Flash Survey: UH Libraries Social Media
The University of Houston Libraries Office of Communications is committed to bringing the best, most relevant content to you. We recently asked for your feedback about UH Libraries social media. Here’s a quick recap of the results.
Which best describes you?
What social media platforms do you use on a regular basis?
On what platforms do you follow UH Libraries?
How did you hear about UH Libraries’ social media?
We asked what UH LiIbraries social media topics are most important to you. The top three categories were responses from the Libraries to comments, retweets, etc.; notifications on library hours and availability; and news about the Libraries. Some of you also requested more posts on “strange” or unique Libraries holdings.
August 2017 New Databases
New databases in a variety of subjects are now available from UH Libraries.
The following databases are now available from the University of Houston Libraries:
College Preparation Center
College Preparation Center includes practice tests, interactive tutorials, and ebooks to help you prepare for college success.
Ebook Central (recently migrated from Ebrary)
You need credible content from authoritative, scholarly sources. Ebook Central delivers, with breadth and depth of ebooks from scholarly sources, including university presses and other top publishers.
Open Book Publishers
A social enterprise run by scholars who are committed to making high-quality research available to readers around the world. OBP publishes monographs and textbooks in all areas, and offers the academic excellence of a traditional press, with the speed, convenience and accessibility of digital publishing. All the books are available to read for free online.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist
The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online Checklist provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library’s 1981 publication Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress and will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions. The online checklist also contains links to existing digital images from our collection and will be updated as new images are added. If you have any questions, comments, or are interested in obtaining reproductions from the collection, please Ask A Librarian. The Sanborn maps are arranged by state, then city and release data. Currently there are over 25,000 sheets from over 3000 city sets online in the following states: AK, AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, GA, ID, IL, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NV, OH, OK, PA, SD, TX, VA, VT, WY and Canada, Mexico, Cuba sugar warehouses, and U.S. whiskey warehouses.
UpToDate
UpToDate is designed to answer the clinical questions that arise in daily practice. It covers over 10,000 clinical topics in over 22 medical specialties and includes links to patient education, practice changing updates, drugs & drug interactions, and medical calculators.
UH Libraries Announces 2017-18 Microgrant Winners
UH Libraries announces the 2017-2018 Microgrant Program winners.
The University of Houston Libraries has awarded funds to innovative project teams through the Microgrant Program.
Now in its 9th year, the Microgrant Program fosters new ideas in support of the Libraries’ Strategic Plan and the University’s goals.
Library staff submitted proposals for new services and programs which would benefit teaching, learning and research objectives of the UH community, and will collaborate in cross-departmental teams to implement their ideas.
The UH Libraries Microgrant Program winners for 2017-2018 are:
Project title: DIY Health Zine Saturday
Lisa Cruces, Rachel Helbing, Ariana Santiago, Emily Vinson, Anne Washington
DIY Health Zine Saturday is designed to raise awareness of zine collections available at UH Special Collections, the zine culture in Houston, and to empower students with skills on how to find credible consumer health information and share it through self-published magazines (“zines”). UH librarians from Special Collections and Health Sciences will create a research guide to facilitate access to health information resources and zines in Houston.
Project title: Library Movie Night
Jay Harkins, Emily Vinson
The UH Library Movie Night is a screening of classic films paired with relevant footage from the University Archives.
Project title: Serious Play at the Library
Melody Condron, Lee Hilyer, Christina Gola, Frederick Young
Lego Serious Play is a creative facilitation model that uses Lego bricks to solve problems and generate ideas. It is a hands-on model that encourages innovative thought and cooperation. The method can be used in the University classroom, professional meetings, retreats, or team-building exercises. The project will explore the value of the Serious Play facilitation model within libraries and at the University by hosting at least two events that use the kits for a variety of problem-solving activities.
Houston Archives Bazaar
The Archivists of the Houston Area (AHA!) will host the Houston Archives Bazaar on Sunday, September 10, from 2:00 – 6:00 p.m. at White Oak Music Hall. Houston and Gulf Coast archives and affiliated organizations will offer a free, fun and interactive experience for attendees to learn about historical resources and services available in the region.
- The Houston Archives Bazaar is a free, fun event for the community to engage with the amazing historical collections and resources available in the Houston area.
Attendees can browse the unique collections of participating organizations, and learn how to care for their own photos, letters, and digital media. An oral history booth will be available for attendees to record their Houston story for future generations. The Bazaar will also host a film screening featuring archival footage, and speakers will share stories about Houston and Gulf Coast history.
AHA! is a professional organization that exists to increase contact and communication between archivists and those working with records, to provide opportunities for professional development, and to promote archival repositories and activities in the greater Houston area.
University of Houston Libraries is a proud sponsor of the Houston Archives Bazaar. For more information, contact Emily Vinson at 713.743.7696.
Fall 2017 Libraries Open House
UH Libraries Open House
The University of Houston Libraries will welcome students back to campus during its Just Ask! Libraries Open House, Monday through Wednesday, August 21 – 23, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Students are encouraged to drop by the MD Anderson Library to learn more about library services and programs. Library staff will be on hand to answer common questions about MD Anderson Library and the campus branches.
UH Libraries Guide for Faculty
Vision
A community nurtured by curiosity and creativity that drives lifelong learning and scholarship
Mission
University of Houston Libraries advances student success, knowledge creation and preservation, and globally competitive research.
View the Libraries Strategic Plan.
MD Anderson Library – general collections, Optometry Library (temporary)
Special Collections – MD Anderson Library second floor
William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library – Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture first floor
Music Library – Moores School of Music second floor
Health Sciences Library – coming soon to the new Health and Biomedical Sciences Building 2
Liaison Services is home to the subject librarians who directly support UH colleges and departmens through instruction, outreach, collection development, and research services.
The Technology Training Program offers free technology courses to current UH faculty, staff, and students.
The Digital Research Commons (DRC) is a new space and suite of services that will offer UH faculty members access to specialized digital scholarship and digital humanities tools and software, expert consultation support on the research process, and space for conducting collaborative and cross-disciplinary projects.
Off-Campus Access
To access electronic resources while off-campus, an active Cougarnet account is needed. Visit the UH Libraries website and select the resource you wish to access. You will be redirected to a log-in screen. Enter your Cougarnet username and password.
Faculty Delivery Service
Faculty can request to have library materials delivered directly to their on-campus departmental mailbox. Items usually arrive within two business days.
You may request delivery of items owned by the Libraries, or through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
ILL is used for:
- Borrowing materials not available from UH Libraries
- Scanning and delivering articles to faculty and graduate students
- Delivering library materials to distance education students
- Lending UH materials to other libraries
To use this service, an ILL account must be created on the UH Libraries website. A Cougarnet account and UH email address are required.
Course Reserves
UH Libraries’ course reserves system is integrated with Blackboard, allowing faculty and students access to course reserves, and allowing faculty to add, edit, or organize course reserves at any time.
Research Skills Instruction
UH Libraries supports the entire student population through information literacy education and research support initiatives. Librarians partner with faculty to develop curricula, assignments, class presentations, and student learning assessments. They consult with faculty and graduate students on all aspects of the research process from the literature review to the visualization of research data, and teach nearly a thousand classes and workshops each academic year.
Research Assignment Design
Assignments that require students to engage more fully with the research process can produce better research and writing. Subject librarians are available to collaborate on creating engaging research assignments that effectively teach students about the research process.
Liaison Services offers a range of services to support the evolving research needs of faculty. We offer:
- Data management plan help
- Instruction to graduate students on data management best practices
- Help in finding data repositories, citation management tools, information about impact factors, and more
The Libraries also collaborate with faculty on research and teaching projects involving GIS data, data visualization, text mining, and other data analysis and presentation activities.
Collection Support
UH Libraries welcomes recommendations for its collection from faculty. Contact your liaison librarian with recommendations for the Libraries’ collection.
UH Libraries Quick Start Guide
The University of Houston Libraries is here to help students, faculty, staff, scholars, researchers, and lifelong learners reach their academic, personal, and professional goals. We’ve created a Quick Start Guide with links to some of our popular services and resources.
View our online research guides.
Your Cougarnet account is your key to all of the Libraries’ online resources. Use it to access resources here or from off-campus, and to access library computers.
The Technology Training Program at UH Libraries offers free instructor-led technology courses to current UH students, staff, and faculty. Classes are offered year-round and are held in room 106-P on the first floor of the MD Anderson Library. Popular courses include Adobe Acrobat, Excel, Google Docs, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, PowerPoint, Prezi, SPSS, and HTML, and more.
MD Anderson Library – general collections, Optometry Library (temporary)
Special Collections – MD Anderson Library second floor
William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library – Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture first floor
Music Library – Moores School of Music second floor
Health Sciences Library – coming soon to the forthcoming Health and Biomedical Sciences Building 2
MD Anderson Library has over 300 computers divided between two labs for the students, faculty, and staff of the University.
Print and scan services are available.
MD Anderson Library has a variety of study spaces, including group work rooms, open collaboration areas, and individuals quiet zones.
The Hamill Foundation Multimedia Studio features audio recording booths and professional-grade equipment to help students, staff, and faculty create high-quality productions.
Equipment including laptops, DSLRs and HD video cameras, GoPros, projectors, sound recorders, and more are available for check-out.
In addition to workspace, MD Anderson Library has areas for you to recharge between classes. Visit the McGovern Leisure Reading collection on the first floor.
Nominate a UH Librarian for the 2017 I Love My Librarian Award
Our nation’s librarians transform their communities, schools and campuses, and improve the lives of the people they serve every day. If a librarian has made an impact on you in a meaningful way, now is your chance to honor their contributions.
Nominate a UH librarian for the 2017 I Love My Librarian Award.
The I Love My Librarian Award encourages library users to recognize librarians in public, school, college, community college and university libraries for their efforts to make a difference in their communities.
Nominations will be open until September 18.
Up to 10 librarians will be selected to win $5,000 and be honored at a ceremony and reception in New York, hosted by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Additionally, each award-winner’s library will receive a commemorative plaque. Winners will be announced on November 30, 2017.
To be eligible, each nominee must be a librarian with a master’s degree in library and information studies from a program accredited by the American Library Association or a master’s degree with a specialty in school library media from an educational unit accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education. Nominees must also currently work in a public library, a library at an accredited two- or four-year college or university or at an accredited K-12 school in the United States.
The award is supported by Carnegie Corporation of New York, the New York Public Library, and The New York Times. It is administered by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.
New Student Art Exhibit in Jenkins Library
The William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library is pleased to present Leah Bydalek’s first solo exhibition.
Fluorescent Lessons is on view from July to August 2017. Bydalek is a senior painting major at the University of Houston. She confessed that her color palette was inspired by the pictorial artist Wayne Thiebaud, known for painting cakes. The artist also plays around with her memories and giving them a final twist.
Leah Bydalek’s art is on display in the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library through August.
Artist’s statement:
Fluorescent Lessons
I love it when the “truth” of a thing can be turned on its head to yield a novel experience.
It shows us that perceptions are malleable and that people have the potential to change.
This is the meeting point of the familiar and the unknown
the beautiful and the disgusting
the docile and the disobedient.
How to Do Research in UH Special Collections
The University of Houston Libraries Special Collections preserves, safeguards, organizes, and describes materials in its collecting areas, making them available for use by the UH community and the general public. Anyone is welcome to visit the UH Special Collections Reading Room, located on the second floor of the MD Anderson Library. UH Special Collections is home to rare, unique, and irreplaceable items of intellectual, cultural, and societal distinction, and for this reason, the materials are stored separately from the main library in a climate-controlled setting.
All are welcome to visit the UH Special Collections Reading Room.
UH Special Collections boasts a remarkable variety of primary source materials, both historic and contemporary. It is here that visitors can experience the sound recordings, creative material, and personal papers of hip hop icon DJ Screw, read a letter penned in 1833 by Antonio López de Santa Anna, or study the campaign papers of the Honorable Annise Parker. It is where a French scholar traveled to immerse herself in the world of literary luminary Donald Barthelme. It is where the history of KUHT is preserved and made digitally accessible. It is home to over 100,000 rare and antique books, including The Handy-Volume Shakespeare from 1885 and a French devotional book from the Middle Ages.
But there is much, much more in the archives of UH Special Collections. Students of all ages, scholars, researchers, history buffs, and lifelong learners, the curious and creative, can avail themselves of a vast array of singular treasures preserved here.
While UH Special Collections is known for its rich, Houston-centric collecting scope, the research collections also comprise primary materials with state, national, and global significance.
View a full list of collecting areas and archivist contact information.
A source of pride for UH Special Collections stems from its strong relationships with individual and organizational partners. UH faculty collaborate with archivists to connect students with primary source materials for transformational learning experiences. Archivists work with campus and institutional colleagues to increase the visibility of, and access to, the collections in the community through exhibits and sharing of materials.
Planning Your Visit to UH Special Collections
Visitors are encouraged to start by checking the collection coverage at the UH Special Collections website. Type a search term in the Archival Finding Aids field, or browse by collecting area. A finding aid is an inventory of a collection that contains an overview of the collection, scope and contents, and a biographical note. You’ll find that some collections have varying levels of description; some are more detailed than others. It’s helpful to look at the finding aid as a map that will lead you to relevant material.
For those who aren’t sure of the materials they need, it is best to contact a friendly and knowledgeable Special Collections archivist or staff member. Archivists oversee the collections and know what they contain and what they don’t. These professionals can direct you toward areas of the archives that may have been overlooked, or can suggest secondary general resources. Archivists can also assist students and researchers in articulating research questions. These are often developed or modified after an examination of the materials reveals new and interesting avenues of inquiry.
Once you have browsed the website and located specific materials that fit your research scope, schedule a visit to the Reading Room with a request to have the material pulled and ready for you when you arrive.
What to Expect on Your First Visit
An ID is needed to use the collections. On your first visit, you will be asked to complete a Patron Registration Form. A staff member will give you a quick orientation on how to handle the material. You may also use the computer in the Reading Room to browse finding aids. You’ll be given one box at a time. While looking through the materials, take full citations for later reference. Smartphone cameras are welcome in the Reading Room for the purposes of private study and research only.
Find out more about visiting UH Special Collections.
Additional Research Resources
The UH Digital Library makes digital collections available online, documenting the University, city of Houston, and state of Texas, as well as other historically and culturally significant materials. Collections within the UH Digital Library are mainly derived from Special Collections as well as the William R. Jenkins Architecture & Art Library and the Music Library. A few collections are from the UH Hilton College Hospitality Industry Archives.
The main UH Libraries’ OneSearch allows you to search through journals, databases, the catalog, research guides, and the website.
Have a question not covered above? Contact us.
Special thanks to Lisa Cruces, Hispanic Collections archivist, for her guidance on a recent visit to UH Special Collections that was the basis for this article.