Library Newsletter Fall 2015

NEWSLETTER FALL 2015 Message from the Dean of the Library and Learning Technologies If you came into the Library this summer, you know that much of the building was humming with construction and renovation projects. While we worked and studied through the noise, some wonderful new spaces were created or renovated that enhance our ability to provide cutting edge learning spaces for our students, faculty, and staff. The new Hollis Family Student Success Center on the Library’s mezzanine, the expanded Innovation Lab, and the renovated Writing Center all opened for business the first week of classes. A new Skype conference room was created, and we began to plan for making the ground floor courtyard better suited for receptions, outdoor meetings, and student gatherings. (More details on all of the changes later in this Newsletter.) Other needed renovations included new carpeting on the mezzanine floor, new chairs for the East Computer Room, the installation of automatic front doors, and security cameras added to various locations throughout the building. While our print and online library collections, along with the many services we provide, are essential to our mission, the facilities and technologies that we offer are just as important. Contemporary academic libraries serve as integrative spaces that provide opportunities for many different types of learning. Quiet individual study, group study, research, tutoring, and creative uses of technology must all co-exist under one roof. We continually plan for our library’s future by adapting to the changing needs of our students. Stay tuned! Susan M. Ryan, Dean of the duPont-Ball Library Welcome Grace and Bryan The library welcomed two new staff members this summer. Grace Kaletski is our new Learning and Information Literacy Librarian and Assistant Professor. Grace earned her MLIS from Florida State University and a MA in Women’s Studies from the University of Alabama. For the past two years, she has worked as a graduate assistant at FSU, teaching many course-integrated library/research instruction sessions. She brings to Stetson a passion for incorporating emerging technologies, active learning, and information literacy to her instruction courses. Bryan Roppolo joined the library staff as the Library Technology Specialist. Bryan has a Master’s in Information Science and a Bachelor’s in Sociology from the University of Pittsburgh. He comes to us from his most recent position as a Technology Trainer at the Orlando Public Library and will manage our Library’s Innovation Lab, liaison with Information Technology, and work on many technology-related issues. ___________________________________________ Follow the Library on Facebook Stay up-to-date on library news. Follow us on Facebook at http://facebook.com/StetsonLibrary. The library also maintains the John B. Stetson Facebook page which posts Stetson-related items of current and historical interest. Follow us at http://facebook.com/johnbstetson1886. Hollis Family Student Success Center Librarians and library staff welcomed our new Student Success colleagues into the building this fall. Led by Stacy Collins, Director of Academic Success, the staff will use the beautiful new 4,500 sq. ft. space to help meet their mission to “foster personal growth and intellectual development, promote an accessible, inclusive community, and support each student along their individual path of success.” The Hollis Family Student Success Center will offer tutoring and peer instruction, success coaching, pre-advising support, and Discovery coaching. The open inviting space also adds almost 100 additional seats for Stetson students using the library. We are pleased to see that students are already at home in the Center and are using the area for group and individual study, as well as taking advantage of Student Success services. If you have not seen this great new space yet, stop in and take a look. Find out more about Student Success Services at stetson.edu/administration/student-success. Writing Center When the Writing Center needed a new home in 2013, the library could only offer a corner of the building. The Writing Center staff did a great job of creating a workable space and the use of the Center’s services increased significantly almost immediately. This summer, however, the space was renovated and it now has walls and a door defining the area, along with new carpeting and all new furniture. We welcome new Writing Center Director Leigh Ann Dunning to the duPont-Ball Library and wish the Writing Center staff a great year of helping students improve their writing skills. Learn more about the Writing Center at stetson.edu/other/writing-center. Expanded Innovation Lab With funding from the Betty Drees Johnson Innovation Endowment, the library opened a small 250 sq. ft. 3D printing lab in the summer of 2013. The lab was so successful and the demand for printing so great that we expanded it to 1,000 sq. ft. this summer. Library Dean Susan Ryan and Dr. Tandy Grubbs, chair of the Chemistry Department, have made four national presentations and numerous state and local presentations on the use of 3D printing as a teaching and learning tool, and have published a book chapter (with a second book chapter forthcoming) and a journal article on the topic. Several students from various disciplines have used the 3D printers in their senior research projects and others have made conference presentations on their work. The library has now won two competitive innovation awards, including the prestigious Florida Library Association Innovation Award, for our collaborative 3D printing work with the Department of Chemistry. The expanded Innovation Lab opened in the fall as a full “MakerSpace,” as we incorporated the campus Innovation House’s equipment into the library this summer. In the spring, two faculty members are planning to collaborate with the library to offer a semester-long Rapid Prototyping (3D printing in academic and business applications) course using the Lab’s space, printers, and tools. Dr. Bill Ball, who directed the Innovation House, will offer a number of workshops for students, faculty, and staff in the Lab this year. Learn more about the Innovation Lab, including workshops and courses, at stetson.edu/library/innovation-lab. __________________________________________ New Spaces on the Library’s ‘Garden Level’ The duPont-Ball Library offers Apple computers for digital film editing. The Creation Station is in the north wing of the ground floor (fondly referred to as the ‘Garden Level’) of the library and is available to students and faculty for editing and creating digital images and videos. A Skype conference room is now available for faculty, staff and students for in-person and distance conferencing. The Nemec Courtyard, on the north side of the library, named for Ruth Bartlett Nemec (’38) by her husband, James Nemec (’32, ’36), is being upgraded for university receptions and other events. _________________________________________ Technology Available for Check-Out Students turn to the duPont-Ball Library for many of their information needs. The library has access to hundreds of thousands of books and journals in both physical and electronic format. But more often students are coming to the library for help with their technology needs as well. Whether they are students taking a creative or digital arts class or students who just want to use the latest technology, they can now come to the library to check out needed items. The library has purchased an assortment of new technology that students can check out and use for their classes or for fun. Thanks to a generous donor, we now have 11 HD Samsung camcorders and tripods in the collection. Students use these cameras to complete class assignments as well as record events on campus. The library has several other cameras for checkout including Autographers (http://www.autographer.com/), wearable still cameras that take a 130 degree picture every few seconds. See a sample video of what can be done with pictures from an Autographer at https://youtu.be/gqWO8ZTLzeM. Some of the most popular technology items for checkout are our tablets – we have iPads, Nexus 10 Android tablets, and Windows Surface tablets. Students use them in class to take notes and download e-books to study. Instructional Design Services Over the summer, the Office of Learning Technologies, home to the library’s instructional designers, was reorganized and renamed in order to better advance Stetson University’s teaching and learning goals. Learning Technologies was combined with the library’s old “Technical Services” department (acquisitions, cataloging, serials, and e-book management) to direct-report to the Associate Dean of the Library under the new title Library Information Management and Instructional Design Services. Instructional Design Services has many varied duties. The staff serve as a resource for both students and faculty for all technologies related to instruction and learning. Technologies include student response systems (or clickers, as they are most often called) that allow students to respond electronically to questions posed by a professor so that the entire class can immediately see the group’s responses, our Blackboard Learning Management System, and both new and tried-and-true teaching tools. This summer, Instructional Design Services assisted in the advancement of Stetson’s Online Summer School program – online offerings increased from last year’s 15 to this year’s 32 distinct courses. Classes included Introduction to Western Art Music, Spanish, Mathematics and Statistical Modeling, Educational Technology, and many others. These courses allowed students to continue their Stetson studies over the summer even if they could not be on campus due to internships, jobs, or travel. Find Instructional Design Services through the north Nemec Courtyard library entrance (pictured above). Faculty Members Honored The library has the tradition of honoring faculty members who have been recently tenured and/or promoted at our annual August reception. This fall we honored twelve tenured and/or promoted colleagues – most receiving promotion to the distinguished rank of Professor. Anthony “Tony” Abbott, Professor of Environmental Science and Studies: Land Degradation and Society by Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield. Joel Davis, Professor of English: The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. “The book that has influenced me the most is Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. The Prince has been in circulation for over 500 years now, and still we debate whether it is a manual of dirty tricks for would-be tyrants or a black-comedic parody of the same. Some scholars hold that it is a precocious and patriotic attempt to unify all of Italy under a powerful monarchy, but it might really only be the dialectical starting-point for Machiavelli’s republican Discourses on Livy. The Prince is by turns brilliant, sly, scary, and witty. It has been used and abused for centuries (but no one is certain which is the use and which is the abuse), and it has given me much to think about from the day I read it in July 1991 to now.” Michael Denner, Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures: Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott. “I’ve spent my entire academic career writing, in one way or another, about resistance to authority, what might be called anarchism; it is not exactly a political program, but a personal orientation. James C. Scott’s book, Seeing Like a State helped me to gain a better, more nuanced understanding of Stetson, of how our schemes to improve the institution inevitably but subtly distort our perception of reality, and eventuate in the creation of a “second nature,” one that has little or nothing to do with the way things “really” are. Universities are peculiarly susceptible to falling into these schemes, and in part that’s a laudable tendency: The intention is to sincerely improve, but the result is often to occlude. Our drive to enumerate, concatenate, measure, and report ultimately leads us to forget why we’re really here. As someone who finds himself too often in an administrative role, I find Scott’s simple “rules of thumb” for planning within a system incredibly useful. Take small steps. Favor reversibility. Plan on surprises. Plan on human inventiveness. You’ll permit me one quotation from the book. Yet a man who uses an imaginary map, thinking that it is a true one, is likely to be worse off than someone with no map at all; for he will fail to inquire whenever he can, to observe every detail on his way, and to search continuously with all his senses and all his intelligence for indications of where he should go. (That’s Scott quoting Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful.)” Hala ElAarag, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science: Children of the Alley by Naguib Mahfouz. “The book of my choice is Children of the Alley by the Egyptian Nobel Prize winner, Naguib Mahfouz. This book is one of those page-turner books that, once you start, you just can’t stop reading until you finish. What I like about this book is that throughout the book I did not know whether it was fiction or non-fiction, whether it was allegorical or historical. Definitely a very engaging, thought-provoking novel.” Melissa Gibbs, Professor of Biology: A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. “Although I thoroughly enjoyed reading Leopold’s book (especially his description of plover chick’s running through the grass like mice on stilts), it was his Land Ethic – the premise that we have a responsibility for the land – that struck me as the most important. Leopold says that ‘The ordinary citizen of today assumes that science knows what makes the community clock tick; the scientist is equally sure that he does not. He knows that the biotic mechanism is so complex that its workings may never be fully understood.’ As for conservation, Leopold makes the statements that there is a false assumption that ‘the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts,’ and that the only remedy for the problems of conservation is ‘an ethical obligation on the part of the private owner.’ Sadly, many ‘industrial landowners and users are inclined to wail long and loudly about the extension of government ownership and regulation to land, but they show little disposition to develop the only visible alternative: the voluntary practice of conservation on their own lands’.” Laura Gunn, Tenured at the rank of Associate Professor of Integrative Health: Meta-Analysis in Medicine and Health Policy by Dalene K. Stangl and Donald A. Berry. “I chose Duke University for my graduate studies in statistics because I wanted to focus on biostatistics and clinical trials with faculty who had joint appointments, or were well-connected, with a high-caliber medical school. I had chosen my advisor, Dr. Don Berry, before arriving at Duke; I met him the prior spring and we began discussing ideas for dissertation topics on breast cancer clinical trials – he is among international leaders in Bayesian biostatistical models and clinical trials in breast cancer. I also had a list of three additional faculty with whom I wanted to work – all on biomedical applications, clinical trials more specifically, or Bayesian biostatistics. However, when I arrived at Duke in August 1999, Don Berry and all three of the remaining faculty had moved to MD Anderson Cancer Center or Johns Hopkins University that summer. And, no one was working on biostatistical topics of interest to me at that point. I muddled my way through my first year of graduate studies with uncertainty of who would be my advisor and what topics I’d be restricted to pursue. Then, I began delving into journal upon journal, paper upon paper, and I was beginning to wonder whether this was the right fit for me. However, certain statistical approaches here and there kept jumping out at me in my readings, and several of these kept recurring from this reference throughout my research. In my second year of graduate studies, I borrowed this book from one of the authors, who also happened to be a faculty member in the department, and found myself intrigued by the advanced biostatistical applications and flexible, cutting-edge methods that were used across a vast array of medical and health policy studies. In reading this book, I approached the faculty member and author, Dr. Dalene Stangl, with some possible new ideas, and we began discussing projects that could lead to dissertation topics. This book allowed me to explore much-needed statistical approaches in public health and medicine, outside of clinical trials, that I could use to make a difference in health studies. This book provided the motivation for me to develop an unchartered and unexpected path which led to a career of collaborative and interdisciplinary opportunities in the public health and medical sciences. It also showed me that I could not discover my true passions without finding myself truly challenged.” Camille King, Promoted to Professor of Psychology: The Enchanted Loom edited by Pietro Corsi. “About 20 years ago, I checked this book out of the library because it was described as ‘a sweeping look at the history of neuroscience from the philosophy of Aristotle to the advent of artificial intelligence.’ The preface of the book, however, captured my attention. In it, the editor emphasizes the difficult but important challenge of ‘communicating to the general reader an idea of the connections between scientific development and the wider dimensions of cultural and social life in the Western world over the course of the last five centuries.’ In the middle of a postdoctoral research position when I came across the book, I was narrowly focused on only the science of the brain; I had thought very little about its connections with cultural and social life. The Enchanted Loom, fortunately at an early point in my career, widened the scope of my thinking about neuroscience – impressing upon me the importance of weaving science with culture as a means to better understand both.” Andrew Larson, Promoted to Professor of Music: Choral Repertoire by Dennis Shrock. “A highlight of a choral director’s life is sorting through new music to perform, and this monumental collection of choral repertoire annotations is the candy store of the choral kid in me. This reference book gives an authoritative sampling of western music from many countries and many historical periods. I take music from it directly, or I use it to get a lead in searching through other sources. Dr. Shrock’s recent retirement, along with that of one of my own mentors in choral scholarship, Dr. Chester Alwes, helps mark in my mind a crucial passing of the torch in the area of choral scholarship to a younger generation.” Matthew Schrager, Tenured and promoted to Associate Professor of Integrative Health Science: The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman. “One of my favorite courses in college was Population and Evolutionary Biology. When I read the recently published The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Harvard evolutionary biologist, Daniel Lieberman, it struck me as the first time anyone had so skillfully blended those two fascinating areas of biology with my primary interests in human physiology, chronic disease, biomechanics, and aging. It is a sweeping, scientifically sound, and readable account of how humans evolved to be bipedal and cooperative, and it describes how our genes have gradually become mismatched to our modern, convenient environments. Not only does Lieberman present compelling arguments, he proposes original and thought-provoking potential solutions that may help address disturbing global trends in obesity, diabetes, mobility, disability, and other chronic and/or aging-associated diseases.” Alicia Slater, Promoted to Professor of Biology: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. “This story about the African American diaspora out of the south during the post-civil rights era revealed the racial history off where I live and grew up, and about which I now realize I was pretty ignorant. Before reading this, I’d always thought that the racial problems were those of the Deep South states, such as Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. But I learned that Florida was one of the worst states for African Americans, and that the children that I went to elementary and middle school with were the descendants of people who decided for some reason to stay in the south. After reading this book, my views of race and place are forever changed, and I have realized a new depth of compassion.” Kirsten Work, Promoted to Professor of Biology: Water, The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource by Marq de Villiers. “My perspective on global history and conflict changed after I read this book.” Honored also was Jason Palmer, promoted to Professor of Legal Skills at the College of Law in Gulfport. Congratulations to all of our tenured and promoted faculty members! ___________________________________________ FACULTY AUTHORS Also celebrated at the library’s August reception were those faculty members who wrote or contributed to a book in the past year: Jesus Alfonzo, Soggetto cavato: La Historia y mis Relatos de Los Primeros Cinco Años de El Sistema; Michael Denner, Tolstoy on Screen; Mary Pollock, Storytelling Apes: Primatology Narratives Past and Future; and Mark Powell, The Sheltering: A Novel. LIBRARIAN HIGHLIGHTS Librarians stayed very busy this summer – not only did we work on all of the renovations mentioned above, but we took part in a number of professional development opportunities as well. Several librarians attended conferences this summer to present their research projects and others chaired important professional meetings. Susan Ryan, Betty Drees Johnson Dean of the duPont-Ball Library & Learning Technologies, and Tandy Grubbs, Professor of Chemistry, presented Beyond MakerSpaces: Integrating 3D Printing into the Curriculum in May at the Florida Library Association’s Annual Conference in Orlando. At the request of the Northeast Library Information Network (NEFLIN - a library consortium serving north and central Florida), they repeated the presentation for NEFLIN librarians from around the state. Ryan and Grubbs also presented a poster session, Can You Print That? Collaborative 3D Projects Drive Curricular Innovation, at the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in San Francisco in June. They have a book chapter on 3D printing collaborations coming out in 2016. Jason Martin, Head of Public Services, also attended the American Library Association conference in San Francisco where he took office as Chair of the University Libraries Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries professional organization. Jean Wald, Research Librarian and Assistant Professor, presented Pianists Speak! Musicians in Conversation with Robert Dumm, 1959-2008 in June at the joint meeting of the International Association for Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centers and the American Musicological Society at the Julliard School in New York City. Sims Kline, Research Librarian and Assistant Professor, had his article, “The Embedded Librarian: Beyond the Course Connection,” published in the summer 2015 issue of Southeastern Librarian. Debbi Dinkins, Associate Dean of the Library and Professor, chaired the annual ICUF Libraries Group meeting in May at Warner University in Lake Wales. Stetson’s library participates in cooperative buying arrangements with other ICUF (Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida) libraries and engages in joint professional development at the end of each academic year. ______________________________________ Stetson Memorabilia Wanted Are you trying to clean out a closet or unclutter your living space? If you have Stetson memorabilia, such as scrapbooks, photos, fraternity and sorority items, team uniforms, Stetson jewelry, programs from music performances, athletic events, or anything “Stetson,” please consider donating them to the library’s University Archives. We will preserve your memories and they can be enjoyed by other Hatters for years to come. Contact Library Dean Susan Ryan, [email protected], 386-822-7181, for more information. duPont-Ball Library • Stetson University • 421 N. Woodland Blvd., Unit 8418 • DeLand, FL 32723 (386)822-7183 • stetson.edu/librar y • facebook.com/StetsonLibrary