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
By: Ryan Johnson
You can then complete the Office 365 Post Migration Checklist.
By: Jessica Showalter
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.
We 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.”
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.
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.
Summer 2018
Academic calendar information for all campuses is available online.
Jan. 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.
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
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, 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.*