Temple Libraries Announce Spring Season of Events and Programs

Posted on January 19, 2009 by

Temple University Libraries Announce Spring Season of Events and Programs Temple University Libraries Spring 2009 programs and events will begin on January 29 with the Temple Book Club’s annual discussion of the One Book, One Philadelphia selection; this year’s is The Soloist by Steve Lopez. Author and journalist Lopez will also be making a stop at the Libraries later this spring. Don’t miss this acclaimed Los Angeles Times writer, formerly of The Philadelphia Inquirer, on March 19 as he discusses his best-selling book: a story of second chances, human connections and the power of art and music.

The season continues on February 5 with the spring’s first installment of Chat in the Stacks. This ongoing series highlighting and promoting excellence in faculty research, creativity and scholarship will highlight Race in the Stage with a performance from The Seven, based on Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes. Director Lee Richardson, along with English professor Roland Williams and Theater professor Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, will complete the panel.

On February 18 we welcome local scholar David Eng. A multi-disciplinary scholar, Eng is a professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s English Department, but his specialties lie within and beyond the written word. Eng is a cutting-edge scholar exploring the inter-connectedness of literature, cinema, ethnic studies, sexuality and theory. He will present his new research on “Queer Space in China” through a discussion of the film Lan Yu. Please join us in welcoming one of our city’s most engaging academics. This event is co-sponsored by Center for the Humanities at Temple.

Other season highlights include:

A visit by local popular author Leslie Banks on March 4.
The Blockson Collection’s second annual celebration of Women’s History Month on March 5.
A Conversation with Dom Nozzi, a city planner and sustainability expert on March 31.
Secret Cinema, featuring unearthed films from the Urban Archives April 16.
The 5th Annual Library Prize for Undergraduate Research awards April 30.

Check out all our events and programs, and we hope to see you at the Libraries soon.

-Nicole Restaino, Library Communications Manager

Tyler Library Closes Permanently At Semester’s End

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Steven Bell

As of Friday December 19, 2008 an era will end. The Tyler School of Art Library will close its doors at the Elkins Park location. The materials, including journals, housed at Tyler will be integrated into the Paley Library. Older and lesser used materials will be moved to the Library Depository. Depository items may be requested for use by filling out a form linked to the catalog record. The Diamond online catalog will reflect the new item locations when the libraries re-open on Monday January 5, 2009.

The Tyler location will be changing and the materials will be moving, but the Temple University Libraries will continue to serve the education and research needs of the Tyler population. Reference, library instruction and research services will be delivered by the Paley Library Reference and Instruction Services Department. Access services, located in Tuttleman, will handle any material location issues and course reserves. For information on course reserves call 215-204-0747.

This move will also add “new” holdings to the general and reference collections at Paley, so the rich collections of materials for students and the wider Temple community will be deeper than ever and available at main campus.

The staff of the Tyler Library will be relocating also. Andrea Goldstein, the Tyler Librarian, will be joining the Ambler Library staff. Frank Marzullo, the Tyler Library technical assistant will also be joining the Ambler Library staff. Ann Mosher, the bibliographic assistant at Tyler, will be moving to the Urban Archives in Paley Library.

New opportunities for the Tyler staff, and “new” resources at the Paley Library will ring in the New Year at the Temple University Libraries!

Addendum 08/20/09: Jill Luedke has been hired as the new Subject Specialist for Art. She can be contacted at at jluedke@temple.edu or 215-204-3166.

New Orleans Before & After: author interview

Posted on December 17, 2008 by Fred Rowland

Author Ronald Gauthier visited the Temple Book Club on December 4 to discuss his new book Crescent City Countdown, a mystery which is situated in post-Katrina New Orleans. Gauthier discussed his colorful and nuanced characters, the twists and turns of plot, and the mystery’s connection to real events in New Orleans. He also addressed the profit-driven pressures of the contemporary publishing industry and his current writing projects.

After his appearance at the Temple Book Club, he stopped by for an interview. We talked about his book as well as the odyssey that the winds of Katrina set him on, blowing him from New Orleans to Atlanta and beyond. Have a listen.

[ensemblevideo contentid=Qa0mA0ZkUkiBFdIjX0GrYw audio=true] (mp3, running 15 minutes)

iTunes U link (for downloads)

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—Fred Rowland

Temple Libraries Celebrate 3 Million Volumes

Posted on December 4, 2008 by

November 13, Paley Library Lecture Hall-Temple University Libraries celebrated 3 million volumes, a testament to the rich and growing collections available to Temple scholars, students and researchers.

At the ceremony on Thursday, the 13th, the Libraries’ Board of Visitors Chair Estelle Alexander, Dean of University Libraries Larry P. Alford, Provost Lisa Staiano-Coico, and Special Collections Department head Tom Whitehead unveiled the ceremonial book to a crowd of over nearly 200 at the celebration in Paley Library. Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Teresa Scott Soufas; Dean of the School of Communications and Theater, Concetta M. Stewart; and the head of the Theater Department, Roberta Sloan, also participated in the day’s activities.

The acquisition, Shakespeare’s The Tragedie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke, is “a stunning example of 20th century fine printing,” according to Alford. The book was issued by the Cranach Press in 1930, edited by J. Dover Wilson, contains illustrations by Edward Gordon Craig and was printed by Count Harry Kessler. Whitehead worked with a number of departments across Temple to acquire this fine edition, which supports so many disciplines across campus.

Festivities also featured the opening of a new exhibit on the history of fine printing curated by Whitehead. For the occasion Whitehead and Brian D. Stilwell wrote the Libraries’ first large scholarly exhibition catalog: Fine Printing and Typography of Five and One-Half Centuries.

Actors Ross Beschler, as Hamlet, and Whitney Nielson, as Ophelia, performed the famed Hamlet scene, “To Be or Not To Be,” to the delight of the crowd. The Libraries had consulted with the Theater Department on the selection of the book, which further demonstrates Temple’s strong commitment to the arts. The text of Hamlet is not just a singularly great work of theater, but the commentary and illustrations in our 3- millionth edition serve as a primary source for theater history and design.

After the ceremony, a keynote lecture was given by Harvard University’s Marjorie Garber, one of the nation’s foremost and versatile scholars. Garber’s talk A Tale of Three Hamlets focused specifically on the book of the day, the “Cranach Hamlet.” Dr. Garber’s lecture was co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at Temple.

In addition to the 3 million volumes, the Libraries hold 10 million images; more than 50,000 print and online subscriptions; 35,000 linear feet of manuscripts; and a rich collection of sound and video recordings, along with growing media holdings. Thanks to all involved in making the Libraries’ 3 Millionth Volume Celebration so special.

Temple Libraries Completes Shift To E-Dissertations

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Steven Bell

The Temple University Libraries, in partnership with the Temple University Graduate School, is pleased to announce that all doctoral dissertations completed at Temple University will be freely available online through the University Libraries newly launched Digital Collections website. All dissertations completed at Temple, beginning August 2008, are added to this digital repository. Several dozen dissertations have already been made accessible through this website. Temple doctoral candidates are now able to complete all their work electronically, submit it for review in electronic format and have it permanently archived at the Library as a born-digital document. As part of this shift to all-digital disserations the Libraries will no longer add paper copies of Temple dissertations to the Library stacks nor will it collect dissertations on microfilm. The versions of the dissertations available through the Library’s Digital Collections website are the original and complete versions of the dissertation. Dissertations accessed through the ProQuest Digital Dissertations database may be subject to some editing changes performed by ProQuest.

Users worldwide can now search by keyword the full-text of all the dissertations uploaded into our new dissertations repository powered by CONTENTdm software. One can also browse, search by committee member and advisor, and sort by subject and date. Full-text content is presented in the standard Adobe Acrobat .pdf format so the dissertations are individually searchable and printable. All Temple Dissertations will continue to be indexed by the authoritative international database Digital Dissertations (formerly known as Dissertation Abstracts) to which Temple and many other universities subscribe, but now they will also be directly accessible to any Web user free of charge. Many other leading research universities have created similar “open-access” electronic dissertation repositories and have found that cutting-edge doctoral research is more frequently read and cited as a result of making dissertations globally available in an open-access repository. For example, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln recently reported their open-access dissertations are downloaded sixty times more frequently than are restricted versions offered through the institutional subscription to Digital Dissertations.

In addition to doctoral dissertations, the University Libraries’ Digital Collections website will continue to bring you access to thousands of scanned study versions of photographs, slides, and posters held by the Temple University Libraries. For more information or to provide feedback about either Temple University Libraries’ e-dissertations project or its Digitial Collections please contact either Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, or Jonathan LeBreton, Senior Associate University Librarian.

Paley Open 24/7 Through Finals

Posted on December 4, 2008 by Steven Bell

To provide Temple students with an around-the-clock study environment and all hours access to our collections, the Paley Library will be open 24 hours a day starting 8 am on Monday, December 8 and will remain open 24/7 until 5 pm on Saturday, December 20. The staff of the Paley Library is available to provide assistance with any last minute research needs, help finding hard-to-locate information, or whatever our students need to complete their assignments successfully. As always, when in the Library please watch your personal belongings at all times. Avoid leaving cell phones, electronic devices and book bags unattended.

Please also be aware that the Paley Library will be closed starting Wednesday, December 24 and will not re-open until Monday, January 5, 2009. Normally the Library would be open several days during the winter break. However, the University has scheduled a major electrical infrastructure upgrade for the Library that requires all power in the building be shut for at least four days. Though we understand this closure will inconvenience some members of our community, this is clearly the best time to shut down without causing a major inconvenience to a large number of library users. We will be publicizing this closure in a variety of ways.

The Paley Perk Wins A Close Contest

Posted on November 18, 2008 by Steven Bell

It came down to the wire and The Paley Perk is the winner of our cafe naming contest. For the last few days of November The Paley Perk and The Study Mug were running neck and neck towards the finish line. But it was ultimately The Paley Perk that took the cup. Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote for their favorite cafe name. Look for more information about the grand opening of the cafe in the spring semester when we officially name it The Paley Perk – and we award the grand prize – an 8 gb iPod Touch to the student who came up with the winning name.

Exploring Race in Contemporary Judaism

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Fred Rowland

On October 6, 2008, The Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought at Temple University held its Second Annual Symposium on Race and Judaism in the Paley Library Lecture Hall. The program was entitled Exploring Race in Contemporary Judaism: A Symposium on Jewish Diversity [click here for PDF of flyer].

Before the symposium began, Professor Lewis Gordon, director of The Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought, sat down with three of the presenters, Edith Bruder, Avishai Mekonen, and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen to discuss their work. Edith Bruder has written a book entitled The Black Jews of Africa: History, Religion, Identity and her symposium presentation was entitled “African Judaism: Ancient Myths and Modern Phenomena”. Avishai Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen screened and discussed their work-in-progress documentary, 400 Miles to Freedom, a “film [which] explores racial and ethnic diversity in Judaism through the story of Avishai Mekonen, whose disappearance in Sudan as a boy launches a quest that leads him to other African, Asian and Latino Jews in Israel and in the U.S.” John L. Jackson, who also presented at the symposium (“The Bodied Politic: Ethnobiology, Anti-Religiosity and the Reckoning of Black Hebrewism”) was not present for this recording (but we hope to record an interview with him at a later date).

[ensemblevideo contentid=mgtrjIiXtk6zj3iKadF-TQ audio=true] (mp3, 22 MB).

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More Computers On 2nd and 3rd Floors

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Steven Bell

The staff of the Paley Library are pleased with the positive response of the Temple student body to the renovation of our first floor computing area. In fact, the area has become popular quickly and at peak hours it can be a challenge to find a computer. See the photo below which shows the computer area on a recent afternoon at 3:00 pm.

While there are almost double the number of computers in the first floor west computing area compared to prior semesters it still does not always meet the demand. Students should keep in mind that there are still an additional 25 computers by the front window on the east side of the first floor. During the summer we also added 20 computers on the second floor (10 on each side of the building) and 6 on the third floor (all on the west side). See the photo below of some computers on the third floor.

So if you can’t find a computer on the first floor computing area, keep in mind we have more computers at other locations in the Paley Library. Do note that all of the library’s computers print to the printers located in the first floor computing area.

Try ILLIAD for your Interlibrary Loan needs

Posted on October 1, 2008 by

ILLIAD is our new service for requesting materials not available or not owned at any of our Temple University Libraries. To use ILLIAD you need to register as a first time user, and once you have done that all you need to do to use ILLIAD is to login with your Temple access net account and password. Then you can request articles, book chapters, books not available at Temple or through E-ZBorrow, dissertations, conference proceedings, and anything else you need. Using ILLIAD you can check on the status of your requests, request renewals, and access articles you requested. It also keeps a history of your requests. A video is available to help you if you are using ILLIAD for the first time. Library patrons at the Paley, Law, Ambler, Tyler, SEAL, and Harrisburg Libraries need to use this login. For Kresge and South Libraries use this login. For the Podiatry library use this login. If you have any questions about this service please feel free to contact Penelope Myers at pmyers@temple.edu or 215 204-0749, or Justin Hill at jhill@temple.edu or 215 204-0752.

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