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TowersNewsletter of the Library Associates of the University of Idaho Library

Fall 2011 Volume 14, Issue 1

How do academic libraries function as community centers? What are we doing to create a sense of community and place here at the University of Idaho library? What could we do better?

Library as Place, Library as Space

P.O. Box 442350Moscow, ID 83844Phone: (208) 885-6534Email: librdean@uidaho.edu

Inside this issue:

Library as Place, Library as Space ........1-2

Twainiana & Angling Collections in Special Collections................................3

The Library by the Numbers.......................3

The Future of Past Time and Space: Recent Highlights and Future Directions for Digital Initiatives at the UI Library.......................................4-5

Information Commons & Tutoring...........6

September 11 Remembrance Exhibit.....6

Peace Corps 50th Anniversary Exhibit ...6

Dean’s Corner: Library Advisory Board ..7

Ways to Give ....................................................7

To subscribe to Towers, please visit us at:

www.lib.uidaho.edu/giving/

continued on page 2

Across from the reference desk, on the main floor of the library, there is a white board. A young woman walks up to the white board and lingers, reading for a few moments, tilting her head this way and that to see what is written. Finally, she picks up a dry eraser marker and squats down, carefully printing Blueberries for Sal. It is all I can do not to run across the floor and say, “HEY! I love Blueberries for Sal too!” I restrain myself; after all, this is a library, right? Not a place for the kind of squealing in which I am tempted to indulge. Or is it?

This white board, posing the question, “What books did you love as a child?” stands next to a library exhibit on Louisa May Alcott. In just 24 hours, it has been covered in children’s book titles, including everything from The Poky Little Puppy to The Chronicles of Narnia. The week before, the same white board stood next to our exhibit in remembrance of September 11th, asking library visitors, “How have the events of 9/11 changed your life?” The discussion that ensued was passionate, diverse, and engaged, drawing people toward the exhibit, and more importantly, into conversation with each other. These kinds of conversations are just one small part of the many ways the University of Idaho Library works to create a space and a place for community. Fostering collaboration, cohesiveness and diversity is part of fulfilling our vision statement, in which we seek to,

“present the best of Idaho to the world, and the best of the world to our university.”

In 2011, in Section 403 of the Stafford Act, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) declared libraries to be essential community organizations, eligible to receive relief funds and temporary relocation under the FEMA Public Assistance Program, formally recognizing what many of us have always known: the value of libraries reaches far beyond their ability to supply us with books and information. In the past fifteen years, as the Internet has permeated more and more aspects of our lives, providing instant access to overwhelming amounts of information, the demise of the library has been predicted regularly. The reports of the death of libraries, however, have been greatly

A student adding a favorite children’s book title to our whiteboard. Photo by Bill Kerr

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Libraries, continued from p. 1

exaggerated. Why? What do libraries give us that we don’t get elsewhere? There are too many answers to that question to discuss here, but as FEMA recognizes in the Stafford Act, one thing libraries offer us is community. The library, as both space and place, simultaneously provides us with exciting ideas and the room and context to process those ideas with the very people with whom we live and work and play.

Libraries have been challenged to adapt to a new and increasingly technology focused landscape of thought and learning. As Elmborg observes, ”An entirely new vocabulary has emerged around learning spaces and how to conceptualize and create them … We have come to think of learning as a constructive process, which has encouraged us to redesign schools and libraries to foster collaborative and active learning” (339). The field of librarianship is actively engaged in theoretically and physically building libraries that are dynamic relevant places that continue to respond to change in ways that allow them to retain their essential functions places for thought and fomenting informed deliberation.

In “Bowling Alone in the Library: Building Social Capital on Campus,” Frey and Codispoti frame this function of the academic library in terms of sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s idea of the “third-place.” Oldenburg posits that third-places are critical spaces outside of work and home where people gather, such as pubs, cafes, downtowns, bookstores, and coffee houses. According to Oldenburg, these places are critical to forming engaged, vibrant communities and promoting social equality. Libraries fit very naturally into this concept of third-place, particularly on college campuses where students are able to gather together outside of classrooms and dorms.

By emphasizing browsability by time and place, our newly accessible Digital Collections (p. 3) are another way we situate ourselves within the context of our local and global communities, even online. Many libraries, the University of Idaho Library included, are making concerted efforts to create spaces that can be used by students as a “third-place” by providing moveable furniture, open study spaces, and places for conversation and group study.

Many of the University of Idaho Library’s latest projects, and specifically those we’ll be talking about in this issue of Towers, coalesce around the idea of the library as a third space for members of our community. The bright modular furniture, expansive stretches of whiteboard space, and the freshly re-located Tutoring Assistance Center and Statistics Lab in our new group study area (p. 6) invite students to think of the library as a place to come together to work and think collaboratively. Every day of the week, the group study area is filled with students meeting to study, discuss, work on class projects, or just read.

Our moveable whiteboards allow the university community to engage with each other and the library in a very spontaneous, direct way. In addition to questions related to our exhibits, whiteboards have sought feedback on what we should call our new space, and we are planning to keep the conversations going. It is surprising and gratifying to see how enthusiastically and creatively our library patrons are willing to contribute to these discussions!

No place else is quite like Idaho, and all of our unique collections reflect different aspects of the history of the University of Idaho and the people and places with which it has been associated. Clicking on the INSIDE Idaho interactive map, or scrolling through the images and documents in the Big Burn Collection gives readers a visceral sense of the identity, history, and physical and cultural geography of the University and its community.

Finally, we are excited to having the newly created Library Advisory Board (p. 7), which will give the library external perspectives on library services, assist in identifying and acquiring resources and support for library activities, and serve as advocates for the library and its programs, as a new and vital voice in the University of Idaho Library conversation.

Thank you for reading and being a part of our community too.

References

Council on Library and Information Resources. Library as Place: Rethinking Roles, Rethinking Space. Washington, D.C., 2005.

Elmborg, James K. “Libraries as the Spaces Between Us: Recognizing and Valuing the Third Space.” Reference & User Services Quarterly 50.1 (2011): 338-350).

Frey, Susan M. and Margti Codispoti. “Bowling Alone in the Library: Building Social Capital onCampus.” Popular Culture & American Culture Association Annual National Conference, St. Louis, Missouri. Arpil 2010. Conference paper.

“An entirely new vocabulary has emerged around

learning spaces and how to conceptualize and create

them…We have come to think of learning as a constructive

process, which has encouraged us to redesign schools and

libraries to foster collaborative and active learning.”

(above) From Digital Collections- The Big Burn Collection:A picture of Wallace, Idaho taken after the forest fire of 1910

- James Elmbourg

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New Information Commons on the First Floor

Peace Corps ExhibitIn remembrance of this tragedy and the lives lost, and in honor of all of the people who courageously worked together in heroic rescue efforts, the library hosted an interactive September 11th Remembrance exhibit on the first floor. The exhibit included a poster designed by University Creative Services (image above), as well as a flag that was flown over the Pentagon, the World Trade Center Towers, and the Flight 93 Memorial Site, and an official 9/11 Commemorative Flag. We placed one of our moveable whiteboards nearby and invited community members to respond to the exhibit and the legacy of the events of 9/11. We started the conversation by asking, “How have the events of 9/11 changed your life?” The conversation that ensued was engaged, relevant, and passionate.

The traveling exhibit, “Idaho Commemorates 50 Years of Peace Corps Service,” made its University of Idaho debut this September on the first and second floors of the library. This exhibit, a joint project of the Idaho Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and the Idaho Histori-cal Museum, included poster-sized images and artifacts that tell the history of the Peace Corps and Idaho’s Peace Corps volunteers.

The poster panels lined the walls of the first floor hallway and the area near the second floor elevators, and artifacts were displayed in the cases on the both floors. More than 1,350 Idahoans have volunteered with the Peace Corps since it was founded in 1961. We extend special thanks to returned volunteer Louise Barber for all her hard work on the exhibit (and ingenuity with fishing line).

In 2008, the University of Idaho Library developed a long-range plan to transition traditional library space into a collaborative Learning Commons. The first step in that plan was implemented this fall with several new changes to the first floor space of the library, including new modular furniture, col-laborative workspaces, and rearranged refer-ence stacks to create a larger area for group study. Support for these innovations came from our donors, the Library Associates.

Perhaps the most innovative feature is the new whiteboard wall paint, intended to facil-itate collaboration and visual learning. So far, the whiteboards have been used primarily by students in interdisciplinary scholarly pursuits, but librarians have also encouraged student participation and feedback by using them to post weekly discussion questions. In addition to providing new learning spaces, the new arrangement has also resulted in increased interest in the library’s exhibit and display spaces on the first and second floors. A special thank you to the First Floor Redesign Task Force Committee for making these innovative changes possible.

This fall also marked the beginning of a new initiative between the library and two tutoring services on campus: the Tutoring Assistance Center (TAC), run by Tutoring and Academic Assistance Programs, and the Statistics Assistance Center (SAC), run by the College of Science’s Department of Statistics.

The SAC and TAC will retain an administra-tive support presence in the Commons, but all active tutoring going forward will take place on the first and second floors of the library. This is another step towards the model of inclusive student learning and collaborative work space envisioned in the Learning Commons plan. So far, in the first few weeks of the fall semester, the first floor space has already seen dramatic increases in use. If you’re in Moscow, please feel free to stop by and see the new developments-it’s an exciting time for the library!

-Kristin Henrich, Reference Coordinator

(above) Brand new furniture and whiteboards in the Learning Commons. Photo by Bill Kerr

(left and above) Artifacts from around the world were contributed to the exhibit by returned

Idaho Peace Corps volunteers. Photos by Bill Kerr

National Day of Remembrance

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The Future of Past Time and Space: Recent Highlights and Future Directions for

Digital Collections at the University of Idaho LibraryThis past year has brought major changes and additions to the digital initiatives department at the library, and the coming year looks to bring even more additions and revisions, as we have several projects already in the works that should revamp the look, feel, and accessibility of our collections.

Many of these changes are driven by an increased emphasis in the department on the times and locations of our items. One can get a taste for our new emphasis on location by checking out our newly revamped collections: the Idaho Historical Aerial Photographs Collection (http://cloud.insideidaho.org/webMaps/flash/hap/).

The Idaho Historical Aerial Photographs Collection has been available in different digital formats for several years. The collection began and persisted up until last spring as a collection of image files on CDs that were held in Reserves and could be browsed by request. In 2010, INSIDE Idaho created a web application that allowed users to browse the catalog records and a handful of digital images via an interactive, online map. This past Spring (2011), we noticed that some of the image files on the CDs might be in danger of corruption, so we added digital copies of all the image files to our own digital archive for preservation purposes and published online all photographs that were connected to INSIDE Idaho’s web application. Consequently, all points on the INSIDE Idaho map now link directly to our Digital Collection of images, meaning that users can browse and view historical aerial photographs online based on desired location. The collection has subsequently become one of our most highly accessed digital collections.

The Big Burn Collection (http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/bigburn/), an online exhibit displaying materials related to the “big burn” fires of 1910 in Northern Idaho and Northwest Montana, was also added to Digital Collections in the past year. The addition of this collection was particularly timely because the University of Idaho’s 2011 Common Read Program focused on Timothy Egan’s 2009 book, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America.

(left) Image from the Big Burn Collection, taken during the forest fire

in Wallace, Idaho (1910)

(right) Picture of two men burned in the Wallace, Idaho forest fire (1910).

All images from University of Idaho Digital Collections

Much of Egan’s research for the book was done in the University of Idaho’s Special Collections and Archives; The Big Burn Collection from Digital initiatives makes the documents Egan studied easily accessible to the general public.

Watch for announcements regarding the new revisions and updates to our digital collections on our newly designed library homepage http://www.lib.uidaho.edu or visit us directly at http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/. And if you ever have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please contact me at dbecker@uidaho.edu or by phone at 208.885.7040.

(above) Interactive searchable map providing access to the Idaho Historical Aerial Photograph Collection

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New “Twainiana” and Fly Fishing Collections in Special Collections

The University of Idaho Library by the Numbers

Special Collections & Archives is very excited to report the donation of two substantial libraries. The first is a collection of over 300 books by and about Mark Twain (including a substantial batch of ephemera, prints, and film adaptations) from the Rev. Canon Donald Fraser. Canon Fraser is a new friend to the Library Associates, having been introduced to us by Library Advisory Board member Dolores Chapman. This collection includes over a dozen first editions, and most of the other volumes are first edition thus (i.e., an edition of a work that postdates the original first edition but contains some modification to the work, such as a new introduction, added illustrations, and/or a revision of the text). There are also several multi-volume editions, including all books published by the Mark Twain Project at University of California at Berkeley, and all of the manuscript facsimile editions. With this gift, the Uni-versity of Idaho will have one of the finest collections of “Twainiana” in the Northwest. This collection will be housed in Special Collections, but like all of our resources, widely available to all researchers.

The second gift to Special Collections is Dave Engerbretson’s library of more than 250 books on fly fishing and fishing in general from Shirley Engerbretson, his widow. Dave taught exer-cise science at Washington State University, but he was best known for his angling exploits and extensive writing and research on fly fishing. Early on in his life, he headed his own fly fishing school at the K Bar L ranch in Montana. He was also a commercial fly tier for the Orvis Company and a licensed fishing guide on numerous rivers throughout the Inland North-west. Until his death he was editor-at-large for Fly Fisherman magazine as well as a contrib-uting editor to the Virtual Fly Shop, Cabelas’s Guidebooks, and Lefty’s World. He was perhaps best known as the host of the popular PBS television series, Fly-tying: The Angler’s Art, seen nationwide. Along with the books, Shirley also included a set of prize-winning framed flies exhibited by Dave—these will soon find their way into an exhibit on angling in Idaho.

– Garth Reese, Head of Special Collections

Dave Engerbretson in action.

Thanks to the Rev. Canon Donald Fraser’s recent gift, the UI Library now houses one of the finest Mark Twain (above) collections in the Northwest.

In an average day at the UI Library (summer, weekends and holidays included):

• Over 1,200 people came into the Library.

• Our website was visited 1,000 times, with each visitor viewing, on average, 2 pages.

• WorldCat Local was accessed 250 times, with each visitor viewing, on average, 10 pages.

• 1,700 articles were downloaded.

• 3,400 searches were done on databases over the course of almost 600 sessions.

• 200 physical items were checked out, 30 reserve items were used, and 60 items were renewed.

• Over 100 ebooks and e-reference books were used

• 14 articles and 14 books were borrowed through ILL. ILL also loaned 16 books and 25 articles to other libraries.

In other words, day or night, weekend or weekday, holiday or not, on average:

• Every 25 seconds, someone searched a database.

• Every 34 seconds, someone viewed a new page on WorldCat Local.

• Every 43 seconds, someone viewed a page on our website.

• Every 50 seconds, someone downloaded an article.

• Every 71 seconds, someone entered our library

• Every 7 minutes, someone checked out a book.

• Every 47 minutes, someone checked out a reserve item.

• Every 51 minutes, someone asked a question at the Reference Desk.

• Every hour, a student received classroom instruction from a Librarian.

Selections from both of these collections, as well as books

from Shirley Strom’s 2009 gift, will be on exhibit at this year’s

University Gala.

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Ways to GiveFor more information on giving options and ensuring your gift is used exactly the way you want it to be, contact Dean Lynn Baird at (208) 885-6534.• CashGifts• PlannedGiving• In-kindGifts(Materialsand

Personal Collections) • TaxBenefitsAppreciatedAssets• MemorialorHonoraryGifts

For more information, please visit: www.lib.uidaho.edu/giving/ways.html

Visit us online:www.lib.uidaho.edu

Become a Fan: facebook.com/UofILibrary

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Check in on Foursquare: foursquare.com/venue/1500910

P.O. Box 442350Moscow, ID 83844Phone: (208) 885-6534Email: librdean@uidaho.edu

As part of its commitment to sustainability, the University has chosen to focus on the theme, Owning Our Own Destiny. Colleges and departments across the university are undertaking a variety of entrepreneurial activities in support of this theme, and the library is no exception. In order to better own our own destiny, we have established the Library Advisory Board.

The newly established Library Advisory Board is led by Ruthie Nellis. Vice-chair and chair-elect is Gary Strong. Other members include Dan Butler, Dolores Chapman, Leif Erickson, Ron Force, Ben Hunter, Julie Levine, Stephen Parrot, Howard Peavy, Garth Reese, and Shirley Strom. We are grateful for the support and feedback we receive from this newly formed group as well as our annual giving friends group, the Library Associates. The Library Associates group is led by Bob Staab (chair) and Gary Williams (vice-chair). These two attend the Library Advisory Board meetings to facilitate communication between the two organizations.

The members of the Library Advisory Board will give the library external perspectives on library

Dean’s Corner: Library Advisory Board

services, assist in identifying and acquiring resources and support for library activities, and serve as advocates for the library and its programs. Chairwoman Nellis is currently forming committees for the Library Advisory Board, which meets twice per year. These committees focus on activities that support the board’s mission.

The next meeting of the Library Advisory Board will be Oct. 28, 2011; it will be held in conjunction with a university-wide meeting of all advisory boards.

–Lynn Baird, Dean of Library Services

Dr. Lynn Baird, Dean of the Library