Screaming sharks, shattered glass, & neon love: Just another day in the library

This past Thursday, December 8th, students from Art History 101 held their contemporary art poster presentations from 1:30 - 2:30 pm in the Library's beautiful Fisher Room. They did a fantastic job of describing their chosen artists and presenting eye-catching displays. Such enthusiasm and professionalism! Kudos to professor Mary Lou Greene for leading such a great group! (Bonus points if you can spot Marygrove President Dr. David Fike in one of these pictures.)

Bruce Nauman: Google Images

Arman: Google Images

John Baldessari: Google Images

Willie Birch: Google Images

"The Interesting Book" - Ilya Kabakov (Google images)

Tony Cragg: Google Images

Eva Hesse: Google Images

Damien Hirst: Google Images

Anish Kapoor: Google Images

Decking the halls and letting it snow

The elegant and warm Festival of Trees took place on Friday, December 2, 2011, in the Denk Chapman room of the Madame Cadillac building. The Staff Advisory Council did a phenomenal job organizing and hosting the event, and they chose a lovely theme in "Lighting the Way: A Symbol of Peace, Hope, and Thanksgiving."

And oh, was it beautiful. Ken Malecke, Vice President of Institutional Advancement, was responsible for securing the 25+ donated trees. Different departments and offices around campus volunteered to decorate them. Here's a before and after shot of the Library's tree:

Before...

...and after!

Antoinette Cartwright, student president of The Association of Dramatic Artists (TADA!) welcomed the large crowd. Jane Hammang-Buhl, Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Leslie Love, President of Staff Advisory Council, made the opening remarks. Students Jeriel Woods and Dejon Parmer were accompanied by Tara Sievers of the Music department on piano. Student Jennifer Colvin performed a liturgical dance solo, and then TADA! and the Theater Department showed a short film of Marygrove students, staff and faculty describing what they're thankful for this holiday season. The Office of Student Engagement and Leadership provided donuts and hot cocoa - so delicious!

What are we thankful for this holiday season? Among other things, magical mornings like this:

Faculty: how much would you pay per month for scholarly database access?

Photo credit: epSos.de

"How much would you pay per month for scholarly database access?"

That's the question posed in yesterday's ProfHacker column in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The question is especially relevant given that the cost of library database subscriptions has reached unsustainable heights. Your Marygrove librarians are curious - do we subscribe to databases that you've never used? Do you wish you could add a database to our offerings? If you had to take a stab at how much of the library budget goes toward database subscriptions, what would you say?

Read the whole article here: http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/reader-input-how-much-per-month-for-scholarly-database-access/34949

Black No More: Skin Bleaching

In a recent Facebook post, Humanities professor Dr. Karen Davis refers to the latest issue of the Journal of Pan African Studies (volume 4, number 4), which is devoted to skin bleaching. This issue is available for free here: http://www.jpanafrican.com/currentissue.htm. (The title of this blog post is taken from the title of one of the articles in this issue.)

Dr. Davis writes, "I've been compiling resources on global history and practices of skin bleaching for about a year now, starting with the Jamaican controversy over Buju Banton's song "Love Muh Brownin" in the 1990s, followed by Nando Ranks' anti-bleaching response, "Dem a Bleach," a hugely popular club song in the 1990s."

The resources that Dr. Davis has compiled are available upon request; they include videos, journal articles, song lyrics, books, images and websites on the practice of skin bleaching. For a copy of these resources, please contact librarian Christine Malmsten (313.927.1378 - cmalmsten@marygrove.edu) or Dr. Davis (313.927.1352 - kdavis@marygrove.edu).

March 2011 report from the Association of American University Presses

The Association of American University Presses (AAUP) published a report in March titled, "Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Economic Models for University Presses." From the AAUP website:

This report a) identifies elements of the current scholarly publishing systems that are worth protecting and retaining throughout this and future periods of transition; b) explores business models of existing projects which hold promise; c) outlines the characteristics of effective business models; d) addresses the challenges of the transitional period we are entering; and e) arrives at recommendations that might allow us to sustain high-quality scholarship at a time when the fundamental expectations of publishing are changing.

You can read the full text of the report here (PDF).

The authors make five recommendations:

1. Prevent wasteful duplication of effort and ensure that significant developments are not lost in the clutter.
2. Existing partnerships should be supported and the development of new ones encouraged.
3. The role of agencies outside the presses in providing funds to work toward the digital future has  been, and will continue to be, crucial.
4. The trend toward more open access publishing is clear; but it will not succeed unless sustainable business models can be developed to support it. Nonprofit publishers, especially university presses, should become fully engaged in this discussion with the support of their parent institutions.
5. Proposals and plans for new business models should explicitly address two issues: the potential impact of the new model on existing parts of the press’s program and the requirements, both operational and financial, for making the transition to the new model. Ideally the consideration of these issues would involve the relevant author community as well as the press, its partners such as libraries or societies, and the funding agency.