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More News January 10, 2020

Astrid Bear, the daughter of award-winning Science Fiction novelist Poul Anderson and his wife Karen, recently donated their papers to the UCR Library.

The collection includes 73 boxes of correspondence, manuscript drafts, notes, diaries, personal records, artwork, memorabilia and ephemera from various conventions and events.

“I am absolutely delighted that the Eaton Collection at UC Riverside is the custodian of my parents’ papers, preserving and making them available for scholars long into the future,” Bear said. “The Eaton Collection is one of the premier university SF/F collections in the world, and I am very happy that the Poul and Karen Anderson papers are part of it.”

A Danish-American author born in Bristol, Pa., Poul Anderson earned his undergraduate degree in Physics at the University of Minnesota, which provided a strong foundation for his science fiction writing. He published more than 50 novels and contributed to over 60 anthologies, receiving seven Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards, a John W. Campbell Memorial Award, among others throughout his highly-decorated career. He also served as the President of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1972-1973 and was named a Grand Master in 1997.

Karen Anderson co-wrote several books with Poul, including “The King of Ys” series. She was also a prolific publisher of fanzines and a very active contributor.

“Poul and Karen were both integral members of the science fiction and fantasy communities in California. Poul was one of those few authors who found success writing in both genres, and the collection represents that very well,” explained Andrew Lippert, Special Collections Processing Archivist, who processed the collection in 2019. “One of his most highly regarded works, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus, is the novella ‘The Queen of Air and Darkness,’ which might be one of the first successful blendings of sci-fi and fantasy.” Few authors have won all three awards for a single piece, Lippert said.

Lippert and the Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction, Jacqueline “JJ” Jacobson, included this novella in the library’s 2019 exhibition, 50x50: Celebrating the Eaton Collection’s 50th Anniversary.

The Andersons’ shared an interest in history, particularly northern European medieval themes, which found its way into some of Poul’s writing, according to Lippert. They were also founding members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and both maintained active roles within the community and fandom.

“We are delighted to have the Anderson collection join the papers of Anne McCaffrey, Gregory Benford, Gardner Dozois, and others as part of the Eaton collection at UCR,” Lippert said. 

Astrid Bear notes, “The knowledge, respect, and enthusiasm shown by the UCR staff during the donation and cataloguing process was quite wonderful.” 

Poul Anderson passed away in 2001, followed by Karen in 2018.

More News April 11, 2012

Renowned rare book preservationist Terry Belanger will speak at April 18 celebration.

By Bettye Miller

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — UCR Library will celebrate the acquisition of its 3 millionth volume in a ceremony on April 18 at 2:30 p.m. in the lobby of the Tomás Rivera Library on the UC Riverside campus.

The keynote speaker will be Terry Belanger, University Professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and founding director of Rare Book School, a nonprofit institute devoted to the history of books and printing, and to rare books and special collections librarianship.  He won a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2005.

Mike Terry, pipe major of the UCR Pipe Band, will perform an original composition, “Literary Notes” (An Ode to the Book).   A reception will follow. The event is free and open to the public. Parking costs $5 in Lot 6. To RSVP call (951) 827-4941 or email terrig@ucr.edu.

Achieving a collection size of 3 million volumes is a milestone for UCR, said University Librarian Ruth M. Jackson. The library celebrated its 1 millionth volume in March 1981, and its 2 millionth volume in November 2001. Currently the number of volumes held by the libraries is 3,214,420. Of that total, more than 404,000 are e-books.

With this achievement, UCR ranks 81st for the number of volumes held among the 115 academic research libraries in the United States and Canada that are members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). That places UC Riverside just below UC Irvine, which ranks 77th, and just above UC Santa Barbara, which ranks 84th.

“The digital transition is occurring at a steady pace,” Jackson said, and will ultimately transform libraries in much the same way as the printing press revolutionized the process of book-making and distribution in the 15th century.

Printed books will continue to co-exist with e-books and other formats and will remain a staple of university and research libraries for some time, she said.  Currently, only 20 percent of all in-copyright scholarly books published in the U.S. and worldwide are fully available in digital form, she said. Electronic books allow multiple users to browse their pages at the same time; can be viewed and accessed on-site in the library, or remotely from home, student residences, and faculty offices using either hard-wired computers, laptops, or hand held mobile devices with proper UCR authentication; and will ultimately offer vast advantages for full-text searching/data mining as the trend continues.

Research libraries, such as the UCR Library, typically purchase books upon the recommendation of library subject-specialists, in collaboration with faculty, based upon the national publication output and the University’s profile, Jackson explained.

In fiscal year 2011, the UCR Library initiated a pilot for testing a demand-driven acquisition (DDA) system that enables all UCR-affiliated library users to access and read licensed e-books loaded into the Scotty catalog by three major vendors. The e-books and the titles for printed books are chosen for loading based upon the university’s academic and research profile. If an e-book or the title for a printed book is accessed or used three times, a purchase is automatically made by the system for the UCR Library, making the electronic title part of the permanent collection. When the title for a print book is accessed for the first time, the system will ask the user if he or she wants to place an automatic order for the title.

The UCR Library will analyze purchasing patterns based upon the pilot at the end of the current fiscal year to determine how the two models of selecting materials for permanent addition to the collections differ and complement each other.

“It’s still very much a print world  in many ways and will be so for a while in several key academic disciplines and publishing fields such as the arts, humanities, social sciences, foreign language materials, and selected areas of the sciences ,” Jackson said. “It’s also one of the most exciting times to be a librarian and information scientist because of the mix of information resources we are able to make available to our users.

“The digital transition in publishing is changing the whole information environment. Libraries have a significant role to play in reshaping the campus information environment and developing new ways to manage, deliver, and preserve both print and digital resources, as we continue our role of making easily available the scientific, social and cultural publishing output of the nation and the world in support of research and learning.”

First e-book acquired by UCR Library: “Native American health care: January 1980-January 1993,) Patricia La Caille

10 Most Popular Books in the UCR Library 2011-2012 (based on circulation data)

1. “Outliers: the story of success,” Malcolm Gladwell (2008)

2. “Person and reality; an introduction to metaphysics,” ed. Peter Anthony Bertocci et al (1958)

3. “Eat, pray, love: one woman’s search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia,” Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)

4. “God and creation: three interpretations of the universe,” John Elof Boodin (1934)

5. “GRE exam: premier program,” Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions (2008, 2009)

6. “Handbook of fuel cells: fundamentals, technology, and applications,” ed. Wolf Vielstich, et al (2003)

7. “Cracking the GRE,” with DVD, Karen Lurie, et al (2010)

8. “Crisis intervention theory and practice: a clinical handbook,” Ann Wolbert Burgess, et al. (1981)

9. “Catching Fire,” Suzanne Collins (2009)

10. “The Hunger Games,” Suzanne Collins (2008)

More News March 29, 2022

Alvaro Alvarez believes 3D printers have the ability to open up a world of possibilities.

The Innovative Media Librarian for the UCR Library has a passion for robotics and technology and enjoys transforming three-dimensional digital models into tangible objects. 

“I love the fact that I can think of something and bring it to life with electronics,” Alvaro said. “You can make anything—toys, even print 3D parts for 3D printers.” 

Alvaro works at The Creat’R Lab, located in the Orbach Library. The Creat’R Lab is an innovative learning environment where new technologies, scientific curiosity, and entrepreneurship come together across the disciplines. 3D printers are a perfect fit for this environment, and the UCR Library is adding more to its arsenal. 

Currently, the Creat’R Lab has six 3D printers. Next week, two more will join them in the Creat’R Lab 3D Printing Room (Orbach 145). 

“We’ve done our research. From reading reviews and from talking to people that have used the models we purchased, they're really good, very reliable,” Alvaro said. 

3D printing has grown in popularity over the years, and as a result, demand has increased. These two printers will assist in meeting demand so the UCR Library can better serve students and faculty. Additionally, it’s also good to have more printers in the event any need repair.

“There is usually a higher demand at the end of each quarter,” Alvaro explained. “Each print job can take anywhere from three to four hours so if a printer goes down, it could be hard to keep up.”

The Creat’R Lab has printed some unique items, including fault lines for students and faculty in Earth Sciences. 

“We have a class that's been coming in, they've been printing terrain and earthquake faults,” Alvaro said. “Not only is it a great visual, but they can also take out the fault lines and pop them back in.”

The Creat’R Lab has a special connection with Earth Sciences. Three months into the Creat’R Lab’s arrival to Orbach, a researcher in Earth Sciences, Christodoulos Kyriakopoulos, collaborated with The Lab in 2017 to create a 3D-printed earthquake fault model. 3D printed fault lines seemed like a wild idea at the time but proved incredibly useful. The model was showcased at a congressional meeting in 2018, during which the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology deliberated on the future of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.

The new 3D printers are currently undergoing testing and will be fully operational on April 4. If you want to learn more about the 3D printing process at the Creat’R Lab or submit a 3D printing request, review our Creat'R Lab 3D printing guide.

While the 3D Printing Room is currently only open to Creat’R Lab staff,  we have plans to provide a more interactive experience in the future. Meanwhile, we welcome you to peek into our large window and see the equipment in action! 

More News September 29, 2017

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.

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More News November 22, 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More News May 31, 2018

The end of each academic year brings many goodbyes, both farewells to graduating students and to members of our career staff who will retire in 2018.

We would like to recognize and celebrate the following UCR Library colleagues, who shared snippets of their UCR history with us:

Diane David

Music Cataloger Diane David started as a student assistant in UCR’s Music department in 1971 and later transitioned to working in the Music Library’s listening room. After finishing her B.A. in 1973, she was hired as a music cataloger, one of three in UCR Library’s history.

With 45 years of service, David might hold the record for the longest-running career at UCR Library. “It has been interesting to see the industry change and to see the impact technology has had on our work,” she said, recalling her earliest days with hand-typed cards for the public catalog and all the various changes in technology she has witnessed since then.

Those years have also contained many great memories, including having Maya Angelou as the commencement speaker when David earned her M.A., Scot’s Week, and a very distinct campus prank in the early 1980s. “One year, we arrived early in the morning to find that the Bell Tower had a giant arrow through the top of it,” David explained. “Remember Steve Martin, the comedian who would come on stage with a headband that looked like an arrow through his head? This was a giant version of that.”

After retirement, David will miss seeing friends and colleagues on a daily basis, but looks forward to continuing her career in theater, which is booked well into the next year.

Kit Rembert

Preservation Assistant Cynthia “Kit” Rembert started her career at UCR Library in September 1977 as a typist clerk, and will retire this year from her role as a supervisor of special projects and processing. “Coming to work at UC Riverside in the libraries has been a blessing,” Rembert said.

Her favorite memories include special moments with colleagues at celebrations to acknowledge retiring staff. “I also have a lot of good memories from working on special projects with different people in all areas of the libraries,” she said.

Rembert recalls one day when she and a few colleagues got locked down in the sub-basement at Rivera Library for about 30 minutes. “The elevator broke down and we had to wait for someone to come around to open the side entrance,” she explained. “The only thing we could do was look at some old books and tell some family stories.”

Another vivid memory, Rembert said, was when the library’s namesake Dr. Tomás Rivera passed away on May 16, 1984. “He was held in the highest regard on this campus,” she added. “He was gone too soon.”

Julia Ree

Metadata Cataloger Julia Ree has held many roles at the UCR Library since 1978, when she was hired as a student assistant in the Reserve Book Room on the first floor of Rivera Library. She has also worked in stacks maintenance, public services, acquisitions, cataloging, and for 12 years as the subject specialist for the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

She met her husband of almost 36 years, Bob, at the public services counter in December 1980 when he was looking for weekend box office statistics for the Star Trek motion picture. “You could say that Star Trek brought us together! You could also say that having the same last name at birth was a contributing factor, but it’s the UCR Library space that made it all happen,” Ree said.

Ree’s favorite memories include organizing the 2013 Eaton Conference, at which they presented the Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award to Stan Lee. Another fond memory was in 2014, when Ree received the “Staff Who Make a Difference” award from Campus Staff Assembly. “I have worked many decades to create a quality to my work,” she said. “This, above all else, recognized my commitment to those we serve and I will be forever grateful to be singled out in this meaningful way.”

Josie Arreola

Josie Arreola was first hired at UCR as a receptionist in the Physical Plant / Grounds department; she joined the library in 1980. This year, she will retire from her position as a Collection Maintenance Assistant in Rivera Library.

In her 38 years at UCR Library, Arreola said she has been most fond of gatherings with student employees and staff colleagues, particularly the Thanksgiving Feast, as well as other on-campus events including University Club and holiday parties. Of the most unusual thing that happened to her on the job, Arreola said, “One week, I took like three security reports due to people trying to steal books, or damaging them.” What she will miss most about working at UCR Library is her co-workers and friends.

Maria Mendoza

Assistant Unit Supervisor of the Interlibrary Loan Unit, Maria Mendoza has been part of the UCR Library team since 1992. During that time, Mendoza said that she has collected too many fond memories to choose any favorites among them.

“But what I will miss the most is superior staff, our splendid students and phenomenal faculty,” she said.

In addition to her work at the library, Mendoza also taught Hawaiian dance classes to a group of UCR staff, faculty and students as part of the Mobile Fit program. A dedicated group of her dance students would sometimes perform as part of the Mission Inn’s Festival of Lights and at other community events.

After retirement, Mendoza plans to visit her native state of Hawaii and also to travel to the Philippines for the first time.

Rhonda Neugebauer

Collection Strategist for the Arts and Humanities Rhonda Neugebauer joined the UCR Library in 2001 as the Bibliographer for Latin American and Iberian Studies.

Her favorite memories include National Library Week postcards, “Edible Book” celebrations, the 2-millionth volume panel and reception, and celebrations with colleagues such as the library’s Student Employee Picnic and Thanksgiving Feast and Staff Association events. “I enjoyed seeing us as a group, united in our efforts to wholeheartedly support the library and library colleagues and enthusiastically serve our students, faculty and staff,” Neugebauer said.

When asked what she will miss most about working at UCR Library, she replied, “Co-workers who helped me, supported me, nurtured me, mentored me, stood with me during the rough times, and empathized with me when the news was sad, bitter and unthinkable.”

Her funniest memory was when an earthquake hit during a job candidate’s presentation in the Rivera Library. “When the speaker momentarily suspended his remarks ad asked, ‘Was that an earthquake?’ All the library colleagues who had already logged on to the shake map were able to report immediately to the candidate, ‘It wasn’t too bad, it was just a 3.4,’” she said. “Then we all laughed at how quickly everyone felt, reported and critiqued the shaking!”

***

The UCR Library would like to thank each of our retiring staff members, both those who are named here and those who wish to remain anonymous. We are grateful to have had you as our colleagues and friends, we appreciate your many years of excellent service, and we wish you all the best in your future!

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 April 30, 2021

The UCR Library wishes to congratulate Deputy University Librarian Ann Frenkel on her upcoming retirement in June 2021.

In 2006, Ann Frenkel joined the UCR Library as the Assistant University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services (later promoted to Associate University Librarian), along with her husband, Gwido Zlatkes, who became a librarian first in Special Collections and University Archives, and then in Metadata Services. Ann and Gwido met at Brandeis University outside of Boston, Massachusetts, where Ann worked as a reference librarian and Gwido worked as a graduate student employee at the library information desk.

In 2016, Ann was promoted to the role of Deputy University Librarian. Throughout the years, she has influenced instruction activities, programs, and services that support UC Riverside’s research, education, and service mission. She has also guided the creation of policies and communication strategies for the library. The lasting impact of Ann’s role and work with the UCR Library is extensive.

As her retirement date drew closer, we invited Ann to share some of her UCR memories with us.

What was your favorite part about working at the UCR Library?

Teamwork. Being able to work with staff in all different departments, divisions, units and create things we've never done before, new services, watch people come up with really creative solutions. And then, because of my particular position, I had the ability to give people the tools they needed, whether funding, or the ability to make a decision. I could help people be able to do things, give them what they needed to make things happen. It was fun and rewarding to see people develop and grow in their careers, and personally, as well.

One downside is that I've had several people leave and go on to other positions, bigger positions. But that also is part of the joy of working, even though it's always hard to lose people. It's been a delight for me to see people grow, and I feel like, “Oh, I had a tiny little hand in that!”

What are the biggest “wins” from your time working at UCR?

The reorganization with Research Services and Teaching and Learning is a big win in that I was able to do it together with the directors of the two departments and with the department staff. We worked as collaboratively as we possibly could. It was never perfect, it's always going to be a work in progress, and there are different ways and places for it to go now that I am leaving. We gave ourselves the freedom to imagine what it could look like, and we came up with a plan and we tried it out. Yeah, things changed a lot, but it was really rewarding work.

I think that the furniture and collaborative working space projects in both Rivera and Orbach were also big wins. In my memory it was so much fun because it involved so many people and we definitely had to come up with compromises, especially around colors, I remember! I think, in the end, everybody was satisfied. But we worked together and really envisioned using those spaces in new ways. What's exciting now is that it's going on to phase two or phase three with a new focus, and we'll see where it goes.

The Creat’R Lab is definitely a big win, from its beginnings with a couple librarians creating some Maker Boxes, to saying, “Hey, let's get a 3D printer and see what we can do with it!” and then finally developing a dedicated space that the students took over as their own. That has been really exciting.

There's one more big win from the early days that I remember -- something that seemed like a revelation at the time, and now it's old hat. When I first arrived, we had very rigid policies about what you could do in the libraries. You were supposed to sit in your seat and study and not talk very much, and that was about it. You couldn't eat or drink, and there weren’t places to work collaboratively with others, and the library wasn't seen as a “comfortable” space. I wanted it to be a space where people wanted to be -- and it needed to include all the things that one needs to have to make yourself comfortable, including food and drink. Within the first year I was here, I said to the then-University Librarian, “I think we should revise the food and drink policy to allow it.” She let me come up with a way to do that, and we moved on from there.

I also have a philosophy about rules: that you only should have rules in libraries when you really, really need them. And you shouldn't have rules just for the sake of them. That has always felt very oppressive to me, so I'm always thinking, “How would this make me feel?” and I make decisions accordingly.

What are you going to miss the most?

I know it sounds pat, but the people. I'll really miss the teamwork. I've always been able to work well with my colleagues and form really good working relationships. We truly have enjoyed working together. We've had a special connection. Those relationships are really important.

It's odd retiring when we're still in a remote, Zoom environment. I still see people on Zoom and I'll miss that, as well. I also have missed over this past year the casual contact with people in the office. It's fun, working together with people. That's a huge part of the job. It's why things work. When things work well, it's because you've been doing things together with others.

What's next for you?

I will be, probably the majority of the time, living in Warsaw, Poland with my husband Gwido. We won't be in a long-distance relationship finally, which we're really looking forward to.

Gwido and I have a huge number of translation projects. We translate under several pseudonyms -- Frank L. Vigoda (Polish to English) and Franek Wygoda (English to Polish). We have a book that's coming out in May, a translation to English from Polish of a memoir of one of the most famous Polish dissidents, Karol Modzelewski. It was supposed to come out last year, but got delayed during the pandemic.

One other thing that is coming out soon is a translation from English to Polish of Float by the Canadian poet, Anne Carson. Gwido translated it, but I helped at the very end of the project significantly, and I feel very connected to it. We've always translated from Polish to English together, and he does English to Polish, usually on his own. But working on this project together made us realize how I can be effective as a partner in that process, as well. So we're looking forward to that when we live in Warsaw.

We also hope to travel more. I think being cooped up with the pandemic has made us a little bit more impatient, like, “Oh, we want to go to Rome! Oh, we want to see Paris again! Oh, we want to go here and there.” Our base in the United States will be Portland, Oregon. I have family up there and grew up in Oregon, so I feel quite connected to that region.

What’s your funniest memory from your time at the library?

It’s not really funny, but it is interesting -- we now have a fairly elaborate process that we go through when a student asks to shoot a student film in the library. We ask, “Do you have any fake blood or fake weapons?” That's because there was an incident several years ago when we had a supposed active shooter, and the entire library evacuated, and we were hiding behind bushes for like three hours. What happened was that a student was doing a film in one of the group study rooms and was using an imitation gun. Somebody saw it and reported it, and the rest was history.

So, talking about not having rules for rules sake -- it’s kind of unusual that we ask those questions, but there's a reason why we have to ask those things!

I wish I had something as good as that time in the 50s or 60s when somebody let a flock of chickens loose in Rivera. I don’t have anything as good as that. There is a picture of that somewhere in Special Collections, I believe.

Do you have any parting gems or wisdom to share with your colleagues and community?

One is that I think a key to working in libraries, probably working in general, is to always stay flexible. To not have very rigid ideas. And I say this as somebody who's very opinionated and bossy, at times! But I know that, despite all that, my opinions can be pushed and changed. I think that's important. The second thing… As a leader or as a manager, it’s important to err on the side of giving people more responsibility than you might even think they're ready for because that's how people grow. It’s sometimes hard to find that fine line between delegating and giving someone responsibility, or over-managing / micromanaging them. There's a tension between those two, and I think it's always more rewarding and it's better for you and better for others to err on the side of a more laissez-faire approach because it gives people the freedom and space to develop. It's scary to do this, and sometimes it feels like you're ceding responsibility. But I have had the chance to really see this work, and it’s so rewarding!

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We at the UCR Library are grateful to have known Ann as a leader, colleague, and friend for the past 15 years. We celebrate and deeply appreciate her many years of excellent service, and we wish both Ann and Gwido all the best in their next adventure. Congratulations, and we will miss you!