Library Blogs

From the beginning of my time as a transfer student to the University of Michigan in the Fall of 2019, I have been interested in both engaging with the transfer community and improving the overall transfer student experience. When preparing for this big transition over the summer of 2019, I was most concerned with adjusting socially and academically to a new school. However, when I actually got here, I found there were many other, more hidden aspects of campus life that I had to figure out on my own. For example: Which buildings require swipe access? Where can I scan a document? What is the “UgLi,” and is it a good place for group work?

I think we don’t often consider how all these little questions and struggles add up to create the transfer student experience. Transfer student success is often measured by quantitative academic markers; students themselves are concerned with adjusting academically and socially. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that concerns about how to use the library as a transfer were far from the first thing on my mind. So, when looking for social science research opportunities this fall, I was intrigued by a position that entailed analyzing the specific library needs of transfer and commuter students. I saw it as an opportunity to engage with the transfer student experience through the unique, and often undervalued, lens of the library.

Ultimately, this interest led to me joining the Library Research & Evaluation team as a Research Assistant, as part of the Library Engagement Fellows Program. Through this position, I was able to utilize and strengthen my social science research skills through a project I am personally invested in and passionate about. Additionally, this position exposed me to library functioning and the specific resources offered by the University of Michigan Library.

The Special Collections Research Center is pleased to announce a new online exhibit: A Menagerie of Animal Tales, curated by students in Dr. Lisa Makman’s English 313 course: Children’s Literature and the Invention of Modern Childhood.

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Celebrate by checking out some of the library’s e-resources chronicling Asian American and Pacific Islander history and culture. There are a variety of formats and genres to choose from, including ebooks and e-audiobooks, biographies, memoirs, academic texts, and literature authored by Asian American and Pacific Islanders.

Announcing the publication of the Digital Archiving Research Guide, with tips and recommendations for organizing and preserving your personal digital files.

This project, supported by the Library Engagement Fellows Program, asked itself: what are the needs and opportunities within graduate curricula in the humanities and social sciences for co-curricular digital scholarship education that could be offered by the University Michigan library? This project defines digital scholarship as “Scholarship enabled by and shared through digital media and tools, that is able to ask new questions through digital methods.” While there have been various past and current efforts related to digital scholarship (programming as well as initiatives to improve resources currently offered), this research project sought insight from graduate students in particular. Insight gathered from this project would provide the library with information on what graduate students need as well as possible changes that could be made to satisfy these needs.

Idealized Cuban Family Structures is a research based project that uses humor, the Cuban Family Code, the ASCE Steel Construction Manual, and my own family history to start a conversation about social engineering. It is presented as three sculptures, or “corrective devices” for the steel structure shown above, which represents my family’s dynamics. The sculptures will be accompanied by a series of 2D graphic works which assist the viewer in understanding the absurd translation of my family’s interpersonal relationships into this steel structure. The 2D pieces will also sarcastically illustrate where the family went “wrong” according to the Code. Humorous caricatures of engineering drawings depict where the corrective devices would bolt into the family structure and how the corrective devices would physically work to “fix” the family.

PILOT is a student organization founded in 2010 with the mission of empowering students from underrepresented communities. We work to develop campus leaders through various project initiatives, one of which is Dreams2Reality. Dreams2Reality is a social justice outreach program that hosts bi-weekly workshops with first- and second-year Metro Detroit high school students that center around different social justice topics, as well as on-campus Dream Day. Our program aims to build community between multi-ethnic students of African, Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European descent from under-resourced high schools, to promote social awareness and consciousness about topics including, but not limited to, social identities, privilege, and discrimination.

An 1861 map of New York City, now worn with age, the delicate paper permanently creased from its life in a file-folder, shows the familiar landscape of upper Manhattan. Two hand-drawn lines, remnants of its previous handling, cross the page – a red line runs along sixth avenue, and a yellow one cuts across 86th Street, intersecting just below the reservoir. Aside from a few cosmetic changes - “Bloomingdale Road” has been straightened out into Broadway, the Great Lawn is now decorated with baseball fields – much of this landscape, detailed over a century ago, remains today. For over a century, millions of people have traversed these same paths, unknowingly following each other through the unremarkable progression of days and years.

Over the past academic year, Anthony Erebor, Lyse Messmer, and I have worked as library engagement fellows. We have been working with Librarian Rebecca Price to exhibit a growing collection of 20th-century house catalogs held in the Art, Architecture and Engineering Special Collections. The catalogues, which focus on residential construction in the Midwest from the 1910s through the post-war building boom of the 1950s and 60s, tell many stories: the historical story of Michigan's industrial past transitioning from lumber to automobile; an architectural story about changing patterns and arrangements of domestic space; a sociological story of the gender roles within and outside the household; a racial story of exclusion and expectations; an urban story of the development of suburbia, a transportation story of the impact of the family car form and road systems; a technological story as appliances were integrated into the home; a materials story from construction to furnishing to decoration; and a communications tory in the visual presentation of house plans and their promise.

The Latinx Student Psychological Association (LSPA) is a graduate student organization affiliated with the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. We were awarded a Library Mini Grant to support our write-ins during the Winter 2020 semester. Our write-ins have strengthened our strategies for collaboration and have resulted in a supportive relationship with library staff, and specifically with Jesus Espinoza, a relationship we hope will continue in the future.