• Crown 111 is open whenever classes or meetings are not in session.
• Noonan Reading Room is open 24 hours a day for quiet study.
• Librarians are on hand to help you check your citations or find resources for term papers.

To apply, please submit your resume and a brief writing sample (250-500 words) to Margaret Heller, Web Services Librarian at mheller@dom.edu. Applications are due January 13.

A former participant had this to say…

Becoming a Library Labs volunteer is a fantastic way to keep up with emerging technologies, especially if you are interested in libraries and information science. By researching new tools and websites, you’re not just learning about what’s out there, you’re investigating and determining the future of libraries. Your research and recommendations will add value to the Rebecca Crown Library and benefit the DU community at large. The resulting blog posts will also serve as great items in your portfolio. An even if you’re not a GSLIS student, we could use your perspective and skills.

 Martin Luther King Day

January 16, 2012- Closed

What do the Gospels mean to you?

Please join us for a conversation about the book this Thursday, November 10, 2011, 7pm in Lewis Lounge.  Dominican English professor Dan Anderson will guide our discussion.

For more information please contact:

Ken Orenic – 708-524-6870 korenic@dom.edu

Throughout the week, 11 faculty members, in disciplines ranging from Spanish to Psychology, agreed to publish their scholarship in our new repository, Constellation.  This includes article pre- and post-prints, and even some publisher versions of articles.  Most of them are already in Constellation; a few more will be added shortly.  Thank you to those faculty members, all of whom responded within only a few hours of my initial email.  As faculty publish new research, we will determine that research’s eligibility to be included in Constellation and contact faculty accordingly.

On Wednesday night, Clifford Lynch, Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, spoke in the Recital Hall on “Names and Lives in the Cultural Record.”  With the Internet, digital publishing, blogs, Twitter and more, just about anyone can become a creator of content, an author.  The question is raised, then: How to keep track of all those names?  Though Lynch’s talk did not directly relate to open access, some connections can be made.   With Internet publishing, much of that new content is open access.

Faculty, I hope you got some open access chocolate.  I visited each academic building to pass out candy wrapped in information about open access, author rights and self-archiving.  Faculty members weren’t always in their offices at the times I stopped by, but I had several good conversations.  I talked with a few faculty members about their specific research and the journals in which they usually publish, and followed up with email later in the week.  These conversations, plus the quick email responses mentioned above, indicate that Dominican faculty get it.  They understand their rights as authors and want to make their research available.

Finally, I checked in with Dominican’s fellow LIBRAS institutions that are also using Constellation.  After getting them started with the repository a few weeks ago, Open Access Week was the perfect time to see how it’s going on their campuses.

Constellation and publishing scholarship from our faculty, students and staff is, of course, an on-going thing.  But Open Access Week allows us to take time out of our busy, varied jobs to concentrate on such things.  Our Week was successful and laid the groundwork for continued success.

Stop by the University Special Collections on the second floor of Crown to see a display of material about Founder’s Week throughout the history of Dominican University.

The librarians at Crown Library wish you all a safe and enjoyable Halloween.   Be sure to stop by the Reference Desk for some ghoulish treats (as well as help with finding articles for your assignments)!

Take a look.

It still functions the same way, but this gives you more help and opportunities to send us your comments.

Happy National Archives Month!

This year has proven an especially exciting one for Dominican University’s Archives and Special Collections. For an outside observer our activities may seem particularly quiescent – the website for the Archives has not been regularly updated, no brochures have been circulated in the past year, and there are no new finding aids available online. Yet this serenity masks the development of our programs and collecting activities which will, I expect, emerge within a flurry of activity come 2012.

While the school has supported a rare book and manuscript collection almost from the beginning, and an on campus archives since 1971, it was only in 2010 that the two entities were officially united into a single unit within the Rebecca Crown Library. Inventories of most every collection have been assembled. Innumerable records from the history of Rosary College and Dominican University have been discovered and collected. Our rare books are inventoried and in the process of being cataloged for online discovery. We’ve even discovered several books with fore-edge painting!

Gaps in our yearbook collection have been filled, and we an annual presence at our reunions. Faculty, staff and alumni have proven most helpful in identifying unknown people and events in our 20,000 item physical photographic print collection. Within the past year we have received several notable donations from alumni and their families. As our visibility on campus grows, we continue to receive new transfers and donations of materials almost daily. In addition to the new archival and museum studies certificate the Graduate School of Library and Information Science is offering, as well as a recent write-up in Dominican Magazine, we’ve also received notice by writers outside of Dominican. At least three separate
newspapers reported on our Noah Hart Papers. Perhaps most rewarding of all was our discovery of a rare photograph featuring Charles Kallal for a local blogger.

By 2012 we also hope to print our first ever catalog for Special Collections. This one will focus on the Mae Kennedy Kane Irish book Collection donated to us in 2010. There are some true treasures to be found among the Irish books, and we hope that the bibliography will encourage use of the materials while we continue to work to catalogue them. We also plan to produce a limited edition run of some 1970s posters designed by Patti Ellen Ricci, graduate of 1957, advertising Rosary College and its programs. Unfortunately she passed away last year; we hope to honor her memory with these posters for what is her 55th reunion year. These posters will be sold during reunion to benefit the Archives, which is now home to her graphic design collection encompassing her professional work for various Catholic institutions in the Chicagoland area as well as all her work in the 1970s for Rosary College.

You’ve likely seen our Civil War era letters from Noah Hart, and the Wilson A. Bentley Snowflake Collection. Soon we hope to add a few new digital collections as well in the coming months: images and transcripts from our Medieval manuscript collection; an exhibit of our letters to Justin Winsor in 1879 (the year of the American Library Associations’ incorporation) from an assortment of library luminaries such as Melvil Dewey, Samuel Green, and Charles Ammi Cutter;
and, an exhibit of our sheet music. For my next blog post I will feature our autograph letter by Saint Francis de Sales, just one of the hidden treasures in our collections.

Our special collections are open to all, not only during National Archives Month. Please contact me to schedule a visit, I’d be more than happy to give you a tour.