WVU Libraries

The Art in the Libraries Committee and Dean of Libraries Karen Diaz selected Anna Allen, a BFA candidate in painting, and Raymond Thompson, Jr., an MFA student in photography, to receive the 2020 Dean of the Libraries’ Student Art Award.

Masks are the new symbol of our time. WVU’s Art in the Libraries Program will host a free virtual event titled “The Art of the Mask: A Community Discussion and Show-and-Tell” Monday, Feb. 15, from noon-1 p.m.

The Zoom gathering, in conjunction with the Art in the Libraries’ online exhibit, The Art of the Mask, will feature an informal sharing of masks and discussion by Suzanne Gosden-Kitchen, assistant chair and teaching associate professor in the Department of Management, John Chambers College of Business and Economics, and Matthew Tolliver, an adjunct faculty member at WVU and a certified professional school counselor, Monongalia County Schools. Their mask creations are part of the digital Art of the Mask exhibit.

WVU Libraries is hosting “Amplifying Appalachia” Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, an effort to amplify the stories and figures of under-represented Appalachian artists, writers, and other creators, particularly women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.

“Amplifying Appalachia” is open to all and will run virtually from March 1-5. Participants can contribute whenever is convenient them. Prior Wiki experience is not necessary.

Are you an instructor who is concerned about the impact of high textbook costs for your students’ academic success? WVU Libraries will host an Open Textbook Workshop and Textbook Review on March 4 at 10 a.m. that will help instructors explore possible open textbook solutions to this growing financial issue.

Over the past few years, 60 percent of students surveyed said they delayed purchasing textbooks until they received their financial aid and 70 percent chose not to purchase a required textbook because of cost, according to the Open Education Network, a group that studies how the high cost of course materials impede students’ academic success.

WVU Libraries is pleased to announce a free professional development opportunity available to University faculty and staff – complimentary registration for the OLC Innovate Virtual Conference scheduled for March 15-19.

This unlimited virtual package is a prize won by Engineering Librarian Martin Dunlap at the Online Learning Consortium’s Accelerate 2020 conference.

The Innovate Conference’s schedule includes more than 100 sessions and workshops and covers topics such as Blended Teaching and Learning; Career and Technical Education; Instructional Technologies and Tools; Leadership and Advocacy; Open Learning; Process, Problems and Practices; Research: Designs, Methods and Findings; and Teaching and Learning Practice. There are also “targeted summits,” which are thematically focused gatherings for Community College, HBCU, Instructional Design, Research, International and K-12.

WVU Libraries’ Committee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, in collaboration with the Prioritize Periods Campaign of Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, has launched “Take One, Leave One,” a menstrual product drive, in their campus locations including Downtown Campus Library, Evansdale Library, and Health Sciences Lactation Room, as a trial through the spring semester.

“Take One, Leave One” bins are located in public, yet discreet, locations in the buildings and welcome students and Library users to donate or take what they need. Locations will be posted on bathroom mirrors in each of the buildings. Bins will be monitored to record use and donations for potentially more long-term use or future initiatives.

“While access to basic hygiene on campus such as soap and toilet paper is routine, access to menstrual products is not at this point,” Libraries Dean Karen Diaz said. “We are happy to participate with Prioritize Periods Campaign to work on changing that and are happy to provide space to pilot improving access to this basic health requirement for so many in our community.”

The Downtown Campus, Evansdale and Health Sciences libraries and the Book Depository will close at 1 pm today because of the winter storm. The buildings will reopen at noon Thursday. 

The West Virginia University Food Justice Lab and WVU Libraries’ Arts in the Libraries committee are seeking content from scholars, artists, community groups and practitioners for a curated art exhibition that addresses issues related to Food Justice.

“The Food Justice Lab is thrilled to support WVU Libraries with an art exhibit that will elevate the rich histories of Appalachian food heritage, explore the inequities presently coded into our food system and help us to imagine a more just and resilient food future for our region,” WVU Food Policy Research Director Joshua Lohnes said.

The WVU Libraries are moving to a new authentication system for our electronic resources on Dec. 14th. This change should be seamless for most users. If you have linked to journal articles, eBooks, or other online library resources in your courses or bookmarked them in your browser, please change http://www.libproxy.wvu.edu/login?url= to https://wvu.idm.oclc.org/login?url= in the links. If you encounter problems, please contact Library eResources at eresources@mail.wvu.edu.

The Downtown Campus Library will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday as crews complete work on a steam line that supports the building’s HVAC system. The library will reopen Thursday at 7:30 a.m. For a complete list of WVU Libraries hours visit the Libraries’ website, wvu.libcal.com/hours. 

One hundred years ago, the West Virginia Legislature ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended voting rights to women. West Virginia University Libraries and the West Virginia and Regional History Center are marking the milestone with the exhibit “Votes for Women – 100 Years of Suffrage in West Virginia” in the Downtown Campus Library’s Rockefeller Gallery.

After being passed by Congress in 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment needed to be ratified by at least 36 states to become law. Success in the mountain state required conquering multiple hurdles, including assorted anti-suffrage protests. Despite such challenges, on March 10, 1920, West Virginia became the 34^th state to approve the amendment.

Elections are a foundation of American democracy, and the act of campaigning for public office is nearly as old as the Republic itself. In this election year, the West Virginia & Regional History Center is highlighting campaign materials from West Virginia politicians in a new digital exhibit, Vote for Me: West Virginia Political Memorabilia .

Elections and campaigns have changed over the centuries, and the 2020 campaign season has looked like none before. As Americans decide on the future, this exhibit explores some of West Virginia’s political past, the contributions of West Virginia politicians, as well as the history of campaign materials.

In commemoration of the Suffrage Centennial, the WVU Libraries’ Art in the Libraries Virtual Program will host Atiba Ellis, Professor of Law at Marquette University Law School, on democracy, voting and race on Oct. 30 at 6 p.m.

Ellis researches how racial and class-based oppression interact continue to abridge and deny the right to vote to communities on the margins of American democracy. His work has analyzed voter identification laws for their socioeconomic effects, situated felon disenfranchisement laws as enforcing a political underclass, analyzed the theoretical scope of the Citizens United decision, and described the ideological drivers of vote suppression.

Temperatures are falling, leaves are turning, and Halloween is fast approaching in Appalachia. No tricks here – WVU Libraries has put together a libguide with information and fun facts for the season. The guide covers Halloween history, local spooky activities, how to stay safe trick or treating during the COVID-19 pandemic, information costumes and cultural appropriation, profiles of our local monsters, resources for Day of the Dead, and has some great horror recommendations. Check it out here as you prepare for Halloween.

To celebrate the work of science fiction author Isaac Asimov and the West Virginia University Libraries’ Isaac Asimov Collection, the University is hosting the 2020 WVU Isaac Asimov Collection Symposium, a virtual event, on Oct. 31 from 3-5:30 p.m.

Asimov (1920-1992), widely considered one of the greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth-century, earned the title of “The Great Explainer” because he made complicated subjects easy to understand.

Marking the centennial of Asimov’s birth and promoting science fiction as an academic resource, the Asimov Symposium will feature conversations and presentations from the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of California at Riverside, the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, WVU’s Rare Book Collection and Eberly College of Arts and Sciences Department of English science fiction faculty.

By Karen Diaz, Dean of Libraries

The Libraries closed to the public on March 19 as part of the campus shut down due to COVID-19. It remained shuttered to the public until August 20 when it reopened to the campus community only through swipe access. This was 143 days of being closed.

During the closure most of our staff retreated to working from home as did the rest of campus with a skeleton crew on sight to retrieve and deliver print materials to our faculty, staff and students as needed. During that time, we continued to maintain access to our digital materials and purchase new academic content, completed teaching our already online credit courses, continued to answer reference questions through email, chat and phone. As mentioned, we also scanned articles from print materials as needed to email to our campus community and even mailed print books as needed.  Interlibrary loan continued for everything digital, but stopped for print materials due to so many library buildings being closed. The WVRHC was also closed, but provided reference assistance as possible.

In commemoration of the Suffrage Centennial, the WVU Libraries’ Art in the Libraries Virtual Program will host “Women Speak”, a juried performance of poetry, songs, short stories and essays, in a virtual format on Saturday, Oct. 17, from 1-3 p.m.

The annual event is a creation of the Women of Appalachia Project (WOAP) who issues a call to residents throughout Appalachia. This year’s participants hail from West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Tennessee and North Carolina.

“Many people have an image of an Appalachian woman, and they look down on her. The mission of WOAP is to showcase the way in which female artists respond to the Appalachian region as a source of inspiration, bringing together women from diverse backgrounds, ages and experiences to embrace the stereotype – to show the whole woman; beyond the superficial factors that people use to judge her,” said Kari Gunter-Seymour, WOAP founder and executive director.

The Health Sciences Library will be closed Saturday, Oct. 17, as parking lots around and bus service to the Health Sciences Center will be unavailable due to game day. The library will be open Sunday from 2 p.m.-midnight. For a complete list of WVU Libraries hours visit the Libraries’ website, wvu.libcal.com/hours. 

In commemoration of the Suffrage Centennial, the WVU Libraries’ Art in the Libraries Virtual Program will host Becky Cain Ceperley, former National League of Women Voters president, for a talk on the impact of voter registration and turnout on Friday, Oct. 9, from noon-1 p.m.

Ceperley is an at-large member of the Charleston City Council and serves as its president. She’s a former member of the Public Policy Committee of the Council on Foundations; national Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; the Advisory Committee on Election Law to the American Bar Association; the national Campaign Finance Institute; and the West Virginia Election Commission. Ceperley is also a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from WVU’s Political Science Department and the Eberly College of Arts and Science.

This event is in conjunction with WVU Libraries’ exhibition Undefeated: Canvas(s)ing the Politics Around Voter Suppression Since Women’s Suffrage  and in partnership with the West Virginia Women Vote of Morgantown coalition. Register here: https://wvu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMtdOusqzkqHtVegUOoI4zelpa8qehOaOBN

The face mask has become a symbol of our times, an emblem to illustrate the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also a signal of caring and a gesture of community amidst the upheaval of our daily life.

West Virginia University Libraries is accepting creative photos of masks from the WVU and local community – whether personally crafted, purchased, gifted, picked up at a free stand or imagined – for a juried online exhibit to launch in December.