It’s always wonderful to know that researchers are using the UF Digital Collections (UFDC) in their research, and it’s particularly nice to see how the UFDC can become part of and can facilitate research. Most recently, an image from UFDC appeared in Stowe: in Her Own Time, edited by Susan Belasco, which was recently published by the University of Iowa Press. The image from UFDC is from the September 1869 issue of Fun Magazine and it provides an illustration for page 183 of Stowe: in Her Own Time, in the section “Rose Terry Cooke, [Stowe and the Lady Byron Controversy, 1869-1870]. UFDC regularly receives inquiriesRead More →

The Pennsylvania State University Libraries seeks a Digital Collections Curator to play a key role in the further development of our electronic content stewardship and publishing programs. These programs will be developed through a strategic and dynamic partnership between the Penn State Libraries and Information Technology Services (ITS). The Digital Collections Curator will lead the Libraries’ efforts to develop and plan user focused services that enable the effective creation, sharing, discovery, and use of digital content in support of research, teaching and learning. The Digital Collections Curator collaborates extensively with colleagues throughout the Libraries and ITS to achieve his or her objectives. The Curator willRead More →

The Research Library Leadership Fellows (RLLF) Program is an executive leadership program jointly designed and sponsored by ARL member libraries. The pilot program was sponsored by the University of California at Los Angeles; Columbia University; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Texas at Austin; and University of Washington. The second offering was sponsored by six ARL member libraries: University of California, Berkeley and the California Digital Library; Harvard University; University of Minnesota; North Carolina State University; Pennsylvania State University; and the University of Toronto. The 2009-2010 program is being jointly sponsored and designed by Brigham Young University, University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology,Read More →

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a posting on Bolivia’s plans to open three universities teaching indigenous languages, including Aymara, Quechua, and Guarani. MJ Hardman from the University of Florida has been researching Aymara, Jaqaru, and Kawki for decades. Her extensive research and teaching materials will help support this and other efforts to protect endangered languages, and many of her earlier materials are even in the process of being digitized for the Jaqi Collection within the University of Florida Digital Collections. It’s always wonderful to hear about how newly digitized materials have been or will be used!Read More →

With the new Florida College System developing where a handful of current community colleges will soon begin offering four year degrees, maybe changes for colleges and universities in the state of Florida. Florida needs the Florida College System to serve the public, but even in positive budget years major change is a great deal of work. Far too many factors are at play to know exactly what elements will have the greatest impact or what that impact will be on how the Florida College System will shape the future of Florida’s higher ed. Knowing the past, though, can offer insight into complicated situations and booksRead More →

Comics studies and comics collections continue to grow, and now there’s more great news. Ohio State University’s Cartoon Research Library is acquiring the International Museum of Cartoon Art’s collection. Currently, OSU’s gallery space is small (or so this article says–I haven’t been lucky enough to see it yet, but it’s on my list of places to go as soon as I can) so OSU’s Cartoon Research Library is planning a larger gallery space to display more of their already excellent, and now growing, collection. This is great news for comics studies as a whole–it means more resources will be available in a centralized and organizedRead More →

In order to simplify our internal systems through a complete overhaul, we won’t be loading any items for the next week. A week from now, users will notice subtle, yet significant changes in terms of the overall design and in terms of speed. Most of the changes appear small, but they’re all part of the optimization process which will greatly enhance the infrastructure supporting the Digital Collections, stripping out additional code, enhancing system memory usage, and speeding and cleaning the whole process for human users and robots for search engine indexing. While we’re completing this process, we won’t be loading any items, but as soonRead More →

I just saw this announcement and it’s great news, so I’m sharing! Open Access has done so much and has so much to, so more support is always wonderful. Open Access Directory: A wiki to organize information about the open access movement Boston, April 30, 2008. Peter Suber and Robin Peek have launched the Open Access Directory (OAD), a wiki where the open access community can create and maintain simple factual lists about open access to science and scholarship. Suber, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Earlham College, and Peek, an Associate Professor of Library and Information Science at Simmons College, conceived the project inRead More →

With the dire budget Florida is facing this year, there are very few job openings and only openings for critical positions. Luckily, the UF Libraries have a few critical positions to fill and one is for our training coordinator, the “Personnel Services and Employee Development Coordinator.” The official job description is below, and the Libraries’ HR employment page has more information. I think the best recommendation, though, is from the Libraries’ staff as a whole, and we’re a really fun group. We’re on Facebook (mainly for internal communication since there are so many of us); the HR main page has links to pictures of ourRead More →

The UF Libraries now have a multi-user install of WordPress (known as WordPress MU). The blogs that the Libraries have been using externally from various other sites, including this one, are now being centralized for ease and improved communication. Blogs at the UF Libraries are here: http://blogs.uflib.ufl.edu. The Blogroll for the main blog includes only the blogs at the UF Libraries, so the first page is an easy entry into the rest of blogs. Right now, many of the blogs are still being pulled in and other non-blog areas of the Libraries are being tested for reformatting  as blogs. After all, blogs are great forRead More →