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News Stories

“Ask Us Live!” is Live

HCL’s reference librarians are used to handling questions from patrons in a variety of formats, whether in person, on the phone, or via email. Now a new pilot program gives patrons additional access to reference help online—and in real time—by introducing an instant messaging (IM) or “chat” function for reference services.  Billed as “Ask Us Live!” the IM service is accessible from the HCL public website and will run from June 23 through August 15, the length of Harvard’s summer session.

Full story.
Posted June 24, 2008

Poster Session Explores Wide Range of HCL Projects and Activities

Given the breadth and depth of Harvard College Library, it is nearly impossible to keep up with the variety of projects and initiatives taking place. To highlight some current work, the College Library organized its first ever poster session for last month’s Middle Managers meeting.

Full story.
Posted June 20, 2008

Thompson Publishes Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story

In the 1980s Christina Thompson was an American graduate student studying literature at the University of Melbourne when, vacationing in New Zealand, she met her husband-to-be. What makes her story unusual is that he was a Maori and the two were, culturally speaking, complete opposites. He was a tradesman from a background of rural poverty, she was an upper-middle-class intellectual. He was a “native” while she descended from European colonizers. Thompson has taken her personal story and combined it with her extensive knowledge of New Zealand’s culture and colonial past to pen Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, a book that is part history, part anthropology, part memoir.

Full story.
Posted May 30, 2008

HCL Digitizes Artemas Ward House Collection

Within its walls the General Artemas Ward House contains hundreds of 18th- and 19th-century artifacts: old-fashioned dresses and top hats, china and linens, parasols and playing cards, a sewing basket, butter churns, and much, much more. The house—originally owned by the commander of the patriot forces during the Battle of Bunker Hill and meticulously preserved by his descendants—was given to Harvard in 1925 but proved difficult to study since it lies 40 miles from Cambridge in Shrewsbury, Mass.

Full story.
Posted May 22, 2008

Visiting Committee Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting Winners Announced

In March, when Harvard student Gregory Scruggs ’08 was on spring break in New Orleans, he discovered a general used bookstore called La Librairie d'Arcadie that had a  great selection of books by Louisiana writers. Even better for Scruggs, it had a special section of French-language books by Louisiana authors—Cajun literature, black Creole literature, general books about the state and New Orleans—a boon for the literature concentrator always on the lookout for francophone books.

Full story.
Posted May 14, 2008

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Staff Announcements

Nancy Hallock, Head of the Spanish/Portuguese Technical Services Division, prepared a handlist of publications by SALALM (Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials) titled "SALALM:  The First Fifty Years.  A Handlist of Publications with Author Index."  It has been published as no. 56 of SALALM's  Bibliography and Reference Series. (July 2008)

Andrew Wilson, Access Services Librarian, Loeb Music Library, has published an article titled "Great Service Pays: A Model for Service Delivery in an Academic Music Library" in the Journal of Access Services, vol. 5, nos. 1-2. This is the journal's "Best Practices in Access Services" issue. (July 2008)

Leslie A. Morris, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts, Houghton Library, along with Joan Winterkorn of Bernard Quaritch Ltd., London, presented a paper on "Collecting Strategies: Working with Private Owners" during the ACRL Rare Books and Manuscripts Preconference in Los Angeles. (July 2008)

Karen Nipps, Head of the Rare Book Team, Houghton Library, recently attended the 2008 annual meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), held in Oxford, England, where she presented a paper entitled "The Self-Education of Lydia Bailey, Last of the Widow-Printers." (July 2008)

Marisa Déry, Media Technician in the Audio Preservation Studio, Loeb Music Library, came in second place in an audio enhancement challenge held at the annual Audio Engineering Society conference in Denver earlier this month. Participants had only hours to clean up five audio clips exhibiting noise problems—like cell phone humming, loud restaurant background noise, and Shakespeare recited by a fountain—to make them more understandable. Working alone, Déry used Sound Cleaner software by SpeechPro, and she was beat only by the expert four-person training team for that particular software. Influenced by her past experience enhancing audio clips of domestic disputes, Déry donated the award money to a battered women's shelter. (June 2008)

Christina Thompson, editor of the literary journal Harvard Review, Houghton Library, has been awarded the 2008 James E. Conway Excellence in Teaching Writing Award by the Harvard Extension School. Thompson's students praise her for her ability to establish a "vibrant classroom culture," her intellectual rigor, and her "profound knowledge of the subject."  An instructor in the Division of Continuing Education since 2001, she currently teaches Advanced Narrative Nonfiction and Principles of Editing. The Extension School requires the latter course for its Certificate in Publishing and Communications program, for which Thompson also serves as an adviser. (June 2008)

Joseph Garver, Reference Librarian in the Harvard Map Collection, recently gave a lecture on the cartographical history of Rhode Island to the Redwood Library & Athenaeum in Newport, Rhode Island, and met with the Redwood's Cartography Cartel to discuss the Harvard Map Collection's digitization efforts. (June 2008)

Jay Hurd, Preservation Review Librarian in Preservation & Imaging Services, attended the 20th Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, in Cooperstown, New York, where he gave a presentation entitled "An Introduction to the History of Baseball Literature for Children and Young Adults, Late 19th-Early 20th Centuries." (June 2008)

Raymond Lum, Librarian for the Western Languages Collection in the Harvard-Yenching Library and Asian Bibliographer in Widener Library, was invited to submit an article on Hedda Morrison's photographs of Beijing for the June issue of Orientations: The Magazine for Collectors and Connoisseurs of Asian Art, which is being prepared to coincide with the Beijing Olympics. Lum’s article, "Beijing 1933-46: The Photographs of Hedda Morrison," is illustrated with a number of Morrison's photographs, all drawn from Harvard's VIA catalog. A synopsis of the article is available on the Orientations website: http://www.orientations.com.hk/thisiss.htm#raymond. Morrison's China photos, which she bequeathed to the Harvard-Yenching Library, and additional information about the photographer and the collection is available at: http://hcl.harvard.edu/libraries/harvard-yenching/collections/morrison/. (May 2008)

Lynn Shirey, Librarian for Latin America, Spain, and Portugal in Widener Library, made an acquisitions trip to Manaus, Belem, and Fortaleza in northern and northeastern Brazil this past April. In addition to purchasing materials for the libraries, she met with publishers, book distributors, and library colleagues. She also visited the Sao Paulo office of Harvard's Brazil Studies Program, which sponsored her trip. Shirey and a colleague from Michigan State University were featured in the Manaus daily "A Critica," as "Miners of Amazonian Books." (May 2008)

Ann Robinson, Science Reference and Interlibrary Loan Librarian in Cabot Science Library, gave a talk in May at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in Philadelphia entitled "The Transfermium Wars: Chemistry, Physics, and the Politics of Naming." The talk was an overview of the thesis she wrote for the Master of Liberal Arts at the Harvard Extension School. Robinson also received a travel grant from CHF to do further research in the archives of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry which are a part of CHF's collections. (May 2008)

Jeffrey Spurr, Islamic and Middle East Specialist in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Fine Arts Library, participated in a symposium, Homeward Bound: Returning Displaced Books and Archives, held at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City on April 6. He presented a paper entitled "Contested Patrimony: The Fate of the Iraqi Jewish Archive." (May 2008)

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