Monthly Archives: June 2018

Customer Service Tip: How to improve your powers of observation

By: Jeff Toister (submitted by Carmen Gass)

Have you ever encountered a customer who had that “lost” look?

There’s something about their facial expression and body language that tells you they are having trouble finding their way. You probably made a difference in their experience if you seized the moment and offered them assistance. Read more here

 

Tech Tip: What happens on the day of the Office 365 migration?

By: Ryan Johnson

Office 365 logo

  • Migration windows begin at 4:30pm and end by 8am the next morning.  Your migration may complete at any time between those hours.
  • Migration speed can be influenced by mailbox size, number of items, network speed/capacity.  If you have a very large mailbox or a large number of items and/or folders, your migration may take longer to complete.
  • Please note: Office 365 Mail via the web will work immediately upon provisioning.  THis means that at ~5pm on your migration day, you will be able to access all new emails via the Office 365 website.  As the migration continues, you will see your old emails/folders/calendar entries/contacts start to populate.
  • Forwarding of your email to Office 365 will be done for you.
  • You will receive a confirmation email in your Office 365 account when your migration has completed.
  • After the migration is complete, you can access the entire suite of apps at office365.psu.edu, or go directly to your email and calendars via a shortcut that will be provided on your desktop

outlook web logo

You can then complete the Office 365 Post Migration Checklist.

Recap: Eiche Library social media campaign, “Remembering D-Day”

By: Jessica Showalter

Eiche Library D-Day announcement

The Penn State Altoona Eiche Library has a large special collection of over 500 WWII-era letters written by former students and faculty members, and we have been exploring ways to draw attention to this collection as well as our other archival holdings. Because this collection centers on WWII, we decided to build a social media campaign for the anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

D-Day Twitter screenshotWe ran the campaign from June 4-8, 2018 on our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. The week before the campaign began, we published an announcement about the campaign on our social media channels to build excitement. We also shared a news release with our local Penn State Altoona news liaisons.

During each day of the campaign, we posted an excerpt from one of the WWII letters. We chose five letters that specifically mentioned the preparation for, fighting of, or aftermath of D-Day. Four of the soldiers were former students, and one soldier was a faculty member. We also did biographical research on each of the letter-writers to add more context.

Keeping in mind the importance of visuals for online writing, we created an eye-catching template for the quotations. We found a public domain image of D-Day using Wiki Commons, which we used for the background. Then we superimposed the block quote from the letter and added an attribution including the soldier’s name, branch, and letter date. The attribution text box was bright blue to add some more visual interest. We used the same photograph, typeface, and shade of blue in our other announcements to keep the style consistent across the campaign.

Retweets and shares from the social media accounts of Penn State Libraries, Penn State Altoona, Penn State, Penn State Altoona History Department, Baker Mansion, and others gave us a much-appreciated signal boost.

Some of the comments we received:
• “Jim was in my class at AHS. I knew him well.”
• “Check out this wonderful initiative from our friends at the Penn State Altoona Library.”
• “What an awesome treasure at the Eiche Library at Penn State Altoona!”
• “It is good to share our history! Especially since we are PENN STATE!”
• “Great idea for a social media campaign coming from our Libraries colleagues at         @eichelibrary.”
• “Follow @EicheLibrary to see more powerful images of #DDay on the 74th anniversary of the   Allied Invasion of Normandy.”

Remembering D-Day Facebook message

Although we often hear that Facebook is a dying medium, especially for the under 25 age group, we had a robust response on Facebook, particularly with alumni and current faculty and
staff. For a campaign focused on bringing attention to archives that might be useful not only for students but also for faculty, staff, or local history researchers, we still think Facebook is a useful channel.

Obstacles we faced include having small numbers of followers and running the campaign during the summer months when less students are on campus. In the future, we plan to explore ways to increase followers and run campaigns focused on other topics, perhaps
library services or our archival sports-related items. We may also consider sharing campaigns of local interest with local news stations.

Taking steps to share more Special Collections materials through Interlibrary Loan

By: Meg Massey, Interlibrary Loan  

As part of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Penn State has been engaging in conversations with the consortium about how we are (or are not) sharing our special collections materials.  According to the presentation, A Tale of Three Projects: Sharing Special Collections Materials Via Resource Sharing, a survey was released in April 2017 to gauge the level of sharing between BTAA ILL departments and their Special Collections departments.  While the survey found that 12 out of 15 institutions shared articles from Special Collections, only 8 out of 15 shared loans from Special Collections.

After conducting this survey, the BTAA formed the Interlibrary Loan-Special Collections Task Force, which included representation from four BTAA Interlibrary Loan departments, and three Special Collections departments, including Penn State’s Matt Francis, Associate Head of Special Collections.  This task force worked together to create the Big Ten Academic Alliance: Principles and Protocols for Interlibrary Loan of Special Collections Materials.

Locally at Penn State, we’re already working to implement the recommended practices in this document by looking for ways to say yes to requests for items in Special Collections.  Before this document was created, our Interlibrary Loan department already had established protocols for requesting materials from Special Collections, both for our own PSU patrons and for borrowing libraries.  Working with Special Collections, we recently were able to revise our procedures to remove “automatic no” collections (such as the Blockson and Gaines Collections) so that we can really evaluate each request on a case-by-case basis to see if it’s possible to share that item in some way.  We appreciate this opportunity to collaborate with the Special Collections department to make these rare items more accessible to our Big Ten partners and beyond.

To learn more about sharing Special Collections materials through Interlibrary Loan, listen to the audio recording of A Tale of Three Projects: Sharing Special Collections Materials Via Resource Sharing, which was presented at this year’s OCLC Resource Sharing Conference.  Brian Miller, a member of the BTAA ILL-Special Collections Task Force, shares about the Task Force and their work to create this important document during his portion of the presentation.

Events: June 25

Summer 2018
Academic calendar information for all campuses is available online.

"What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales" exhibition, image from "The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault," illustration by Harry ClarkeJan. 16–Aug. 26, “What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales”exhibition, Eberly Family Special Collections Library Exhibition Room, 104 Paterno Library.

 

Depth of Field exhibit poster

 

Feb. 18-Aug. 13, “Depth of Field” exhibit, Diversity Studies Room, 203 Pattee Library, seeks to highlight the intersections of war in the Middle East with the history of war photograph

 

exhibit logo - 1968

 

Mar. 27-July 31, “1968: Student Activism at Penn State and Beyond” exhibit, Highlighting archival documents, photographs, and books from The Eberly Family Special Collections, this exhibit ties into a College of the Liberal Arts project titled Moments of Change: Remembering ‘68. Learn more about this project at 1968.psu.edu. Barbara Hackman Atrium, Pattee Library.

 

Friday, July 6: An Evening of Literary Reading. In collaboration with Webster’s Bookstore and Café, the Woskob Family Gallery will host an evening of literary readings and refreshments. Nicole Miyashiro will present two new ekphrastic poems based on Diane Samuel’s piece, “Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas/Testimony Against Gertrude Stein,” on view in the exhibition. 7 p.m. at Websters Bookstore and Cafe, 133 E. Beaver Ave., State College.
Wednesday, July 11: Docunight: Iran via Documentaries. Documentary films about or filmed in or around Iran, or made by Iranian filmmakers. All films have English subtitles and are free and open to the public. Every first Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m., Foster Auditorium.

Thursday, July 12: 2018 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award event. Join winner Nikki Grimes, who will receive her award and read from her award-winning book, One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance. 2:30-3:30 p.m., Downsbrough Community Room at Schlow Centre Region Library, 211 S. Allen Street, State College.

Please submit event information — and all Library News submissions — to Public Relations and Marketing via the Library News submission form. *Please note: The content submissions process may be changing soon; please stay tuned for updates.*

Identifying Pennsylvania historic base map and geospatial resources

By: Tara LaLonde

Base map layers are common reference geographic information portrayed in many print and digital mapping projects (e.g. elevation, transportation networks, political boundaries, populated places etc.). Patrons often come (in person and virtually) to the Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps and Geospatial Information looking for base map information for current and historical time-periods. Library staff now have a new resource for recommending good base map layers for the state over the past 200 years – the Pennsylvania historic base map layers table.

The PSU historic base map project was conceived as an effort to explore the library’s physical and electronic collections of geographic information. The project was inspired by the Pennsylvania Geospatial Coordinating Board’s effort to implement authoritative modern base map layers for Pennsylvania. The coordinating board identified specific “themes” for categorizing map layers, such as transportation and hydrography. Similar thematic divisions to categorize base maps in the Pennsylvania historic base map layers.

Thematic categories are:

  • Geographic Names
  • Landmarks
  • Transportation
  • Hydrography
  • Municipal Boundaries
  • Land Ownership
  • Elevation
  • Land Use & Land Cover
  • Remote sensing

Maps included in the table were judged by staff to be the best available examples of their category for a 10-year period (for maps published between 1900 and the present) or for a 50-year period (for maps published between 1800 and 1899). The results of the project identify both existing library holdings of historic base map information as well as serving as a guide for future collection development of missing historic base map information for Pennsylvania.

For more information on the process of reviewing content for inclusion in this project, check out our project page.

 

HUB Gallery A→CHROMATIC: Drawings and Paintings, 2013–2018 by J. Harlan Ritchey

By: Carmen Gass

On display May 29 – July 28, 2018, in the HUB Gallery

A→CHROMATIC represents a comprehensive overview of painter J. Harlan Ritchey’s artistic development and coincides with the 5-year anniversary of his introduction to the gallery world.

The subject matter of A→CHROMATIC can be divided into four broad genres: landscape, still life, floral, and abstract. Within each of these genres Ritchey works to explore specific themes and emphasize the elements that he considers to be most conducive to those themes. In the landscape genre, those themes are a connection to perspective and place while the floral genre
explores a connection to rhythm and color; the still life genre emphasizes a connection to composition and form, and the abstract genre’s theme focuses on a connection to pattern and theory. Each image carries a range of art-historical, cultural, and biographical influences but invites the viewer to arrive at their own aesthetic or critical judgements.

J. Harlan Ritchey is an Information Resources and Services Support Specialist in the Engineering Library. He received his BA in Filmmaking from Penn State in 1999, with Honors in Visual Arts. He is a self-taught artist and has for the past several years done fine art and illustration commissions for a range of local and national clients. Ritchey’s first public exhibition was in 2013, and in 2015 he began teaching art classes. He currently lives and works in State College, PA.

 

Research coffee at the Special Collections Library

By: Rachael Dreyer

Are you working on a research project using archives or Special Collections materials? Are you thinking about using archives or Special Collections in your research? Yes? Excellent! Join us for
our next Research Coffee Hour on June 27 from 10am to 11am in the Mann Assembly Room (Room 103), on the first floor of the Paterno Library.

We’ll get things rolling with a brief lightning talk that will give you tips and tricks for expanding your search for material that is relevant to your research topics. You’ll learn how to read a finding aid for helpful research clues, and how to continue your research beyond Penn State’s Special Collections Library.

Continue the discussion as you share your research challenges and gain ideas from others and learn more about the collections and research assistance available in the Special Collections Library. Participants will also have the option to engage in research consultations with members of the Research Services Team; if you would like to take advantage of brief research consultations immediately following the event, please register here: https://tinyurl.com/y9dh7q74.

This event is open to all Penn State students, faculty, staff, and community members. We look forward to seeing you there!

New Garmin GPSMap 64st GPS Units available for circulation

By: Tara LaLonde

Two new Garmin GPSMap 64st units are now available to check out from the Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps and Geospatial Information. These GPS units have some enhanced features compared to the old GPS units. The three older Garmin Oregon 450 GPS units will remain available for circulation. Each GPS unit is available to borrow for 7 days.

Garmin GPS map equipment

Garmin GPSMap 64st unit, holder, computer cable, and manual. (Photo by Heather Ross)

Additional information on these Garmin GPSMap 64st GPS units are on the Donald W. Hamer Center for Maps and Geospatial Information Libguide on Global Positioning Systems (GPS) guide.

A highlight of some enhanced features of these GPSMap St units include preloaded TOPO U.S. 100K maps and a 1-year BirdsEye satellite imagery subscription. The BirdsEye satellite imagery is accessed through the Garmin BaseCamp software, which is available on public computers within the Center for Maps and Geospatial Information. Another enhanced feature of the new units is that they can access GLONASS (Russia’s counterpart to the United States’ GPS system), which significantly improves their performance relative to older units.

Garmin GPS map equipment

Garmin GPSMap 64st unit with imagery and track. (Photo by Tara LaLonde) 

Xternal Libraries and Training Bulletin #45

BY: Ann Snowman

When browsing the CAT we sometimes run across an item with a non-library location, for example, “Leave the light on : a memoir of recovery and self-discovery” by Jennifer Storm, located in Boucke. These items are held by Associate or Affiliate Libraries at University Park. These highly focused collections are not University Libraries’ collections per se, but are
maintained by the various University departments and organizations that house them. University Libraries catalogs them and includes them in our catalog to make them discoverable.

Training Bulletin #45 provides an explanation of these materials and how to gain access to them. The term XTernal comes from a note field in the Workflows record that describes the item as something other than a University Libraries holding.

Link to Access Services Training Bulletins:
https://staff.libraries.psu.edu/access-services-council/training-bulletins-numerical

Tech Tip: New applications to be installed on University Libraries machines this week

By: Ryan Johnson

TeamViewer and IBM BigFix Self-Service Application will be installed and running soon all University PC machines.

Note: At this time, BigFix Self Service Application will not be available on Macs.

TeamViewer is remote access software that allows I-Tech to remotely connect to your computer to provide support when you need assistance, regardless of where you are, as long as you have an Internet connection. The TeamViewer Host client is a very small application that runs in the background on your computer that connects it back to our management console so a remote connection can be established when needed.

teamviewer screen shot

For more information on TeamViewer, please review the TeamViewer Staff Site page.

IBM BigFix Self-Service Application is a program that works in conjunction with the IBM BigFix system management console (which is used to manage library workstation) that allows users to one-click install available software applications. The software applications are offered ahead of time to select computers or groups of computers.

screen shot for tech tip

For more information on BigFix, please review the following staff site page.

Customer Service Tip: All customers are created equal – Just some are more equal than others

By: Shep Hyken (submitted by Carmen Gass)

In 1945 George Orwell published the literary classic, Animal Farm, which was required reading in my middle-school English class. I always remembered the line: All animals are created equal, just some animals are more equal than others. Someone recently referenced the book and this famous line, and it made me think about how customers are treated. Read more here.

Events: June 18

Summer 2018
Academic calendar information for all campuses is available online.

"What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales" exhibition, image from "The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault," illustration by Harry ClarkeJan. 16–Aug. 26, “What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales”exhibition, Eberly Family Special Collections Library Exhibition Room, 104 Paterno Library.

 

Depth of Field exhibit poster

 

Feb. 18-Aug. 13, “Depth of Field” exhibit, Diversity Studies Room, 203 Pattee Library, seeks to highlight the intersections of war in the Middle East with the history of war photograph

 

exhibit logo - 1968

 

Mar. 27-July 31, “1968: Student Activism at Penn State and Beyond” exhibit, Highlighting archival documents, photographs, and books from The Eberly Family Special Collections, this exhibit ties into a College of the Liberal Arts project titled Moments of Change: Remembering ‘68. Learn more about this project at 1968.psu.edu. Barbara Hackman Atrium, Pattee Library.

 

Wednesday, June 20: American Red Cross Blood Drive. faculty and staff can help save a life this summer by donating blood. 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. in Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library.
Friday, July 6: An Evening of Literary Readings. In collaboration with Webster’s Bookstore and Café, the Woskob Family Gallery will host an evening of literary readings and refreshments. Nicole Miyashiro will present two new ekphrastic poems based on Diane Samuel’s piece, “Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas/Testimony Against Gertrude Stein,” on view in the exhibition. 7 p.m. at Websters Bookstore and Cafe, 133 E. Beaver Ave., State College.

Thursday, July 12: 2018 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award event. Join winner Nikki Grimes, who will receive her award and read from her award-winning book, One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance. 2:30-3:30 p.m., Downsbrough Community Room at Schlow Centre Region Library, 211 S. Allen Street, State College.

Please submit event information — and all Library News submissions — to Public Relations and Marketing via the Library News submission form. *Please note: The content submissions process may be changing soon; please stay tuned for updates.*

Libraries Open Publishing re-launches “The Mentor” Journal

BY: Ally Laird

Established in 1999 and originally known as The Mentor: An Academic Advising Journal, published by the Division of Undergraduate Studies, the journal is now re-launching as a
publication of the Libraries’ Open Publishing Program, with a new website and a new name—The Mentor: Innovative Scholarship on Academic Advising. The Mentor is a peer-reviewed journal with a rich history of publishing articles that introduce innovative ideas relevant to academic advising.

On the website, you will find a new Letter from the Editor, which discusses the journal’s mission of providing an outlet for innovative scholarship. You will also find the first article, C.J. Venable’s “Philosopher-Kings and Academic Advisers: Learning from The Republic.” In this article, Venable engages in an intriguing thought experiment, imagining a conversation about academic advising between Plato and contemporary advisers.

New articles will be published online continuously throughout the year and organized into annual volumes. Please register as a reader for email notifications or keep up with the journal
through our RSS feeds. The Mentor is accepting new submissions from authors in any discipline or scholarly field. Please visit https://journals.psu.edu/mentor for more.

The Libraries Open Publishing Program, a part of the new Digital Scholarship and Data Services department, currently publishes eight Open Access journals, five bibliographies, a Topical Web
Portal publication, and will be publishing their first Open Access monograph very soon. For more information on the Open Publishing Program, please visit openpublishing.psu.edu, or
contact Ally Laird at alaird@psu.edu.

Tech Tip: Microsoft Planner – The new project management app in Office 365

By: Ryan Johnson

Office 365 Planner tutorial screen shot

Planner is an online project management tool for teams. It’s a tool that will help with structuring teamwork and collaboration on projects by automating many of the tasks related to groups of people working together on a project.

With Planner, team members can create plans with assigned tasks and then add automation such as setting due dates that send out reminders and notifications, updating the status of the project and individual tasks.  Planner allows for easy sharing and collaborating on files, interesting visuals on a dashboard that makes it easy to monitor progress and even make adjustments right from the graphics without having to leave the dashboard.  In these ways, Planner is very similar to Trello.

To learn more about Planner and how to get started, click on the Planner Learning Path.

Office 365 Learning Path tutorial screenshot

Customer Service Tip: Use this email checklist

By: Jeff Toister (submitted by Carmen Gass)

A lot of customer service problems could be solved (or prevented) if people wrote better emails.

**Check Your Email Before Sending It**

Customer service emails are frequently misunderstood, misconstrued, or simply miss the mark.

Here’s a simple checklist you can use to review your own emails before sending. You won’t use this for every email, but try using it with a few until you get the hang of it.

* Tone: Does the tone of the email sound friendly?
* Readability: Did you use appropriate grammar, punctuation, and spelling?
* Action-oriented: Did you state the purpose of the email in the first paragraph?
* Helpfulness: Does the email provide additional information the recipient is likely to need?
* Image: Is the email professionally written?

Events: June 11

Summer 2018
Academic calendar information for all campuses is available online.

"What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales" exhibition, image from "The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault," illustration by Harry ClarkeJan. 16–Aug. 26, “What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales”exhibition, Eberly Family Special Collections Library Exhibition Room, 104 Paterno Library.

 

Depth of Field exhibit poster

 

Feb. 18-Aug. 13, “Depth of Field” exhibit, Diversity Studies Room, 203 Pattee Library, seeks to highlight the intersections of war in the Middle East with the history of war photograph

 

exhibit logo - 1968

 

Mar. 27-July 31, “1968: Student Activism at Penn State and Beyond” exhibit, Highlighting archival documents, photographs, and books from The Eberly Family Special Collections, this exhibit ties into a College of the Liberal Arts project titled Moments of Change: Remembering ‘68. Learn more about this project at 1968.psu.edu. Barbara Hackman Atrium, Pattee Library.

 

Wednesday, June 20: American Red Cross Blood Drive, faculty and staff can help save a life this summer by donating blood. 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. in Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library.

Thursday, July 12: 2018 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award event: Join winner Nikki Grimes, who will receive her award and read from her award-winning book, One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance. 2:30-3:30 p.m., Downsbrough Community Room at Schlow Centre Region Library, 211 S. Allen Street, State College.

Please submit event information — and all Library News submissions — to Public Relations and Marketing via the Library News submission form. *Please note: The content submissions process may be changing soon; please stay tuned for updates.*

Events: June 4

Summer 2018
Academic calendar information for all campuses is available online.

"What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales" exhibition, image from "The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault," illustration by Harry ClarkeJan. 16–Aug. 26, “What Big Eyes You Have! Looking at the Wolf in Fairy Tales”exhibition, Eberly Family Special Collections Library Exhibition Room, 104 Paterno Library.

 

Depth of Field exhibit poster

 

Feb. 18-Aug. 13, “Depth of Field” exhibit, Diversity Studies Room, 203 Pattee Library, seeks to highlight the intersections of war in the Middle East with the history of war photograph

 

exhibit logo - 1968

 

Mar. 27-July 31, “1968: Student Activism at Penn State and Beyond” exhibit, Highlighting archival documents, photographs, and books from The Eberly Family Special Collections, this exhibit ties into a College of the Liberal Arts project titled Moments of Change: Remembering ‘68. Learn more about this project at 1968.psu.edu. Barbara Hackman Atrium, Pattee Library.

Thursday, May 31: Discovery Day, a full day conference-style event created to increase understanding of University Libraries, the library profession, and the campus and community environment in which we work. 8:45am – 4:15pm, various locations around Pattee and Paterno Libraries.
Wednesday, June 6: Docunight: Iran via Documentaries, Documentary films about or filmed in or around Iran, or made by Iranian filmmakers. All films have English subtitles and are free and open to the public. Every first Wednesday of the month at 7 p.m., Foster Auditorium.
Wednesday, June 20: American Red Cross Blood Drive, faculty and staff can help save a life this summer by donating blood. 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m. in Mann Assembly Room, Paterno Library.

Thursday, July 12: 2018 Lee Bennett Hopkins Award event: Join winner Nikki Grimes, who will receive her award and read from her award-winning book, One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance. 2:30-3:30 p.m., Downsbrough Community Room at Schlow Centre Region Library, 211 S. Allen Street, State College.

Please submit event information — and all Library News submissions — to Public Relations and Marketing via the Library News submission form. *Please note: The content submissions process may be changing soon; please stay tuned for updates.*