In early 2011, the UCR Library acquired the McLeod Collection of Sikh Studies from the widow of William Hewat “Hew” McLeod, a New Zealand scholar who wrote many books and essays about Sikh history, theology, and cultural identity.

This collection contains nearly 2,000 volumes devoted to topics including Sikh religion, culture, art, and history. Kuei Chiu, Head of Collection Development Department, oversaw the intake and Manuel Urrizola, Head of Metadata and Technical Services oversaw the cataloging of these items for the Library.

About half of McLeod’s collection is written in English, while the remainder are in Punjabi. UCR Library’s Music Cataloger Diane David and Serials Cataloging Librarian Sharon Scott completed cataloging of the English-language volumes six months after their initial receipt. The English items in the McLeod collection were immediately available for use.

The items in the Punjabi language were cataloged by external vendor Backstage, in collaboration with Librarian and Metadata and Technical Services Department Head Manuel Urrizola and Library Assistants Jim Clark and Cynthia “Kit” Rembert.

The entire collection was available for study and research by 2015.

With the exciting announcement by the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS) of their Harkeerat and Deepta Dhillon Endowed Research Award for Sikh and Punjabi Studies in the Arts and Humanities, the Library looks forward to seeing an influx of visitors to the McLeod collection.

The Dhillon family’s $100,000 gift to CHASS is intended to support dissertation research and writing by doctoral candidates. Students majoring in history, religious studies, and philosophy are certain to benefit from these unique Library resources, as well as from the Dhillon’s generous contribution.

The McLeod Collection of Sikh Studies is housed in the Tomás Rivera Library. To view the full listing of items, use this link: http://bit.ly/ucrsikh

• Read more about Copyright & Author’s Rights

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.”

Starting on July 2, 2018, Orbach Library will host the National Library of Medicine's latest traveling exhibition, "Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature."

On a dark and stormy night in 1816, Mary Shelley began writing a story that posed profound questions about individual and societal responsibility for other people. To make her point, the young novelist used the scientific advances of her era and the controversies surrounding them as a metaphor for issues of unchecked power and self-serving ambition, and their effect on the human community. Since that time, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has become one of the Western world’s most enduring myths. The story provides a framework for discussions of medical advances that challenge our traditional understanding of what it means to be human.

The six-banner traveling exhibition explores the Birth of Frankenstein, the life of author Mary Shelley, the scientific search for the principle of life, and the transformation of the “monster” in popular culture.

Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets of Nature began traveling around the United States in June 2015.

For more information, contact nlmtravelingexhibits@nlm.nih.gov or visit us on the web at: www.nlm.nih.gov/frankenstein.

This exhibition was developed and produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Curated by Susan Lederer, PhD

Images courtesy The Bodelian Library, University of Oxford; Universal Studios Licensing LLC; Courtesy The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelly and His Circle, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

On Friday, Oct. 20, the UCR Library will broadcast Forum Four of Diversifying the Digital series, titled: “Integration: Why and How to Address Integration with National Digital Collections Initiatives.”

The forum will discuss how to integrate community archives into a nationwide digital platform and the importance of including diverse communities’ voices in our recordkeeping while respecting cultural protocols, traditional practices, and local conditions governing the collection, preservation, and access to community archives materials.

Those interested can watch the livestream broadcast in Rivera Library, Room 403 from 7:30 am to 1:00 pm, and join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #DDHR4. Forum presenters will include representatives from funding agencies, national digital collections initiatives, traditional libraries and archives, and community archives.

Diversifying the Digital is a collaboration between the Inland Empire Memories project at UC Riverside, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, the Shorefront Legacy Center, the South Asian American Digital Archive, and Mukurtu. The project was funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services’ (IMLS) National Forum Grants program.

The project aims to address the lack of diversity represented in collections; to develop sustainable networks of community archives resources, programming and collections access at local, regional, and national levels; and to design strategies for increased collaboration with inclusion in national digital initiatives, such as the National Digital Platform.

Diversifying the Digital has hosted three prior forums to facilitate public conversations about collaborative community archives and the composition of our cultural heritage, including digital records. Forum Four will be the last in the series.

“Community archives are traditionally independent entities developed to serve specific communities. They grew out of necessity because of exclusion,” explained Bergis Jules, Project Director for Inland Empire Memories. “Diversifying the Digital has been a tremendous opportunity to explore how we can integrate community archives into national digital collections, organizations, and projects while honoring the individuality and independence of those spaces.”

Funding agencies such as IMLS, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are moving toward more collaborative approaches to providing access to digital records, as are national digital cultural heritage projects like DPLA and the HathiTrust, which makes this an ideal time for community archives to determine how best to integrate their work with these efforts.

Records for the first three forums are posted on the Diversifying the Digital website, and can be found on Twitter using the hashtags #DDHR1, #DDHR2 and #DDHR3, respectively.

• Read more about Publications Based on Research Conducted in SCUA

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.”

• Read more about University Archives

The holiday season tends to inspire a spirit of giving and goodwill. Access Services Desk Supervisor Leslie Settle has discovered a way to extend that magnanimous feeling throughout the whole year.

It began five years ago, when Leslie first heard about the Guardian Scholars Program during a Staff Assembly. “I recognized one of the students in their advertisement photo as someone who comes to the front desk all the time,” Leslie explained.

Connecting a familiar face to the mission of Guardian Scholars is what inspired Leslie to make a monthly donation to the program via payroll deduction. “When I was a student here, I never knew that UCR did this,” Leslie said. An alumna of UC Riverside (class of 2006, B.A. in Political Science and Ethnic Studies, and 2009, M.A. in Public Administration), Leslie understands well the demands of student life.

Learning about what the Guardian Scholars Program does was eye-opening in many ways for Leslie. “I didn’t know that kids in the foster system get completely cut off when they turn 18, so it’s like becoming homeless all over again,” she explained. “I thought to myself, ‘That isn’t right and I must help.’ A lot of these scholars are young, single parents, and they’re trying to go to school and take care of their family at the same time. I remember as a student having no home to go home to, since my mother was homeless. And now that I’ve been blessed, I want to help by blessing others.”

“The Guardian Scholars Program provides housing for them, it gives them school supplies, and money for things like going to the movies with their kids,” Leslie continued. “Some of the Guardian Scholars will write a personal thank-you note and send it to your house. Some will even send you pictures of their kids. It’s very sweet.”

“Guardian Scholars is among a few of the popular, ‘feel good’ programs that UCR staff and faculty can donate to,” explained Lily Barger, Director of Annual Giving. Lily stated that others include R’Pantry, Scholarship Assistance, the Living the Promise fund, and R’Garden.

“The R’Garden is a great link between the community and the university,” said Lily. “People who live in Riverside can get a plot in the garden. Food grown there goes to the families, to the UCR Food Pantry, and to a few local food pantries, as well.”

 “It blesses me to give because I love helping people. I know without help, I would not be where I am today,” Leslie explained. “I felt like I could do more, so I told some coworkers about Guardian Scholars. A few others signed up to give, too, because of what I had shared, which was great to see. And giving to UCR is so easy – one form to fill out, and you never have to think about it again.” In addition to giving to the Guardian Scholars Program, Leslie also donates each month to Society 54, which supports the UC Riverside Staff Assembly.

If you feel inspired by Leslie’s story, there are many programs that could use your support. You can learn more about the different ways to give to UCR, or speak with any member at UCR’s Office of Development to learn about how to participate in the Faculty and Staff Giving Campaign.

 “The library would be thrilled to be a leader on campus, not only in our services, but also in our sense of community, spirit, and campus-wide support,” said Samantha Lang, Director of Development for Campus-wide Initiatives, “The library would love to achieve 100% participation in the Faculty and Staff Giving Campaign, which is part of UCR’s Living the Promise Comprehensive Campaign. And ‘participation’ can be a simple, one-time $25 donation to anywhere on campus, not just the library.”

An added bonus is that each donation counts as a charitable deduction come tax season. “This is a great alternative to giving just at the end of the year,” Leslie explained. “If everybody who works at UCR gave a little each month, we could raise millions of dollars each year.”

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.