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More News November 22, 2017

Digitization Project Coordinator Charlotte Dominguez grew up hearing her father exclaim, “There’s Sherman!” whenever they drove past the Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, CA.

Little did she know that one day, she would be part of a monumental, two-year collaborative project between the Sherman Indian Museum and UCR Library’s Inland Empire Memories initiative,  that was made possible by a grant received from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Enabling New Scholarship through Increasing Access to Unique Materials program.  

Dominguez joined the library team in mid-July 2017. Since September, she and her three Sherman Indian High School student workers Kassie, Marisa, and Koby have been busy digitizing Sherman’s archival materials and preparing them for online publication via Calisphere.

“It's kind of like a treasure hunt because you never know what you're going to see,” Dominguez said. “I really like seeing the pictures of the younger kids. After you see the same face four or five times, you start to get attached.”

The photographs and archival documents that Dominguez and her team are digitizing depict a cultural odyssey that spans many decades, rich with the history of local Native American people as well as those who have come to study at Sherman from all over the continental United States. They chronicle the early days of the Sherman Institute, years when it served as a vocational school, and the era after 1970, when it became Sherman Indian High School. “The school has a really solid cultural program, and that's a really big draw for a lot of the kids,” Dominguez explained.

The project aims to not only preserve and increase access to these materials online, but also to help Sherman Indian High School students gain valuable, hands-on work experience with handling, digitizing, and creating descriptive metadata for cultural heritage materials.

Work experience can be hard to come by for boarding school students, who aren't allowed to leave campus without supervision from their parents or school staff. Dominguez explained, “One of the main goals of this project is to give the Sherman students a chance to learn skills that they can use in the future and allow them to be less financially dependent on their families. For all of them, it's their first real job.”

Koby said that he enjoys learning about Sherman’s history while working with the photos and seeing how fashion trends and hairstyles changed over the decades. Kassie enjoys the digitization process. “It’s fun to enlarge the scans to see the hidden details,” she said.

Their goal is to digitize an estimated 10,000 items and complete descriptions for each so that they can be indexed by search engines when made available online. To date, they have digitized over 2,000 items and finished the accompanying metadata for 1,200 of those files. That puts them on target to complete the project on-time by the summer of 2019.

These three students will work with Dominguez until the end of this semester, and then she will train four new students over the next term. “I made the decision to rotate the kids in conjunction with the museum curator, Lori (Lorene Sisquoc),” Dominguez explained. “We wanted to make sure as many kids as possible had the experience, if they wanted it.”

Once published online, this collection will be a valuable resource to researchers worldwide, as well as to Sherman Indian High School alumni. “A lot of the researchers who come here are doing genealogy, or they're alumni looking for things to show their kids or grandkids, and a lot of them can't travel like they used to,” Dominguez said. “So having things published online will be so useful to them.”

They are also hoping to crowd-source captions and other identifying details for the photographs. “Lori is hoping that, once these get published, family members or maybe even the alumni themselves will come forward and say, ‘Hey, that's me!’ or, ‘Hey, that's my aunt!’ and help us put names to these faces.”

Dominguez said that the Sherman Indian Museum and the UCR Library project team plan to share information about what the project has accomplished, how they plan to use it, and why they did it within both the Native American and academic communities.

More News December 09, 2016

On Tuesday, November 29, 2016, students of the Music Department’s debut course “Genealogy of Hip-Hop” became the first to use UCR Library’s new Dexter Thomas Japanese Hip-Hop Collection.

Dani Brecher Cook, Director of Teaching & Learning at UCR Library, collaborated with Dr. Liz Przybylski, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology to make this new archive available for student research.

“It was a new and exciting class that was offered by the Music Department to music majors and non-majors,” Dr. Przybylski said. The course examined hip-hop’s global spread and specific case-studies in the global hip-hop scene.

Dr. Przybylski felt that her collaboration with Dani and the library was productive. “Dani helped the students to interact with some of the materials, which helped them to understand what an archive is and how they can use it,” Dr. Przybylski explained. “The students enjoyed themselves, and it’s great to see what can happen when we have someone like Dani, who has the skill and experience to translate collections into student learning.”

Dani agreed that the collaboration was a terrific experience, stating, “Liz was a librarian’s dream to work with. She had a clear sense of what she wanted the students to walk away with, regarding how distinctive collections can deepen their understanding, beyond or in addition to what a YouTube video or streaming music might.”

Student groups participated in an open-ended listening activity, with each group assigned to one artist, based on what the library had available in the collection. Dani felt that this experience demonstrated the importance of physical collections and how material objects can enhance our understanding of topics in unexpected ways. “The students closely examined each part of the CD, ranging from the artwork on the liner notes and how that correlated (or didn’t!) with the music that they heard on the tracks, picking out the range of influences that informed the music, and tracking how artists evolved over time.”

“Students who don’t have a history of working with a physical product just don’t understand what kind of information it’s possible to encounter when you’re looking at an actual album or all the ways you can interact with an album, other than just hearing the songs that are on it,” Dr. Przybylski explained. “The physical CDs helped to tune the students in to the artist’s trajectory. They were reading CD liner notes to see more than just the lyrics of the songs. One group put all the CDs in order by year and looked at how the images changed over time, what label are the artists on now versus the label they used to be on. It was so much more immediate and accessible with the music in their hands.”

Dr. Przybylski sees great potential for future collaborations between the Music Department and UCR Library, using this archive. She hopes to see the “Genealogy of Hip-Hop” class run each year, and integrate the Dexter Thomas Japanese Hip-Hop Collection more robustly into the course curriculum. She would also like to incorporate it into her graduate seminar in hip-hop so that students could research the collection in-depth.

“It’s exciting to see students discover new things and create new knowledge for themselves using our distinctive collections,” Dani explained. “I’m looking forward to having the whole collection available next time, and seeing how that will help to build new connections and facilitate different thought processes and discoveries.”

“Some students seemed surprised that they really enjoyed the music even if they didn’t understand the lyrics,” Dr. Przybylski mused. She found only one drawback to the experience: “Having someone fluent in Japanese to translate the materials would enable us to extract even more information from them.” Perhaps this need could inspire a future collaboration between the library and the Asian Studies department.

Students also expressed interest in who the collector was and how he put this material together, Dr. Przybylski explained, because they resonated with and were inspired by the success that he had achieved post-UCR. Dexter Thomas graduated from UC Riverside in 2006 with a major in English and is now a PhD candidate in East Asian Studies at Cornell University. While at UCR, Thomas served as the Student Director of Programming at KUCR-FM, and after graduation he became a correspondent for the HBO show Vice News Tonight. Thomas won a Pulitzer Prize for his work at the Los Angeles Times on the 2015 San Bernardino shooting. He is currently writing a book about Japanese hip-hop.

More News February 01, 2017

UCR Library is pleased to announce that the Executive Assistant to the University Librarian position was offered to Terri Gutierrez, and she has accepted. Her new title will be effective beginning February 1, 2017.

We appreciate the superior political acumen, efficiency, and effectiveness that Terri brings to this position.

Terri first joined the library in 2011. For the past five years, she has served as the Administrative Specialist, providing wide-ranging administrative support to the University Librarian, Steve Mandeville-Gamble.

Terri received her BA in English from Cal Poly Pomona. She has approximately 18 years of experience as an administrative assistant. She also has significant experience providing administrative oversight for an executive in academic and corporate settings.

Please join us in congratulating Terri on her new role.

More News November 12, 2025

Shari Laster (she/they) will serve as the inaugural Associate University Librarian and Director of Systemwide Library Facilities, starting on January 2, 2026. 

In this role, Shari will oversee SLF-North and SLF-South, and will collaboratively respond to and advance the long-term physical preservation and access needs of all of the UC libraries. Shari will be based at the Northern facility (Richmond and Berkeley).

Shari comes to us from Arizona State University, where she currently serves as Head, Open Collections Curation & Access and Interim Associate University Librarian. In this role, Shari provides leadership for community-focused collection development, digital repository management, and specialized collections services, supervising nearly a dozen direct reports and 30+ personnel within the department. Previously, Shari held positions at UC Santa Barbara as Government Information & Data Services Librarian and at the University of Akron as Government Documents/Reference Librarian. Shari earned an MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007.

Shari brings extensive experience in collaborative collection management and shared print programs, currently serving as Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee for the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST). Shari has been deeply involved in government information preservation initiatives, including service on the Depository Library Council and a leadership role with the Preservation of Electronic Government Information (PEGI) Project. Their scholarly work includes co-editing "Transforming Print: Collection Development and Management for our Connected Future" and numerous publications on collections strategy and government information access. At ASU, Shari successfully led complex projects including the relocation of over 800,000 volumes during the Hayden Library renovation and served as project coordinator for a Mellon-funded initiative exploring data-driven approaches to collections design. Their leadership philosophy centers on people-focused collaboration and operationalizing strategy in service of equitable access.

We look forward to Shari's leadership and continuing our collaboration with our fellow University of California libraries. 

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Background: The UC Libraries shifted operational and strategic oversight of our Regional Library Facilities to become fully systemwide service centers. This change builds on the existing “one RLF, two locations” ethos and work practices. For more information about the shift from regional to fully systemwide library facilities, please see the UC Berkeley Library blog post about charting a unified course for the facilities from August 2025 and the SLF FAQ. You can read the full announcement on Shari's arrival on the UC Berkeley Library blog.
 

More News March 12, 2018

This past quarter, Public Services Assistant Zayda Delgado received word that she had received a scholarship from the National Endowment for the Humanities-Global Book Histories Initiative (NEH-GBHI) to attend Rare Book School at Amherst College during summer 2018.

Rare Book School (RBS) is an independent institute housed at the University of Virginia that provides continuing education and community-building opportunities through hands-on, seminar-style classes taught by distinguished faculty.

At RBS, Delgado will take a course called A History of Native American Books & Indigenous Sovereignty.

Delgado applied to the program for personal and professional development, but also with the purpose of sharing her knowledge here at UCR. “We have a significant collection of Native American books, particularly on California’s first people,” she explained.

“This award presents an opportunity for Zayda to develop her skill sets in culturally diverse book collections,” said Tiffany Moxham, Assistant University Librarian for Collections. “It also ties into our initiatives to support the documentation and research support of our local communities, which are manifested in such initiatives as Inland Empire Memories.”

This will be Delgado’s second time attending Rare Book School. She first received a fellowship in 2016, along with a group of 20 fellows. That year, she took the course History of the Book 200-2000, which was taught jointly by John Buchtel, Director of the Booth Family Center for Special Collections at Georgetown University and Mark Dimunation, the Chief of Rare Books at the Library of Congress. “He gave us a behind-the-scenes tour,” Delgado said. “I got to hold the rarest and most precious materials that they have at the Library of Congress.”

Traditionally, scholarships are reserved for those who have not previously attended Rare Book School. Coordinator of Scholarships Danielle Culpeper encouraged Delgado’s group to apply for the NEH-GBHI fellowship because it was open to people who had attended RBS before.

“It’s just so fun, the opportunity to go back to RBS. It’s like a summer camp for people who really love books,” Delgado explained. “From the time you wake up in the morning until the time you go to bed at night, you’re learning something new every minute. It’s really exciting for me, so I’m really looking forward to that.”

More News January 30, 2024

Join members of the University of California community for UC Love Data Week (UCLDW), scheduled for February 12-16, 2024.

This exciting free event series, open to all members of the University of California community, focuses on a wide range of data-related topics including data access, management, security, sharing, and preservation.

UCR Library Data Librarian Kat Koziar, who has been involved with UCLDW since its inception in fall 2020, shared her enthusiasm for the upcoming event. "I’ve really enjoyed how we adapt and change our workshops to have relevant and current information for researchers," Kat said. She highlighted that including this year over 100 workshops will have been offered since the program began, with the UCLDW web team now working on ways to easily search across these for available recordings and materials.

This year, the UCR Library is sponsoring workshops that focus on 3D data and how to create 3D images. Kat, also a panelist in one of the sessions on open data resources, emphasized the variety of topics covered. "This year’s UCLDW workshops are truly across the disciplines," she stated, pointing out that there are sessions designed for both science and humanities participants.

Kat also spoke about the importance of data literacy in today’s academic and professional landscape. She believes that UC Love Data Week contributes significantly to this area. "Data literacy is not just integral to success in today’s academic and professional landscape, it’s important for everyday life," she remarked. “When attendees learn skills to understand data, those skills aren’t restricted to just research data, they can be applied to all types of data.”

UC Love Data Week promises to be a comprehensive platform for learning and discussion, catering to a wide range of interests, like open data sources, qualitative data, GIS and mapping, drone data, data science, and more.

We encourage the UCR community to explore this year's presentations and workshops on the UC Love Data Week website (make sure to register using your UCR email address). 

More News February 08, 2019

Access Services Desk Coordinator Leslie Settle recently received her certification as a systemwide facilitator for the University of California.

She joins an elite group of ten people who are certified to provide UC systemwide professional development programs, including the award-winning University of California Women’s Initiative (UCWI) CORO.

At present, Settle is the only UC Riverside-based certified UC Facilitator for the UC Women’s Initiative.

In spring 2018, Settle first participated in CORO UCWI, which aims to establish a pipeline for advancement and to promote women in leadership at the university. CORO exists to open doors to women in any stage of their careers, not just in senior-level positions within the university, Settle explained.

After completing CORO UCWI, Settle was one of four applicants chosen to become a UC facilitator, trained at UCOP through a partnership between CORO and Systemwide Talent Management.

“The biggest transformation, personally, was learning to break my imposter syndrome and value my skills and abilities,” Settle said. “To be put on the same playing field as women whose titles held more prestige than mine, and then realize that they wanted to learn from me, was an honor.”

During CORO, Systemwide Talent Management staff remarked on Settle’s charming use of colloquialisms in facilitating, something she felt would not have been a factor if she had equal professional status to those in management. “This experience helped me to learn that taking constructive feedback means knowing what to adjust and what not to fix, so it doesn’t change who I am,” she explained.

CORO UCWI also helped Settle to achieve greater confidence and skill as a trainer, and increased clarity on her career goal: to become a national leadership program facilitator.

From April to June at UC Riverside, Settle will co-lead CORO’s UCWI 2019 southern cohort, a group of 30 mid-career women from across the UC system who have demonstrated potential for advancement in staff, faculty or academic roles. Topics will include growth mindset, intersectionality, balancing advocacy and inquiry, emotional agility, negotiation, writing professional narratives, and more.

Professional development and mentoring student employees are high priorities for Settle, who also served as the first chair for the UCR Library’s Professional Development Committee. “At work, I get to bring joy to the students I serve and the people I work with. Outside of work, I love to pay it forward. I’m a giver at heart.”

As a UC facilitator, Settle’s role is also to educate people on who is eligible and how to apply for programs like CORO UCWI. “All UCR women employees who have been working in a career position for seven to 10 years – not just at UCR – should be encouraged and welcomed to apply.”

CORO UCWI is sponsored by the Systemwide Advisory Committee on the Status of Women (SACSW) and the UC Office of the President, and administered by Systemwide Talent Management.

More News October 22, 2021

A chance meeting with a Special Collections librarian completely altered the career path of UCR alumna Andrea Valencia.

A Latin American history major, Valencia often visited Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) for a history course with Professor Juliette Levy. While in SCUA, she met Robin Katz, Arts and Humanities Teaching Librarian, who led a teaching seminar for Levy. (At the time, Katz was the Outreach and Public Services Librarian for SCUA.)

Katz’s enthusiasm for teaching and learning with primary sources made a strong impression. Valencia explained, “Her expression of joy to share that information with us, and our joy of receiving it was an entirely new experience for me. Seeing someone so happy, so charismatic, and having so much fun teaching students how to handle these documents, I realized that I wanted to be in that kind of position one day.”

So, Valencia asked Katz, “How do I become you?”

Katz replied, “You’ll have to get your MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science).”

After graduating from UC Riverside in 2016, Valencia enrolled at San Jose State, where she completed her MLIS in 2019.

Until that day, Valencia had thought she wanted to become an elementary teacher. “For some reason, my perspective on education and teaching was that it was only something you could do with a large age gap,” Valencia explained. “I never realized until that moment that you could be an adult teaching other adults or young adults something that they are passionate about. Being that source of information for them, and having a slightly more equitable sharing of knowledge.”

A Corona native and only child, Valencia’s parents presented her with two choices for college: UCR or Cal State Fullerton. “I really wanted to go to UCR because I’m a life-long Riverside resident. I plan on staying in Riverside long term. It’s my home, and UC Riverside was the obvious choice.”

Valencia now works as the Reference and Instruction Librarian at the Riverside County Law Library. She has been working in libraries for nearly five years now.

Upon learning of her impact on Valencia’s life path, Katz said, “It’s an honor and a privilege to get to help UCR students forge their academic and post-college careers! I am always happy to speak to anyone interested in librarianship, archives, museums, and related cultural heritage professions.”

To Katz, Valencia would say, “Thank you for presenting this job opportunity for me, this path in life that I never would have considered. As many other students, I was like, ‘What’s next? What am I going to do after I graduate?’ Growing up and going into college, thinking you want to be a librarian is not so common.”

Valencia encouraged her fellow Highlanders to learn about libraries in different settings, the Library Bill of Rights, and libraries’ commitment to the freedom of information. “Libraries are an integral part of society. Your local library, they want to meet you, they want you to come, they want you to talk to them. We’re sitting there waiting for the next person to come in because we're so excited.”

Still early in her career, Valencia is excited to see where this path takes her. “I’m using this period of my life to learn as much as I can, to find as many mentors as possible, and to go to as many conferences as possible. I just presented at CLA for the first time last year, so this is a growth and learning period for me and I really hope that in five years, I’m ready to be in the next place where I’m ready to be at home more permanently. The dream is obviously to go back to UCR.”

For UCR’s current students, Valencia shared this advice: “Don’t be so set or worried that you have to decide your future at such a young age, because ultimately your future is unfolding before you in ways that you can’t expect. It’s not like reading your story and you don’t know the end. You’re not supposed to know where you end up when you’re starting the story! You’re supposed to be flipping page by page, experience by experience, person by person, and end up where you’re supposed to end up by fate, or whatever you want to call it. Ultimately, that’s how I feel the UCR Library impacted my life. The people I met, the experiences I had there, and the time that I spent there ultimately changed my story, unfolded it in the way it was supposed to, and led me to a very fulfilling career that not many people know of.”

More News August 24, 2018

At all-staff meetings held on August 20 and 21, Library Human Resources acknowledged ten UCR Library employees for their outstanding contributions.

These team members became the third round of employees to be recognized through the KUDOS program.

Under the KUDOS program, non-probationary staff and academic employees at the UCR Library can be nominated by a peer for actions or contributions related to the library's mission that have a significant, positive impact on colleagues, library users, or others.

Nominations were submitted anonymously by library non-probationary staff and academic employees, and then were reviewed by members of Library Cabinet to determine which staff members would receive the KUDOS awards.

The August 2018 recipients received the following comments on their nomination forms:

Natalie Moller, Collection Maintenance Assistant

• “Natalie’s ALMA contributions in the Collection Maintenance workflow deserve special recognition.  Natalie continues to be an asset to the ongoing configuration of our ILMS.”

Jim Clark, Head of Database Management and Authority Control Unit

• “I’d like to nominate Jim for his role in the ALMA migration.  I know it’s been an enormous amount of work, on the technical side, as well as supporting colleagues in Metadata and Technical Services to get oriented to a previously unfamiliar system and get up and running. Thank you!”

Margarita Yonezawa, Research Services Assistant

• “Margarita has proved to be an exemplary and dedicated worker.  She is a proactive person who is dedicated to her job and the library.”

Erika Quintana, Acquisitions Unit Supervisor

• “Erika is in a true sense, the person with the biggest insight and knowledge of most, if not all functions in the library.  The introduction and training of the new system of Ex Libris is just one of various examples of her great motivation, smarts, accuracy and personal care.”

Pam Sun, Collection Strategies Services Coordinator

• “Pam was recently assigned to a special project in the Learning Resources Display Center that was an insurmountable task that needed to be done quickly. Pam and her students have done a beautiful job, consulting as necessary if there was anything that she was unsure of.  Because of her attention to detail and willingness to consult, she completed the task in record time. Many thanks to Pam for her excellent work.”

Chuck Stephenson, Night and Billing Coordinator, Rivera

• “Chuck has been a major contributor to the configuration and testing of the fulfillment functions in ALMA.  He has made significant contributions in defining the billing workflow for the library. He is willing to jump in and assist where he can.”

Rocco Berges, Senior Building Maintenance Worker

• “Rocco has done quite a bit to keep the Rivera and Orbach libraries looking great.  In addition to regularly keeping the lounge areas tidy and clean, he’s taken on some projects that go beyond regular maintenance, which have had an outstanding and noticeable impact. The results are noticed and appreciated every day, the good work reflects the excellence of a dedicated, focused and hardworking individual. Rocco goes beyond his duties and we appreciate the care!”

Sahra Missaghieh Klawitter, Circulation/Reserves Services Manager

• “I would like to thank Sahra for all her efforts to alleviate students’ stress, to support employee professional development and to celebrate the library employees. Sahra’s contributions resulted in a successful migration in circulation and reserves.  Our users' experience with circulation and reserve transactions are seamless, because of Sahra’s behind-the-scenes configuration work.”

Bernice Ridgeway, Interlibrary Loan Assistant

• “Bernice’s contributions to establishing ILL protocol and workflows between OCLC and Alma have been noteworthy!  She has shown flexibility and is very attentive to our users' needs. Thank you Bernice!”

Shelly Gipson, Head of Collection Maintenance

• “Shelly has contributed to the migration of Alma in many areas to develop new and improved workflows using the Alma system.  She continues to research and test different processes and her contributions have been noteworthy. Thank you Shelly!”

Please join us in celebrating these library employees’ achievements!

 

More News May 27, 2025

The ORCA Forum highlights student research, creative projects, and open scholarship across disciplines.

What began as a Maker Week competition transformed into something new: the inaugural Open Research and Creative Activities (ORCA) Forum, held on Friday, May 9 at Orbach Library. This quarterly event, hosted by the UCR Library’s Research Services Department, celebrates student projects across disciplines and academic levels, with a focus on open scholarship and interdisciplinary research.

The shift from a Maker Week-related competition to a presentation-based forum was led by Dr. Jing Han, Digital Scholarship Librarian, who saw it as an opportunity to rethink student engagement. “The transition was driven by a desire to experiment with different models for student outreach and engagement, informed by my previous experiences as a student participating in various presentation events,” said Jing. She also identified a “growing need to promote eScholarship usage on campus.”

That insight connected with Jing’s discovery of Janeway, an open-source publishing platform that supports peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and other scholarly publications. “During a walkthrough of the Janeway platform with the eScholarship team, I noticed its potential for managing conference submissions and publishing proceedings, though there was no existing use case,” she explained. “As several of these elements aligned, the concept for the ORCA Forum naturally came together.”

The forum was designed as both a platform for interdisciplinary research and a pilot for integrating Janeway into UCR’s open publishing infrastructure. “While the Janeway integration is still in progress,” Jing noted, “the forum successfully offered a meaningful space for students across disciplines and academic levels to share their work and engage with the values and practices of open scholarship.” She added, “I was especially happy to see students bond with one another after the event, many of them forming new friendships and becoming research partners.”

Presenters covered a wide range of topics, from visual poetry to mathematics and political science. In the end, Angeliz Vargas Casillas, a PhD candidate in Mathematics, and Mst Shamima Hossain, a PhD candidate in Computer Science and Engineering, tied for first place. Vargas Casillas presented a project on multiscale mathematical modeling of keloid scar expansion, while Hossain showcased her research on developing an “electronic bee-veterinarian” system to safeguard honeybee populations using technology.

Looking ahead, Jing hopes to scale the event while maintaining its intimate format. “Each student retains the opportunity to present for 10 minutes and engage in meaningful feedback from both judges and the audience.” She also hopes to see Janeway “fully matured to manage submissions and publish proceedings directly to eScholarship, including the establishment of a clear review process.”

The next ORCA Forum is scheduled for summer 2025. In the meantime, Jing is preparing to launch a Digital Scholarship Certificate program and The Reference Desk, a biweekly podcast hosted by Jing and produced by KUCR, featuring UCR faculty and student researchers.

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Stay up-to-date with all things digital scholarship at UCR by visiting library.ucr.edu/digital-scholarship.