More News January 30, 2017

Most 16 year-olds are taking the SAT and starting to apply to colleges. Victoria Scott is already living the dream as a first-year student here at UC Riverside.

The youngest of three children raised by a single mother in Berkeley, California, Victoria showed academic promise very early in life. “I went straight from preschool to first grade. I also skipped my junior year of high school,” she explained. “Starting in seventh grade, when I got bored during summer break, my mom would send me to community college to take elective classes. So I started earning transfer credits very early.”

She applied and visited four different UC schools before deciding to become a Highlander. UCLA’s campus was too big and she didn’t feel “at home” there, whereas Berkeley was too close to home. Victoria felt that moving away from her hometown would allow her to branch out and do things on her own. With the rest of her family based in northern California, “My mom wanted me to come here to be close to my grandma, who lives in Palm Springs,” Victoria smiled. “Plus, the financial aid package here was really good, so that means I won’t have to take out any student loans.”

Victoria works at the Rivera Library Circulation/Reserve Desk, helping patrons check out library materials including course reserves, organizing books, answering phones, and assisting patrons with directional and informational questions. “She is smart, gifted, and a diligent worker. She is never late and exceeds expectations,” Access Services Desk Supervisor Leslie Settle said of Victoria. “She even had her car stolen from the dorm during finals week, right before Christmas, and was still able to be positive, report to work and excel in school. She is one remarkable young lady.”

 “Working at the library was a job I wanted to acquire before I even stepped on campus,” Victoria stated. Not having spent much time in libraries before college, she figured that knowing where the textbooks are and how to check them out would be a valuable skill to learn. “Working at the library makes it easier to navigate,” she said. “It’s given me a sense of responsibility. I primarily work with other students, but there’s always a supervisor on staff, so we can call on them if we need to,” she added. “I like UCR because everyone is willing to help you.”

The giving nature that Victoria sees in her UCR Library colleagues is mirrored in her own generous spirit. In addition to being a student employee at the library, Victoria also works in the Financial Aid Office and volunteers with an on-campus program called KID (Kindling Intellectual Development). “In KIDS we travel to homeless shelters on Wednesday and Thursday nights and work with kids between the ages of one and twelve,” she described. “Over winter break, around Christmas time, our lesson plan covered what they’re thankful for, making Christmas trees, and teaching them the importance behind Christmas.”

Victoria has plans to found her own service organization on campus before she graduates. “My organization will teach the youth science and technology, to inspire them to learn, advance their knowledge, and change our communities. My goal is to run my program through an elementary school,” she explained. “I love kids! Kids are my favorite thing in the world. They make my days fun, energetic, and happy!”

Aligned with her helping nature, Victoria’s decision to major in neuroscience or biology was inspired by her family’s experience. “My stepbrother was in a motorcycle accident and he suffered significant loss of brain and body function. That experience sparked my curiosity and persuaded me to want to study and learn more about the brain,” she said.  Because she came to UCR with a lot of transfer credits, Victoria plans to take a quarter off sometime during her senior year to start applying for medical school.

Before that time, however, Victoria plans to do a medical mission in Haiti. “I would go for one week with a doctor during spring break, to provide them with IVs, blood transfusions, wrap up their ankles, and anything else they need assistance with,” she explained. Victoria is excited about the prospect of cultural immersion as well as the opportunity to serve others. “It would be an incredible and eye-opening experience to go to a third world country and provide them with healthcare that we take for granted.”

In addition, Victoria hopes to study abroad, but has not yet decided whether to go to Mexico, Spain, Italy or France. “I want to go several places,” she said. “I was also thinking about doing a Semester at Sea, because you get to cruise either the Atlantic, Caribbean, or Pacific. You do your studying on a ship and then, when you’re off the ship, you have time just to explore.”

With a service-oriented spirit like Victoria’s, the more places she can visit, the more people she will benefit with her skills and her presence.

More News November 10, 2017

On Nov. 2-4, several UCR Library staff members contributed programs and poster sessions for the California Libraries Association (CLA) Annual Conference in Riverside, CA. The 2017 conference theme was, “New Worlds Emerge.”

Maker Services Librarian Krista Ivy, Open Research Librarian Michele Potter, and Data Librarian Kat Koziar gave a presentation session called From Zero to Makerspace: The UC Riverside Creat’R Lab Story. “It was well attended, and the audience was engaged with what we presented,” Koziar said.

Data Librarian Kat Koziar, Special Collections Public Services Assistant Zayda Delgado, Head of Preservation Services Patricia Smith-Hunt, Preservation Assistant Sara Stilley, and Director of Distinctive Collections Cherry Williams collaborated on a poster presentation titled, New Technologies, New Worlds. The poster showed the evolution of books across a timeline from 2500 BCE to present day, highlighting the most significant inventions used to create, package, disseminate, and access information.

“We took several items from our teaching collection and people who stopped by got to see and touch the transformative technologies our poster highlighted,” Delgado said. “Conference attendees really enjoyed the hands-on experience.”

Social Sciences Teaching Librarian Christina Cicchetti gave a poster presentation called Promoting School Readiness Through Diverse Children’s Books, which she prepared in collaboration with Dr. Ashaunta Anderson, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the UCR School of Medicine and Principal Investigator for the Cultural Pride Reinforcement for Early School Readiness research project; Sharon Rushing, PhD candidate in the UCR Department of Anthropology; and Dr. Annette Goldsmith, Lecturer at the University of Washington Information School.

“The study will distribute books to children during well-child visits to their pediatrician,” explained Cicchetti, who serves with Goldsmith on a community advisory board that helped to select books used in the study and prepared an informational handout for parents.

University Programs Teaching Librarian Judy Lee organized and led a Riverside Asian American Walking Tour on Sunday, Nov. 5, after the CLA Conference concluded.

Carla Arbagey, Collection Strategist for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) led a tour of the UCR Library for attendees from the CLA conference.

“I had a lot of fun showing off our libraries and our campus,” Arbagey said. “Of course, the highlight of the tour was our visit to Special Collections and University Archives, and everyone was excited to see the home of the Eaton Collection.” Katz shared program goals and findings for 4 to Explore, along with the featured items from the current and prior months.

When showing Project Bi Nary by Steven McCarthy (nicknamed the “pillow book” by library staff), a recent acquisition from the September road show with Vamp & Tramp Artists Booksellers, Arbagey had an a-ha! moment: “I saw how one item from our collection can show how the seemingly disparate departments in our library are actually very connected.” The tour group first encountered it when they met with Patricia Smith-Hunt in Preservation, who explained how Preservation creates custom-made, acid free boxes to store special collections items.

Then in Special Collections, Katz explained that she had suggested the book as a purchase because it could be featured as part of a Creat'R Lab event on crafting and artists' books.

“So, you can see how our tour, which went from the Creat'R Lab to Preservation to SCUA, could be connected by this single (and very cool) book!” Arbagey concluded.

More News January 29, 2018

Sam Tang is a class of 2018 Mechanical Engineering major who has worked for the past four years as student employee for the UCR Library’s Cyberinfrastructure department.

This position requires Tang to maintain computers and peripherals for library users and to help staff solve problems connecting to email, printer malfunctions, and other troubleshooting issues.

“It’s taught me a lot about working in an office and communicating with people,” he said. “Be patient, be kind. That was a huge lesson in IT, apart from all the technical stuff about hardware and specific applications that the library uses. I learn so much on the job.”

“Sam is a valued member of our team. He is smart, kind, honest, and reliable,” said Dan Szilagyi, Manager of Cyberinfrastructure. “He’s a hard worker who produces timely, efficient, and effective results.”

Tang grew up as an only child in Irvine, CA. His father is a biomedical engineering professor at UC Irvine. His mother was a piano teacher during his childhood, but she now works as an office manager for a law firm. Before moving to Irvine, Tang’s family lived in Virginia while his father worked on the gyroscope for cruise air missiles for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

Tang originally planned to study media and arts at UC Riverside, but changed his major to Mechanical Engineering (ME) during his junior year. At first, he had no plans to study math. “I actually failed pre-calculus in high school, so I thought that math was the opposite of what I wanted to do,” he laughed.

However, he tried a few math classes here at UCR and felt like the work was rewarding. “I wanted to get the most out of learning as possible,” he said. “In high school, I was super lazy about everything. I only cared about not doing schoolwork. But that changes a lot during college when your work actually matters and you’re held responsible for the work that you put in.”

Part of what inspired Tang to become a ME major was his respect for Professor Sundararajan Venkatadriagaram. “He’s one of the nicest guys I know, but the material he gives out is super-hard and it really forces you to learn everything you can about ME,” Tang explained. “You can ask him about anything in ME and he’ll know the answer, and he can also prove it on paper. Having that kind of knowledge in engineering is something I’d aspire to do.”

After graduation, Tang could picture himself in a few different roles. “The skills in IT aren’t at all the same as what you learn in ME, but I could see myself doing research and developing in either field.” However, he has one dream that aims even higher. “If I could do anything, I’d like to be an astronaut,” Tang said. “It’s a good mix of physics, mechanical engineering, and some IT, as well, because you need to know how to operate a lot of electronics.”

More News November 03, 2016

UCR Library is pleased to welcome a new Business Librarian Swati Bhattacharyya to the Rivera Reference team.

Swati joins us from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, where she has led the business school’s library since 1994. She holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in information studies and technology from Syracuse University, a Master’s degree in computer applications from Indira Gandhi National Open University, and an Associateship in documentation and information science from the Indian Statistical Institute.

Swati’s primary responsibilities will be to liaise with students and faculty in the School of Business and Anderson Graduate School of Management, serve as the subject specialist for business and economics, and participate in the ongoing projects and services of Rivera Reference.

Michael Yonezawa Staff Profile

Social Science Teaching Librarian

More News January 29, 2021

The Fujimoto Transcripts project has made a treasured library resource even more accessible to a global audience.

The diaries of Japanese Americans, Toranosuke (George) Fujimoto and George Fujimoto Jr. constitute one of the most valuable and unique collections housed in the UCR Special Collections & University Archives. Toranosuke, born in 1882, kept a diary from 1913 to 1968. George Jr. wrote in his diary from 1942, when he was 21 years old, to 1948. These astonishing materials document the daily life experiences of both the father and the son during World War II, when the family was forcibly removed from their Riverside, California home and taken to an incarceration camp in Poston, Arizona.

The opening entry in George Jr.’s diary, date March 11, 1942, documents his return from school to find that his father and others had been arrested and taken away:

“Went to school as usual… Came home about 5PM and was shocked to learn that Pop was taken into custody today by federal officials. 28 Riverside Japanese aliens were rounded up in today's raid; Mr. Sanematsu & Pop included. Fortunately Pop was partially prepared.”

According to Cherry Williams, Director of Distinctive Collections, some readers have had trouble accessing and using the digitized diaries because the readers were unfamiliar with cursive script, or because they lacked fluency with the English language and sentence structure, or due to challenges with reading the soft color of the ink, among others.

“The Fujimoto transcription project sought to alleviate such impediments by enhancing, expanding, and facilitating the ease with which these important and distinctive documents can be used and re-used by the general public, research scholars, students and any others interested in this period in Riverside County and The Inland Empire during WWII,” Williams explained.

The UCR Library recognizes and extends its deep appreciation to the committed librarians and library staff who dedicated months of work creating the transcriptions, which are now available on the Calisphere website: Diary of George Fujimoto Jr. (1942) — Calisphere

At present, only the diaries of George Fujimoto Jr. have been transcribed.

More Past Exhibits March 23, 2023

Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons is an exhibition celebrating the contributions of African American academic surgeons to medicine and medical education. It tells the stories of four pioneering African American surgeons and educators who exemplify excellence in their fields and believe in continuing the journey of excellence through the education and mentoring younger physicians and surgeons.

Through contemporary and historical images, the exhibition takes the visitor on a journey through the lives and achievements of these academic surgeons, and provides a glimpse into the stories of those that came before them and those that continue the tradition today.

The four pioneers are Alexa I. Canady, the first African American woman pediatric neurosurgeon; LaSalle D. Leffall, Jr., cancer surgeon, and the first African American President of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society; Claude H. Organ, Jr., general surgeon, and the first African American to chair a department of surgery at a predominantly white medical school; and Rosalyn P. Scott, the first African American woman cardiothoracic surgeon.

The exhibition also features other academic surgeons from around the country that follow in the tradition of sharing their knowledge and passing the torch to younger surgeons. These include Levi Watkins, Jr. of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who performed the first implantation of an automatic defibrillator in a human in 1980 and Carla M. Pugh of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine who holds a patent for a method of simulation used to design the pelvic exam simulator, a teaching tool for medical students.

Opening Doors is not intended to be an encyclopedic look at African American academic surgeons, but is intended to provide only a glimpse into the contributions that African American academic surgeons have made to medicine and medical education. We hope that through this exhibition we can bring these stories to light and inspire others to pursue careers in academic surgery.
A collaborative effort between the National Library of Medicine and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture in Baltimore.

The National Library of Medicine is the largest medical library in the world and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum is the largest African American museum on the east coast.

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More News October 21, 2021

UC Riverside class of 1968 alumna Ann Kelsey recently pledged a $489,000 planned gift to the UCR Library to fund an endowment that supports initiatives in technology advancement.

Born on June 20, 1946 in Kokomo, Indiana, Ann Kelsey’s father served in the Navy, having enlisted after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941. At age five, her father’s career brought the family to a Southern California facility.

Very early in life, Kelsey knew that she wanted to become a librarian. She spent much of her adolescent years reading and working in libraries; starting at sixteen, she worked for the Riverside city-county library.

Both of Kelsey’s parents encouraged her to attend college because neither of them nor most of her extended family members had gone to university. By her senior year of high school, she knew that UC Riverside was the natural choice.

At UCR, Kelsey double majored in English and Anthropology; from her anthropology classes, she developed an interest in Asian cultures and Southeast Asia.

After graduating from UCR, Kelsey attended library school at UCLA, where she met Army Special Services recruiters. Kelsey served as a librarian during the Vietnam War, traveling to Vietnam to establish and oversee recreational libraries for soldiers.

Kelsey’s career as a librarian placed her at the helm of introducing new technologies within library spaces to better support the changing needs of the communities they serve.

Her $489,000 planned gift to the UCR Library will provide unrestricted support, allowing the library to strengthen and sustain its programs and services in emerging technology, which directly aligns with Kelsey’s own life and career.

University Librarian Steven Mandeville-Gamble said, “The UCR Library is honored by the generosity and confidence shown by Ann Kelsey in her establishment of this bequest. Ms. Kelsey’s career has spanned the advent of library automation to the evolution of digital scholarship and emerging digital literacies. This gift will allow the UCR Library to continue to evolve to meet the increasingly sophisticated technology needs of our faculty and students for many decades to come.”

More News November 17, 2021

AUTHOR: SARAH NIGHTINGALE

On hot and steamy days in Saigon, Vietnam, there was only one place for an enlisted man to cool off for a while. “That place was the library,” said UC Riverside alumna Ann Kelsey, who served as a civilian librarian for the U.S. Army from 1969-70. “The libraries were air conditioned because of the books, not the people, though. If they weren’t, the books would mold in two days.” 

Kelsey’s service during the Vietnam War was the beginning of a career in library science and automation that would span more than four decades. Her recent pledge to UC Riverside, a $489,000 planned gift to the UCR Library, will continue Kelsey’s legacy in helping people learn through technology.

After meeting as a UCLA student with a U.S. Army Special Services recruiter, Ann Kelsey went overseas after graduation, overseeing four libraries during the Vietnam War.

Born in Indiana in 1946, Kelsey moved with her family to Riverside at the age of five, attending Riverside schools and graduating from Polytechnic High School. Her parents supported her dream of attending university and becoming a librarian, but money was tight. UCR—affordable, close to home, and offering the feel of a small liberal arts college—was the perfect fit.

“I was the first person in my family to go to college and I lived at home, so I spent a lot of time at The Barn, which was the gathering point for students who didn’t live in the dorms,” Kelsey said. “I had so much fun going to dances and parties. I also loved the classes and the teachers, and I learned so much.” 

Anthropology classes, in which Kelsey developed an interest in Southeast Asia and Vietnamese history and culture, changed her world view. 

“My whole experience at UCR was wonderful. It really was a life-changing experience,” she said.

After graduating from UCR with a double major in English and anthropology in 1968, Kelsey earned a master’s in library science at UCLA. During her time on that larger, more politically active campus, Kelsey felt suffocated by anti-war protests.

“The anti-war movement was very active at UCLA. It was constant hostility and strife,” Kelsey said. “Bruin Walk, which is right outside Powell Library, was a focal gathering point. All my classes were there of course, so I had to walk through that every day. That was in 1968 and there were Vietnam veterans attempting to go to school. I was just appalled.”

When U.S. Army Special Services recruiters came to campus looking for librarians, Kelsey knew she had an opportunity to show her support for Americans serving in Vietnam.

“I filled in the application form, sent it off and, two months after I graduated, I was my way to Vietnam. There were 300 soldiers and me on the plane and that kind of set the tone for the whole year.”

During her time in Vietnam, Kelsey oversaw four libraries, helping soldiers with everything from homework for correspondence courses to recreational reading.

Ann Kelsey's gift will help strengthen and sustain the UCR Library's programs and services in emerging technology.

Ann Kelsey's gift will help strengthen and sustain the UCR Library's programs and services in emerging technology.
“The libraries functioned very much like a small town public library,” Kelsey said. “That was the purpose of the Army Morale and Recreation program, whether it was library, the entertainment shows, or the rec center—it was to bring a touch of home to the combat zone.”

Returning to the United States, Kelsey settled on the East Coast, working at public libraries and community colleges while supplementing her income with freelance and contract work. In the late 1970s, while working at the Morris County Free Library in Whippany, N.J., Kelsey found herself at the forefront of library automation.

“I could tell this was where the future of libraries was going to be,” Kelsey said. "At that time I was in charge of the children’s book department, so I volunteered to work extra, retrospectively converting the manual shelf list to a digitized record.”

UCR Alumni Association events in the New York tri-state area rekindled Kelsey’s connection with the university in the 1990s. At that time she became a member of the Alumni Association and began making a monthly pledge to the association’s scholarship fund. 

In-line with her life and career, Kelsey’s latest gift—a $489,000 planned gift to the UCR Library—will help strengthen and sustain the library’s programs and services in emerging technology.

“The UCR Library is honored by the generosity and confidence shown by Ann Kelsey in her establishment of this bequest, said Steven Mandeville-Gamble, University Librarian. “Ms. Kelsey’s career has spanned the advent of library automation to the evolution of digital scholarship and emerging digital literacies. This gift will allow the UCR Library to continue to evolve to meet the increasingly sophisticated technology needs of our faculty and students for many decades to come.” 

More about Kelsey’s service in Vietnam is available as oral history interviews in the Virtual Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech University and Rutgers University Oral History Archives. “In Their Footsteps,” a play based on the oral histories of Kelsey and four other women documents the often untold experiences of the thousands of women who served in Vietnam during the war. It has been performed in New York, New Jersey, Texas, Ohio, Italy, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Australia.

 

More News February 02, 2021

When Class of 2019 alumnus Matthew Diep first enrolled at UC Riverside to double-major in accounting and public policy, becoming a children's book author was not on his to-do list.

However, a missed opportunity in another campus department led him to apply for a student employee position at the UCR Library, which became the catalyst for a huge shift in Diep’s career and life plans.

“My whole life would have been different if I had gotten that first job,” Diep reflected. “When I was a senior at UCR, my dad passed away. The library was always there for me. They were so supportive. Books were always there for me. You know, books get me through everything.”

In January 2021, Diep self-published his first children’s book (under the pseudonym Matthew Dee) titled, “There’s a Book on That,” which is currently sold through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Book Depository. In his book, Diep wanted to show his young readers all the wonders that books in libraries have to offer.

“When I was a kid, I despised reading,” he admitted. “But the one thing that I did like to read was books that rhymed.” Diep eventually learned to love reading and began writing poems during high school, so he knew that he could rhyme, but he had never written anything like this.

After writing the manuscript last year, Diep saved it in his Google docs and promptly forgot about it. “Then this winter break, I got bored,” he said, which is why he decided to self-publish.

Throughout all 4 years of his undergraduate studies, Diep found himself feeling “miserable but practical” about his decision to focus on accounting. “Toward the end of senior year, I reflected on what would make me happy and what would I enjoy, and I knew I enjoyed working at the library. So I decided to totally switch my career path.” He applied for a Masters program in Library and Information Sciences (MLIS) at San Jose State, and hopes to complete his degree within two years.

He is currently employed part-time with the City of Ontario Library and full-time with the University of Redlands Library, where he supervises student employees in the Access Services department. This reminds him of his former supervisor: “Leslie [Settle] is someone I always think about because she was a great supervisor and she was always there for her students, and that’s what I aspire to be for my students.”

Upon completion of his MLIS, Diep hopes to work in an academic library, perhaps at his alma mater. He has ideas for more children’s books, as well. In the meantime, he is focused on marketing his first book and getting it onto the shelves of as many libraries as possible. “I do want to see it with the little call number and everything,” he said.

Diep's endeavors have been met with overwhelming support from his family and friends on social media, though interested libraries should move quickly, he said. “The hard copy is already out-of-stock on Amazon.”

Fortunately, the UCR Library has already ordered a copy of “There’s a Book on That,” which will soon sit proudly alongside its counterparts in the library's juvenile collection.

Supportive Highlanders can follow their classmate at matthewdeebooks.com.