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For the visual learners out there, here’s a video explaining why the library won’t necessarily have a copy of your textbook, as well as providing options that might save you money on some of your books and assigned readings. Enjoy!
One of the first things students do as the new semester begins is figuring our their textbook strategy. Which ones can they borrow from friends that took the course before. Can it be rented in e-format from B&N, Amazon, Google or Chegg? Does the bookstore have a used copy? For which courses could a textbook purchase be delayed or even ignored? With the high cost of textbooks, figuring out how to get them at the cheapest possible price is high on the students’ beginning of the semester to-do-list.
That’s why one of the most frequently asked questions at the Temple Libraries during the first week or two of the semester is about textbooks. Students want to find out if the Libraries hold a copy of their textbook. Some assume we buy them, but they find out that’s not the case. Sometimes their book is placed on course reserve by the instructor. Sometimes a fairly out-of-date edition, a past reserve item, can be found in the book stacks. Some students will choose to take that outdated edition over the current edition.
Student interest is growing in having faculty point them to open education resources instead of assigning traditional textbooks. In a research paper titled “Online and Campus College Students Like Using an Open Educational Resource Instead of a Traditional Book“, Brian Lindshield and Koushik Adhikari of Kansas State University, report that data gathered over several semesters using an alternate textbook they called the “flexbook”, that utilized an open-source textbook platform to allow faculty to collaboratively offer freely available learning materials, was preferred by students over the traditional textbook. They conclude “that students are willing to move beyond traditional print textbooks.” An article in Inside Higher Ed titled “Expense Experiments” identifies how different institutions are experimenting with both e-textbooks and technology for reading them.
Additionally in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Almanac of Higher Education 2013, there is a chart that summarizes student responses to a question asking them what technologies they would like to most see their professors using – and what they’d like to see used less often. Nearly half of the students surveyed indicated that they would like to see more use of freely available course content beyond the student’s own campus. A slightly lesser number of students wanted more use of e-books and e-textbooks.
The Temple University Libraries offers a resource page for faculty seeking more sources for open educational resources – such as the University of Minnesota open textbook catalog that can subject search the holdings of numerous open textbook repositories. The Libraries also owns thousands of e-books that may be used as an alternate to a textbook. Using the SUMMON search (on the Libraries homepage) it is possible to modify a search to locate book chapters in electronic sources:
With the growing number of open educational resources available to faculty, and the increasing student acceptance of e-resources, the possibility of replacing traditional textbooks with open learning materials is greater than ever.
When the Temple University community returns from summer break, students will be attending classes from off-campus, and from locations well outside the Philadelphia metropolitan area. Luckily, even at this distance, all Temple students still have access to the incredible wealth of databases, eBooks, and streaming media available through the library. Now, more than ever, students can engage directly with the library staff who are positioned to guide them towards academic success.
Temple librarians already provide specialized assistance to remote students with through our “Ask a Librarian” service. We also offer in-class information literacy instruction to students enrolled in some online-only courses.
In order to extend library instruction to remote learners and faculty teaching online courses, Temple University Libraries is pleased to offer our first ever Virtual Learning Lunch Week on September 3rd-6th. Each session will consist of 20 minute long presentations, designed to jumpstart your use of various library services and resources, with additional time to ask the librarian your questions on the topic.
Sessions are open to the whole Temple community, no matter whether you are many miles away or right next-door. To attend, login to https://webex.temple.edu with your AccessNetID and password. Click on “Live Sessions” under “Attend a Session” and look for the day’s “Library Virtual Learning Lunch”. (Please note: first-time WebEx users should arrive a few minutes early to install the WebEx Add-On on their computer or the Cisco WebEx Meeting app on their mobile device.)
The event starts off with a Tuesday session designed to help faculty use the new Ares course reserve system, followed by one explaining the legal ins-and-outs of using video in both face-to-face and online classes. On Wednesday and Thursday, we continue with sessions fostering basic research skills and highlighting some of the useful databases and unique resources available at the library. Then, Friday sessions introduce both students and faculty to the streaming media available through the library, resources equally useful for research and leisure.
September 3rd
12:00pm – Ares course reserves system (Justin Hill)
12:30pm – Video copyright basics for faculty (Brian Boling)
September 4th
12:00pm – Refworks for citation management (Fred Rowland)
12:30pm – Basic research in education (Jackie Sipes)
September 5th
12:00pm – Learn about primary sources (David Murray)
12:30pm – Special Collections Research Center orientation (Josue Hurtado)
September 6th
12:00pm – Streaming Music Databases (Anne Harlow)
12:30pm – Streaming Video Databases (Brian Boling)
Planning on hitting the TUFest tables on Liacouras Walk? We’ll be there, too, handing out bags, bubbles, buttons, and information about the libraries. Feel free to drop by and ask us any questions you may have about our services, and don’t forget to grab some candy before you leave!
We’re here to answer your questions!
Paley Library will also be hosting CeLIBration, a party for students that will include fair-themed food (think: cotton candy, popcorn, and hotdogs), arcade games, & a DJ spinning jams. Stop by and bring your friends!
Meet Julie, a student worker in Paley Library. She has worked there for the four years that she has been at Temple, but you may not have seen her. She works in the Special Collections Research Center, but when she started, it was “just” the Urban Archives. As a student worker Julie has had the opportunity to assist patrons, but also did photocopying, retrieved boxes, and filed away newspaper clippings and photos. In her last few days of work, she continues to work on an ongoing project of transferring the Philadelphia Bulletin clippings from the big cabinets into archival boxes Julie has really enjoyed working in the Urban Archives ,not only because of the staff and her supervisors, but because she learned many new things about Philadelphia history. Working with the various documents, photographs and news clippings have given her insights into Philadelphia neighborhoods and landmarks, as well as the surrounding suburbs. On one occasion she found development plans for her hometown, Lansdale, PA. Julie loves going to the beach, and frequents Ocean City, NJ. She enjoys supporting the Philly sports teams, especially the Phillies. She notes one exception that during football season, she wears black and gold as she roots for her mom’s hometown team, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Julie’s major is Speech, Language Pathology. She started out at Temple as undeclared. She really did not know what she wanted to do. Of her three older sisters, who attended Temple before her, two were in the education field. Julie loves working with children, but did not want to be a teacher. In August of 2010, in the Temple bookstore, while buying books for the upcoming fall semester, Julie met an excited student who was graduating that day with a degree in speech pathology. The brief conversation from this chance meeting gave her the idea to look into this major. She hopes to combine that with her desire to work with children and work in an elementary school, or an early intervention program. Before that, however, she is going on for her master’s degree in Speech Language Hearing Science here at Temple.
Graduation, on Thursday will bea proud time for Julie. She has studied and worked hard, and achieved dean’s list every semester. In April, President Theobald presented her with the honors cords that she will wear on graduation day.
While I have never worked with Julie, I do know her very well. In fact, I have known her since the day she was born, and I will be watching with pride as she graduates on Thursday, May 16, 2013!
Thursday May 2, 2013 was the date that the library celebrated students and undergraduate research. The 9th annual Library Prize for Undergraduate Research and the 3rd annual Library Prize on Sustainability & the Environment were awarded on that afternoon with a welcome by the Interim Dean of University Libraries, Carol Lang; and Peter Jones, the Senior Vice Provost of Undergraduate Studies at Temple University. A Temple alumnus, John H. Livingstone, Jr. a 1949 graduate of the SBM, has supported this undergraduate prize since its founding. Gale, a part of the Cengage Learning family of research products, has provided funding for the prize for sustainability and the environment.
The scholarship introduced to us that day continues the heritage of our earlier prizes, each award reminding us about what research is: the language of new knowledge. Please take the time to visit the Research Guide for the Library Prize for Undergraduate Research. If you are interested in the sustainability prize visit the Research Guide for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability & the Environment. At both these sites you will find information about the prize itself, and also the winners and their entries. Amongst these, there might be an entry to inspire you to apply next year, or perhaps discover a new area of interest for you to pursue! The Libraries, the resources we provide and our staff are here to help you in either case!
Whether or not you were able to join us on May 2, you can watch the Library Prizes Awards Ceremony right here. We were so impressed with this year’s winning research. We know you will be, too.
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William Noel at the Center for Humanities at Temple
“My mission is to bring art and people together, for learning, discovery, and enjoyment.” –William Noel
On Thursday, April 25th, the Center for Humanities at Temple hosted William Noel, internationally renowned expert in the application of digital technologies to manuscript studies. Dr. Noel is currently director of the Special Collections Center, and Founding Director of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His presentation, “Free and Easy: The Appearance of Truly Useful Cultural Heritage Data”, covered the restoration and digitization of the Archimedes Palimpsest, a project that he led while at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Dr. Noel concluded with a discussion of the reasons why a “free and easy” approach is best for digitization of cultural materials. (Eureka!)
What is the Archimedes Palimpsest?
Upon initial examination, what is now known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, appears to be a medieval prayer book, dating from 1229, written by the scribe Johannes Myronas in Jerusalem. Back then, parchment was expensive, and therefore was sometimes “recycled.” To make this prayer book, the scribe scraped off old mathematical text from some parchment and wrote new text on top, making the book a palimpsest. From then until 1906, this prayer book was used in liturgical services, and suffered numerous abuses, most notably dripping candle wax, mold, missing pages, and images painted over text as late as the 1930s. In 1906 the Danish philologist Johan Heiberg discovered the manuscript in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Istanbul, and identified the hidden text as Archimedes. He photographed every page, and with the help of only a magnifying glass, transcribed and published the underlying text that he could perceive.
The twentieth century was no kinder to manuscripts than the middle ages, and from about 1930 to 1991, the Archimedes Palimpsest was either lost or gone from public view until 1998, when an anonymous collector bought the manuscript at an auction at Christie’s in New York. This collector brought it to William Noel at the Walters Museum in Baltimore for preservation and digitization, for the world to study and enjoy.
Why is the Archimedes Palimpsest important?
Archimedes (c.287BC-212BC), brilliant scientist, inventor, mathematician, and engineer of ancient Greece, worked extensively in geometry, calculating the value of pi, the circle, the sphere, and cylinder. He developed a theory of buoyancy called the Archimedes Principle. Of the nine known treatises by Archimedes in Greek, hidden within the Archimedes Palimpsest are seven. Of these seven, The Stomachion and The Method are the only known copies in the world. Archimedes’ treatise On Floating Bodies contained here is the unique source in the original Greek. These Archimedes texts predate any other surviving Archimedes manuscripts by 400 years.
“Best of all is to win. But if you cannot win, then fight for a noble cause…” – Hyperides
Extensive sections of previously lost speeches by the 4th century Greek orator Hyperides, the largest discovery of new Hyperides text in over a century, also reside hidden in the Archimedes Palimpsest. Hyperides spoke at public meetings on topics of Athenian court cases as well as politics and democracy. Previous texts of Hyperides are gleaned only from fragments of papyri.
Other texts hidden beneath the prayerbook are a Commentary on Aristotles Catergories, two Byzantine liturgical manuscripts, and two unidentified manuscripts.
Restoration
Conservation and restoration of the Archimedes Palimpsest is an enormous and ongoing task. Progress is slow and the work is meticulous and painstaking. To prepare the manuscript for imaging, the codex had to be taken apart because the hidden text continued under the folds of the parchment in the spine of the book. Because some of the glue was from the late 20th century, it was particularly difficult to remove. It took 4 years just to take off the glue! Next, the parchment was analyzed chemically to determine the condition of the collagen, the main component of parchment. Here you see an image of an enlargement of a cross-section sample of the parchment, the size of a pinhead, from the Archimedes Palimpsest. The Archimedes text is the dark stain at the top of the parchment. In this sample, the collagen is sound. But where the manuscript has mold, the collagen is breaking down and disintegrating.
Imaging and Digitization
Modern technology allows us to view the underlying text of the Archimedes Palimpsest through various techniques. One technique is multi-spectral imaging. In ultraviolet light, both the overlying and underlying texts are visible. Ink blocks ultraviolet light, but the parchment flouresces, causing another light source. There is then, two light sources, one going into the page, and one coming from the page going out, which allows us to see the underlying text. When the images are merged together, the underlying text becomes red, and enlarging the image allows the underlying text to be legible. The only way to access the text underneath the gold-leaf illustrations added to the codex in the twentieth century, was to use the particle accelerator at Stanford University. Ink used for the Archimedes manuscript contained a high amount of iron, which could be recognized and captured only by the strongest xrays such as those generated by the particle accelerator. In the following image, an abstraction of an object or a boat in the sea, one can see that Archimedes considered the world to be round.
Principles of Digitizating Cultural Artifacts
William Noel explained the basic principles that formed the foundation for the many decisions made during the Archimedes Palimpsest project. His principles are based on ethical considerations, digital use and sustainability, and economic value for the institution undertaking the project. Taking the example of the Mona Lisa, Noel explained that thousands of people visit the Louvre every year to see the Mona Lisa, even though they already know what the painting looks like. In fact, the reason that the Mona Lisa has so many visitors is precisely because so many know the painting already and want to see the original. Therefore, making digital images as broadly available and usable as possible to the largest audience benefits the institution in name recognition, visitors, and financially. The Walters Museum in Baltimore has already benefited this way because many of their medieval manuscripts are so freely available, and that they appear at the head of results in Google image searches. Thus, the Walters Museum gains name recognition, prestige, and popularity.
The sustainability of the data benefits from Noel’s philosophy of wide availability and use. As he explains, data from digitized cultural documents must be:
1. well documented
2. free
3. just take it
4. just use it
The data from the Archimedes Palimpsest is licensed in the Creative Commons, and images also appear on Flickr. As a result, the data from the Archimedes Project is preserved, not only at the Walters Museum, but at Stanford, and at other universities as well.
Noel also explained the importance of presenting such data as data, pure and simple, allowing others to create interfaces for study and exhibition. Why? Because interfaces have a shelf-life of only about three years, but the pure data can be used and re-used. Noel said that too often institutions are busy creating “boutiquey” interfaces for their digitized data, that these institutions are presenting “apple pie” to the researchers, when simply presenting the raw data in many cases would be more helpful. In addition, Noel gave an amusing way to think about data. Dr. Noel says that data should be:
Sustainable
Usable
Complete
Known
The criteria for data to be sustainable is that it should be cheap to maintain, in an interface that should last, and be simple, not relational. By complete, Dr. Noel explained that images must be presented at full resolution (with derivatives as an option), with all descriptive metadata and all technical metadata. And to make the data known, a discovery layer for human readers should be developed. Raw xml can be presented that is machine readable, with a style sheet that combines images with the xml, to give a traditional type of presentation.
Dr. Noel ended the presentation discussing new ways for social media to further scholarship and knowledge. For example, jokes are often hidden within medieval manuscripts. If a scholar finds a joke in a manuscript, they tweet it! The Penn Provenance Project uses social media to help identify the provenance, or historic background of the ownership of precious books and manuscripts by crowdsourcing. Scholars writing blogs about the images are important, too. Another project, t-pen.org, will, in the next few years, make manuscripts texts searchable.
Using these techniques, we can all share in William Noel’s mission, “to bring art and people together for learning, discovery, and enjoyment.”
William Noel answering questions at the Center for Humanities at Temple.
For more information see:
The Archimedes Palimpsest; 2004; 2 May 2013 <http://archimedespalimpsest.org/about/>
Archimedes Palimpsest. 2 May 2013 <http://www.digitalpalimpsest.org/>
Archimedes. Works. New York; Dover, 195-?.
Noel, William. Revealing the Lost Codex of Archimedes; TED: Ideas Worth Spreading; Apr 2012; 2 May 2013 <http://www.ted.com/talks/william_noel_revealing_the_lost_codex_of_archimedes.html>
“Archimedes.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 02 May 2013. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/32808/Archimedes>.
Krock, Lexi. Inside the Archimedes Palimpsest; NOVA; 09.30.03; 2 May 2013 <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/inside-archimedes-palimpsest.html>
Netz, Reviel and William Noel. The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the True Genius of Antiquity’s Greatest Scientist. Philadelphia; Da Capo, 2007.
-Anne Harlow, May 2 2013.
As students traverse the main floor of Paley Library, rushing to and from classes this spring semester, a few stop every now and then to experience the poetry. Spread among the display cases on the first floor of Paley are books and documents from the Temple University Libraries Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) that invite us to explore 20th century alternative and small-press American poetry. As the crush of exams and final projects arrives, exploring this poetry display can be a great way to clear one’s mind and do a bit of de-stressing.
According to Margery Sly, Director of the SCRC,all the material in the exhibit comes from SCRC manuscript and rare book holdings. She adds that the display was designed as a journey into our poetry collections that begins with Philadelphia-region forefathers Walt Whitman and Edgar Allen Poe, who were considered radical in their day and moves forward into the work of 20th century poets. The display was also intended to coordinate with a lecture about Whitman, and to also promote the use of the poetry collection for research by Temple students.
Moving among the cases provides insight into poets who be less familiar to us but whose work is significant in the world of poetry. The work of accomplished poets such as John Burnett Payne, Lyn Lifshin, Dorothea Grossman and Tony Quagliano are featured in this display. Browsing the poems, letters and related documents one senses the importance the small press has played in expanding the dissemination of poetry in 20th century America. A small (literally) book of verse, such as Grossman’s “The First Time I Ate Sushi” communicates “the fun of speaking English” (a line from her poem Future Past).
If you want to explore those other iconoclasts and innovators of American poetry, scattered among the display cases are rare artifacts for Poe and Whitman found in our Special Collections Research Center. Then proceed up the stairway to the mezzanine level where you will find several cases dedicated to Poe and Whitman. There you will find some unique items documenting the lives and works of these great writers. This exhibit will remain in Paley Library through August. Be sure to take some time to explore before it returns to the SCRC.
To help you get through those study days and finals, Paley Library will be open 24 hours starting tomorrow, May 2 at 8am, through Wednesday, May 15 at 8pm. Good luck with the end of the semester!