News/Spotlight

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The UW WorldCat and Summit catalogs, and the "Ask Us" email/chat service will be unavailable between Saturday June 6 at 10:00pm PDT - Sunday June 7 at 04:00am PDT due to scheduled maintenance. Please use the UW-only Catalog at that time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Budget reduction overview, planning principles and action items effective July 1, 2009.

Each spring the Libraries takes time to honor its nearly 500 student employees who help keep the libraries open; process, digitize and shelve materials; and provide invaluable assistance in all of our units and libraries.

The new UW Center for Teaching and Learning will launch in July 2009 in Gerberding Hall. Requiring no new budgetary resources, the Center will be directed jointly by Undergraduate Academic Affairs, the Graduate School, and University Libraries, and has been designed to provide the infrastructure needed to support and improve teaching for faculty, librarians, teaching assistants, and research assistants in all disciplines, at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Interlibrary Loan tracks down books, texts and articles that students and staff request for research. Although the UW library system, which currently owns approximately 7 million volumes, is expansive, students often need an item that is not currently in the system. This is when the ILL takes action.

Brian Byrnes of the UW Daily spends time behind the scenes learning how it all works.

The UW WorldCat and Summit catalogs, and the "Ask Us" email/chat service will be unavailable between Saturday May 2 at 11:00 PDT - Sunday May 3 at 03:00 PDT due to scheduled maintenance. Please use the UW-only Catalog at that time. We apologize for any inconvenience.

ResearchWorks, the Libraries digital repository service, is now available. A digital repository is a system for disseminating and preserving scholarly work to researchers and other interested people around the world. UW Colleges, Schools, Departments and Research Centers can easily present their work to prospective students, faculty, granting institutions, as well as colleagues and other interested individuals around the world resulting in higher visibility for your work.

Check the ResearchWorks FAQ for more information about the repository, how to deposit your work, and info about preservation and access. Contact us with any questions or feedback.

A brief report of the 2008 Libraries website redesign effort and subsequent usability testing is now available online.

In preparation for anticipated reductions to the University Libraries Seattle campus information resources budget, we are undertaking a comprehensive review of our serial subscriptions (including print and electronic journals, databases, and microforms) in Spring 2009.

Saturday, 4 April - Elsevier's ScienceDirect, Scopus, The Admin Tool and 2collab - unavailable due to scheduled maintenance from 3 p.m. PDT for approximately 9 hours. They apologize for the inconvenience.

Jill McKinstry, Director of Odegaard Undergraduate Library, is the staff winner of the David B. Thorud Leadership Award. The award honors those who lead, serve, inspire and collaborate with broad-ranging impact that is beyond their regular responsibilities.

Mary Whisner, Reference Librarian at Gallagher Law Library, is this year's Distinguished Librarian. The award recognizes excellence in librarianship, especially as it benefits the academic community through teaching, research, learning, and innovative approaches to practice.

Congratulations to these two outstanding librarians!

Sign up for Libraries e-news! Keep up-to-date on events, exhibits and activities at the University Libraries. Send us an email and we'll include you in the next mailing. Read the current newsletter

Washington State has a large and active Jewish community that has been part of its history for over 150 years. It is notable for its large Sephardic component (Jews who trace their ancestry back to Spain and Portugal) that enjoys a culture distinct from that of Ashkenazic Jews (those from Central and Eastern Europe). The University of Washington Libraries has placed online a growing collection of photographs dating from the mid 1800s to present day, that relate to Jewish life and history in the Pacific Northwest, as well as nationally and internationally. Represented are only a selection of the thousands of images in the Washington State Jewish Archives Photograph Collection.

From March through June 2009 the UW Libraries are conducting a pilot project to deliver journal articles from our print collection to your desktop at no charge for current UW students, faculty and staff.

In 1909, the A-Y-P-E put Seattle on the map, celebrating the culture, industry and innovation that still define our region today. Visit the UW Libraries portal to view many images, maps and documents from this city's first world's fair.



Learn about other AYPE Centennial Events at ayp100.org.

Sign up for Libraries e-news! Keep up-to-date on events, exhibits and activities at the University Libraries. Send us an email and we'll include you in the next mailing. Read the current newsletter

The Orbis Cascade Alliance, the consortium of libraries that participate in and are responsible for the Summit shared catalog, is changing software vendors. As a result there will be a number of modifications to Summit beginning in November 2008.

What does the change mean for UW borrowers?

• Requesting of Summit material will continue during the change to the new system. Beginning November 21 material checked out in the current system will have a progressively shorter loan period or renewal as all material must be returned by December 12.
• Requesting in the new system will start on December 1, 2008. Material checked out in the new system will have a 4 week loan period with no renewals. Items that have been requested will not show in your library account for 2-4 days.
• The ability for UW borrowers to visit other libraries and check out materials will continue, though they will need to verify their status at the remote library by logging into their UW library account. Once the UW borrower is "adopted" in this manner by the remote library they can request that books from other libraries be delivered to that library.

Why are the changes being made now?

Our contract with our current software vendor expires in January. We know this is not an ideal time to implement new software but it was not feasible to continue with the current vendor through the spring.

Questions?

Additional information will be made available as we near the change to the new system and are able to provide details. General information is available at the main Summit site. You can also check the UW Libraries main page for updates.

Questions can be sent to the Libraries AskUs service.