White Papers: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries

Sem. Bot. at the University of Nebraska

Richard E. Voeltz — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 06:43:54 PDT

The Sem. Bot. (Seminarium Botanicum or Botanical Seminar) began in 1886 as an association of seven students (two Juniors, two Sophomores, and three Freshmen) at the University of Nebraska. They collected plants, campaigned against the “Lits and Philistines” (literary and classical studies), and controlled the Science Club and several debating societies. “Show me a Lit” was their rallying cry. Charles Bessey was a force in organizing and developing the Sem. Bot.

Early Herbals at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Richard E. Voeltz et al. — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:56:21 PDT

The essence of an herbal, one author has written, is the combination of the botanical classification of the plants, a description of their medicinal properties, and traditional plant lore. Since the books were meant to be used, illustrations and physical descriptions played an important role in helping the reader identify the plants included.

The great period for printed herbals was the late fifteenth to the seventeenth century. As medicine and botany developed in the early modern period, herbals were supplanted by more specialized books emphasizing medical uses of plants or botanical classification.

The herbals listed here include some of the most important works, and they are interesting for their roles in the development of botanical classification, for their illustrations, and for the light they shed on beliefs and practices of earlier times.

These herbals are listed under the dates they first appeared, with parentheses in case we own only a later edition. They are housed in Special Collections. Love Library (South) Room 29. The University Libraries also own reprints or microfilm copies of a number of other herbals not listed here. For more information, see the following books. Lists of herbals are included in these books.

American Petroleum Institute Research Project 44: Description and Analysis

Richard E. Voeltz — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:47:09 PDT

The American Petroleum Institute, in cooperation with the National Bureau of Standards, initiated its Research Project 44 in 1942. The project was designed to provide reliable information on the thermodynamic and thermophysical properties of selected hydrocarbons and their sulfur-containing derivatives. This information was needed to support the massive demand for fuel, lubricants, and other petroleum products during World War II. The tables containing this information were originally produced in loose-leaf form for refineries, chemical companies, and universities. The tables were subsequently issued in book form in 1948. A newer edition, Selected Values of Physical and Thermodynamic Properties of Hydrocarbons and Related Compounds, provided tables produced through December 31, 1952. The project moved from the National Bureau of Standards to Carnegie Institute of Technology in June, 1950.

SELF-STUDY REPORT Appendix 15: Libraries Faculty Vitae

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:12:16 PST

294 pages

SELF-STUDY REPORT Appendix 14: Grants, Awards and Honors University of Nebraska-Lincoln January 1, 2002 - January 31, 2010

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:10:26 PST

17 pp.

Self-Study Report to the Academic Planning Committee

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:07:46 PST

I. PROGRAM OVERVIEW
A. Brief History of the Libraries
B. Libraries’ Goals
Libraries Vision Statement
Revised 2009/10 Library Goals
C. Progress on the 2003 Academic Program Review (APR) Recommendations

II. SUMMARY OF LIBRARIES ACTIVITIES AND CONTRIBUTIONS
A. Collections, Content, and Scholarly Communication
Collections
CONTENTdm
Digital Commons
Table 1. Digital Commons Content and Access
GIS
Media Services
Government Documents
Cataloging Campus Collections
Scholarly Communication Programs
Data Curation
B. User Services and Access
Liaison Program
Reference
Library Instruction
Search and Discovery Tools
Outreach, Public Relations, and Development
C. Diversity
Figure 1. Timeline of the Libraries Diversity Initiatives
Scout & Search: Recruitment Strategies
Support & Sustain: Retention
Table 2. Libraries Faculty Statistics 1999-2009
D. Libraries Organization
Assessment
Graduate Student Advisory Board
ClimateQual
Learning Organization
Table 3. Staff Development Programs
E. Facilities
F. Center for Digital Research in the Humanities

III. DEPARTMENT RESOURCES
A. Faculty
Table 4. Faculty List
B. Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Statistics
Table 5. Transactions 2003-2009
Table 6. Volumes 2003-2009
Table 7. Serials 2003-2009
Table 8. Faculty, Staff, and Students
Table 9. Expenditures-Salaries and Wages
Table 10. Total Materials Expenditures
Table 11. Total Library Expenditures
Table 12. UNL 2007-08 ARL Ranking

IV. CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
A. Funding
The Libraries Budget
Review of Library Funding
B. Workforce Demographics
Table 13. UNL Libraries Expenditures & Sources 2003-2008
Table 14. UNL Libraries Sources 2003-2008
Table 15. UNL Libraries Credit Hour Fee Expenditures 2003-2008
Table 16. Total Acquisitions Budget 2006-2012
Table 17. Total Acquisitions Expenditures 2006-2012
C. Facilities
D. Re-engineering Workflow and Changing Technologies
E. Partnerships on Campus
F. Scholarly Communication and Digital Publishing

V. APPENDICES
1. Office of Institutional Research and Planning Data Set
2. UNL Libraries Strategic Plan
3. UNL Core Values, Role and Mission Statements
4. UNL Libraries Mission Statement, Vision Statement, and Core Competencies
5. UNL Organizational Chart, Love Library Organizational Charts
6. UNL Libraries Faculty Bylaws, and Promotion and Appointment Criteria
7. University Libraries Appointment and Promotion Procedures and Deliberations
8. 2003 APR Report
9. Review of Library Funding
10. Libraries Evaluation and Suggestions for Effective and Sustainable Assessment
11. Quality Indicators Selected by the Program
12. Libraries ClimateQUAL Report
13. Engineering Libraries of the 21st Century Final Report

CD
14. Libraries Faculty Awards and Grants
15. Libraries Faculty Vitae

SUMMARY BRIEF: UNL Libraries 2003/04 – 2007/08 Acquisitions: Performance of Non-Serial Volumes Available for Checkout

David Tyler — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:09:01 PST

The activity of the included five years’ worth of receipts was analyzed for both degree of idleness and extent of use. Analyses were conducted upon the collection of receipts as a whole and upon the collection disaggregated into broad subject categories and into Library of Congress (LC) subclasses. When reading the report to follow, one should keep in mind that statistics may sometimes mask as much as they reveal, especially when one is dealing with non-discrete category data. For example, several LC subclasses (e.g., HC = Economic Theory and Demography) cover multiple topical areas, so analysis at the LC subclass level may hide activity at the narrower sub-topical level. Therefore, analyses for such subclasses should be taken as being broadly accurate, but additional in-depth analysis may be necessary to obtain a truly accurate assessment of the activity in such subclasses.

The sections of the report to follow will provide more in-depth analyses of the broad disciplinary categories that comprise the collection (i.e., “General Literature,” “Arts & Humanities,” “Social Sciences,” and “Science & Technology”) and of the more noteworthy LC subclasses within them.

Ingesting TEI metadata into Encore at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln: TEI/Encore Task Force Report--University Libraries, June 2009

Charity Martin et al. — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:14:29 PDT

In January 2009, a library task force was formed to inform the digital asset management group about which dates from a TEI record should be used in an Encore record. While investigating this issue, the taskforce encountered a host of other issues that they did not anticipate but were addressed in this report.

This report documents the key problems that emerged as a result of the Cather and Lewis and Clark harvesting. Before and after metadata is ingested quality control is necessary. Responsibility for quality control rests with all library departments. The key recommendations for Encore quality control are:
1. Establish criteria to determine the level that records (project, collections, and sub-collections)
should be harvested for each project in Encore. 2. CDRH and TS should establish a policy that will articulate what CDRH projects should be cataloged.
3. TS should review the use of format codes (e.g. PRINT MATERIAL, COMPUTER FILE, THESIS/DISSERT) in the catalog code records.
4. We do not recommend that the TEI encoding be edited or enhanced so that it will be harvested different in Encore.
5. Going forward, all project teams working with TEI should be aware of OAI harvesting as well as Encore aggregation. Furthermore, project teams should attempt to create metadata that would aggregate according to fields indexed by Encore—without compromising the integrity of the metadata (TEI or otherwise) or the project
6. Utilize Encore’s community tagging mechanism

The TEI to DC Crosswalk is included but it is constantly changing. The crosswalk should not be cited because it is customized for UNL’s projects only. Questions about the crosswalk should be directed to Laura Weakly in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities .

Metadata Committee Task 1 Update

Margaret Mering et al. — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:06:32 PDT

1. Doorway Records.
2. Migration of architectural images from the online catalog to ContentDM.
3. Registering ContentDM collections on WorldCat (OCLC)

Task One: Moving Dublin Core to MARC

Margaret Mering et al. — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:04:28 PDT

Problem: Currently we catalog architecture slides in both MARC and ContentDM (Dublin Core)

Questions: How can we catalog items in ContentDM and then load the data into IRIS in a MARC format with appropriate URL to access the actual images?
Also, how can we move catalog records and URLS from IRIS to ContentDM without a great deal of clean up?

Charge: Design and test a process for moving data from ContentDM to IRIS and from IRIS to ContentDM.

Report of Task Force on Metadata Analysis

Margaret Mering et al. — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:59:19 PDT

This report :
1. Provides a brief overview of the different metadata schemes that are available.
2. Identifies the various metadata schemes being used to search and access information and digital content in the UNL Libraries.
3. Provides an analysis of the state of cross-searching among the various metadata schemes.
4. Provides recommendations on how UNL should decide which metadata schemes to use and when to use them.