Each year, the Ames librarians take advantage of end-of-year opportunities to acquire digital access to new content. With the new year upon us, we are happy to announce that the IWU community now has access to the digital archives of the following titles:
Esquire
Maclean’s
National Review
New Republic
Sports Illustrated
Time
In addition, we have acquired access to the African American Historical Serials Collection, which “documents the history of African American life and religious organizations from materials published between 1829 and 1922 and contains more than 170 unique titles related to African American life and culture.”
Providing access to these resources electronically promotes enhanced discoverability of these valuable resources, and facilitates student use of these resources in their own scholarly and creative work. The African American Historical Serials Collection also enhances the diversity of materials available to our students and faculty through the Ames Library, and promotes greater opportunities for discovery and analysis of information documenting diverse American cultures. Print volumes of journal titles now available digitally are being reviewed for retention as part of the current review and shifting of library materials.
You may find these resources, and more, through the Ames Library A-Z list of digital resources. If you have any questions about these new resources, please contact Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Collections and Scholarly Communications Librarian.
The Ames Library is collaborating with the Office of the Provost, Information Technology Services, the School of Theatre Arts, and others to bring an exciting new space and set of services to the Illinois Wesleyan community in Fall 2019: The Soundstage.
The Soundstage will be a 750–square-foot film and sound recording facility that will be used by students in the Film Studies minor (as well as other courses), and by student groups with an interest in film, video, and media production, including Titan TV.
Media literacy – “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms” – is a critical component of undergraduate education in the 21st century, and a essential to the information literacy program at IWU, which is designed to shape students both as critical consumers and creative creators of information, scholarly work, and creative activity. The Soundstage will complement existing production resources in The Ames Library, including the One-Button Studio (and the upcoming Light Board Studio), audio and video editing hardware and software, and equipment available for use outside the library, including digital cameras, camcorders, GoPros, and more. More information on specialized film production equipment available for use outside the library through a dedicated Soundstage service desk will be announced in the Fall. Film Studies students, as well as other users of The Soundstage, will also have access to the Beckman Auditorium, an ideal space for both the presentation and discussion of film. According to Tom Quinn, core faculty member for the Film Studies minor: “The addition of The Soundstage to The Ames Library will revolutionize the study of videographic arts and technologies at Illinois Wesleyan. Within this new space, students will master technical skills, and explore the power of motion pictures through the creation of dramatic fiction, documentaries, educational films, and commercial communication”
The Soundstage will be located on the lower level of The Ames Library, and collections are currently being reviewed and shifted in order to make space for production space and related equipment. If you have any questions about The Soundstage, please contact Tom Quinn, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts or Scott Walter, University Librarian. If you have questions about collections being moved for construction of The Soundstage, please contact Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Collections and Scholarly Communications Librarian.
As part of our ongoing review of library collections and space, we are undertaking a number of projects over the summer that will result in materials moving to new places in the short-term (or beyond). Microform collections have already been moved from the lower level of the Ames Library to the 3rd floor, and a number of books and journals will be shifted throughout the lower level during the next several weeks as we make room for additional services in the library.
If you have any questions about the location of library materials, or require assistance placing a request for materials, please contact the Library Services Desk.
Illinois Wesleyan University is one of 12 partner libraries, including the Claremont Colleges, University of Alberta, University of Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, and others, joining the Library Publishing Coalition and the Educopia Institute to explore best practice in scholarly journal publishing as part of library publishing programs.
The Ames Library has long been a leader in exploring the potential for academic libraries to serve as a platform for open access scholarly publishing, primarily through the use of our Digital Commons repository to provide access to a wide range of scholarly and creative works produced by IWU students, faculty and staff, including undergraduate research journals. By participating in this project, funded through a US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant, IWU will contribute to a critical discussion of workflow practices, scalability, and sustainability for open access library publishing services, including those designed to extend the reach and impact of undergraduate research programs in liberal arts colleges.
In the contemporary information environment, students must learn not only how to discover, access, and evaluate the work of others, but also about their own opportunities (and responsibilities) as content creators. Ames Library faculty collaborate with colleagues across the university to find opportunities to integrate scholarly communications education with information literacy instruction as part of teaching, learning, and scholarship in all fields.
Illinois Wesleyan University is an Initial Contributing Member of the Library Publishing Coalition, and Digital Commons has become an integral component of undergraduate research programs at the university, including the John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference (with contributed posters available here). Scholarly and creative works published through Digital Commons have been downloaded by users around the world over 350,000 times in the past year alone. If you would like to know more about open access initiatives and scholarly communications education at Illinois Wesleyan, or would like to discuss opportunities to publish your work through Digital Commons, please contact Stephanie Davis-Kahl, Collections and Scholarly Communications Librarian.
The Ames Library will be closed for the 4th of July holiday on Thursday, July 4th, and Friday, July 5th. Library users will continue to have access to digital content, including full-text articles, e-books, and digital media (including streaming media). Research assistance will also remain available through online research guides.
We wish you a happy and safe holiday and look forward to seeing you when the library re-opens on its regular summer schedule on July 8th.
At Illinois Wesleyan, we are committed to providing experiences that “blur the line between the learning that takes place in the classroom and outside the classroom,” and The Ames Library and its faculty have supported these experiences for years, e.g., through information literacy instruction that supports undergraduate research projects, and partnerships with other units with a focus on “engaged learning,” including the Writing Center and the Action Research Center. But, the library can also be the site for research, internships, and community projects that demonstrate our commitment to engaged learning, both for our undergraduate students and for graduate students working toward a future in library work.
The Tate Archives and Special Collections, for example, has hosted Library and Information Science (LIS) students from the University of Illinois School of Information Sciences as part of that program’s Alternative Spring Break. This summer, Associate Professor and University Archivist Meg Miner is serving as intern supervisor for Cynthia O’Neill, a student in the Kent State University Master of Library and Information Studies program pursuing a concentration in Archives and Special Collections. Ms. O’Neill comes to her internship at Ames with experience in both the museum and public library fields.
“There are similarities in the missions of libraries, archives, and museums,” Professor Miner notes, “but also subtle differences in the ways we go about achieving our shared goal of preserving and providing access to cultural heritage materials in our communities today and into the future.” This internship, Miner continued, “will provide Cynthia with hands-on experience with these distinctions, and with strategies for applying both archival theory and her past experience to archival work in the academic environment.”
In her IWU internship, Ms. O’Neill is learning about the management of archival collections, as a whole, and about the management of the archives as a research environment. She will do this in the context of completing a number of specific projects:
assessing, organizing, and describing a collection of materials donated by Marjorie Kouns (’79);
creating a tutorial on historical book construction techniques and their preservation needs.
“Everything I’ve learned in my classes is coming together [in this internship]”, O’Neill says, and the field experience “is especially beneficial as I am gaining experience both with university records management and with the personal collections of regional residents and organizations.”
Both as a resource for experiential education and an opportunity for experiential education, The Ames Library reflects the university’s commitment to engaged learning. We expect this to only grow with the launch of the Center for Engaged Learning in the library in the coming year. If you or your students have questions about opportunities for pursuing undergraduate research or other engaged learning experiences under the supervision of library faculty, please contact Scott Walter, University Librarian.
On June 22, 2019, The Ames Library will join partners including Academic Advising, Career Center, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Information Technology, Study Abroad, and others at the “Experience IWU” Parent Orientation’s “Titan Fair.”
Parents will have the opportunity to learn more about the services available to their students in the library, and across campus, as part of our commitment to student success. We will also highlight expert services provided by our librarians, and ways in which we can help students to achieve their goals in the classroom and out while taking advantage of academic opportunities including internships, study abroad, undergraduate research, and more.
Research has shown that parents can be powerful partners with librarians and other student success professionals to ensure that students learn about, and take advantage of, all of the resources available to them as they make the successful transition to college life. We look forward to meeting our students and their families this summer as they continue the process of “Turning Titan“!
Earlier this month, IWU librarians Meg Miner and Scott Walter took part in a two-day workshop hosted by Ithaka S&R for institutions participating in the upcoming, international study of teaching with primary sources.
In this study, participating institutions, including IWU,
Williams College, Brown University, Dartmouth College, University of Virginia,
Indiana University, University of Sheffield (U.K.), Lafayette College, Yale
University, and others, will explore how “[teaching] undergraduates with
primary sources promotes student engagement and critical thinking skills and is
a key ingredient in the current pedagogical push toward ‘inquiry-based’ or ‘research-led’
learning.” Given the history of instructional collaboration among Ames Library
faculty and colleagues in academic programs across the curriculum in information
literacy instruction, writing-intensive instruction, and service learning,
IWU is in an excellent position both to learn from local research set within
this global context, and to provide examples of “best practice” to colleagues
who will employ the results of this international study to inform their own
teaching and learning programs, especially around media literacy, digital
literacy, and artifactual (or “primary-source”) literacy.
During Fall 2019, the IWU research team will be conducting
interviews with a small number of campus faculty (tenure-system, visiting, or
adjunct) who make effective use of, or take innovative approaches to the use
of, primary source materials in their teaching. While the focus for the study
is in the humanities and social sciences, our team will consider faculty from
any department who wish to participate in the study when making our final
selection about who to include in the participant pool (according to guidelines
provided to all participating institutions by Ithaka).
If you would like to learn more about this study, or to add
your name to the list of potential participants in the study currently being
reviewed for inclusion, please contact Meg
Miner, University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian. Invitations
to participate in this study will be issued in August 2019.
With our ongoing review of library spaces, and innovation in library services and campus services available through the library, 2019 was a perfect time to update and enhance our video introduction to The Ames Library. Library staff collaborated with Curtis Kelch, Director of Web Services and IWU students; Justin Piotrowski ’21, Rachel McCarthy ’21, and Will Mueller ’19 to produce this new introduction to the library.
Whether you (or your students) want to know about the range of materials you can borrow from the library, the ways librarians can help you to answer the most complex research questions or integrate information and digital literacy skills into your assignments, or the unique spaces and resources available in our circulating and special collections, this video will give you a place to start. And, if you would like to learn more about how to make videos like this one for your own classes, you can also find out more about IT resources in the library, including the One-Button Studio. Whether you are new to campus or simply new to our expanding array of spaces and services, we hope you will enjoy (and share) our new orientation video!
For more than a decade, the Action Research Center (ARC) has been a hub for service learning and community engagement initiatives across the curriculum and co-curriculum at Illinois Wesleyan University, and a platform for bringing IWU students, faculty, and staff together with community partners to “[pursue] innovative ideas that transform communities.” Offering credit-bearing courses, workshops, independent study projects, internships, and innovative programs like the Citizen Scholars First-Year Experience, and the Weir Fellowship, ARC routinely supports more than 40,000 hours of volunteer service and community engagement activities each year. A long-time relationship between ARC and library focused on information literacy instruction for field-based research and experiential learning is set to take a big step forward with the relocation of the Action Research Center to the Ames Library in Summer 2019.
As part of the “Center for Engaged Learning” initiative, ARC is joining other core program partners already housed in the Ames Library, including the Writing Center and the Thorpe Center to bring together expert resources and services for faculty wishing to integrate information literacy, writing, information technology, and/or service learning into their teaching and scholarship, and to make it easier for students to discover, and make use of, student success programs housed across campus. The co-location of ARC and the Library, in particular, has promise both to integrate the research-based and field-based aspects of service-learning initiatives, but also to further explore the potential for collaboration among libraries in the community, including public libraries, school libraries, special libraries, and museums. Reflecting on her experience with the library to date, and the new opportunities that may come with this move, ARC Director Deborah Halperin said, “Ames Library is a dynamic hub of ideas and resources. We are excited to be in this space and to have greater opportunities to interface with students, staff, librarians, and other faculty. This move will create new partnerships on and off campus that will enhance the student experience, build stronger connections among faculty colleagues, and strengthen the university’s position as a community leader.”
ARC student interns have already joined staff to begin work on community-centered research projects, including an analysis of Westside neighborhood revitalization focused on housing data from 2008-2018. The project requires a literature review of revitalization and community development theories, analysis of GIS maps for the area, and interviews with a wide variety of community leaders and stakeholders. We look forward to seeing additional opportunities for community engagement and field-based undergraduate research continue to develop as the Center for Engaged Learning takes shape in the coming year.
The Action Research Center was founded in 2003 with a focus on providing greater opportunities for students to engage in meaningful, community-based internships demonstrating a shared commitment to improving communities in the spirit of social justice. Major community projects originally sponsored by ARC include Radio Latina (2009), LINK at the Farmers’ Market (2010), IWU Peace Garden (2012), Tool Library (2013), and Veggie Oasis (2014). For more information on the Action Research Center, please contact Deborah Halperin, Director. For more information on library services or the Center for Engaged Learning initiative, please contact Scott Walter, University Librarian.
