Library Blogs

On Tuesday, November 13th from 3-5pm the Michigan Library Engagement Ambassadors held our first event of the semester in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library. Employees from the Career Center came to take free professional head shots and provide advice on how to improve your LinkedIn profile and use it to network successfully. We had a great turnout of students who came dressed to impress and took advantage of this event.

An unforgettable figure of the anarchist and syndicalist communities, Federico Arcos (1920-2015) was known for his generosity and the unabating commitment with which he pursued his ideals. Friends of the Labadie Collection remember Arcos as a long-time benefactor and collector. Federico and his wife Pura curated in their home in Windsor, Canada, an important library of anarchist books, newspapers, and archives that never failed to impress their many guests. In addition to the many items he endowed the Labadie Collection with, Arcos bequeathed his personal papers, now inventoried.

I had only been a User Information Services Specialist for two weeks before a student employee approached me for professional guidance. I knew the position had been created for this very purpose—to provide added expertise on the reference desk and support for student staffers—but nonetheless, when this first happened, I found myself somewhat taken aback; baffled that I could be perceived as an authority by anybody else, when in fact I had only just made the transition from student employee to regular staff member myself. I was even more surprised when the answer I offered was met, not with wariness, but rather with an exuberant response of “Now it makes sense! That’s so helpful, thank you!” As I picked my jaw up off the floor it dawned on me that maybe I knew what I was doing, after all.

Hi! My name is Isaac Levine, and I’m the supervisor for the new and improved WorkBench space inside of the Digital Media Commons. I’d like to introduce you to the resources available through this space, and also talk about exciting new developments.

Brunelleschi's Dome tells the story of one of the greatest achievements in architecture, the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, better known as the Duomo, in Florence, and of Filippo Brunelleschi, the irascible genius who created it. Author Ross King details Brunelleschi's many inventions, including his few failures, and his rivalry with another great artist, Lorenzo Ghiberti.

Have you always wanted to take a course about video games? Need to fill an elective slot for Winter term? Since most students are picking out which courses they'd like to take, we thought we'd share a list of interesting courses being taught next term. There are many other good ones out there as well, but here are a few to get you started.

For three years the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has been assembling a vast online library to document "the full range of human experience." By reaching out to libraries, archives, museums, and historical societies throughout the United States, the DPLA has gathered metadata from a vast number of digital collections online, including photographs, books, manuscripts, moving images, and audio recordings. Despite having a staff of fewer than twenty people, the DPLA now provides access to over fourteen million records.

Last Friday, I was privileged to welcome students from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit to the Special Collections Library. As part of a class on exploring the book, attendees were preparing for an assignment to create a one-of-a-kind artists’ book. The instructor had asked me to find examples of unusual artists’ books with interesting structures, offering me an opportunity to explore new dimensions of Special Collections’ artists’ book holdings.

Last month at the Party For Your Mind, students shared their favorite summer reads. We may be solidly in autumn now, but let's take a look back at what Wolverines read this summer!

The Wolverine Podcast is a series of short audio narratives comprising interviews and stories about students' experiences during their first year at the University of Michigan and beyond. This series is produced by University of Michigan students who use storytelling and audio engineering to craft compelling narratives from all around campus. Each interview is an exciting peer-to-peer process in which both parties can guide the conversation.

Episode one is a student interview about living on campus at the University of Michigan. Each Monday we will bring you a new student story. For more information about The Wolverine Podcast, contact mlibengaged@umich.edu.