Month: April 2020

Lynne M. Thomas, head of The Rare Book & Manuscript Library, has been nominated for science fiction’s most prestigious award—the Hugo Award. Thomas is already an eight-time Hugo Award winner.

Hugo Award finalists were announced on April 7, 2020. Thomas is nominated with her husband Michael Damian Thomas for Best Editor, Short Form and Best Semiprozine (a non-professional periodical publication) for Uncanny Magazine. Thomas is the co-editor-in-chief and co-publisher of Uncanny with Michael Damian Thomas.

Three short fiction finalists on the Hugo Award nomination ballot are from Uncanny Magazine. “Away With the Wolves” by Sarah Gailey is a finalist for Best Novelette; “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye” by Sarah Pinsker is a finalist for Best Novelette; and “A Catalog of Storms” by Fran Wilde is a finalist for Best Short Story.

“I am thrilled and honored to have the work of the team at Uncanny and three of our authors recognized by the international science fiction and fantasy reader community,” said Thomas.

Past Hugo Award wins for Thomas include Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It (Best Related Work) in 2011; SF Squeecast (Best Fancast) in 2012 and 2013; Uncanny Magazine (Best Semiprozine) in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019; and Best Editor, Short Form in 2018. In addition to these eight wins, Thomas has garnered 18 Science Fiction/Fantasy nominations since 2011. A comprehensive list of her awards is found in the Science Fiction Awards Database at www.sfadb.com/Lynne_M_Thomas.

The fan-nominated Hugo Awards are sponsored by the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS). Winners will be announced in August at an all-virtual CoNZealand, the 78^th World Science Fiction Convention, in New Zealand. For more information about the Hugo Award, visit thehugoawards.org.

 

Over the past few weeks, libraries nationwide confronted the challenge to extend services to an online environment. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University Library was well-positioned to meet this challenge. 

“Serving a disciplinarily broad campus, the Library already spends well-over 70% of its acquisitions budget on acquiring electronic resources,” said Associate University Librarian for Collections and Technical Services Tom Teper. “However, no matter how much we spend on electronic journals, books, and media, there are always gaps in what we can acquire and deliver to our users, especially during a time when access to physical materials is restricted.”

The Library offers a guide that includes a list of publishers offering increased access to e-resources for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign community during the COVID-19 pandemic. That guide is found at https://guides.library.illinois.edu/expandedaccesscovid19. 

In partnering with other libraries and publishers, Illinois has expanded its offerings significantly. 

The HathiTrust 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the HathiTrust is now providing full member access to all titles that correspond to their print collections so that the Library can continue to support teaching and research during the stay-at-home order. 

During this period, digital access to the University Library now includes nearly half of the print collection that corresponds to materials digitized in HathiTrust. The faculty, staff, and students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign can now electronically access these works (including those in copyright). 

Users will have 60 minutes of access to a book during an active session while using HathiTrust. If patrons remain active in the book during any session, access time is extended. While books cannot be downloaded (to protect the author’s rights), patrons may download page-by-page.

Detailed instructions are located at https://www.library.illinois.edu/geninfo/covid-19/hathitrust-etas/.

Cambridge University Press Ebooks

Most recently, the Library acquired Cambridge University Press (CUP) ebooks to help scholars during this challenging time. Using turn-away data logged by CUP, the Library identified more than 1,400 recent publications that users tried to access in the past year. Many are duplicate items the Library has in print, but this disciplinary neutral list includes titles in many fields, including Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, History, Management, Linguistics, Cinema Studies, and Economics, and other fields. 

All of the records have been added to the Library’s catalog. However, a spreadsheet listing all of the titles in this collection is available at  https://uofi.box.com/s/dfh4rmdtqfqdnclzw39wat5pnspg6z75. 

ProQuest Academic Video Online

In order to help facilitate the transition to online learning in short order, the Library acquired access to ProQuest’s Academic Video Online (AVON) for the coming year. This product provides access to over 70,000 total videos, including 45,000 that are not carried anywhere else. 

All of the records have been added to the Library’s catalog. However, a spreadsheet listing all of the titles in this collection is available at https://uofi.box.com/s/6aa6cqhr40qmm5x81smm0za6xdqmth2y.

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For more information on all Library services offered during the COVID-19 pandemic, including information about obtaining essential print material for research and teaching, please visit www.library.illinois.edu/geninfo/covid-19.