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VVol. 4, #1ol. 4, #1 Fall 2011Fall 2011

Collecting ‘Outside the Margins’

Also in this issue:SocHum’s Trace Completed Project

Journalism Student Gaming Excercise

The Indian Ocean region.

SocHum’s subject spe-

cialists are increasingly using

the advantages of NYU’s book

approval plan to expand the li-

brary’s collections outside of

the “easy to get” materials.

Approval plans are

arranged so that vendors send

titles to libraries on ”approval”

based upon a detailed descrip-

tion of the library’s collection policies. Some of

the criticism of approval plans were that they

would, in the words of one critic, “...produce li-

brary collections that were too much alike, with-

out the collective richness resulting from local

selection...”

While approval plans and the growth of e-

books may lead some library holdings to re-

semble a “cookie cutter” collection, librarians

can also use the time saved by approval plans

to locate and acquire materials that make their

collections distinct.

Over the past six years Bobst has been

building a collection of research materials on the

Indian Ocean region. This collection includes

rare books, maps, prints, and sea charts.

The Indian Ocean area, touching on East

Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, is a

growing area of research and many scholars

believe it is a developing

heuristic device - similar to At-

lantic Studies - to study the

surrounding areas. Building a

research collection in this area

also aligns with NYU’s opening

of the Abu Dhabi campus. In

March 2010, NYU’s Africa

House sponsored a confer-

ence at NYU Abu Dhabi on

“Africa and the Indian Ocean,” which brought to-

gether scholars from the across the world to dis-

cuss topics such as “Africa and the Indian

Ocean,” “Conflict across the Indian Ocean,” and

“Migration and Remittances Across the Indian

Ocean.” Since much of Indian Ocean research

also involves the continent of Africa, Bobst has

also been building a collection of pre-colonial

maps of the African continent.

Given that the research interest in the In-

dian Ocean region includes NYU faculty at

Washington Square and Abu Dhabi, there are

plans to digitize unique elements of the Indian(cont’ on page 6)

Google Apps for Higher Education

Spotlite on SocHum Page 2

by Meredith Levin

NYU’s CTE hosted a Google Apps for

Higher Education session on December 1, 2011

at Kimmel to showcase several academic uses

for Google Apps. A panel of five presenters (one

Tisch faculty member and four Academic Tech-

nology Services staff members) discussed var-

ious ways in which Google Apps can be

implemented in a classroom setting, including

using Google Docs for the Tisch Film Produc-

tion clearance process, formatting Google Cal-

endar as a course syllabus, the benefits of

Google Forms for surveys, and how to create

Google Groups for collaboration.

Devin Nix, an original member of the NYU

Google Apps team, unveiled a new feature of

Google Calendar, appointment slots, that can fa-

cilitate setting up office hours or meetings with

students. It eliminates the irritating email chains

when trying to find a mutually convenient time.

The librarian does not have to share his/her cal-

endar, students can be given a range of avail-

able options to choose from, the process is

automated, and the librarian can send a link to

the appointment sign-up via email or can embed

it into a wiki page. Booked appointments appear

as regular calendar events with notifications; the

appointment slot that is selected by the student

becomes automatically blocked off in the librar-

ian’s calendar to prevent new invitations, which

prevents double-booking.

Meredith Levin is a Reference Associate in SocHum.

SocHum’s Trace Completed Project

One of the more annoying occurrences at

the reference desk is encountering a BobCat

record that states an item’s availability as “Re-

quest ILL.” Although not very transparent, it is

meant to tell patrons that the title is missing from

the stacks, but is available on interlibrary loan.

In the past year the SocHum staff have

completed three rounds of the Trace Completed

project, which is an attempt to find items in Bob-

Cat listed as “Request ILL,” and re-order them.

The Resource Management staff of

KARMS generates a list of Request ILL titles,

which are sent to SocHum, then routed to the

appropriate subject librarian, and then reordered

as a print or e-book, or the record is deleted

from BobCat. In the first two rounds of the proj-

ect the SocHum staff reviewed 4,660 titles and

re-ordered 1,835 titles. In some cases the miss-

ing titles are duplicate copies and - based upon

the decision of the subject librarian - may not be

re-ordered. This process has also been made

more efficient by our ability to place orders with

Alibris, as often the replacement copies are out

of print and only available from out of print book

dealers.

Spotlite on SocHum Page 3

A Library Gaming Experienceby Alexa Pearce

If you have worked at the reference desk

in Bobst during the last five years or so, you

might be familiar with Journalism Professor

Adam Penenberg’s penchant for challenging re-

search assignments. As he described in his re-

cent Fast Company column, he used to present

his Business & Economic Reporting graduate

students with questions such as “How many

vice presidents died in office” or “How many

countries were represented in the 2008 Summer

Olympics.”

It sounds pretty manageable until you read

the fine print: no use of the internet in the com-

pletion of this assignment. At all! As a reference

librarian, I have no shame in admitting that I am

every bit as relieved as the students that the no-

internet stipulation is no longer part of the as-

signment. In my capacity as the liaison to the

Journalism Institute, I’ve had the opportunity to

work much more closely with Adam in design-

ing research activities for his students.

Our most recent effort took the form of an

elaborate game, which we affectionately re-

ferred to as the “Library Treasure Hunt,” as it en-

tailed the use of game mechanics, which Adam

is studying for a book that he’s writing, along

with an effort to get the students into as many li-

brary spaces - both physical and virtual - as pos-

sible.

For my part, I can say that the Treasure

Hunt entailed the highest degree of collabora-

tion that I’ve yet experienced with a faculty

member. Adam and I met several times to dis-

cus our goals, brainstorm content, and work out

logistics. The result was a series of 15 individual

games (one per student) that would be played

over a period of approximately three hours, in-

troducing the students to everything from the

cookbook collection in Fales to the OED. Stu-

dents had to complete specific tasks, such as

scanning and emailing articles from our micro-

The Treasure Hunt was described in an article on the web-

site Fast Company.

film collections or using their phones to read QR

codes, in order to move between clues. The em-

phasis on gamification meant that students

faced penalties (loss of points for hints received)

as well as rewards (coffee and doughnuts on

LL1). The games were challenging and I wor-

ried, having authored them, that the students

might mutiny.

I can’t say they didn’t panic at the begin-

ning, (they did and so did I). But by the end, they

were positive, if weary. (We started at 8:45

sharp on a Tuesday morning.)

They thanked me profusely for facilitating the

game, which would allow the top-scorers to opt

out of other assignments, and for introducing

them to resources and service points within the

library that they may not have explored on their

own. I visited their class the following week to

debrief and they remarked on how much more

confident they felt in using the library and how

resolved they were to continue using it. Looking

back on the semester, I’d count the Treasure

Hunt as among the most enjoyable and reward-

ing experiences I’ve had. I’m happy to share the

template with anyone who is interested.

Alexa Pearce is the Bobst Librarian for Journalism,

Media, Culture and Communication.

SocHum Staff News

Jason Phillips (Librarian for Soci-

ology) published “Undergraduate

Information Seeking Behavior, E-

Reference and Information

Literacy in the Social Sciences.” in

E-Reference Con-

text and Discoverability in Li-

braries: Issues and Concepts. S.

Polanka (ed). Hershey, PA: IGI

Global, (pp. 83-88) and [with

Samantha Guss and David Mc-

Garry], “The NYU Survey Serv-

ice: Promoting Value in

Undergraduate Education.” College & Under-

graduate Libraries, 2011, V. 19 (2/3): 183-199.

Jason also presented “Understanding the

21st Century Research Landscape: Emerging

Trends and Needs Within and Across

Disciplines,” at the Charleston Conference, No-

vember 2011, with Mike Diaz, Audrey Powers,

Corey Seeman and Dennis Brunning.

Tim Johnson (Librarian for Africana

Studies) published “The Communist

Party and the Alabama Sharecrop-

pers Union,” in Science & Society,

2011, V. 75 (4), pp. 454-479.

Meredith Levin (SocHum Reference Associ-

ate) was awarded an NYU Libraries' HR Pro-

fessional Education Award for the Fall 2011

semester to attend LIU’s School of Library and

Information Science. Meredith is a student in

the NYU/LIU Dual Degree Program and is pur-

suing a masters degree in Italian Studies in ad-

dition to an MLS.

SocHum Staff Produce a Video

Tour of Bobst Library

Tim Johnson and Meredith Levin com-

pleted work on a 30 minute video “Tour of Bobst

Library,” which is now available on the Bobst

Research Guide “New to NYU Libraries,” where

it has received over 80 views. The project took

one year and a half to complete - largely due to

reconstruction work on the fourth and fifth floors,

which necessitated changes in the script and

the visuals.

The script for the tour was edited by

Meredith Levin and was based on an audio tour

produced by Scott Collard and Nadaleen Tem-

pelman-Kluit several years ago.

The filming and editing were done by Tim

Johnson using Apple’s iMovie program. iMovie

allows for easy editing so that, as changes occur

within library services or call number locations,

they can quickly be edited into the video. It also

allowed for the edited creation of smaller seg-

ments of the tour (five to ten minutes) for people

who don’t have the time to watch the entire

video.

NYU-TV has expressed interest in broad-

casting the Bobst Tour video on its television

channel and the SocHum VideoCasting com-

mittee is planning on producing a series of video

introductions on conducting research in various

subject areas.

Spotlite on SocHum Page 4

Spotlite on SocHum is produced by the Social

Sciences & Humanities Department of NYU’s

Bobst Library and is published two times per

year (Fall and Spring). Contributors to this issue

include Tim Johnson, Tatiana Bryant, Andrew

H. Lee, Meredith Levin and Alexa Pearce.

Spotlite on SocHum Page 5

THATCamp: A Digital Humanities “Unconference”by Tatiana Bryant

This Fall I had

the opportunity to at-

tend two THATCamps,

one in Philadelphia

and the other at Bran-

deis University in New

England. THATCamp

is an “unconference”-

an inexpensive, infor-

mal meeting open to

anyone (humanists

and technologists of all

skill levels) interested

in the intersection of the humanities and tech-

nology (i.e., the Digital Humanities). No associ-

ation membership or institutional affiliation is

needed, just a strong willingness to collaborate

in an unstructured environment and an interest

in experimenting with new tools.

THATCamp was created by the Center for

New History and Media at George Mason Uni-

versity and funded through a grant from the Mel-

lon Foundation and other sponsors. Volunteers

offer to organize THATCamps at their respec-

tive institutions, typically over the course of a

weekend.

Participants decide on the content of work-

shops, writing and hacking sessions, and gen-

eral discussions, which can range from:

understanding the history of DH; scholarly com-

munication and copyright issues; citation man-

agement using open source tools; digitization

and preservation of humanities materials; ma-

nipulating and analyzing humanities data; visu-

alization and web analytics; open access

publishing; project management; text analysis;

usability; web and computer programming and

social media.

Attendees also volunteer to offer training

on topics they are knowledgeable about and

propose and facilitate discussion sessions on

what interests them related to DH.

At tendees

also volunteer to

offer training on

topics they are

knowledgeable

about and pro-

pose and facilitate

discussion ses-

sions on what in-

terests them

related to DH. A

few of the work-

shops, trainingsand discussions I attended include: DH project

management, data manipulation using Google

Refine, Map creation using GIS, utilizing regular

expressions for text analysis, and promoting

linked open data.

THATCamps have begun to expand out-

side of academia and specialize in smaller, re-

lated fields. For example, there is now

THATCamp Museums, THATCamp Games, and

recently THATCamp Pedagogy (which focused

on expanding the practice of DH amongst un-

dergraduates) and THATCamp Publishing. Tatiana Bryant is a Reference Associate in SocHum.

Spotlite on SocHum Page 6

collection - including monographs, maps, and

sea charts.

In addition to building the Indian Ocean

collections, Bobst Library has also been

strengthening it’s the collections in Iberian Stud-

ies. In the summer of 2011, NYU’s Librarian for

History, Andrew H. Lee, made contact with sev-

eral Portuguese and Spanish book vendors

while in Spain for a conference. He also visited

the oldest still functioning bookstore in the world,

Bertrand’s in Lisbon, founded in 1732.

As a result of his meetings with publishers

and vendors, Lee was able to expand the depth

and breadth of our holdings of materials that are

erratically collected in the United States. He

added that, “ A broader variety of Spanish DVDs

are now coming to Bobst and we started a con-

versation about e-publishing with an important

university press that will possibly bear fruit in a

year or two.”

Tim Johnson, Librarian for Food Studies,

has been building the Library’s collection of Mid-

dle Eastern and African cookbooks. Through

contact with a Turkey-based vendor, he has

been able to add a number od rare titles and

books that are not widely available in the U.S.

“Through my work with graduate students

in Food Studies and a faculty member in

Africana Studies, I became aware of a signifi-

cant gap in our holdings of African and Middle

Eastern cookery,” he noted. “The vendor in

Turkey travels widely in both areas and has

been able to supply us with a large number of ti-

tles that would be otherwise difficult to get.”

While the approval plans serve the pur-

pose of streamlining the ordering and process-

ing of common materials, they also provide time

for librarians to seek out rare and hard to get

materials. It is these materials that will ultimately

define and differentiate the library collection.

18th century map of Africa (from NYU’s In-

dian Ocean Collection).

Bertrand’s, the oldest bookstore in the world.

“Outside the Margins” (from page1)

Several of the recent Bobst acquisitions in African and

Middle Eastern cookery.

An 18th century map of the Guinea Coast (West Africa) to be

added to the Bobst collection.

SocHum

Commencement Celebration

2011

Spotlite on SocHum Page 7