Bryan Museum Exhibit: La Cruz Blanca

A special exhibit at Galveston’s Bryan Museum features items from the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections’ Leonor Villegas de Magnón Papers. A digital collection is available online.

Magnón, a Mexican citizen and life-long resident of Laredo, Texas, was a trailblazer and leading force on a variety of issues related to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. Among her many accomplishments, Magnón founded and financed La Cruz Blanca (The White Cross) to provide more organized medical assistance to soldiers wounded in the Mexican Revolution. More details on this work can be found in her autobiography, La Rebelde (The Lady Rebel). In the years after the Revolution, Magnón opened a bilingual school for children and contributed to female civic organizations in the US and Mexico, traveling back and forth from Laredo until her death in 1955.

“It’s fantastic that more people are getting to know about the Magnón Papers and women’s contributions to history, said Lisa Cruces, Hispanic Collections archivist. “We hope that with the increase in awareness, more scholars will visit our archives and make use of this rich material.”

The new exhibit, which opened June 18, also includes artwork by Mexican painter Diego Rivera and other artifacts pertaining to the Mexican Revolution, loaned by museums, historical societies, and private collections.

In Memoriam: Alice Evans Pratt

Alice Evans Pratt, a longtime friend of the University of Houston Libraries and Houston Public Media, passed away in June.

Mrs. Pratt created the Emily Scott Evans Endowed Professorship in the Special Collections and Archives Department that was occupied for many years by former head of Special Collections Pat Bozeman, and also supported the construction of the Emily Scott and Joseph Wood Evans Training Room classroom that has served to introduce thousands of UH students to the library’s rare books, archives, and manuscripts in support of teaching and learning on campus.

“I was saddened to learn of Alice Pratt’s death,” said Bozeman. “I owe so much to her personally and for her many kindnesses to, and in support of, Special Collections. Mrs. Pratt had a very sharp mind and a fine sense of humor, and I always enjoyed our conversations.”

New Digital Collection: Burdette Keeland Architectural Drawings and Photographs

Burdette Keeland, Jr. was an influential Houston architect who left a legacy as a designer, an educator, and a member of the Houston Planning Commission. At the peak of his practice, from 1950 to 1980, Keeland produced some of the city’s best modernist architectural design. Yet he will also be remembered for his four decades on the faculty of the University of Houston, where he dedicated himself to mentoring the next generation of architects. This digital collection provides a sample of five of his imaginative works, including architectural drawings and renderings, photographs, clippings, and audio interviews.

A 1950 graduate of the University of Houston, Keeland quickly developed a successful architectural practice. As with many architects of the period, his work of the 1950s reflected the influence of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Keeland’s innovative design for the Fred Winchell Studio and Apartments (with Harwood Taylor, 1953) combined a professional office with rental apartments on a small city lot. Two years later he produced his best-known work, a steel-frame residence for homebuilder W. K. King, featured in the 1955 Meyerland Parade of Homes.

In the 1960s Keeland’s work expressed other trends in architectural design. He interpreted the Brutalist aesthetic in the Essex-Houck Office Building (with Herman F. Goeters, 1962), where his tight grouping of masonry towers gave this small office building a sense of the monumental. In the Williams Beach House of 1967 (with Alan Rice), his crisp, shed-roofed volumes evoked the barnlike structures of California’s iconic Sea Ranch development.

Keeland experimented with new ideas in his own house on Ferndale Street. In 1976 he transformed a modest 1930s house into an urban retreat for his family. He made further changes in the 1980s and 1990s, but the rear courtyard received the most attention. He showed his flair for artistic and whimsical details in the over-scaled metal column that supports a second floor overhang; a few feet away a vine-covered spiral staircase offered access to a roof-top office and observation deck.

The original materials are available in UH Libraries Special Collections in the Burdette Keeland Architectural Papers.

ORCID: Helping Make Connections

ORCID IDs provide a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes one researcher from another. More precisely, an ORCID identifier reliably and unambiguously links scholars with their complete, correct, and current scholarly output. It is also very useful when integrated into key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission since it supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, thus ensuring that a researcher’s work is recognized. By integrating ORCID identifiers across the research workflow, the scholarly community will be better able to distinguish and track the unique contributions of individuals as authors, researchers, grantees, faculty, and inventors.

During 2016, a number of scholarly publishers have indicated that they will begin requiring ORCID IDs for corresponding authors at minimum. Publishers requiring ORCIDs include the Royal Society, IEEE, and the Science journals, to name a few. Further, a number of funding agencies have been requiring ORCID IDs since 2015 and include Autism Speaks, the Wellcome Trust, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. The potential exists for other publishers and funding agencies to follow suit and require researchers to have ORCID IDs. Additionally, over the last several years a number of grant and manuscript submission systems have adopted ORCID, providing researchers the opportunity to identify themselves with their ORCID ID.

It’s simple and fast to create one, and ORCID also connects to a variety of systems in the research workflow bringing the benefits of interoperability (i.e., savings of time and effort) to authors and researchers. So far, over two million researchers have registered for ORCIDs.

If you would like more information or assistance in creating an ORCID account, please contact Adam Townes, research support coordinator at the University of Houston Libraries, or your subject librarian.

2016 UH Libraries Recruitment Video

We take pride in delivering the very best experience for the campus community. See why UH Libraries is a transformative place for students, faculty, and the scholarly community.

View the 2016 University of Houston Libraries recruitment video.

Sponsored Projects (Grants) Workshop

Join us at the Sponsored Projects (Grants) Workshop to be held on Friday, June 10 from 10 am – 12 noon in the MD Anderson Library, Room 10F. Denise McGuire of the UH Office of Contracts and Grants will discuss the process of pre- and post-awards.

June 2016 New Database

The following database is now available from the University of Houston Libraries:

PolicyMap is a fully web-based online data and mapping application that gives you access to over 15,000 indicators related to demographics, housing, crime, mortgages, health, jobs and more. Data is available at all common geographies (address, block group, census tract, zip code, county, city, state, MSA) as well as unique geographies like school districts and political boundaries. Data comes from both public and proprietary sources.

Spring 2016 Newsletter Now Available

The University of Houston Libraries spring 2016 newsletter is now available (PDF).

Inside: New Digital Collections, Resource Wish List, Strategic Plan Goals (feature), Donor Profile, Collection Transformation, and Librarian News.

June 2016 Technology Training

Workshops in EndNote, Excel 2013, Illustrator CS6, Google Docs, PowerPoint 2013, Photoshop CS6, Prezi, SPSS and Word 2013 are being held in June at the University of Houston Libraries.

The Technology Training program at UH Libraries offers free technology courses to current UH students, faculty and staff. Classes are held in the Learning Commons Training Labs on the first floor of the MD Anderson Library.

View the full calendar and reserve your seat.

 

Summer Book Club 2016

University of Houston Libraries and the UH Women and Gender Resource Center will co-sponsor the 2016 summer book club, which is open to all UH students, faculty and staff, and alumni.

Readers are invited to gather at the Resource Center, located in the University Center North Room 201, for a literary conversation. Readers may bring a lunch, and drinks and sweets will be provided.

On June 28 at noon, Asking For It by Louise O’Neill (fiction) will be discussed.

On August 18 at noon, Year of Yes (nonfiction) by Shonda Rhimes will be discussed.