More News February 17, 2017

UC Riverside’s Associate Professor of History Juliette Levy likes to teach from the edge of the e-learning revolution.

Her latest experiment involved a virtual reality (VR) platform intended to stimulate intellectual learning on an emotional level for the students in her History 20 / World History course. Dr. Levy co-created a VR application called “Che’s Village” and invited students and faculty to test and review the platform in Orbach Science Library on February 15 and 16.

"Juliette felt that the library is precisely where this type of exploration should take place, as our mission is to expand critical thinking skills in studnets," explained JJ Jacobson, UCR Library's Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction. Jacobson and Dr. Levy collaborated for several months on the concept and development in order to bring "Che's Village" to life.

 “We serve a population of students who are digitally savvy,” Dr. Levy explained. “We have an amazing student body and an amazing faculty, and we need to teach them to think critically using the tools in their environment.”

Gesturing toward the wall, where a large monitor displayed what the student in the virtual reality goggles was seeing at that moment, Dr. Levy added, “This is the future of public education in here. Technology is a means to activate and render moments of the learning experience more intense.”

The platform was built to amplify students' experience of studying Che Guevara's speech, "Social Ideals of the Rebel Army," which he delivered on January 27, 1959. Guevara along with Raul Castro and others had recently won the rebellion against the existing Batista regime in Cuba, Levy explained. In his speech, Guevara had to balance the nationalistic, pro-Cuba intent of Castro with Guevara's own intent to lead a communist revolution.

The application’s co-creator and head of a VR prototype studio named Shovels and Whiskey, Tawny Schlieski stated, “We built this VR environment for students who have read Che’s speech. It’s meant to provoke them into compelling questions, to connect pieces of text with other pieces of research.”

Once inside the virtual world, exactly as Schlieski had explained, the user could see the text of Che Guevara’s 1959 speech in the setting of a Cuban jungle, with links to other content directly connected to highlighted passages in the speech. Using a pointer, the user could open and view the additional resources – whether text, images, or video – to elaborate on the themes of that particular passage. “It’s like footnotes, but in a virtual reality environment,” one user commented.

Users who tested the VR application saw potential in it. Professor Robert W. Patch from the UCR Department of History commented, “Technology will make certain things easier, certain things better.”

In some ways, the reflection indicated that UCR professors who leverage technology are already doing something right. One of the student testers observed that his best friend, who commutes over 50 miles to attend a different college, does not go to office hours because of the additional time it would require. He added, “He could have a more intimate learning experience if there were online office hours.”

“Good teaching is good teaching, whether that’s 100 years ago or 100 years from now,” Dr. Levy commented. “We owe our students to help them learn better and faster, especially with the amount of debt students are taking on to get an education. We are making it deeper and better with technology.”

“We’re looking to build applications of new technology in humanities that provoke critical thinking for students,” Schlieski stated. Reflecting on her previous work with Intel, she added, “From an industry perspective, problem-solving skills are sorely lacking in recent college graduates. Technology becomes obsolete so fast, but critical thinking skills are always valuable.”

Jacobson added, "After more than 10 years of library and education experience in virtual environments,  I think that working with information, ideas, and learning in 3D is something educators and librarians would do well to keep on their radar. VR is in an incunabular age, and we don’t know yet what it will look like as it takes useful forms. However, the possibilities are so compelling that I’m confident VR (or other VE) will develop into important tools for teaching, learning, and information."

No stranger to using digital platforms, Dr. Levy currently employs a variety of digital resources including Podcasting, Zoom, online office hours, and a private virtual discussion forum to maintain a sense of connection with her students throughout the week. As a result, she has received overwhelmingly positive student feedback. For Dr. Levy, this latest endeavor with “Che’s Village” is intended to find new ways to engage her students. “Technology allows us to give students who live off campus and part-time students the same quality of attention and education that a small liberal arts college could,” Levy explained.

“I can teach 300 students and make it feel like a class of 30 students because the entire medium is devised for contact,” Levy added. “The students are all on a screen, and online, everyone is in the front row – so it feels more connected. Students who would usually not raise their hands and participate in a live classroom are more inclined to speak up in an online platform. It’s convenient and an environment in which they feel like they exist, their voice matters.”

“Che’s Village” was a first-step in the iterative design process, and both Dr. Levy and Schlieski are now incorporating the feedback they received from testers to improve the VR platform.

More News April 16, 2018

Where there’s a will, there’s a way – and a team of UC Riverside faculty and staff has devoted the last few years to finding innovative ways to make course materials more affordable for our students.

Survey results indicate that the Affordable Course Materials Initiative (ACMI) program has succeeded so far, having saved students more than $1.5 million over the past two years, according to Instructional Designer Nathaniel Wildes.

Wildes calculated these savings by factoring in the current quarter and recurring courses. “On average, it’s a little over $100 cost savings per student,” he said.

He shared these facts and more on Thursday, April 5 at an event called Democratizing Access to Student Success: Student and Faculty Perspectives on Affordable Course Materials, where attendees learned about the local impact of the ACMI since its 2015 launch. Held in the Center for Teaching and Learning on the first floor of Rivera Library, the event was co-sponsored by the UCR Library, the UC Riverside chapter of CALPIRG, and ITS.

“This is a critical social justice issue and one that is especially important on our campus,” said UCR Library’s Director of Teaching and Learning Dani Brecher Cook, who also coordinates the ACMI program for UC Riverside.

Cook’s welcome remarks included statistics from the UCR Basic Needs Working Group, which reported that six out of 10 students experience food insecurity during their time at UCR and may not have sufficient funds to afford textbooks.

A panel of UCR students also shared their personal experiences with high-cost textbooks compared to open-access resources.

Miguel Ramirez, a second-year anthropology major, Vice Chair of the UC Riverside chapter of CALPIRG, and campaign coordinator for the Higher Education Affordability Campaign, ambitiously bought all his textbooks as a freshman. “But I found myself not having enough money to afford three meals a day,” he said. “The average student is expected to pay $1,200 a year in textbooks and school supplies which, for me, is equivalent to almost 3 months of rent.”

Ramirez appreciated that courses using open-access resources gave all students the same opportunity to succeed. “And in my experience as a student, I can tell that my peers in the classroom like it better, too,” he added.

Fifth-year religious studies major and member of Mujeres Unidas Abigail Garcia tried to cut costs by purchasing earlier editions of textbooks or by using eBooks, but found that those alternatives created other challenges. “With older versions of textbooks, I have to make extra efforts to find where the professor is at in my version. It is a lot cheaper, but it doesn’t allow me to be in sync with the rest of the class,” she said. “With eBooks, it doesn’t give me the opportunity to annotate as freely as I’d like to.”

Huma Khan, a first-year business major and CALPIRG member, appreciates the portability of eBooks. “I’m a commuting student, so I would have to carry like 3 textbooks in my bag every day,” she said. However, certain rules during exams can create obstacles students who rely on eBooks or online-only resources. “Sometimes in midterms, teachers are like, ‘Yeah, you can use a book but you can’t use your computer,’” she added.

Both Garcia and Khan have felt frustrated by spending high dollar amounts but only reading one or two chapters in a textbook as well as with access codes. Khan explained, “For my last math class, I had to buy a textbook for the access code and it was $160, and I never even used the textbook.”

“Like a lot of students, I actually went without,” said Semi Cole, ASUCR Vice President of Internal Affairs and a fourth-year political science & public policy major. “I decided to see what I could do, learn what I could from lecture, and just see how it would work. Ultimately, my academics suffered.”

“We need to continue to move forward on this issue and expand to a larger departmental commitment,” Cole added. “We’ve seen from the students here that allowing open source textbooks in the classroom can be successful.”

“It’s deeply appreciated by our students,” said Cook. “It can also lead to innovative and engaging pedagogies.”

Faculty guest speakers included ACMI grant recipients Ruhi Khan, associate professor in media and cultural studies; and Rachel Wu, assistant professor in psychology.

The ACMI was first spearheaded by Chikako Takeshita, associate professor of gender and sexuality studies, and launched at UCR thanks to an $18,000 grant from Computing and Communications. Due to the success of the initial program, in 2016 an additional $150,000 from the Student Technology Advisory Committee established an endeavor that would span three years. At present, the ACMI is in its second year of this longer-term effort.

More News October 08, 2019

Join us as we celebrate these recent achievements by the following UCR Library employees.

Dan Szilagyi, Manager of Cyberinfrastructure recently completed the UC Information Technology Leadership Academy (UCITLA), taught by faculty at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. UCITLA is an intensive learning experience that consisted of two three-day sessions in February and May 2019, along with a team project that was completed in between sessions. Szilagyi participated in the fourth UCITLA cohort.

Participants learned about strategic leadership, innovation and change management; networked with peers to support collaboration and innovation initiatives across the UC system; and prepared to guide staff through change, challenge and opportunity.

UC Riverside’s CIO Danna Gianforte nominated Szilagyi for UCITLA 2019. He said, “UCITLA was excellent and eye-opening, particularly in the area of innovation. The people were amazing to work with.”

***

Elisha Hankins, Orbach Library’s Access Services Desk Coordinator recently completed her Professional Academic Advisor Certification Course (PAACC), a 10-month comprehensive professional development program that teaches the history, practice and art of academic advising, including the crucial role that academic advisors play in student success, building student-centered and responsibility-sharing relationships, and honing the advisor’s conceptual, informational and relational skills.

Hankins’ role keeps her working closely with dozens of library student employees in Access Services, which is what first piqued her interest in PAACC. “A traditional academic advisor only interacts with their students once per quarter, and that’s if their students are proactive. I work with my students 20 hours a week. PAACC gave me tools and resources to use in my current job,” she said.

“The people that I end up hiring tend to be the ones who want to be world-changers or world-shakers, the ones who want to make a difference,” she added. 

The PAACC program also provided skills for working with library patrons. As Hankins explained, “Because we work at the Circulation Desk, people think we’re their best friends, so they’ll tell us their life stories. So we can put these skills into practice with the patrons we assist, as well.”

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Cataloging Librarian Ruben Urbizagastegui recently published “Analysis of El Niño Coastal phenomenon by the method of associated words.”(Ciência da Informação. 2019, v. 48, n. 2.). In this paper, he compared two articles about the local weather phenomenon that affects the coasts of Peru and Ecuador. “El Niño causes a mess all over the world, with typhoons in India and droughts in Australia and California,” he explained. “But the Incas already knew of this phenomenon and knew how to control it.”

The articles he contrasted were written by two of the most prestigious newspapers in Peru -- one government-owned and the other privately owned. He noted the impact of socio-economic influence on the written word. “We analyzed the information, expecting to find two different perspectives, but we found only one,” he said. “In other words, the newspapers don’t care about the people. They do what they do to protect their own interests.”

Urbizagastegui has worked at the UCR Library for 30 years and has published eight books in that time. Additionally, he regularly reviews articles for five or six different library scientific journals. Most of his work has been published in Spanish or Portuguese on issues that affect marginalized communities.

***

In May 2019, Raul Aguilera, Access Services Assistant (Evenings) at Rivera Library completed his Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree with San Jose State University. He began his career as a work-study student at Orbach Library in January 2014, while working toward his Bachelor’s degree in English at UC Riverside (class of 2015).

“Originally, I wanted to be an English professor,” Aguilera said. As a student, he saw the value of the services that the library provided and the research that librarians do; so he began to envision a different career path in academia. Aguilera believes that his life experience as a UCR student gives him an added perspective about which kinds of library services would be most valuable to our patrons.

“I really like giving service, and if someone leaves the desk happy, I feel like I’ve accomplished something,” he added. “I think that’s just part of my nature, being able to contribute in a higher capacity, going above and beyond whenever I’m able to.”

***

Judy Lee, University Programs Teaching Librarian co-wrote a chapter,“Remembering Consciousness is Power: Working to Center Academic Library Outreach in the Service of Social Justice, Asian and Pacific Islander American Ethnic Visibility, and Coalition-Building,” in Cura, Yago S, and Max Macias. Librarians with Spines: Information Agitators in an Age of Stagnation: Volume II. Los Angeles: Hinchas Press, 2019. Lee co-wrote the chapter in collaboration with Melissa Cardenas-Dow, a former colleague at the UCR Library who is now a librarian at California State University, Sacramento.

Librarians with Spines is the second volume in a radical book of essays and chapters on library issues and topics related to emerging and marginalized communities, and is available for purchase on Amazon.

• Read more about Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy

More News October 28, 2022

More News June 05, 2017

Recently, Alertus Desktop Notification was installed on all library computer workstations.

This software is meant to notify UC Riverside library users of on-campus emergency or threat issues.

What is Alertus?

The application functions as an alerting system for staff, students, and patrons that use library computer workstations. Alertus Emergency Notification System works in conjunction with a High Powered Speaker Arrays (HPSA) at the BellTower, as well as a Desktop Client.

What does it do?

1. The Alertus Desktop Alert client program simply pops up a full-screen window, on top of any other computer programs currently running.
2. There should be no expectation of performance impact for any other running processes.
3. For example: An instructor playing a DVD would have his or her playback visually interrupted by the pop up alert message, but after acknowledging the message their program should be in the same state as before the message appeared.

How does it work?

1. The Desktop Alert takes up the entire screen when activated and a Text to Speech message will also play aloud.
2. Users can dismiss the alert manually; otherwise, the alerts disappear when a dispatcher cancels the alert.
3. If a user logs in after an alert has been canceled, they should not see any past alerts.

Who puts out the warnings?

Enterprise Risk Management in collaboration with the UCR Police Department puts out the warnings.

Camille Mahant Staff Profile

Financial and Administrative Analyst

More News September 22, 2017

The University of California, Riverside Library will host International Open Access Week 2017, as part of a global effort called Open Access Week.

The event will be on Wednesday, Oct. 25, in the Orbach Science Library, Room 240, from 9:30 am - 11:00 am. “Open in Order to Save Data for Future Research” is the 2017 event theme.

Open Access Week is an opportunity for the academic and research community to learn about the potential benefits of sharing what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make “open access” a new norm in scholarship, research and data planning and preservation.

The Open Access movement is made of up advocates (librarians, publishers, university repositories, etc.) who promote the free, immediate, and online publication of research.

The program will provide information on issues related to saving open data, including climate change and scientific data.  The panelists also will describe open access projects in which they have participated to save climate data and to preserve end-of-term presidential data, information likely to be and utilized by the university community for research and scholarship.

The program includes:

• Brianna Marshall, Director of Research Services:  Brianna will welcome guests and introduce the panelists.

• John Baez, Professor of Mathematics, UC Riverside:  John was involved in saving US government climate data during the presidential transitions. (time, date, topic not confirmed yet)

• Perry Willett, Digital Preservation Project Manager, California Digital Library:  Perry will share the work he has done at CDL on the promotion and usage of open data initiatives.

• Kat Koziar, Data Librarian: Kat will give an overview of DASH, the UC system data repository, and provide suggestions for researchers interested in making their data open.

This will be the eighth International Open Access Week program hosted by the UCR Library.

The event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP: openaccess2017.eventbrite.com

More News February 04, 2020

On Wednesday, Feb. 5, the L.A. County Department of Military & Veterans Affairs (MVA) hosted a reception to kick off Black History Month, featuring a special art exhibit of the WWII flying group, the Tuskegee Airmen, on loan courtesy of the UCR Library.

The display will be open to the public during regular business hours at the Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles from Feb. 5 - 27, 2020. This venue is a historical building dedicated to assisting and memorializing US Veterans, so the exhibit supports their mission.

During the opening reception, special guest and American hero Lt. Col. Theodore “Ted” Lumpkin, a documented original Tuskegee Airman, discussed his experience during the second World War and answered questions.

Commissioned by the UCR Library in 2016, Ann Marshall and Shar Huston of Annex Design Services originally created the concept for the exhibition materials.

Since 2016, the traveling exhibit has been featured at various venues, including the Association of African American Museums Annual Conference, the University of California, San Diego, and the San Bernardino County Museum, among others.

More News October 30, 2024

Explore the unique and thought-provoking exhibits and displays currently on view in the Tomás Rivera Library. From political memorabilia to rare artifacts, visit soon before they're gone!

 

Political Campaign Buttons

Tomás Rivera Library, 1st Floor (left of the entrance)
View until November 26, 2024 during normal operating hours.
Explore a selection of presidential campaign buttons from our Harold and Barbara Durian Collection of Political Campaign Buttons. The complete collection, including additional political ephemera, is available for research in Special Collections & University Archives on the 4th floor and has buttons from the 1870s to 2016. Learn more. 

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First in the Nation: A History of the Costo Library

Tomás Rivera Library, 4th Floor, Costo Library in Special Collections & University Archives
View until March 21, 2025, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 
This exhibit documents the history of the Rupert Costo Library of the American Indian, located on the 4th floor of the Tomás Rivera Library in Special Collections & University Archives. View to learn about Rupert and his wife Jeannette Henry-Costo, why UCR was chosen to house the library, and more. Learn more. 

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Unexpected Artifacts

Tomás Rivera Library, 4th Floor, Special Collections & University Archives
View until December 20, 2024, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 
Discover surprising items Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA) has collected over the years, including protest armbands, ballet shoes, family quilts, and Cuban cigars. These unique artifacts reflect the diverse, sometimes unexpected, nature of SCUA's collections. Learn more.

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Día de los Muertos Altar

Tomás Rivera Library, 1st Floor (right of the entrance against the blue wall)
View until November 3, 2024 during normal operating hours.
This altar—created by Dr. Amalia Cabezas, the UCR LGBT Resource Center, and volunteers—raises awareness about violence against transgender sex workers, honoring those lost and highlighting the importance of remembrance.