarship Center (the current Duckworth Scholars Studio) scanning a vast

Science Fiction Prject

Science Fiction Books

science fiction collection with OCR technology in order to enable textual analysis and data mining of this digital corpus. He talks about this project during the interview when he discusses the technology-related aspects of his work (13:38 to 16:21).

Throughout the interview, Rebecca and Jill ask Michael to reflect on his career path and provide advice for students who might want to pursue their interests in the cultural sector as a

Michael Carroll

Michael Carroll, action photo

profession. He has very valuable and encouraging suggestions for anyone interested in this fascinating (and, as he cautions, often painstaking) line of work (18:48-21:46; 25:47-27:23; 29:01-32:08).

Since we recorded our original interview way back on December 5, 2019 — which at this point seems like a million years ago — we decided to check back in with Michael at his new pandemic workstation. In addition to providing some insight on how he overcame the initial disorientation and reorganized his work, it is also one among many testimonies to this strange and painful time we are living through.

NEW! Refworks institutional login

Posted on by
1

You can now create an account in Refworks using your institutional login (TU AccessNet). If you already have a Refworks account, you can associate it with your institutional account.

Creating a new account: https://refworks.proquest.com/

  • Choose Temple University, login using your AccessNet, provide email and name, and Voila! You’ve got an account!

AccessNet Login

Associate an existing accounting: https://refworks.proquest.com/ 

  • Log in using your existing account, click on Settings and then on Associate Credentials

Associate Credentials image

Questions? Contact Fred Rowland

 

Dissent in America: A faculty-librarian collaboration

Posted on by
Reply

    photo

 

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=XzoRs8_9Pk-CekUYRe5niw audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

The early 2000s was an eventful period: a popping Internet bubble deflating the economy; the controversial presidential election hanging on chads in Florida and determined by Supreme Court justices long committed – at least rhetorically – to judicial restraint; the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington; and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Polarized politics, contested economics, and lots of bombs dropping in faraway places.

In these anxious times Professor Ralph Young created the Dissent in America course and students eagerly signed up. Young found students enthusiastic to learn about the history of dissenting voices and ideas in American history. Students were introduced to distant voices and gained insight on how the United States had come to its present circumstances. As an outgrowth of the course, Young started the Dissent in America Teach-Ins (see YouTube Video) on Friday afternoons which are open to anyone. Both the course and the teach-ins continue to this day.

After Dissent in America became a General Education course, Young worked with librarian David Murray to add a formal information literacy component. Murray, an experienced instruction librarian, worked with Young for ten years before departing for the College of New Jersey in the summer of 2015. Young published two books as a result of his work on dissent: Dissent in America: The voices that shaped a nation and Dissent: The history of an American idea.

On December 2, 2015 I spoke to Ralph Young and David Murray on Dissent in America and their work together.

—Fred Rowland

 

 

Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability and the Environment Winners are Announced

Posted on by

Congratulations to the winners and honorable mentions for this year’s Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability and the Environment. Join us to celebrate in the Lecture Hall on May 2 at 4PM.

2012-2013 Library Prize Winners

Eamonn Connor

“Miasma and the Formation of Greek Cities”
GRC 4182: Independent Study (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Sydnor Roy

Emily Simpson

“”Represion!” Punk Resistance and the Culture of Silence in the Southern Cone, 1978-1990”
History 4997: Honors Thesis Seminar (Spring 2013)
Faculty Sponsor: Beth Bailey

Nicole Wolverton

“The Murder at Cherry Hill”
English 3020: Detective Novel and the City (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Priya Joshi

2012-2013 Library Prize Honorable Mentions

Jordyn Kimelheim

“The Persistence of Chattel Slavery in Contemporary Mauritania”
Political Science 4896: Theories and Practices of Slavery, Then and Now (Fall 2012)
Faculty Sponsor: Jane Gordon

Kyle Repella

“False Pretenders and Friends of Truth: Pennsylvania, the Keithian Controversy, and the Reorientation of the Quaker Empire in the late Seventeenth Century”
History 4997: Honors Thesis Seminar (Spring 2013)
Faculty Sponsor: Travis Glasson

2012-2013 Library Prize for Research on Sustainability and the Environment Winner

Andrea Gudiel

“Deforestation and the spread of non-native species”

BIOL 4391: Accelerated Research in Biology (Spring 2013) 

Faculty Sponsor: Brent Sewall

2012-2013 Library Prize for Research on Sustainability and the Environment Honorable Mention

Veronica Anderson

“Urban climate catalyst: Lima, Peru”

ARCH 4699: Thesis Studio (Spring 2013)

Faculty Sponsor: Sneha Patel

 

Whither the soul?

Posted on by
Reply

Julien Musolino

 

[ensemblevideo contentid=TKukSY-vSEaTdeKPJCFZug audio=true showcaptions=true displayAnnotations=true displayattachments=true audioPreviewImage=true]

The growth of the cognitive and brain sciences has raised interesting questions about the brain and the mind.  No less, it raises interesting questions about traditional notions of the  soul.  Julien Musolino, professor of Psychology at Rutgers University and the director of its Psycholinguistics Laboratory, is interested in science in the public interest and in communicating scientific ideas to the general public.  He is writing a book on the soul for a general, popular audience which looks at the current scientific evidence for the soul’s existence.  Since I’m the classics, philosophy, and religion librarian – all disciplines that have had a long interest in the soul – I thought it was incumbent upon me to find out the latest on the soul.  Julien Musolino was kind enough to share a copy of his introduction with me and agree to an interview.

Audio Download Link

Audio Embed Code

—Fred Rowland

 

Library Prize Interviews, April 2012

Posted on by

On the day of the Library Prize Awards Ceremony, May 1, 2012, I spoke with the three library prize winners and their faculty sponsors. We discussed their research, the sources they used, the relationship between student and sponsor, and the winding roads that first brought them to their topics.

Please listen to these engaging conversations below.

Summer Beckley:

[ensemblevideo contentid=qrxqfUgc6kqzLdgvrygg6Q audio=true showcaptions=true]

“A Crisis of Identity: Advertising & the British Ministry of Information’s Propaganda Posters of World War II”

Afrora Muca:

[ensemblevideo contentid=LVjrzBVEh0aEqdIg4-Mf6A audio=true showcaptions=true]

“From Classroom to Battlefield: The Role of Students in the Closing of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1918″

Eugene Tsvilik:

[ensemblevideo contentid=i5nXhfn5b0Sx6z21ntlL5g audio=true showcaptions=true]

“No Enemies to the Left:  The Communist Party of the United States and Crises of International Communism, 1956-1968″

—Fred Rowland

1876 & 1976 Centennial Celebrations: The Interview

Posted on by

[ensemblevideo contentid=F0xKKU0OlkqSUMopjJ_aGQ audio=true showcaptions=true]

On March 28, 2012, Paley Library welcomed Professor Susanna Gold, Assistant Professor of 19th and 20th century Art History at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska, graduate student at Brown University, to discuss the 1876 Centennial and the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations. The program was moderated by Paley Library Director of Communications Nicole Restaino.

Susanna Gold is currently at work on a book on the 1876 Centennial Exhibition for Penn State University Press. Since our interview, Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska completed her dissertation — “Bicentennial Memory: Postmodernity, Media, and Historical Subjectivity in the United States, 1966-1980″ — and was awarded her PhD from Brown University. (Congratulations, Malgorzata!)

After the completion of the program, Susanna Gold, Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska, and Nicole Restaino sat down with me to discuss Philadelphia’s Centennial and Bicentennial celebrations.

Audio Download Link

—Fred Rowland

2011-2012 Library Prize Winners!

Posted on by

Here are the winners of this year’s Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and the Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability & the Environment.
Please join us on Tuesday, May 1 at 4 PM in the Paley Lecture Hall for the Awards Ceremony. The winners and their faculty sponsors will discuss the prize-winning papers. Refreshments provided.

Library Prize for Undergraduate Research

  • Summer Beckley, “A Crisis of Identity: Advertising & the British Ministry of Information’s Propaganda Posters of World War II”
    History 4997, Advisor: Richard Immerman
  • Afrora Muca, “From Classroom to Battlefield: The Role of Students in the Closing of Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1918″
    History 4997, Advisor: Andrew Isenberg
  • Eugene Tsvilik, “No Enemies to the Left: The Communist Party of the United States and Crises of International Communism, 1956-1968″
    History 4997, Advisor: Petra Goedde

Library Prize for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability & the Environment

  • Anthony Shields, Jenna Fink, Hasan Malik, Nicola Horscroft
    “The treatment of drinking water using polymeric sorbents”
    Engineering 4296
    Faculty: Huichun (Judy) Zhang
  • Brian Davidson, Fiona Farrelly, Thomson Liang, Melissa MacKinnon
    “Sustainable and efficient rope pump”
    Engineering 4296
    Faculty: Robert J. Ryan
  • (Honorable Mention)
    Rachel Maddaluna
    “Mitigation of climate change and species loss through avoided deforestation”
    Biology 4391
    Faculty: Brent Sewall


—Fred Rowland

Nocturnal Rome

Posted on by

[ensemblevideo contentid=kemrvnzaxkOnzJcMq4QWCQ audio=true showcaptions=true]

Hans Mueller is the William D. Williams Professor of Classics at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Professor Mueller is the author of Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus.

On March 23, 2012, he came to Temple University to discuss his preliminary research on nocturnal Rome. What happened at night in the Roman world? What beliefs did people hold of the night? Before he spoke in the Classics Department, he was kind enough to stop by my office for an interview.

Audio Download Link

—Fred Rowland