*reminder: blog will be back on July 20*
July 9, 2 p.m.: Online Digital Journal Website demonstration, Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. For more information, see story on Brent Wilson’s current exhibition in Special Collections.
July 14, 1:30 p.m.: “What the Libraries Can Do For You: Training for Penn State Staff,” in Foster Auditorium. This program is specially designed for Penn State staff and will focus on the materials and services available in the Penn State Libraries for personal and work-related use. To register, email Megan Gilpin: mcg13@psu.edu.
Save the date:
August 4, 2015, 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.: Dean’s Forum, Foster Auditorium and via Media Site Live. Joe Salem, associate dean for Learning, Undergraduate Services and Commonwealth Campus Libraries, will present. Also, Anne Langely, associate dean for Research, Collections and Scholarly Communications will be introduced. More information to come.
Also in August: Presentations by research travel grant winners
Are you interested in making a positive difference in your unit and personal life? The Green Paws Program (GPP) can help. In its simplest form, the GPP can be seen as a checklist for resource efficiency in the office, and in fact many people think sustainability is synonymous with recycling and energy efficiency. By working through the action steps in this program, participants will come to understand that sustainability is building a skillset of thinking about the social, environmental and economic impacts of our everyday decisions, both at work and at home. By using this decision-making framework developed through the program, we can strengthen our communities and organizations. Many Penn State Commonwealth Campuses and Colleges have included sustainability goals in their Unit Strategic Plans. This program is a tool to help achieve those goals.
Presenter: Lydia Vandenberg
Date: July 21, 2015
Time: 9 – 10AM
Available online Adobe Connect at https://meeting.psu.edu/ust and will be recorded
Photoshop for Beginners
Learn the basics of Photoshop in this hands-on, live workshop. This workshop is designed for people who have little to no experience working in Photoshop. We will learn about layers, how to edit images using color and selection tools, how to add type to an image, and how to use these image in other applications. Training will take place from 10AM – 3PM with a break for lunch from Noon – 1PM. The afternoon will provide you with an opportunity to edit and create your own images, so bring a flash drive with images you would like to work with.
This workshop will not be recorded.
Presenter: Rita Buhite
Date: July 23, 2015
Time: 10AM – 3PM
Location: 302 Paterno – University Park
This workshop will be limited to 12 people.
Please register for these workshops in TECHSmart (https://techsmart.libraries.psu.edu)
The migration from Adobe CQ to Drupal started with what the development team has been calling the microsites. These sites are collaborations with other colleges, departments or institutions outside of the Libraries and include the following:
The People’s Contest
The People’s Contest is directed by a team of scholars and librarians to advance scholarship on the Pennsylvania home front during the Civil War era. The website is a resource station for the vast and diverse collections of archival material around the state—from local county historical societies to large state museums and libraries—and point scholars in promising new directions of inquiry. The site is a collaboration between the University Libraries, the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Heinz History Center and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The People’s Contest was the first of the microsites to go into production in Drupal.
The Pennsylvania Center for the Book
The mission of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book is to study, honor, celebrate, and promote books, reading, libraries, and literacy to the citizens and residents of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The sponsors of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book are Dean Barbara Dewey and the University Libraries of Penn State University. In addition to providing space and administrative support for the Center’s offices, the University Libraries provide in-kind contributions that include staff and faculty time as well as the Pennsylvania Center for the Book alcove in 201 B Pattee Library. Development for the site is finishing up and content migration will begin very soon.
ICIK
The Interinstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge was established at the Penn State in 1995 to promote communication among university faculty, staff, students and community members who share an interest in the diverse local knowledge systems that enables communities to survive in a changing world.
ICIK is affiliated with a global network of indigenous knowledge resource centers in South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. In 2010, ICIK became the only global indigenous knowledge resource center in North America when an extensive indigenous knowledge resource collection amassed by Michael Warren at Iowa State University’s Center for Indigenous Knowledge in Agriculture and Rural Development (CIKARD) was acquired by the Pennsylvania State University Libraries. Development and content migration are almost complete for the ICIK website.
ASEE CED
The ASEE Community Engagement Division (CED) aims to promote scholarly discussion and dissemination of knowledge on the value and impact of engaged scholarship in engineering education; to encourage efforts to improve the design, implementation, and assessment of engaged scholarship pedagogy; and to enhance the status of engaged scholarship teaching and learning in institutions of higher education. ASEE CED is a collaboration between the University Libraries and College of Engineering. ASEE development and migration has begun and this microsite will be the fourth to move into production in Drupal.
Alumni Library
The Alumni Library gives members of the Penn State Alumni Association access to Penn State Libraries’ digitized collections and a selection of online databases not available to the general public including Ebsco’s Academic Search, JSTOR, Project MUSE, ProQuest API, ProQuest National Newspapers, Mergent Archives, Mergent Intellect, Mergent Key Business Ratios, Mergent Online, and Hoover’s. The site is a collaboration between the University Libraries and the Penn State Alumni Association. Development has not yet begun for the Alumni Library.
Please let us know if you have any questions about the microsites, or any aspect of the Drupal Migration project. Contact us at ul-cms-dev@lists.psu.edu
On Tuesday, June 16, faculty and staff from Reference, Collections and Research (RCR) got together to celebrate another great year. Awards were presented for years of service. Also in attendance were Jack Sulzer and Kimlyn Patishnock.
Service award recipients:
Brendan Berthold (A&H/MMC) — five years
Sarah Christian (Life Sciences) — five years
Michael Case (EBSL) — five years
Shenetta Selden (NML/RH) — 10 years
Jeff Knapp (Business) — 10 years
Henry Pisciotta (Architecture & Landscape Architecture/A&H) — 15 years
Helen Sheehy (Social Sciences/Maps) — 35 years
by Ryan Johnson, technology training coordinator
Did you know you can listen to and manage your voice messages online? Faculty and staff who use the University’s Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) voicemail system can access and listen to their messages through a secure online voicemail inbox. The service also enables employees to sign up to receive instant email notifications when they have a new voicemail message on their desk phone.
To enable this service, you must navigate to https://voip.psu.edu and authenticate (if necessary). Then navigate to the New Voicemail Notification tab and select Notifications of new voicemail will be sent to your e-mail address @psu.edu.
You then will be able to log into https://voip.psu.edu and play any new message from the website itself from your inbox:
You will also receive an email in your inbox (see below) that will also allow you to direct your inbox at the VoIP website to listen to the message.
Finally, this new services enables you to check your voicemails from any device, including your iPad, Android or iPhone.
For more information on how to VOIP Voicemail, please visit the IT Knowledge Base.
Please join us in welcoming the following new hires:
Part-time:
Andras Nagypal – Commons Services Desk
Michele Barbin – Publishing and Curation Services
Kerry Dubyk – Abington College Library
Jacqueline Arnold – Worthington Scranton Campus Library
Internal Moves:
Megan Mac Gregor – student engagement and outreach librarian, Penn State Wilkes-Barre
Wishing the following employees well as they leave us:
Wertney Cox – Commons Services
Janelle Sigel – Collection Maintenance
Greg Crawford – Penn State Harrisburg Library (transferring to Penn State Harrisburg campus)
July 4 Holiday
The Independence Day (July 4) holiday is coming up and will be observed on Saturday, July 4. In accordance with University policy, when a holiday falls on Saturday it is observed on Saturday. Eligible employees normally scheduled to work on Saturday receive holiday pay. Eligible employees are not scheduled to work on July 4 receive Holiday Compensatory time that can be scheduled and used like vacation.
On Saturday, July 4, the Libraries will be closed. Full-time employees who would normally work on Saturday will record eight hours of Holiday in ESSIC. Full-time employees who don’t normally work on Saturday will earn eight hours of Holiday Compensatory Time. Part-time employees who are eligible for earned time will record their regularly scheduled hours as holiday. Part-time employees who are not eligible for earned time are only paid for hours actually worked, however, supervisors may, if feasible and appropriate, reschedule part-time employees earlier in the week to make up the hours missed.
On Friday, July 3, there are no classes scheduled but University offices will be open and operations continue. Pattee/Paterno Library will be open from 7:45 am – 5:00 pm. Employees who wish to take off should follow their normal departmental procedure for scheduling time off, and should account for the day using vacation or personal holiday. University policy prohibits using the holiday compensatory day awarded for July 4 until after July 4. If you wish to work on Friday you may and should account for hours worked as you normally would.
If you have any questions, please contact Libraries Human Resources.
ESSIC Attendance Record Audit Reminder
In July, the Office of Human Resources will begin its annual audit of the attendance system. Please note the following reminders, for both system users and supervisors/approvers:
2015 Personal Holiday hours: Full-time employees should have added eight hours of personal holiday time (for 2015) when submitting the January attendance records at the end of January. This is done on the accruals page that comes up when you click “Submit.” New employees must wait until they have completed their first two full months of employment before they may add in the 2015 personal holiday time. The maximum amount of personal holiday hours an employee can have at any given time is 16 hours. If an employee has 16 hours at the end of the calendar year, they can not add the new time in January.
Compensatory Time: Please remember that any holiday or campus closure compensatory time earned should be used prior to any vacation.
Vacation Maximums – Please be reminded of the vacation accrual maximums found at the bottom of your attendance record in ESSIC, in HR-34 and in the Libraries’ Faculty Vacation Policy. At the end of the month when you submit your attendance record, you must be at or below the maximum, or you will lose any time over that amount. If this occurs, when submitting the record, you must only mark the number of hours that will leave you at the maximum for your ending balance, rather than the actual time you would normally accrue.
Submission and Approval: Employees are reminded to submit their attendance records at the end of every month. Supervisors are reminded to review information and approve the records on a monthly basis. It is extremely important that these records are completed, reviewed, and approved monthly.
Recording Time Worked – As a reminder, all non-exempt employees must record all time worked using the “Time Worked (normal hours)” selection, plus account for any time missed. Exempt employees should only record time used to account for time missed (vacation, sick, etc.).
These reminders apply to all full-time employees. Part-time employees do not have access to the Attendance System and should be completing Labman, or some sort of paper record for part-time exempt (staff or faculty, such as Fixed Term II appointments). All supervisors, of all types of employees, should be ensuring that their employees keep appropriate records and submit them on a timely basis in order review their time.
If you have any questions, please contact our office at 814-863-4949.
Note: Dickinson School of Law Libraries and George T. Harrell Library employees are provided with this information as employees of the University Libraries; however, day-to-day operational practices are guided by their respective Colleges. Dickinson and College of Medicine Library employees should speak to their immediate supervisor or local HR Representative for guidance, as necessary. Conditions of employment for Technical-service employees are further described in the “Agreement between The Pennsylvania State University and Teamsters Local Union No. 8.” Technical-service employees should refer to the Agreement for information related to the above topics. Staff employees who are less than 100% should follow the guidance of policy HR-88.
by Barbara Kopshina, DuBois Campus Library
You may have seen Tracie Wickersham’s name before as she is part of the Commission for Women and one of the chairs for the Personal Safety and Sexual Assault Awareness Committee, but did you know that she is working towards a library degree and studied wildlife at Penn State DuBois?
Wickersham…volunteers for Hands On Therapeutic Riding, working with children and adults with various types of disabilities
A native of Ocala, Florida, Tracie came to Warren County, Pennsylvania in 1997. She fell in love with the area and decided to stay. A friend introduced her to the wildlife program at Penn State DuBois, where she enrolled in 2004. Tracie worked two jobs while completing her associated degree, one of which was at the Penn State DuBois Campus Library. She graduated in 2006.
In 2010, Tracie joined the ILL team at University Park as an interlibrary loan support specialist II. She is in charge of article delivery on the lending side and often works with Rapid ILL requests which shoot for a 24-hour turnaround time for patrons.
Tracie is currently working toward a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies with a concentration in library science, from Clarion University, and has made the Dean’s list during her first two semesters. After that, she plans on obtaining a master’s degree in library science, also from Clarion University.
During her spare time, Tracie volunteers for Hands On Therapeutic Riding in Stormstown, Pa. This program helps children and adults who have various types of disabilities by utilizing horses for therapy. She also enjoys genealogy, canoeing and fishing and spending time with her husband, Mark, daughter, Kathleen, and dog, Gunner.
Have a library innovation that you would like to explore? The call for Innovation Microgrant applications for 2015-2016 is just a few days away!
From July 1 until July 31, the University Libraries Microgrant Team wants your applications on anything and everything that could make the libraries more innovative. More details and the downloadable application can be found at the Innovation Microgrant Program webpage: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/admin/microgrant-program.html
The Strategic Plan Working Group on Teaching and Learning has been charged with implementing the Teaching and Learning portion of the strategic plan, and our first step in doing so is to gather quantitative information to develop a profile of the teaching and learning activities we already perform. This will allow us to develop an action plan for the future. This information is being gathered via on online survey that was sent to Unit Heads in April and was due at the end of May.
We are currently at a 79% response rate, with 26 out of 33 units reporting. If you are one of the seven remaining units who has not responded, please do so quickly or get in touch with Jennifer Gilley (jrg15@psu.edu). It is very important that we include all of the available data on our teaching activities in order to create an accurate portrait of our contributions in this area.
The online survey is available at: https://surveys.libraries.psu.edu/TakeSurvey.aspx?PageNumber=1&SurveyID=8l31m76&Preview=true
A copy of the survey in Word document form can be found on the Strategic Plan Intranet at: https://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/groups/intranet/strat_plan_groups.html — Jennifer Gilley
The Advancing University Research Strategic Planning Working Group has developed tactical goals for objectives. The group used the SMART convention, an approach that uses the following criteria:
S – specific in terms of results to be achieved
M – measurable
A – ambitious
R – but realistic
T – time bound
For each tactic, the group identified performance measures as well as unit(s)/position(s) responsible. The update can be found on the Intranet at:
https://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/groups/intranet/strat_plan_groups.html
The link to the Update and accompanying Appendix can be found on the sidebar.
Comments may be directed to Diane Zabel (dxz2@psu.edu) or to the entire working group.
Diane Zabel, (Chair) Benzak Business Librarian and head of the Schreyer Business Library
Nan Butkovich, head, Physical and Mathematical Sciences Library
Angela Davis, engineering librarian
Glenn McGuigan, business and public administration reference librarian, Penn State Harrisburg
Jennifer Norton, assistant director, Penn State University Press
James O’Sullivan, digital humanities research designer
Tom Reinsfelder, reference librarian, Penn State Mont Alto
Susan Martin and Marianne Seiler, information resources and service specialists at Penn State Schuylkill, attended Book Expo America 2015, held at the Javits Convention Center in New York. They won tickets from “Unshelved,” a library oriented comic strip, written by Gene Ambaum and illustrated by Bill Barnes.
Seiler
BEA is the largest event in North America. This year more than 600 authors attended, including personalities such as Nathan Lane, Kunal Nayyar (Raj from Big Bang Theory), James Patterson, John Grisham and “Today” show personality Al Roker. BEA offered content and digital forums on state-of-the-art digital technologies by IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum), Global Market Forum introducing Chinese Publishing, uPublishU, APA and Bloggers conferences.
Martin and Seiler were chosen to attend the BEA Authors Librarian Luncheon featuring Tama Janowitz, Scream (Dey Street, HarperCollins); Barry Moser, We Were Brothers Once (Algonquin/Workman), Stephanie Clifford, Everybody Rise (St. Martins Press/Macmillan); Vu Tran, Dragonfish, A Novel (W.W. Norton); Annie Barrows, The Truth According to Us (The Dial Press/Penguin Random House) and Mary-Louise Parker, Dear Mr. You (Scribner/Simon & Schuster). The authors’ talks were inspirational and humorous, focusing on the influence libraries and librarians had on their lives, and how imperative it is to support libraries.
photos by Seiler and Martin
BEA is already planning next year’s event, which will be held in McCormick Place, Chicago, May 11-13, 2016. If given the opportunity, take time and attend Book Expo America. — Marianne Seiler, Ciletti Memorial Library, Penn State Schuylkill
June 24, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.: Workshop on debt management, Mann Assembly Room, 103 Paterno Library. See https://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/researchguides/business/financialliteracy.html#moneycounts for more information.
June 24, 1 to 2:30 p.m.: HR Forum, Foster Auditorium and MediaSite Live. Includes panel discussion on Penn State Resources for Employees.
July 9, 2 p.m.: Online Digital Journal Website demonstration, Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. For more information, see story on Brent Wilson’s current exhibition in Special Collections.
July 14, 1:30 p.m.: “What the Libraries Can Do For You: Training for Penn State Staff,” in Foster Auditorium. This program is specially designed for Penn State staff and will focus on the materials and services available in the Penn State Libraries for personal and work-related use. To register, email Megan Gilpin: mcg13@psu.edu.
Save the date:
August 4, 2015, 10:00 – 11:00 a.m.: Dean’s Forum in Foster Auditorium and via Media Site Live. Joe Salem, Associate Dean for Learning, Undergraduate Services and Commonwealth Campus Libraries, will present. Also, Anne Langely, Associate Dean for Research, Collections and Scholarly Communications will be introduced.
More information to come.
By Ryan Johnson, technology training coordinator
If you’re going where mobile data is spotty or you won’t have an Internet connection, you can save a map to your device and use it when you’re offline for traveling. Here’s how:
1. Make sure you’re connected to the Internet and signed in to your Google account.
2. Open the Google Maps app.
3. Search for a place, like “San Francisco.”
4. At the bottom, touch the bar that has the name of the place you searched.
5. In the upper right, touch the menu bar
6. To save the map, select Save offline map and follow the directions on the screen.
7. To view your offline map, select the three line menu in the search window and select My Places from the list of options. Scroll to the bottom of the page, where you should find any offline maps still stored on your device.
Keep in mind that any saved maps will only remain on your device for 30 days. After that the app will purge a saved map to clear up space on your device.
Note: The biggest size for an offline map is 50km x 50km. If you try to save an area bigger than that, you’ll be asked to zoom in to a smaller area.
Please join us in welcoming the following new hires:
Full-time:
6/22/15 Jill Shockey — manager, Public Relations and Marketing
6/17/15 Nicole Schwindenhammer — Collection Maintenance
Part-time:
Yun Lu — George T. Harrell Health Sciences Library
Joanne Heckman — Great Valley Library
D’Aundra Lewis — Commons Services Desk
Now that the LibGuides training is live, please remember to request LibGuides access using I-Tech’s Account Request System on their homepage. Generally only supervisors can request accounts, so if you cannot access the form, please ask your supervisor to request an account for you. The account type requested should be “regular.”
We’re happy to announce our full schedule of additional training workshops: