More News April 10, 2020

Despite the closure of the physical campus buildings, the UCR Library staff remain ready to support UC Riverside students, faculty, and researchers during our first-ever all virtual quarter.

What does this mean for you?

The majority of  library services such as Interlibrary Loan (ILL), course reserves, teaching and research support,, workshops, consultations, and other public services are now functioning under a remote operating model.

Here is a list of patron services available:

Accessing resources: Books, Journals, and Databases

• ​Answering patron questions. Email Access Services questions to Library_circulation@ucr.edu.
• Text a librarian is another way to reach out, but is best reserved for brief questions. Text 66746 and start message with "ucrlib".
• Assisting Faculty with iLearn requests for Course Reserves.
• Electronic delivery of Interlibrary Loan (ILL) materials, though some requests are taking longer than usual.
• Uploading existing digitized film resources to the library’s streaming media site.
• Working to find alternate online versions of requested films not currently on our streaming media site.
• Renewing / extending due dates for all materials currently on loan until campus reopens (except ILL, but library staff is requesting renewals).
• Book drops are monitored daily, but materials will not be checked back in until campus reopens.
• Unless your library card is expiring soon, patrons need not worry about late notices for overdue materials.
• Recalls are postponed until the physical library facilities reopen.
• Paging requests are not available until campus reopens.
• Scholarly resources purchasing, with an emphasis on online resources and e-books with unlimited simultaneous user licenses (when available), to support remote instruction and learning.​
• Assistance with finding streaming media options for film screenings and instruction.
• Support finding alternative books to support instruction and research needs.
• Electronic database and journal access support.
• For assistance contact your Collection Strategist.

Remote Instructional Support

• Creating a series of brief video tutorials for library patrons.
• Providing asynchronous or synchronous library sessions for courses.
• Virtual office hours for courses that have research assignments.
• Conducting reference via Zoom, email, or 24/7 chat.
• Developing stand-alone modules that can connect to iLearn.
• Collaboratively on designing assignments and assessments for remote learners.
• Consulting on resources for classes.
• Working individually with course instructors on designing a specific support method for their class.

Faculty interested in any Teaching and Learning services should fill out this instruction request form.

Remote Research Support

• Librarians continue to hold consultations. To request one, visit our Ask a Librarian page.
• Spring quarter workshops will be hosted online.
• Available to provide support for iLearn, in conjunction with Teaching and Learning staff and XCITE.
• Virtual Special Collections office hours on Tuesdays, 2 - 3 p.m. and Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.
• Collaborations with faculty on remote instruction using digitized resources.
• Online workshops on digital archival resources for students.
• Processing and delivering reproduction requests for existing tiffs.
• Archiving the University's response to COVID19.
• Creating informational guides supporting needs for University Archives and historic information.

While not all user-facing, the remaining library departments are hard at work behind-the-scenes to support the remote patron service model.

Now more than ever, philanthropic support is critical as UC Riverside transitions to online-only instruction and research platforms. The UCR Library deeply appreciates the gifts we have received so far in University Advancement’s Support Students Impacted by COVID-19 campaign. If you are able to make a gift of any amount to the Library Student Success Fund, our staff and the students of UCR would be most grateful.

• Read more about Photo Shoots in the Library

More News August 29, 2024

Mark Buchholz has served as the Digitization Services Specialist at the UCR Library since February 2022. 

As the UCR Library's Digitization Services Specialist, Mark focuses on expanding the library’s digital collections by digitizing and preserving research materials and building the library’s digitization capacity for the future.

Mark’s journey into the world of libraries began unexpectedly during his freshman year of high school. A community service requirement led him to volunteer at his local library, where he was tasked with applying barcodes and spine labels to books. At the time, Mark found the work tedious. “I didn’t have any interest in working in libraries then,” Mark recalls. It wasn’t until much later that he would recognize the importance of that early experience.

Mark’s library career began in 2005 at the University of Miami Library, where he worked on a grant-based project to digitize the slide libraries of the Art History and Architecture Departments. “It was a good opportunity to learn,” Mark reflects, noting how digitizing thousands of images sparked an interest in art history. After the grant ended, Mark continued working for UM Libraries for another eight years, digitizing library materials from Special Collections, University Archives, and the Cuban Heritage Collection.

His work at the University of Miami eventually led him to the Claremont Colleges and, later, to the UCR Library. “I wanted to grow personally and professionally,” Mark explains on his move to UCR.

At the UCR Library, Mark has been involved in several significant projects, including the digitization of the Nuestra Cosa newspaper archive, which he found particularly rewarding. “The process of digitizing a multilingual newspaper introduces interesting challenges,” he explains, highlighting the complexities of optical character recognition and metadata description in multiple languages.

Mark is also excited about his upcoming move from the Orbach Library to a new digitization lab located in the Tomás Rivera Library. The new, purpose-built space will improve the safety and efficiency of the digitization process, allowing materials to stay in the same building and reducing risks associated with transportation. “It’s safer and better for the materials,” Mark states.

Mark has become an integral part of the UCR Library’s efforts to preserve and share our unique collections. His commitment to digitization ensures that valuable materials are not only safeguarded but also made accessible to future generations. You can view the UCR Library’s digital collections, which includes material that Mark and his team have digitized, on Calisphere.

More News January 18, 2024

In line with our commitment to improving UCR Library facilities, we will be renovating the Orbach Library roof.

In preparation for this important project, we need to inform you about changes affecting access to the third floor of the Orbach Library.

Limited Access for Safety and Efficiency
Starting immediately, the third floor will be restricted to authorized personnel only. This measure is crucial to ensure the safety of our patrons and staff as we gear up for the construction and renovation of our roof. We understand that this may cause some inconvenience, but it is a necessary step to prepare for the extensive work ahead.

Duration
Please note that limited access will extend through the rest of the academic year. While we regret any disruption this may cause, we are confident that these improvements will greatly benefit the UCR community in the long term.

Use UC Library Search and Interlibrary Loan to Access 3rd Floor Materials
Books, journals, and other monographs housed on Orbach Library’s third floor are still listed in our online catalog. The catalog will show that we do have a copy in the Orbach Library, but it will also include a note that shows the area is closed.

For these items, please click on the Request through Interlibrary Loan link under Find It and our team will work on finding you an alternative version either electronically or by loaning a copy from our extensive network of library partners (also known as the inter-library loan system).

Meeting Your Needs
We are dedicated to meeting your needs throughout this period. To compensate for the temporary unavailability of the third floor, we have arranged for additional seats and study spaces to be added to the other floors in Orbach as well as in the Rivera Library.

Looking Ahead
This renovation is part of our ongoing effort to enhance your library experience. The new roof will improve the building’s structural integrity and provide a more comfortable and sustainable environment for all users.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this time. Our staff is committed to minimizing the inconvenience and is ready to assist you in any way possible. 

• Read more about Borrowing Course Reserves

More News July 03, 2017

Medical Library Programs Coordinator Tiffany Moxham just marked her three-year anniversary at the UCR Library on July 1, 2017. Her presence has been auspicious for the inaugural class of 40 students who graduated from UC Riverside’s School of Medicine this June.

The UCR Library played an integral part in the formative years of UCR’s School of Medicine (SOM), and Moxham has been involved almost since the beginning. “I was very fortunate to be on the search committee for Tiffany’s position, and she just jumped out right away,” said Dr. Michael Nduati, CEO of UCR Health and Senior Associate Dean of Clinical Affairs. Nduati believes that hiring her was “the best decision we could have made for the library and the medical program.”

While clinical faculty may be the core of the program, Moxham has been their unwavering ally in her role at UCR Library. “We are supporting multiple clinical sites and campus locations because it embraces our community aspect,” Moxham explained. “This allows the library to align as a core piece of the research and educational programs, modeling integrated library services.”

Dr. Nduati credits many achievements by School of Medicine students directly to Moxham’s contributions. “Tiffany has been a godsend to the SOM and our medical education program,” he commented. “She meets one-on-one with the medical students to work with them on how to do literature research. A lot of these students have published and presented nationally, and a large part of their success is due to her.”

Moxham also devotes her time to collaborations with and mentorship of faculty. “A lot of faculty would be lost if they didn’t know how to access the resources they need at the library,” Nduati added. He witnessed her commitment to the faculty: “She would go to their offices to set up their computer and walk them through how to access articles. They can’t meet during regular office hours, so she would meet with them at nights, on weekends.”

Moxham has also presented at conferences nationwide with her School of Medicine colleagues. “You feel part of something bigger even though your piece of it might be small,” she said.

The outcome speaks volumes. “One hundred percent of our inaugural class matched,” said Moxham. “This means they all got into a residency program. This does not regularly happen!” Impressive results for a new medical school, indeed.

 “The piece that amazes me about the match is that we tried to do things differently,” Moxham explained. “When you see innovation in practice that allows for such great results in the end, being able to witness that effect on the students, that’s great.”

Retention of high-quality medical practitioners in Riverside and San Bernardino counties is a high priority for the School of Medicine. According to Moxham, “This school was built on the mission of improving the local community and getting more doctors here. We have a huge shortage of doctors here in the Inland Empire. Most of the scholarship money going toward the students was aimed at getting more of them to stay here.” Of the 40 graduates, 33 will complete their residencies in California, and ten of those will remain in the Inland Empire.

View photos from the 2017 School of Medicine Commencement

More News April 06, 2018

The library catalog will undergo a significant transformation this July when the UCR Library deploys an enhanced search tool with a modern, mobile-responsive visual display.

Designed by Ex Libris, the search tool will provide a streamlined user experience (UX) with improved access to library materials and intuitive ways for students, faculty and researchers to discover new content.

The added value to users will include:

• Combined access to both print materials and online licensed e-resources
• Easy-to-tailor search results using active content filters in the sidebar
• Book and journal cover image previews
• Table of contents previews
• Full text access to digital items when searching through the on-campus network or VPN

In addition to user benefits, the new back-end software will give library staff a set of robust, cutting-edge tools to manage collection inventory, track user analytics, and guide future acquisition efforts. This gives staff a way to manage the life cycle of resources, so the library has a better understanding of how patrons use resources, to allow us to allocate our funding more strategically.

Prior to selection, a library-wide task force reviewed proposals from several companies and concluded that the Ex Libris software suite was the best “next generation” system for the library.

UC Santa Barbara and UC Davis have already adopted the Ex Libris suite, while UC Santa Cruz and UC Irvine will go live this summer, along with UC Riverside and almost 50 other university libraries around the globe.

“Moving to this vendor will give us the best UX and the strongest set of tools to move forward,” explained Associate University Librarian for the Digital Library Diane Bisom. “It’s cloud-hosted instead of living on our own servers, with no additional cost as new updates are released. It’s something we can grow on as the library incorporates more and more e-resources into our collections, while enhancing access to our print collection.”

More News October 02, 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, researchers, publishers, 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 utilized by the university community for research and scholarship.

The program includes:

• Brianna Marshall, Director of Research Services, UCR Library: Brianna welcomes guests and introduces panelists.

• John Baez, Professor of Mathematics, UC Riverside: John will describe his activities to save US government climate data through his collaborative effort, the Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project.  All of the saved data is now open access for everyone to utilize for research and scholarship. 

• Perry Willett, Digital Preservation Projects Manager, California Digital Library: Perry will discuss the open data initiatives in which CDL participates, including the end-of-term presidential web archiving that is done in partnership with the Library of Congress, Internet Archive and University of North Texas.

• Kat Koziar, Data Librarian, UCR Library: 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.

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.”

***

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.

More News March 06, 2017

UCR Library is delighted to announce that Raul Aguilera has joined the UCR Library team effective today, March 6, 2017 as our Access Services Desk Assistant - Rivera.

Raul will be located in Circulation/Course Reserves on the first floor of the Rivera Library, reporting to Leslie Settle, Circulation Services Desk Supervisor.

Raul earned his BA in English from UC Riverside.

Most recently, Raul served as the Library Assistant 3 at the University of California, Irvine. Raul also has experience working with the UCR Library in his role as an Affiliate - Library Assistant 3 at the Orbach Science Library.