The Library’s rich collection of visual resources related to the history of the University of Virginia reached a new level of accessibility in September 2021. That month, the digital library JSTOR included five public collections from UVA in a project to add high-quality images to its more than 1,900 journal titles. With the exception of Culbreth Theatre’s image collection of stagecraft props, the UVA images that were added to JSTOR’s Open Community Collections platform are all from the Library. The images are housed on web interfaces constructed by Metadata Librarian Ann Burns.
Two of the Library’s collections — photos of student graffiti captured from study carrels in the main library prior to renovation, and photos of regional and vernacular world architecture taken between 1959 and 2013 by UVA Professor of Architecture Robert Vickery — were featured in the 2020 Library Annual Report. The additional collections are the thousands of items in the Richard Guy Wilson Architecture Archive and the James Murray Howard University of Virginia Historic Buildings and Grounds Collection.
Measuring impact is a critical element of library work, and it often illuminates opportunities for improvement. The Library’s recent Graduate Student Survey is one such example and its findings echo results from the UVA-wide Student Experience in the Research University survey, which focused specifically on the graduate student experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic has been a complicating factor in all realms of graduate student life, it affected Library services a great deal during 2020 and 2021, and the responses in the Graduate Student Survey reflected that.
Three key patterns emerged through the surveys, presented here with representative comments:
First, graduate students wanted better outreach efforts to raise awareness of ways the Library can assist them throughout the course of their education, such as recommending purchases, using interlibrary loan, or engaging with specialty units like the Scholars’ Lab.
Applications are now being accepted for three Library programs: Research Sprints, Course Enrichment Grants, and Affordability & Equity Grants.
Course Enrichment Grants provide support to faculty who would like to enhance students’ abilities to seek, evaluate, manage, and use information and data, as well as create or improve on media-rich class assignments. Recipients receive a $2,500 award (as summer wages or to a research account) and dedicated support from experienced librarians, technologists, or other library staff.
The Central Gazette, established by brothers Clement Pynes McKennie and John Harris McKennie, was Charlottesville’s first newspaper, running from January 1820 until July 1827. A four-page weekly available at a subscription rate of $3 per year, the Central Gazette aggregated items of foreign and domestic news and posted articles and notices of local and regional interest. In the first issue, the publishers laid out the paper’s intended scope: “Besides detailing the general intelligence of the day, it will give a copious account of every transaction appertaining to Agriculture and the general prosperity of Virginia—her seat of learning, her emporium of Arts and her schools of Science.” The paper included marriage notices, obituaries, notices of items found or stolen, want ads, and advertisements for services and goods. The University of Virginia was an early advertiser; Proctor Arthur S. Brockenbrough posted a notice in the March 11, 1820 issue promising “liberal wages” for laborers willing to work at UVA.
Jacob Hopkins knew from a young age that he wanted to work with books and people, either in a bookstore or a library. “I think what I have always liked about libraries is that everyday practice of teaching and learning, as well as meeting people where they are,” he said.
Hopkins joined the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library as an Instruction Librarian in August, becoming the newest member of a vast network of teaching librarians at the University of Virginia Library serving UVA and the local community. In the past calendar year, UVA Library staff conducted nearly 650 instruction sessions, orientations, and tutorials with students, faculty, staff, and community members, introducing them to the Library and sharpening their critical thinking skills.
Scholars have increasingly been moving toward a more inclusive historical narrative, recognizing the contributions of marginalized communities that have often been glossed over in prominent histories. The Library's Collections team is helping to create a more complete and accurate narrative by amplifying voices of Native people; people of color; people questioning prescribed gender roles; people with disabilities; and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities — adding new resources not for the sake of diversity alone but as a way promoting lasting, systemic change.
Just before the winter break, the Library rolled out a refreshed version of its public website, library.virginia.edu. Virgo, LibGuides, and other Library interfaces remain unaffected.
The update is the public manifestation of work that has been ongoing for many years — to design and test a better user experience for new and expert Library users alike. The site will continue to evolve in response to user testing and feedback, and we appreciate your input and patience as progress continues.
Why change?
The main goal of the new site is to provide better navigation and discoverability through improved information architecture. This means more usable menus, as well as better organization of key concepts. This change seeks to benefit expert users as well as folks who may not yet know what the Library can do for them.
For I’ve grown a little leaner, grown a little colder
Grown a little sadder, grown a little older
And I need a little angel sitting on my shoulder [We] need a little Christmas now
As the University of Virginia community heads toward the holiday break, some might be looking for a good book to read over the quiet string of days before the new year. In the spirit of so many end-of-the-year “best books” lists, we asked UVA Library staff to recommend their favorite books they read in 2022. The books could be any genre, published in any year, so long as they were available in UVA Library’s collections.
Take a look at the recommended books below, and check some out for the holidays. Happy reading!
Recommended by Leigh Rockey, Video Collections Librarian
UVA photographer Dan Addison captured exciting moments in October, as a crew installed massive skylights over the new library’s indoor atria.
The UVA Library inhabits more than five locations, including Brown Science and Engineering Library, Clemons Library, Fine Arts Library, Music Library, and Harrison/Small Special Collections Library; plus professional libraries like Health Sciences, Darden, and Law. The main library, Alderman, was closed in early 2020 for renovation, and work continues apace as staff members prepare to move into the space (along with books and services) in late 2023 and early 2024.
When Gayle Cooper was a little girl picking cotton on her family’s subsistence farm in Alabama, she had no idea she would go on to become one of UVA Library's longest-serving employees.
The ‘Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style, and Racial Uplift’ catalog, showcasing the photos and stories of African Americans in central Virginia during the early 20th century, is in partnership with ... the University of Virginia’s Small Special Collections Library.
Linton worked with Sue Donovan, a book conservator in Special Collections at UVA Library to study the bodices and ensure they did not contain traces of arsenic.
“Robopocalypse”