WVU Libraries

West Virginia University Libraries and the Art in the Libraries committee have created the WVU Faculty/Staff Exhibition Award to help promote the art and scholarship of faculty and staff. Current faculty and staff may submit ideas for an exhibit that visually showcases their scholarship in new and experimental ways, provides a visual evolution of their work or answers a research question. One awardee will receive a $1,000 professional development award and an exhibition, including promotion and public programming. Application deadline is February 28. More information is available at exhibits.lib.wvu.edu.

West Virginia University Libraries encourages University and Morgantown community members to participate in the Campus Art Crawl on February 15, from 4-6 p.m. In addition to exhibits, the tour will feature activities, such as a scavenger hunt, and food and drink. Admission and participation are free.

Downtown

• Jackson Hole Photography Workshop: Ten Years in the Making

Downtown Campus Library Atrium: This exhibit celebrates a decade of College of Creative Arts Professor of Photography Michael Sherwin teaching a workshop on Jackson Hole photography. Beginning at 4 p.m., Sherwin and a group of his students will give a presentation on their work.

• Flowing Outward & Beyond: WVU 150^th Anniversary

West Virginia & Regional History Center: A selection of documents and artifacts from the Center’s archives illustrate the University’s founding and early years. Read the rest of this entry »

We will be updating the following systems.  The sites may be down briefly, but downtime should be minimal.

Wherever you travel this summer, as long as you have Internet access, you can take ULIB300: Film and Media Literacy. In this 12-week online course, students will watch the films of Quentin Tarantino, including Inglorious Basterds, Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Reservoirs Dogs, Hateful Eight, and Jackie Brown, and discuss how they relate to other films in their genre, criticism, marketing, film vocabulary, and media literacy.

This 3-credit course runs May 14 to August 3 and fulfills GEC 5 and 7, and GEF 6. To register in STAR, use the Class Schedule Search and set Subject to “Library Instruction.” Learn more at the Libraries website or contact the instructor, Matt Steele, at matthew.steele1@mail.wvu.edu or 304-293-4240.

Blog post by Jane Metters LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC.

In honor of WVU’s new and exciting records retention schedule, here is a little history about the University Archives and information about what we are collecting.

The stacks in the old Wise Library used to be open; now they are closed and we store a lot of the University Archives here.

The West Virginia & Regional History Center is the special collections unit of WVU Libraries and the home of WVU’s university archives.  It all began in the 1920s when an ambitious WVU history professor started to seek support for preserving the state’s historical records. By 1933, we were authorized by the University as the “Division of Documents,” and in 1935 we hired our first full-time archivist Dr. Festus P. Summers.  Read the rest of this entry »

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Rare Book Librarian

Long, cold winter nights are the perfect time to dream of spring.  What shall we plant in the garden this year?  Will we order plants, seeds, or some of both?  Will we have a vegetable garden or will we plant flowers?  Should we dig a new bed for those iris we’ve always wanted to plant?  This might be the year!  If you’re like me, you’ve already received garden catalogs offering heirloom seeds or the latest cultivars. I always get drawn into the beautiful images of plants, the latest introductions, and ways to use them in the home and garden.  There’s nothing like looking at garden catalogs on a snowy day to make you think of spring.  Read the rest of this entry »

As library collections become increasingly digital, West Virginia University Libraries seeks to engage our users and community in our spaces in new ways. One avenue is the Art in the Libraries program, which brings art and collaborative exhibitions into the library buildings to spark discussions and inspire new ideas.

“Having art and exhibits in these publicly used spaces presents a unique opportunity for exhibitor and library guest,” said Sally Deskins, exhibit coordinator for WVU Libraries. “The exhibitor’s work is in a neutral space, a space which preserves and protects new ideas and perspectives, and a space where some who wouldn’t normally seek out art and exhibits, will go.”

Art in the Libraries programming spans the Downtown Campus, Evansdale and Health Sciences libraries. The committee welcomes ideas for collaborative and engaging programs and submissions for exhibition proposals on an ongoing basis.

Read the rest of this entry »

In November, the Art in the Libraries Committee awarded College of Creative Arts’ students Megan Grindle and Christina Kang with the Dean of the Libraries’ arts awards. Grindle’s work, Exposure (2017, acrylic paint, ink, glitter, and art resin)  and Kang’s work Creatures of Dichotomy: Finding a Bridge Between (2017, sceenprint under etching, watercolor, pins), won the awards selected by the Art in the Libraries Committee at the CCA’s Juried Student Exhibit in Laura Mesaros Gallery.

Exposure will be on display in Evansdale Library January through April 2018; Creatures of Dichotomy: Finding a Bridge Between will be on display in the Downtown Campus Library Lobby January through December 2018.

Artist Megan Grindle’s work can be explained simply as abstract, but there are more to the layers of paint than that. She explains that her process takes a careful, skillful hand but the decisions on how to move her hands comes from her unconscious mind. For her work she uses an abstract fluid style that allows her to use the randomness of the paint to create a beautiful outcome.

Artist Christina Kang is a printmaker working on her BFA. She is a self proclaimed “tiny lines enthusiast” and explains that her creating her artwork is her way of showing people her personal identity.

Grindle and Kang will have more artwork on view alongside work by recent graduate Mallory Burka, on display in Room 1020 of DCL January 20-February 2018.

Artist Mallory Burka’s paintings, from afar, seem photographic until viewers look a little closer. Burka’s paintings, though based on her own photographs, are made with oil paint and drop cloth to create a painterly-realistic depiction of structural and natural landmarks in West Virginia. She hopes to interest viewers and persuade them to visit the sites of West Virginia that inspired her.

More information at exhibits.lib.wvu.edu.

Contact: Sally Deskins, Exhibits & Programs Coordinator, WVU Libraries
sbdeskins@mail.wvu.edu, 304-293-0369

Systems Development will be performing server maintenance on Thursday, January 11th beginning at 9am.  Downtime should be minimal, but there may be brief outages.  The following system will be affected:

textbooks.lib.wvu.edu

We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

The latest issue of the West Virginia & Regional History Center’s newsletter has been released!  The feature article is “Ancella Bickley Papers Document the Life and Work of Pioneer Black Educator and Historian.” Additional articles include a celebration of the recent donation of a set of glassware of the Kennedy Presidential pattern, which was produced by the Morgantown Glass Company, and the donation of a set of historical newspapers that document key moments in history. We also honor our recently retired Coordinator of Public Services, Kevin Fredette, who helped the patrons of the Center for 10 years.

You can read a PDF copy of the newsletter or contact the Center to request a print copy.  If you want to see back issues of the newsletter, they are all online and accessible through our Newsletter webpage.

The Libraries are now offering two versions of our updated plagiarism avoidance tutorial.  Both tutorials cover how plagiarism is defined; why students may advertently and inadvertently plagiarize; possible penalties for plagiarism; how to use information ethically in research papers / projects; and where to get help with researching and writing. To enhance usability, students can watch videos, read scripts, or listen to audio covering the Tutorial’s content. Students work through 5 modules, taking self-tests in order to progress from one module to the next. After completing the last module, students take an exam on the Tutorial’s material. The final exam, consisting of 20 questions, randomly draws from a bank of 58 possible questions. Students generally require about 1 hour of concentrated work time to complete the tutorial.

eCampus

This version can be added to your course in eCampus, and the exam’s grade is immediately entered into the eCampus gradebook. To add the Plagiarism Avoidance Tutorial to your class:

1. Go to https://ers.wvu.edu
2. Click on the course that you want to add the Plagiarism Avoidance Tutorial to.
3. Click on the Request Content button.
4. Check the box next to the sections you want to add it to and click Next.
5. Click on Development System when it asks where your source content is located.
6. Then click on Other.
7. In the Name box, type “WVU Plagiarism Avoidance Tutorial” and click Next.
8. Then click Submit.

If you would like to review the Plagiarism Avoidance Tutorial before adding it to your current or future class, you can add it to the course shell of a non-current class using the process listed above.

Web

This version is available at https://lib.wvu.edu/plagiarism. Students will simply visit this link and take the tutorial and quiz.  At the end of the quiz, they will be prompted to email their scores to their instructors.  This new process will eliminate the need for students to register or for instructors to be added to a list.  This will streamline the process for both students and instructors.  Both this updated version of the tutorial and the previous tutorial will be available through the Spring 2018 semester.  On May 7, 2018, the old version will be removed.