On April 29, 2015, Penn State Wilkes-Barre hosted its first Undergraduate Research Day. The event, which was co-sponsored and supported by the Wilkes-Barre campus and the Penn State University Libraries, consisted of 61 posters created by 107 students, highlighting their research this semester. Students, faculty and staff converged in the campus’s historic Hayfield House to share, learn and admire the results of their scholarship.

The event was the brainchild of two Penn State Wilkes-Barre faculty, Renee Rosier (biology) and Timothy Sichler (engineering). Rosier had organized a smaller event in 2014, limited to her own students. Rosier and Sichler mentioned their hopes of growing the event in 2015, while talking to Jennie Knies and Megan Mac Gregor, librarians in the campus’s Nesbitt Library. These four became the official “Planning Committee” for the event.

The committee created a website, which served as a resource guide for participating students, highlighting best practices for poster creation and discussing research techniques. Knies and Mac Gregor taught two heavily-attended workshops in the Nesbitt Library, reinforcing the process and techniques for effective poster creation. Fourteen faculty members on campus encouraged their students to participate in the event, representing every discipline on campus (including biology, math, electrical engineering, English, information technology, rehabilitation and human services, and surveying engineering).

Thirteen volunteers from among the faculty and staff evaluated the posters based on three criteria: content, display and oral presentation. All of the students who participated in the event were professional, enthusiastic and eager to discuss their projects. In the end, a poster highlighting research centering on improvements to the Wilkes-Barre campus: “Expansion of Penn State Lehman Pond for the Benefit of Students and Wildlife Proposal,” by Stephen Jesso and Vanessa Robbins (faculty advisor: Dr. Christyne Berzsenyi, English), took home the first place award. Three honorable mentions were awarded to: “Campus Thoroughfare,” by Carlos Candelario, Greg Copelli, Bryan Flynn, Mark Rowe and Mike Vadas (faculty advisor: Christyne Berzsenyi, English); “Proposal to Complete/Restore PSU-WB’s Fitness Path,“ by Bryan Whiting (faculty advisor: Dr. Christyne Berzsenyi, English), and “3D Printing of Senior Project satellite,” by Jimmy Cosgrove, Mike Gentile, Danny Leighow and Mike Wright (faculty advisor: Timothy Sichler, engineering). All of these posters, plus additional eight top-scoring submissions will be displayed in the Penn State Wilkes-Barre’s Nesbitt Library through the end of 2015 and on the Undergraduate Research Day website. In addition, students have been encouraged to deposit their posters into Penn State’s ScholarSphere repository service.

Feedback and response to the event has been overwhelmingly positive. Plans are already underway for Undergraduate Research Day 2016. — Jennie Levine Knies, head librarian, Nesbitt Library, Penn State Wilkes-Barre

University Pa—The Pennsylvania State University Faculty Senate passed an open access resolution at its April 28meeting that could greatly broaden the reach of scholarly work produced at Penn State.

The Senate Committee on Libraries, Information Systems and Technology (LIST) proposed the “Resolution on Open Access to Scholarly Publications” to encourage faculty to deposit their scholarly work in ScholarSphere, support the principle of open access to research results, review rights retained by authors in publishing contracts and consider publishing their work in reputable open access journals that make their contents freely available online.

“I applaud the Penn State Faculty Senate for passing the Resolution on Open Access because it underscores Penn State’s commitment to actively disseminating critically important scholarship globally. The resolution represents a major milestone for visibility and access to Penn State research and scholarship moving forward,” said Barbara Dewey, dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications.

Scholarsphere is a repository service launched in 2012 by the University Libraries and Information Technology Services. Students, faculty and staff at Penn State can use the service to collect their work in one location and create a durable and citable record of their scholarly materials. These materials can be discovered and accessed online.

Publishing and Curation Services, a unit of the University Libraries, offers scholarly journal publishing for University departments, societies and student groups. Using Open Journal Systems software, the Libraries are able to host online scholarly journals. In addition, this unit provides guidance to publishing scholars and editors at Penn State and advises faculty and researchers on author rights, copyright, fair use and publishing contracts.

The passing of the resolution follows an earlier vote by University Libraries faculty to embrace open access principles when publishing their scholarly articles. Under the Open Access Policy, passed into legislation at the February Library Faculty Organization meeting, each University Libraries faculty member grants to Penn State permission to make available his or her scholarly articles. The policy preserves the right of library faculty to publish where they wish, but also encourages authors to take advantage of open access opportunities whenever feasible.

“I think the Open Access resolution was something long overdue because of the importance of helping to provide more scholarly works on a global scale, and I am happy to see Penn State join the list of universities working in this positive direction,” said Galen Grimes, associate professor of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State Greater Allegheny, and LIST committee chair.

The first vote in favor of open access within a university faculty in the United States took place in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2008. Other faculty organizations, both nationally and internationally, have followed suit, endorsing institution-wide as well as department or college-wide initiatives. Institutions where the entire faculty body has voted in support of open access include the University of California, Cornell, Princeton, Duke, and the University of Kansas.

For more information on open access at Penn State, visit the University Libraries Publishing and Curation Services website or e-mail ul-pcs@lists.psu.edu.

Join the soon-to-be charged Research Data Group in the Libraries!

LHR News

April Events

Greg Crawford Transitioning to New Role 

Don’t Fall for Penn State Password Scams

MISSING, LOST, WITHDRAWN and ZREMOVED

Green Tips

IT Strategies Minutes

It’s not like anyone is going to see my feet…

West Virginia University dean of Libraries visits Penn State

New database offers wealth of financial data related to energy industry

EMS Library well represented at 2015 water Symposium

Collection on Sharon “Peachie” Wiggins donated to Penn State

Common Core and Copyright workshop planned for librarians

2015 MediaTech Expo to be held on May 11

Research travel grant award winners announced

Students win awards for sustainability research

2015 University Libraries awards recipients

After almost 22 years with the University Libraries, including 10 years as Director of the Library at Penn State Harrisburg, Greg Crawford will be leaving the Libraries to assume a new role at Penn State Harrisburg. As of July 1, 2015 Greg will become the the Interim Director of the School of Humanities.   Under Greg’s leadership the library at Penn State Harrisburg has flourished and been at the forefront of advances in both technology and public services. Please join me in congratulating Greg on his new position and wishing him well.

– Christine Avery

by Ann Snowman

Last fall we implemented the new procedure for eliminating long overdue and long missing books from University Libraries’ catalog.  The previous summer was spent searching one last time for MISSING items, then any item not found and reclaimed through a simple discharge was marked WITHDRAWN, the same status that is applied to weeded materials.

In October 2014 all of the records for anything marked withdrawn before October 2013 were moved to the library policy ZREMOVED.  This is a shadowed status only visible to operators in Workflows, the staff interface to the catalog.  Items consigned to the ZREMOVED library will remain there for reference perpetually.
ZREMOVED now has a collection representing 445,397 copies of former holdings.  Any item appearing in ZREMOVED represents something we once owned but is now gone, either through purposeful deselection as in the case of the Elsevier volumes, or because it cannot be accounted for (MISSING), or it was loaned  but never returned (LOST).
A search of Director’s Station reveals that 81% of the ZREMOVED copies were published between 1950-1999.  Item Type BOOK represents the highest number of copies in ZREMOVED. The most plentiful copies in a call number range appear in the H (Social Sciences) classification.
As a result of implementing this procedure we ensure that a diligent search for missing items is conducted; and items no longer available to our users do not appear in the catalog, saving time and frustration; at the same time we retain an historical record of their disposal.
This process is part of an emerging comprehensive collection management program that will ensure that our tangible collections are accounted for and reliably represented in the CAT.  Deduplication of low use monographs will follow and these processes will be repeated each year.

Dean Barbara I. Dewey announced the recipients of the 2015 Libraries awards recently. The recipients will be honored at an award ceremony on Friday, May 15, 2015, at 2:30 p.m. in the Foster Auditorium. A reception will follow in the Charles W. Mann, Jr. Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library. Are are invited to attend.

University Libraries Award: Bonnie Imler, head Librarian, Robert E. Eiche Library, Penn State Altoona

Margaret Knoll Spangler Oliver Libraries Award: Megan MacGregor, information resources and services support specialist, Wilkes-Barre Nesbit Library, and Verne Neff, manager, Collection Maintenance and the Annexes

University Libraries Diversity Award: Mohamed Berray and Rachel Smith, Libraries Diversity Residents

University Libraries Teaching Award: Amanda Clossen, learning design librarian

Congratulations to Bonnie, Megan, Verne, Mohamed, Rachel and Amanda!

Three students received awards for their research last week, as part of the second Annual Award for Undergraduate Research on Sustainability and the Environment.

First prize ($1,000): Kelsey Czyzyk
Czyzyk is a graduating senior majoring in biological engineering in the natural resource engineering option. She has been heavily involved in the Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship (HESE) program. Within HESE, Kelsey was part of the affordable greenhouse venture. She spent last spring working towards expanding the venture into Sierra Leone, where she traveled with a group of HESE students in June. Her research, for which she won this award, was part of this project. It focused on measuring the water savings of the greenhouses as opposed to open air farms. This research was also pivotal in the venture receiving a grant from USAID’s Securing Water for Food competition. After graduation, Kelsey will attend Colorado State University where she will pursue her masters in civil and environmental engineering, focusing on hydrology and water resource engineering.

Second prize ($500): Alexandra Sorce
Sorce is a sophomore at Penn State Behrend, and will be transferring to University Park in the fall to continue pursuing her studies. She is majoring in community and economic development, with minors in sustainability leadership and women’s studies. Her goal is to work with a non-profit organization or foundation. Sorce is vice president/secretary of Greener Behrend, a student organization centered around implementing environmental friendliness and service on campus and around the Erie area.

Second prize ($500):Andrew Madl
Madl is a student in the Stuckeman School working towards the bachelor’s of landscape architecture. His interest in this field is focused on the visualization and figuration of site systems that promote performance and drive design through the implementation of digital technologies. Madl’s work and interest in design is heavily influenced by the artwork of Salvador Dali, with the goal of transforming everyday spaces into unique spatial experiences. Over the past five years, Madl has held internships with Michael van Valkenburgh Associates and Landworks Studio. He has been awarded the 2014 Golumbic Scholarship from the Pennsylvania State University College of Arts and Architecture and a Pennsylvania/Delaware ASLA Honor Award. Madl will be attending the Harvard Graduate School of Design for graduate studies. Upon graduating, Andrew aspires to work at a firm that is multidisciplinary in its approach to design and to one day establish his own firm.

The award, offered each spring, is open to undergraduate students at all Penn State campuses, including Penn State World Campus. For more information.

The Eberly Family Special Collections Library recently announced the winners of the 2015 research travel awards program. This annual program offers travel awards to researchers whose work would benefit from accessing the collections at Penn State.

All winners will visit the Special Collections Library between June and August. During their visit, the winners will be invited to give a short, informal presentation about their research that will be open to the public.

Albert M. Petska Eighth Air Force Archives winner: David Cain, 2nd Air Division Memorial Library and the University of East Anglia.
Cain will be researching the social interaction of the 8th USAAF with local British people in the East of England between 1942 – 1945, with special focus on the relationship of 8th USAAF service persons to landscape and local people in Britain.

Dorothy Foehr Huck award winners:

• Bob Hodges, University of Washington
  Hodges will be researching 19th and 20th century utopian literature in support of his dissertation “Figurations of Modernity in Antebellum U. S. Romances.”
• J. Wesley Leckrone, Widener University
  Leckrone is writing a book entitled “Governing the Commonwealth: Politics, Policy and Executive Power in Pennsylvania.” The primary topic is the use of gubernatorial power by the five executives elected since 1980.
• Angelique Szymanek, SUNY Binghamton
  Szymanek’s topic is “Representations of Rape in Visual Culture.” Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between feminist art production and the anti-rape movement in the U.S. throughout the 1970s and she will be using the Judy Chicago Art Education Collection to support her work.

Helen F. Faust Women Writers award winners:

• Amanda Stuckey, College of William & Mary
  Stuckey will be researching bodily behavior in the nineteenth-century boy book. She studies the female authorship of children’s books in order to understand how the genre of the boy book emerged alongside mid to late nineteenth-century understandings of what constituted able-bodied, self-controlled, disciplined children’s bodies and behavior.
• Arielle Zibrak, University of Wyoming
  Zibrak’s topic is “Writing Against Reform: Aesthetic Counter-Traditions in the Age of Progress.” Her book project attempts to dislodge the critical myth that popular literature and political reform were wholly coherent movements by highlighting significant writers like Rebecca Harding Davis, Kate Chopin, and Edith Wharton who, while committed to social change, wrote against reform, and its underrepresented externalities.

For more information or call Tim Pyatt at 814-865-7931.

A research collection on Sharon Margarette “Peachie” Wiggins (1951–2013) has been donated to the Eberly Family Special Collections Library, further strengthening Penn State’s existing resources on social justice, crime, law, sociology, psychology, women’s studies, public safety and criminology.

Wiggins was originally sentenced to death in 1969 for a crime committed at the age of 17 along with Samuel Barlow and Foster Tarver in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Two and a half years later, all three had their sentences commuted to life without the possibility of parole. At the time of her death in 2013, Wiggins had served the longest term of any woman sentenced as a juvenile.
The collection was created by Ellen Melchiondo, who, in 2011, became Wiggins’ friend and soon after an Official Visitor at Pennsylvania Prison Society. The collection documents Wiggins’ life in prison and provides a forum to discuss the policy implications of long-term sentences for juvenile and women offenders.

Wiggins was named Prisoner of the Year in 2009, to honor four decades spent rising above the prison environment through commitment to education and strength of character. Wiggins was the first graduate of the Penn State Williamsport Center’s associate degree program, part of its continuing education at the State Correctional Institution in Muncy. In later years she served as a student services liaison for the educational program.

Highlights of the collection include biographical material about Wiggins, correspondence, interviews and writings from current and former women prisoners, and advocacy efforts by the Pennsylvania Prison Society for Wiggins and other juvenile offenders. Also featured in the collection are letters from female offenders detailing their friendship with Wiggins and the impact she had on their lives. Melchiondo reports, “Peachie was the consummate friend and leader who selflessly shared her refined value system, spirit and grace throughout the Muncy.”

The collection serves as a vital addition to an existing collecting focus within the Penn State Special Collections Library centered on social justice, crime and related fields. Access to the collection is subject to normal operating hours, Monday–Thursday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Fridays, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Questions about the collection can be directed to University Archivist Jackie Esposito or 814-863-3791 or Melchiondo .

On Wednesday April 22, as part of the 2015 Water Symposium, Earth and Mineral Sciences Library personnel Liz Long, James Searfoss, Tracy Roth, Aaron Procious and Linda Musser were in the HUB sharing information about library services and information resources related to water.

“We asked passersby to complete the phrase ‘Libraries help me….’ and received many interesting responses, which we then posted on the tables. Over 150 people stopped by to talk about the library or ask about our resources,” said Musser, Earth and Mineral Sciences Library head.

Among the responses were:

Libraries help me….
better focus on my studies
study
work harder
get the literature for my thesis
to learn and explore
concentrate on my work and learn
have a quiet place to study
get my work done!