News from the Director

Welcome to a new academic year. I hope you had an enjoyable summer. We’ve been busy in the Libraries and have some important items of news to share with you.

Many of you may recall that this past spring we participated, along with other UW Libraries, in a national assessment survey (LibQUAL+). First, I wish to thank those of you who were tapped to respond in this random survey of our users and who submitted your answers along with very thoughtful and helpful comments.

We recently received our institutional data results from this survey, which we are just beginning to analyze. I am happy to say that our results look comparable to those of our participating peer institutions. We will be using these results to help identify ways to improve service and to help us better understand our users’ needs. Our goal is to provide excellent library service, recognizing the challenges that we still face. These results will be incorporated into our future planning processes.

In addition to responses to the questions, we received several hundred comments and there were no real surprises. Overall our users find the Libraries friendly and service-oriented. Some typical comments from faculty: "very helpful staff, courteous, knowledgeable"; "Electronic Reserve is one of the most important tools to come along in years."

Faculty did express some concerns about the collection. One cited a “lack of access to some critical databases”; another wrote that the Libraries “have to stop cutting journals if we claim to be a research institution.” A good summary of faculty responses is expressed in the following: “ . . . the library is an essential part of achieving the University’s research and education missions, but has been significantly underfunded for many years. Services have been very good overall, but the number of holdings and physical environment reflect the [need] for improvement of this essential aspect of an academic environment.”

Students urged us to modernize our building, and to add more modular, comfortable seating conducive to group study. And they consistently asked for a coffee shop where they could gather.

So, how are we responding? We are happy to announce that part of the main floor of the east wing of the library has been transformed into a comfortable meeting place, with café service and wireless internet access (see Responding to Changing Needs).

Some progress can also be seen on the collection front: This past spring, with an infusion of one-time money, we were able to fill requests from faculty and staff that had been held up due to insufficient funding, as well as acquire resources to support new and growing campus programs. Additionally, this fiscal year we received an increase to our base budget, enabling us to target requested resource needs we were previously unable to consider. The funding has also allowed us to avoid a serials cancellation for this fiscal year.

It goes without saying that inflation for resources continues to outpace our purchasing power, so we will never be able to acquire all requested items. However, we will continue to expand services to provide access to needed resources, including rapid article document delivery to your desktop (via ILLiad), direct borrowing of books through UW libraries via UW System borrowing, and more consortial purchases of electronic resources. Our collaborative efforts with other UW libraries to foster the idea of “one system, one library” will continue to grow in importance in this information rich but fiscally poor environment.

On another note, some of you have expressed concern about privacy and library usage. In response to the USA Patriot Act, we have implemented policies and procedures to ensure that we protect our users’ privacy by retaining only essential data. For example, once a book is returned, the user information is deleted so that there is no existing record detailing specific books a user had checked out. Our online forms, as well as remote access to resources through EZ Proxy, are now fully secured.

We regard the Code of Ethics of our national organization (American Library Association) very seriously: “We protect each library user's right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received, and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired or transmitted.” Let me assure you that safeguarding user privacy and confidentiality has long been an integral part of the mission of the UWM Libraries.

Wishing you a good semester and hoping to see you often in the Libraries.

Ewa Barczyk
Interim Director of Libraries

New Digital Collections

How Milwaukee has pictured itself and pictures of Golda Meir are the subjects of two new digital collections produced by the UWM Libraries.

Greetings from Milwaukee: Selections from the Thomas and Jean Ross Bliffert Postcard Collection is drawn from the over 12,000 postcards donated by the Blifferts to the Libraries in 1998, and focuses on Milwaukee postcards produced by Milwaukee publishers. Ranging from the late 19th century to the 1960’s, the images are an invaluable visual resource, often revealing a lost Milwaukee: historic buildings, now torn down and replaced; Victorian-era parks, soon to be shorn of their flair; and, with less pathos, raccoons at the zoo.

Picturing Golda Meir is a collection of 160 images documenting the life of Golda Meir from childhood in Pinsk, Russia, through her school years in Milwaukee (including her time at the Milwaukee Normal School, a UWM predecessor institution), her pioneer years in Palestine in the 1920s, to the peak of her political career as Prime Minister of Israel (1969-74). The photographs were selected from the Golda Meir Collection, 1904-1987, housed in the Archives Department of the UWM Libraries.

Both electronic collections were created by Digital Projects Librarian Krystyna Matusiak, with the assistance of Max Yela, Amelia Klem, Marta L. Magnuson, and Bart Schmidt, and may be accessed at http://www.uwm.edu/Library/digilib/

“Find It!” @ the Libraries

Library users can now link directly to most UWM Libraries’ online full-text articles, thanks to a new research tool called “Find It!” Employing a powerful linking software, “Find It!” also provides direct access to additional resources and services through a common menu.

is available after a search is performed in one of the Libraries’ databases which have adopted Open URL standards. Simply click this button from the search results list. If the full text of an article is not currently available electronically, “Find It!” provides a link to the Libraries’ catalog, PantherCat, to quickly check for journal holdings, and to ILLiad, to perform an Interlibrary Loan request, with the necessary fields automatically transferred from the database into the form. Additional full-text journals may be found by clicking on the link to PantherCat.

The new software also provides a tool called “Citation Linker,” which allows users to quickly search by article title, journal title, author, date, volume, etc. For more information about “Find It!” and “Citation Linker,” visit http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/ris/guides/findit/.

Native American Literature Collection Highlighted at “Spirit” Event

The UWM Libraries’ Native American Literature Collection, held in the Libraries’ Special Collections Department, was highlighted in a panel display at Peter Buffett’s “Spirit, The Seventh Fire” multimedia event on Milwaukee’s lakefront August 19-September 10. The exhibit featured eight six-foot panels with text and images that provided an overview of one of the few special collections in the United States documenting the Native American experience through the writings of American Indian authors.

The display examined representative examples from the collection with an emphasis on the collection’s areas of strength, including early Native American literature, contemporary fiction, poetry, non-fiction, transcriptions of oral literature, native languages, and serial publications.

The purpose of the Native American Literature Collection in Special Collections is to build a comprehensive collection of American Indian thought and literary effort for the purposes of preservation, documentation, and research. The collection holds over 850 first, early, and special editions, and consists almost entirely of materials written or created by native peoples of the continental United States, Alaska, and Canada from all historical and contemporary periods.

While the tradition of Native American literature is long, the publishing of native writings blossomed after WWII, and experienced a sharp increase after 1968 during the so-called "Native American Renaissance." It is in this later period that the collection has its greatest strength. Special Collections does not collect materials on Native American themes and issues by non-Indian writers, except in the case of anthologies, edited collections, translations, and collaborations with native authors, where the intellectual content of the publication is primarily of American Indian creation.

Special Collections’ holdings of Native American Literature are complimented by American Indian literary holdings in the general collections and the Curriculum Library of the UWM Libraries. Examples of the Native American literary holdings at the UWM Libraries may be viewed in the online exhibit Native Voices: American Indian Literature at the Golda Meir Library at http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/special/exhibits/nativelt/nativelt.htm

Max Yela

Archives On the Air, At the Symposium, In the Theater

Michael Doylen, Head of the Libraries’ Archives Department, and Mary Huelsbeck, Archivist, recently appeared on "At Ten," a program of WUWM (Milwaukee Public Radio 89.7), to discuss the WTMJ-TV News Film Collection. Administered by the UWM Archives Department, the collection consists of the original news film footage used to illustrate stories broadcast by WTMJ-TV News from 1948 to 1980.

The Archives has made significant progress in opening the entire collection for research since processing began in 2001. This year the Archives received its second Herzfeld Foundation grant—$50,000 plus a $25,000 matching grant—to continue the task of cataloging and preserving the estimated 1.5 million feet of 16mm film.

The interview, broadcast on July 13, is archived on the WUWM Web site at .

* * * * * * *

Selections from the WMTV-TV News Film Collection were prominently featured as part of the “Symposium on Milwaukee History,” held in the UWM Libraries’ fourth floor Conference Center, October 7 and 8. The symposium examined the current state of scholarly understanding of Milwaukee history and suggested directions for future research. As part of the symposium, scholars had the opportunity to learn about the wealth of information contained in the WTMJ-TV News Film Collection.

In September, selections from the collection were featured at UWM’s Union Film series. Footage documenting the working conditions of migrant Latino populations in Wisconsin in the 1960s were shown before Haiti: Dreams of Democracy, Dreamers: The Painters of Haiti and The Agronomist. In one clip, Jesus Salas, an early activist for Latin Americans in Milwaukee and current University of Wisconsin System Regent, discusses migrant working conditions in rural Wisconsin. In another, a WTMJ-TV reporter explores issues facing Cuban refugees in the city of Milwaukee.

2004-05 Chancellor’s Golda Meir Library Scholars

The Chancellor's Golda Meir Library Scholar Award (CGMLSA), established in 2002, supports the research of outstanding UWM graduate students. The winners for 2004-05 are Lillie Adams, Department of Urban Education, whose research focuses on the role of mentors for African-American males in Milwaukee, based on the Milwaukee Police Athletic League program; Kristoffer Berlin, Department of Psychology, who is conducting a study of an autosomal genetic disorder occurring in children and its correlation with behavioral indicators; and Virginia Kuhn, Department of English, whose work explores the role of visual literacy in composition classes, and the sorts of technologies and literacy that students of the twenty-first century will need to command.

This year the awards were collaboratively funded by the UWM Libraries and the Graduate School. The winners receive a stipend and individual library assistance, and present their results at The Scholar and the Library lecture series the year following their award.

Milwaukee’s Irish Heritage Featured

"Irish Milwaukee" was the subject of the UWM Libraries Archives' third Revisiting Our Past local history lecture, sponsored in part by the Friends of the Library. Martin Hintz, author of Irish Milwaukee, recently published by Arcadia Press, presented the talk on August 12.

Using images from area archives, Hintz described early Milwaukee and the arrival of immigrants, contributions that the Irish made to the city, the disaster that befell the community with the sinking of the Lady Elgin, and prominent individuals in the community, including those with UWM ties.

His talk ended with an account of the establishment of Milwaukee Irish Fest, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary next year. Hintz is currently working on a book that will mark that event.

Christel Maass

AGSL Curator Presents Paper in Argentina

Christopher Baruth, Curator of the UWM Libraries’ American Geographical Society Library, delivered a paper, “The American Geographical Society's Hispanic Map: Creation and Legacy,” at the annual International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference in Buenos Aires, held August 21-28. His talk described the Society's mammoth quarter-century effort to compile the Latin American sheets of the International Map of the World at a scale of 1:1,000,000. Baruth is a member of IFLA’s Standing Committee of the Geography and Map Libraries Section.

Digital Project Honored

At the annual awards ceremony of the Milwaukee Repertory Theater on April 19, Interim Director Ewa Barczyk and Digital Librarian Krystyna Matusiak accepted a certificate from the Rep, recognizing the UWM Libraries’ role in creating the online digital collection, Milwaukee Repertory Theater Photographic History: The Mark Avery Collection 1977-1994.

The project, completed in 2003, provides a visual chronicle through 17 seasons of the Milwaukee Rep, and includes 1,800 images documenting 195 productions. It may be accessed at www.uwm.edu/Libraries/digilib/milrep/index.htm.

New Staff

New arrivals to the Libraries staff since January include:

Susan Coenen, Associate Academic Librarian (FTE)—Research and Instructional Support

Ellen Engseth, Academic Archivist I—Archives

Rebecca Herzog, Library Services Assistant-Advanced/Lead—Reserve Services

Amelia Klem, Library Services Assistant-Advanced/Lead—Special Collections

Kelly Leu, Associate Academic Librarian (FTE)—AGSL Re-Cataloging Project

Chieko Maene, Library Services Assistant-Advanced/Lead (LTE) and Associate Academic Librarian (FTE) —AGSL

Molly Mathias, Associate Academic Librarian—Research and Instructional Support

Christopher Noyed, IS Comprehensive Professional—Automation

Bart Schmidt, Associate Academic Librarian (FTE)—AGSL Re-Cataloging Project

Joe Tomich, Associate Academic Librarian—Monographs

Recent Donations

We wish to thank all of our generous donors who help sustain our tradition of excellence in library services and resources. Donations of books, maps, videos and other materials enhance our collections and support the research needs of our users. Your contributions mean a great deal to us. Thank you to the following donors for library materials:

If you wish to donate books or related materials, please contact Janet Padway, Collections Manager, at 414-229-6458. Please note that the Libraries reserve the right to decline donations that do not fall within our collecting scope or that duplicate existing holdings.

Exhibit Showcases Contemporary European Artists Books

“Inside Cover,” a traveling exhibition highlighting contemporary European artists books, will be on view in the Fourth Floor Exhibition Gallery of UWM’s Golda Meir Library through November 30, 2004. The exhibition, curated by British book artist Jonathan Ward, offers examples of nineteen new artists books from England, Scotland, France and the Netherlands.

For “Inside Cover,” artists were invited to produce a book in a limited edition of 100 copies to be packaged into boxed sets for exhibition, sale, and education. The artists were kept intentionally uninformed about the contributions of other artists to the project. The resulting books represent an eclectic mix of work that defines the role of the book in a variety of ways. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 8 am-4:30 pm, and by appointment.

How To . . . Use the Libraries

The library instruction program is off to a busy fall. More than 2,100 UWM students, faculty, and community members participated in events led by the Research and Instructional Support (RIS) staff both in and outside of the library during September. Librarians from the Curriculum and Music Libraries and from Archives, Multicultural Studies, and Special Collections taught additional classes. RIS librarians are working closely with faculty to increase library connections to the curriculum, enhance research at UWM, and to remind students that there are friendly, helpful people in the library. The RIS walk-in workshop schedule, updated monthly, can be accessed online at http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/ris/instruction/workshops.html.