Month: October 2009

2009-10-30

Many University of Illinois graduate students are in programs that require the completion of a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation to earn a degree.

As of October 5, 2009, the Graduate College offers master’s and doctoral students the option to submit an electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD) for review by and deposit with the Thesis Office. Students who have formatted their theses according to Graduate College thesis requirements and have obtained departmental approval for the thesis may submit an ETD now .

The ETD submission system for submitting a thesis is the result of a partnership between the Graduate College and the University’s digital repository for research and scholarship, the Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS).

A brief informational video about the ETD process is now available from the University Library in two formats:

• Flash version (with captions, may be turned off by clicking “CC” on the menu bar after video starts)
• QuickTime version (with captions)

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2009-10-14

Ellen Tise, 2009-2011 president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions will be the 2009 Mortenson Distinguished Lecturer. The Isolation and Information Famine Stifling Africa’s Growth lecture will be on Thursday, October 22 at 4:00 pm in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science building (Room 126).

During the scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century, European countries staked claims to virtually every part of the continent to tap into the vast natural resources in Africa. However, post independence from colonial powers has seen the stifling of growth of African countries. It is a generally held view that one of the pre-requisites for the alleviation of poverty and the stimulation of growth is equitable access to resources. And, one of the most fundamental of resources is knowledge. The literature supports this view as it reveals that knowledge and information are fundamental pillars for freedom, the exercising of political power, and economic, social and personal development.

It is the commonly held view that libraries will serve as the intermediary collecting, preserving and making provision of the equitable access to knowledge. African libraries therefore have an important role to play in breaking the isolation and information famine in Africa. They could for example broaden their traditional roles and assume such roles as publishers of information, especially indigenous knowledge which has played such a critical role in Africa. They could play a much more significant role in lifelong learning and cultural development. The public library could become the hub of their communities, providing free, accessible space, resources and services for everyone. Libraries have the opportunity to open channels for the free flow of knowledge and information for the growth and development of the continent.

Ellen Remona Tise, Senior Director of Library and Information Services at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, is the president of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) for 2009-2011. Her professional experience includes serving as University Librarian at the University of the Western Cape from 2001 2005 and prior to that was Deputy University Librarian at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She also previously held the position of Systems Librarian at the University of the Western Cape, as well as posts at Brakpan City Library and the University of the Free State.

She has served on the Governing Board and Executive Committee of IFLA, the IFLA Free Access to Information and Freedom of Expression (FAIFE) Advisory Board, and the IFLA Africa Section Standing Committee. Ms. Tise was Chairperson of the National Organizing Committee for the IFLA 73rd World Library and Information Congress, held in Durban, South Africa in August 2007.

Ms Tises experience at senior management levels in the profession includes being the first elected President of the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA) from 1998 2002; Director of SABINET Board from 2003 – 2007 and Online Board from 2003; Deputy Chair of the South African Library Leadership Programme Governing Committee 2001-2004; Member of the Advisory and Management Committee of the LIASA-Carnegie Centre for Information Career Development Project from 2005-2006, OCLC Members Council Delegate from 2005 – 2008, and Member of the Access to Learning Award Advisory Committee for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2007. She has also served on various selection/review panels such as the National Council for Library and Information Services and the Centre for the Book of the National Library of South Africa.

Ms. Tise is an Honorary Member of the Golden Key International Honour Society, as well as of the Library and Information Association of South Africa. She has published various articles in professional journals and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences, seminars, symposia, etc.

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2009-10-12

The Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offers its patrons, including faculty, staff, and students, new technology this fall. Through the generosity of University of Illinois alumnus, Robert A. David, the Undergraduate Library now houses the BookScan Station, a book-edge scanner connected to a touch-screen self-service PC. U of I’s Library is the first university library in the country to offer this technology.

The BookScan Station has a patented book-edge scanning design that protects book spines from damage and allows the full page to lie flat. University Library patrons may scan paper-free with the BookScan Station. Scanned pages are converted to editable and searchable PDF, Microsoft Word or Excel files and stored digitally on a USB drive.

“The Library is delighted to be one of the first academics to provide this new product to our user community,” said Beth Sandore, associate university librarian for Information Technology Planning and Policy.

David, who graduated with a bachelor of science in business administration from the Urbana campus in 1981, was motivated by a desire to support the University of Illinois with a forward-thinking, eco-friendly device that preserves books and periodicals which students, staff, and faculty can use when they do research. He currently resides in Pleasanton, CA.

Standing (from left to right): Library Friend Robert A. David and Library staff members Roxanne Frey, Beth Sandore, Rudy Leon, and Lori Mestre
Seated at BookScan Station: Library staff member Denise Sampson

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2009-10-09

On October 1, 2009, President Barack Obama proclaimed October 2009 as National Information Literacy Awareness Month.  In the proclamation, President Obama asked “the people of the United States to recognize the importance role information plays in our daily lives, and appreciate the need for a greater understanding of its impact.”

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library recognizes the importance of information literacy and offers a dedicated portal for campus students, faculty, and staff to improve their information literacy abilities at www.library.illinois.edu/learn .  Information literacy resources are available to all library users interested in information research and use. There are workshops, course and subject guides, online video tutorials, and a myriad of other resources that offer help for students and researchers.

“This is an exciting development for information literacy and a great opportunity to demonstrate library impact on student learning and faculty research,” said Lisa Hinchliffe, coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library.

View the proclamation at https://www.govinfo.gov/features/information-literacy-awareness-month . The proclamation was possible due to the efforts of the National Forum on Information Literacy (NFIL).  Its initiative was backed by Senator John F. Kerry, the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and countless librarians in support of information literacy through advocacy, training, and research.

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).

2009-10-07

IDEALS One-millionth Download: “Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books 41 (04) 1987” Downloaded from Doha, Qatar

The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS) , a digital repository for research and scholarship developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has surpassed its one-millionth download.

The service, offered through the University Library and Technology Services , is sponsored by the Office of the Provost at Illinois and was launched in 2006.  The campus institutional repository includes articles, working papers, preprints, technical reports, conference papers and, data sets in various digital formats provided by University faculty, staff, and graduate students.  Although central to the University of Illinois, anyone can access and benefit from IDEALS collections and services.

“Today, over 12,000 items have been uploaded into IDEALS,” said Sarah Shreeves, associate professor and IDEALS coordinator.  “The success of this service has surpassed what anyone envisioned two and a half years ago, and we hope that others in the Illinois community will take advantage of its services.”

The mission of IDEALS is to preserve and provide persistent and reliable access to digital research and scholarship in order to give these works the greatest possible recognition and distribution. IDEALS endeavors to ensure that its materials appear in search engines such as Google, Google Scholar, and Bing and that the majority of the research is openly available for anyone to access.  As a result of its efforts to disseminate research produced at the University of Illinois, IDEALS was recently ranked in the top 10 of institutional repositories worldwide.

“I am delighted with the exposure that IDEALS has provided us with. Whenever we place a thesis or a report, the downloads start and never stop. We get many comments back from readers and researchers who have seen our work only on IDEALS,” said Amr Elnashai, head, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

IDEALS contains a wealth of diverse information, from a Mid-America Earthquake Center report on the Kashmir Earthquake of 2005 to the Ethnography of the University Initiative’s publications and presentations, including campus folklore and cultural perceptions.

“I appreciate that my thesis is archived in a stable location for reliable long-term access. The document is now freely available to anyone in the world, yet I retain the copyright,” said David P. Hruska, an Illinois graduate.  “Furthermore, my thesis is now displayed in search results returned by Google Scholar, improving the dissemination of my research.

“This depository has been exceptionally helpful in preserving in an easily-accessed archive, the extensive field data sets I accumulated over a 25-year period,” said Lowell Getz, professor emeritus, Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution (now Animal Biology) at the University of Illinois.  “There are no other such data sets and most likely never will be again.”

For more information about, or to access, the IDEALS digital repository, visit www.ideals.illinois.edu .

Do you have a story you’d like added to the Library News & Events? If so, please contact Heather Murphy ( hmurphy@illinois.edu ).