Number 110 • March/April 2016
ISSN 1944-7639 (online version)
Contents
CLIR Turning 60!
DLF Announces 2016 Forum Keynote Speaker; Issues Calls for Proposals
Help Us Choose Collection Processing Webinar Topics: Survey Closes April 30
Call for Participation: “Day of [Digitization Cost] Data”
Sarah Kortemeier Awarded 2016 Rovelstad Scholarship
CLIR Names 2016 Mellon Fellows
Revitalized DLF Community Calendar Now Online
Briefly Noted
CLIR Issues is produced in electronic format only. To receive the newsletter electronically, please sign up at https://www.clir.org/pubs/issues/signup.html. Content is not copyrighted and can be freely distributed.
CLIR Turning 60!
This fall, CLIR will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its precursor, the Council on Library Resources. Much is in the works to mark this milestone, including a revamped website, special programming and publications, and more. Starting next month, you can follow highlights via Facebook and Twitter (#CLIRat60).
DLF Announces 2016 Forum Keynote Speaker; Issues Calls for Proposals
Planning is in high gear for the 2016 DLF Forum, to be held Nov. 7–9 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Stacie Williams, learning lab manager at the University of Kentucky’s Special Collections Research Center, will deliver the
Forum’s keynote address. Her keynote will focus on labor issues in library and information science. Earlier this month, Williams 
spoke on the implications of archival labor at a panel discussion at the Organization of American Historians annual conference.
Williams has worked at Tufts University’s Digital Collections and Archives, Harvard Medical School’s Countway Library, and the Lexington, Kentucky, Public Library. In 2013, she organized a panel at SXSW about ways that information professionals can influence and engage grassroots activism on Twitter, and she has copublished on topics such as community archives, cyberracism, and information literacy. Williams is a 2010 ALA Spectrum Scholar and a member of the 2015 Archives Leadership Institute cohort. She holds an MS in library science with an Archives Management concentration from Simmons College, and a BA in journalism from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Call for Proposals: DLF Forum, Liberal Arts Preconference, and Digital Preservation 2016 Due May 15
DLF invites proposals for the 2016 DLF Forum and for its allied meetings: the DLF Liberal Arts Colleges Pre-Conference Nov. 6, and Digital Preservation 2016 (the annual conference of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance) Nov. 9–10. Links to the three CFPs are available at https://www.diglib.org/dlf-events/2016forum/. Proposals are due by May 15th at 11:59 pm Pacific Time.
The DLF Forum (#DLFforum) brings digital library, archives, and museum practitioners together to set ambitious agendas, share new methods and experiments, develop best practices, and better organize our community to accomplish its shared mission. Proposals are encouraged from DLF members and non-members alike. All are welcome at the Forum and warmly encouraged to participate in DLF’s programs year-round. Marquette University Raynor Memorial Libraries, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries will be local hosts for the Forum.
Help Us Choose Collection Processing Webinar Topics: Survey Closes April 30
If you are planning new cataloging or processing projects to expose hidden collections, you can help shape the content of a webinar series that CLIR is developing with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The webinars are intended to help institutions prepare for such projects by building on the lessons learned from recipients of Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives grants.
We invite you to take a 14-question survey that should take about 15-20 minutes to complete. The survey asks you to choose from a list of topics that would be most valuable to you when thinking about starting a collection-processing project. We’ve also allowed for individual comments and suggestions, so please consider sharing examples of excellent e-learning experiences in which you have participated. All responses will be anonymous.
Based on the results, we will develop the top choices into six 90-minute webinars that will be available live this fall. The recordings of these webinars will then be added to a growing library of resources, including the CLIR Hidden Collections Registry, freely available on the CLIR website.
We are seeking responses from a variety of individuals, including iSchool students, as well as all types and sizes of collecting organizations, by Saturday, April 30. Please share this survey link with anyone you think could offer valuable input to the project. At the end of the survey, you will be asked if you would like to receive updates on the series as topics are finalized, dates are set, and recordings are made available.
Questions about the project or the survey may be directed to Christa Williford at cwilliford@clir.org.
Call for Participation: “Day of [Digitization Cost] Data”
Contribute one day of data for the Digitization Cost Calculator … Sign up now—submit data in June!
Digitization is a costly business — estimating expenses associated with a given digitization project, a fiscal year, or for a grant application, can feel disconnected from the reality of staffing, timelines, and true project costs. In 2014/15 the Digital Library Federation’s Assessment Interest Group developed a beta version of a Digitization Cost Calculator to help with digitization project planning by using contributed data to produce average estimates of costs and time for various aspects of the digitization process.
Over the past year we’ve redesigned the calculator’s interface and worked with the digital library community to choose and define processes that should be included in the new and improved calculator (see the processes and definitions document here). But now we need your help!
We are asking you to collect a single day of data to contribute to the calculator, in the month of June. You can choose one or more of the fields for which the calculator needs data. Please help us bring the new and improved calculator to life by signing up for the Day of Data and contributing data from your institution during the month of June.
Sarah Kortemeier Awarded 2016 Rovelstad Scholarship
Sarah Kortemeier, a library and information science student at the University of Arizona, has been selected to receive this year’s Rovelstad Scholarship in International Librarianship.
Kortemeier received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona. Currently, she works as a library specialist with subject expertise in contemporary poetry at The University of Arizona Poetry Center.
She became interested in international librarianship while teaching English in a rural middle school in Japan through the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program. In January, she was selected for the Horner Fellowship Program, an exchange program between the Arizona Library Association and the Japan Library Association, and spent a week speaking with scholars and librarians in Japanese cultural institutions about their efforts to preserve and promote access to poetry artifacts.
“Through international service opportunities throughout my career, I hope to contribute to the difficult, necessary work of cultural memory (what is remembered, why is it remembered, and by whom?) as well as literary advocacy,” says Kortemeier. “I view international librarianship as a tremendous opportunity to listen—and to diversify the stories we tell about our world.”
The Rovelstad Scholarship provides travel funds for a student of library and information science to attend the annual meeting of the World Library and Information Congress, which takes place in Columbus, Ohio, in August this year.
CLIR Names 2016 Mellon Fellows
Sixteen graduate students have been selected to receive awards this year under the Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research in Original Sources program, which CLIR administers.
The fellowships are intended to help graduate students in the humanities and related social science fields pursue research wherever relevant sources are available; gain skill and creativity in using primary source materials in libraries, archives, museums, and related repositories; and provide suggestions to CLIR about how such source materials can be made more accessible and useful.
The fellowships carry stipends of up to $25,000 each to support dissertation research for periods ranging from nine to twelve months.
Elham Bakhtary**
Amir Sher Ali’s Lithographic Challenge to the Wahhabi Movement
George Washington University
Alice Baumgartner
Fugitives: The Underground Railroad to Mexico
Yale University
Chelsea Berry
Poisoned Relations: Medicine, Sorcery, and Poison Trials in the Greater Caribbean, 1690-1850
Georgetown University
Eladio Bobadilla
From “Wetback Invasion” to “One People without Borders”: Mexican Americans and Undocumented Immigrants, 1954-1994
Duke University
Huiying Chen
Show Me the Way: Culture, Commerce, and Politics of the Road in Eighteenth Century China
University of Illinois at Chicago
Rebecca Egli
“The World of Our Dreams:” Agricultural Explorers and the Promise of American Science
University of California, Davis
Jennifer Gaugler
The Architecture of the Archive, the Museum, and the Heritage Site in Rwanda
University of California, Berkeley
Devon Golaszewski
Reproductive Labors: West African Reproductive Expertise and Biomedical Legibility
Columbia University
William Kelly
Revolución es [Re]construir: Housing Reform in the Cuban Revolution, 1960-1989
Rutgers University
Isidora Miranda
Tagalog Zarzuelas and Musical Nationalism in Early Twentieth-Century Manila, 1902 to 1935
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Danya Pilgrim
Gastronomic Alchemy: How Black Philadelphia Caterers Transformed Taste into Capital, 1790-1925
Yale University
Caroline Radesky
Feeling Historical: Same-sex Desire and the Politics of History, 1880-1920
University of Iowa
Marian Smith
Reconstructing a Timurid Cosmopolitanism: Abd Allah Hātifī’s Tīmūrnāmeh in the Cultural Production of Early Modern Eurasia
University of Michigan
Rory Sykes
“We Are All Fedayeen”: Palestinian National Identity and the Image Archive, 1967-1982
Northwestern University
Kena Wani
Communication Satellites and the Pursuit of Outer Space in Post-Colonial India, 1960-79
Duke University
Rachel Welsh
Proof in the Body: Ordeal, Justice, and the Physical Manifestation of Truth in Medieval Iberia, c. 1050-1300
New York University
**Elham Bakhtary is the recipient of the CLIR/Library of Congress Mellon Dissertation Fellowship award.
Revitalized DLF Community Calendar Now Online
Check out the revitalized international DLF community calendar — a one-stop resource for all things related to digital libraries and archives, digital humanities, museums and cultural heritage, data curation, open science, digital publishing, and more!
The calendar is online as a standalone site, and can be subscribed to or downloaded, and embedded in your website as we’ve done here.
Ways to get involved with the community calendar:
- Volunteer to help us keep it up to date for your region, field, or interests! It’s a breeze to set you up with access as an editor (and if you’re already a Google calendar user, it’s seamless to toggle back and forth). Send an email to info@diglib.org and we’ll get you going. (No big commitment required.)
- Drop us a line to suggest events for inclusion in the calendar, whether it’s something you’re planning, attending, or just see passing by on your screen.
- Planning an event? You may find it helpful to consult the calendar when considering dates. And please let us know as soon as you’ve got your dates locked down so we can help publicize your meeting and prevent conflicts!
Briefly Noted
The National Endowment for the Humanities is soliciting applications for 2016 Common Heritage awards. The Common Heritage program supports community archiving projects through grants of up to $12,000 awarded to community cultural organizations. Application guidelines and a list of FAQs for the program are available at http://www.neh.gov/grants/preservation/common-heritage. The application deadline for the next cycle of Common Heritage grants is May 12.
Congratulations to John Unsworth, who has been named university librarian and dean of libraries at The University of Virginia. Unsworth is currently vice provost, university librarian, chief information officer, and professor of English at Brandeis University, as well as CLIR presidential fellow. He will assume his new role June 25. Read more at http://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-selects-john-m-unsworth-university-librarian-and-dean-libraries.
