Collins Unbound

Let’s get Social – Tips from Puget Sound Librarians Rebecca Kuglitsch and Laura Schick.

As Puget Sound’s two newest librarians, Rebecca & Laura agree that one of the best things about UPS is that students here do a lot of hands-on, original work – which means that librarians get to work with students who are fully engaged in the research process. With that in mind, here’s a countdown of the top 5 ways to get even more engaged with what’s going on at Collins Memorial Library, from anywhere in the world and from the comfort of your very own computer:

#5
Follow us on Twitter – a great way to get quick library news bits and find out about events in the library as they’re happening, plus the occasional book or DVD recommendation.

#4

Visit our channel on YouTube – we’ve uploaded some short tutorials to help you make the most of library resources, or you can check out some of our library-related favorites.

#3

Read or subscribe to our official voice-of-the-library blog, Collins Unbound – here you’ll get more in-depth information with posts about new and exciting things happening at the library (like the one you’re reading right now!)

#2

Read or get a feed for the Library Logged blog – so you’ll get instant updates on comments and suggestions for the library from your peers, as well as what we’re doing in response to this much-appreciated feedback.

#1

Become a Fan of the Collins Library on Facebook – get library news, events, and even handy search tips in your Facebook feed, let us know what you’re thinking with a post on our wall, and bond with your fellow Collins Library fans.

Dr. Hooper is Chair of the Humanities Department and currently teaching a new class in digital humanities that combines research, technology and art in one course.  He recently published an open source scholarly work on the artist Ernst Barlach, titled:  Ernst Barlach: bibliographical listing of secondary literature.  This book is freely available online.

According to Professor Hooper, It was conceived as an online resource and not as a two-volume reference work simply because technology offers the opportunity to make a much more valuable resource – for example there are links in the text to sources such as WorldCat for example — those aren’t possible in hard copy!

Check it out on SIMON.

Recently Kent shared some insights about this project with Library Director, Jane Carlin and learn more about open access resources by visiting our web page on scholarly communication; http://alacarte.pugetsound.edu/subject-guide/13-Scholarly-Communication

What prompted you to make this resource available as an open source academic book?

I am philosophically opposed to proprietary bibliographical software, for one.  And for another, most bibliographical software wasn’t sophisticated enough for what I wanted to do.   And I am also in favor of making my work freely available to anyone interested in it, as opposed to making people pay to use it.  ( Publishing the work in hard copy form would have meant royalties to me so laughably miniscule, I like to say I would earn more money playing a couple of bar gigs over the course of a weekend)   As for the vetting process of this kind of manuscript–if the bibliographical listing is good, scholars will use it.  If it has shortcomings, they will have the opportunity to work with me to improve it!   In fact, I  very much hope other Barlach scholars will see the value in working collaboratively on this project.   I would like to move on to a new project–I haven’t worked on Barlach in years–so the hope is some young Barlach scholar will actually want to take over where I have left off.

Tell us about the content.

This is a bibliographical listing of secondary literature related to Ernst Barlach, a German Expressionist artistic multiple talent.   One of the biggest problems for scholars working on Barlach is that there is no decent bibliography of secondary literature; another problem is that the secondary literature is scattered in a variety of fields and subfields: art (and then sculpture, woodcuts, drawings; and then even finer wood sculpture/bronzes/porcelain), literature (prose, drama, autobiography, travel literature, etc).  And then there are all the reviews of exhibitions of his visual art; reviews of all the stagings of his plays.  The landscape is quite varied — and anyone working on Barlach is wise to consult as wide a range of secondary literature as possible.   Now, at least, scholars will know what has been written about Barlach and his works; and these scholars will also save a lot of time in the preliminary research phase, simply because I will have already leafed through the many many dozens of reference sources that catalogue secondary literature.