• Dean’s News
• Research Project Calculator a handy tool for students
• Center offers unprecedented access to restricted data
• Public Poetry Project poet selected for MacArthur Fellowship
•  Cheng wins Lee Bennett Hopkins Award
• ‘When I was at Penn State…’
• LHR News: September 22
• Download iOS 8 without deleting data
• ‘Data Curation in the Research Library’
• ScholarSphere launches new interface and features
• Inside Access: Tips for circulation staff
• Getting to know international patrons
• Events: September 22
• Seminar to highlight enriching field experience

A Research Project Calculator (RPC) at www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/toolswidgets/rpc_instruct.html gives a simple and comprehensive step-by-step model for navigating the research process and allows students and others to enter a due date for a research assignment and in return the calculator breaks the project into steps, providing sources for help and information along the way.

Student and teacher accounts may be set up with a Penn State access id number or with a Friends of Penn State account. Details are included in the web site above.

This tool offered by Penn State’s University Libraries can be customized to add new assignments, to send e-mail reminders and to add notes as well as share the calculator with others such as in a group project.

Recently an Honors Thesis Template has been added and is available at (https://ac.libraries.psu.edu/rpc/). It offers Penn State honors students as a time-management and information guide to completing an honor’s thesis. It offers milestone reminders and helpful links along the way. It can also be used effectively for other major projects such as senior and capstone projects. Please note that a Penn State access account is required.

Penn State researchers in many fields of the social sciences can now tap a rich source of restricted government data through the Penn State Census Bureau Research Data Center (RDC), located on the second floor of Paterno Library. The RDC, which opened earlier this year, contains data collected by the Census Bureau, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Center for Health Statistics. Unlike public-use data, these datasets are not anonymized, offering new opportunities for innovative, in-depth statistical analysis by scholars in many fields including economics, sociology, health services and demography.

Due to the secure nature of the RDC, researchers need to first discuss their proposed projects with the RDC administrator, Chris Galvan (chris.a.galvan@census.gov /301-763-0342). Once a project is considered feasible, a proposal must be developed that focuses on the benefits of the project to the Census Bureau, its scientific merit, the data required, proposed methodology and disclosure avoidance. If the internal reviewers at the Census Bureau approve the project, the researcher must then apply for Special Sworn Status—a federal security clearance that enables the holder to enter the RDC. Once this status is achieved, the researcher can schedule a time with Galvan to use the RDC.

The RDC is located in two rooms on the second floor of Paterno Library, within the University Libraries’ Research Hub that offers a suite of services for faculty and graduate students, including statistical consultations and advanced library research. For more information on the RDC, go to www.psurdc.psu.edu. For information on the Research Hub, go to www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/researchhub.html.

The Pennsylvania Center for the Book is pleased to announce that one of its 2006 selections for the Public Poetry Project, Terrance Hayes of Pittsburgh, has been awarded one of this year’s MacArthur Fellowships. Hayes, a professor of writing in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh, is a poet who reflects on race, gender, and family. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

William S. Brockman, Penn State’s Paterno Family Librarian for Literature, notes, “Hayes’s selection as a MacArthur Fellow confirms the increasing strength of the Public Poetry Project’s backlist of poets and of the continuing importance of the program, fast becoming one of Penn State’s Libraries’ most prominent outreach activities.

In 2006 when the jury selected Hayes’s poem, “Gun/Women/Sons,” they said, “The poem’s excavations of origin, set against the backdrop of a troubled America, are strikingly memorable in their rawness, their energy, their push to construct a habitable identity.” Now in its 14th year, the Public Poetry Project focuses on poets with a connection to Pennsylvania and displays the poetry in public places to make it a part of the daily lives of a greater number of people. Since the project began in 2000, sixty-five poems have been printed and placed in public places throughout Pennsylvania.

The project, under the direction of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, is supported by the Paterno Family Librarian for Literature, William S. Brockman; the University Libraries; the Department of English in the College of the Liberal Arts; and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.

For more information, please call Public Relations and Marketing at 814-863-4240.

Penn State University Libraries and the Pennsylvania Center for the Book are pleased to announce Andrea Cheng as the winner of the 2014 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award. Cheng will accept the award for her book, “Etched in Clay: The Life of Dave, Enslaved Potter and Poet,” at a presentation and Q and A, on October 23, 1–2:30 p.m., in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. A book sale and signing will follow. This event celebrates poetry for young people, and is open to the public.

“Etched in Clay,” published by Lee and Low Books and illustrated by Cheng, tells the story of a slave in South Carolina around 1815, who becomes a noteworthy potter and displays courage, creative inspiration and triumph by daring to protest slavery with inscriptions and poems that he adds to his pottery.

Continue reading →

Please join us on Tuesday, September 30, at noon, in Mann Assembly Room, first floor, Paterno Library, for a brown bag talk by Sarah Pickle, Social Sciences Data Curation Fellow.

Description: Scholars are increasingly pressured—and sometimes required—by grant makers, publishers, and their peers to share publicly the data that they collect over the course of their research. Available data both make it possible to re-test research results and can contribute substantially to the work of other scholars. But in order for those data to be accessible and intelligible to others, they must be managed and curated with accessibility and intelligibility in mind. This talk will introduce key principles of data curation and suggest how a data curation service can both feed and advance the mission of a research library.

Presenter Bio: Pickle’s position in Publishing and Curation Services is part of the CLIR/DLF postdoctoral fellowship program. Prior to coming to Penn State, she was an analyst at Ithaka S+R, where she published on the sustainability of digital collections. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell University and can be reached at pickle@psu.edu.

By Jennifer Montminy

Continual improvement is simply a way of working for the ScholarSphere team. Since the University repository service was launched in the 2012, the team has continuously added new features, incorporated user feedback and worked to make the service easier and more effective for Penn State’s researchers.

ScholarSphere is a collaboration between the University Libraries and Penn State IT and gives all Penn State researchers—faculty, staff, and students—free access to a digital repository where they can preserve, manage, and share their scholarly work.

When uploading files, users are given the opportunity to keep their files private or share them with other Penn State users or the world. When users decide to share their work, the service provides them with persistent URLs for all of the files they upload, making it the perfect tool for researchers needing to link to their data when applying for a research grant or submitting an article for publication.

The repository also makes it easier for researchers from across campus or across the country to collaborate on work. When shared publically, work becomes searchable online, meaning that it is more accessible to other researchers investigating similar topics. It allows for collaboration through discovery and feedback, as well as through group work for Penn State users (for example the Penn State School of Nursing uses ScholarSphere to make collections of their data sets).

Additionally, the service is always adding new features that have been requested by users, meaning that if you try to do something on ScholarSphere one time and can’t, the chances are that the next time you visit the site, you just might be able to do that very thing. Needles to say, in many ways ScholarSphere has been an invaluable resource for the Penn State community.

However, on September 10, it got even better. Continue reading →