Skip to content Skip to navigation

Library News

Open Access Week 2018


October 22, 2018


What is Open Access?

Open Access is a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge.

Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. OA is entirely compatible with peer review, and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance. Just as authors of journal articles donate their labor, so do most journal editors and referees participating in peer review.

OA literature is not free to produce, even if it is less expensive to produce than conventionally published literature. The question is not whether scholarly literature can be made costless, but whether there are better ways to pay the bills than by charging readers and creating access barriers. Business models for paying the bills depend on how...

Faculty Author Series: Food Futures by Catherine Keske


October 16, 2018


Celebrate World Food Day and taste regional specialties from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador as Dr. Keske shares excerpts from her book, 'Food Futures', that explores the origins, present-day complexities, and future of the Newfoundland and Labrador food system. She will also discuss the impact that Central Valley food production has internationally, even in seemingly obscure regions.

HathiTrust Extends Non-Consumptive Research Tools to Copyrighted Materials


October 10, 2018


Since 2011, HathiTrust Research Center has been developing tools to utilize text and data mining methodologies using the HathiTrust collection. Until now, this service has been available mostly in the portion of the collection that is out of copyright, with copyrighted item access restricted.

Works of Photographers Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones Now Online
Author: Sarah Sheets


September 19, 2018


Thousands of images by photographers Ruth-Marion Baruch (1922–1997) and Pirkle Jones (1914–2009) are now digitized and available on Calisphere, UC Santa Cruz University Library Digital Collections and the Digital Library of America (DPLA).

Thousands of Historic California Legislative Publications Available for Access
Author: Sarah Sheets


September 19, 2018


A joint effort between CDL’s Mass Digitization Team, the California Office of Legislative Counsel, and librarians at UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and the California State Library has resulted in 4,000 volumes of historic California Legislative materials being digitized and made open access in HathiTrust and Google Books.

Fall 2018 Library Workshops


September 5, 2018


Your Librarians are hosting a suite of workshops to help you expand your toolkit for success. There's something here for everyone, whether you're an undergrad writing their first research paper, or a grad student, faculty or staff member aiming to broaden your skill set.

Many workshops will be offered multiples times throughout the semester and range from 20 to 50 minutes. All workshops are created and instructed by your UC Merced Librarians.

Click on the date next to the workshop title for the workshop description and to register. View all Fall 2018 workshops here.

 

Research Starters Series (undergraduate)

How to Find UC Cooperative Extension Archival Materials Online


August 28, 2018


This month’s blog post is the first video in our series on how to use and search UC Cooperative Extension Archival materials online.  Our first video focuses on defining and locating our Collection Guides on the Online Archive of California, OAC. Next month’s video will be using Collection Guides on OAC.

 

 

Flipster Digital Magazines
Author: Breanna Wright


August 28, 2018


The Library has partnered with ASUCM to provide the UC Merced campus community with digital magazine subscriptions through Flipster. You can read your favorite magazines from anywhere and on any device.

Before you get started, make sure you are connected to the UC Merced campus wifi or VPN.

On-campus

Visit Flipster using your web browser or download the Flipster app on any of your devices; the app is available on the Apple Store and Google Play Store. You can also check out an iPad mini configured with the Flipster app from the 2nd floor Library Services Desk.

Off-campus

To read magazines when off-campus, you’ll need to download the...

UC Cooperative Extension Archive: Past, Present, and Future
Author: Lisa Vallen


August 2, 2018


Things are heating up at the UC Cooperative Extension Archive! July marks the start of our $308,900 three year grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission for “A Century of Impact: Documenting the Work of the Cooperative Extension in California's Counties.” Over the next three years, we will appraise, process, and digitize historical material from 20 county offices, with the goals of:

Digitizing approximately 180,000 pages and 2,000 photographs from California Cooperative Extension reports. Arranging and describing at least 100 linear feet of material from 20 county extension offices. (One banker box is the equivalent of a linear foot). Creating a scalable demonstration project using the records to engage Merced County 4-H students in tagging and curating digital records. Testing the use of natural language processing (NLP) tools to perform automated named entity recognition for use in creating controlled access vocabularies. Developing a searchable...

Zero-Cost (OER) Course Materials Grant


July 31, 2018


What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or are released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER can include textbooks, supplemental materials, teaching materials, test and question banks, and more!

Why use OER?

Using OER allows students to have materials before the first day of class and to have access to materials 24/7 from any internet connection. The use of OER removes financial obstacles to course materials and allows instructors to customize materials to match their teaching style and learning needs of their students. 

How can I start using OER?

The UC Merced Library and the Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning (CETL) are collaborating to offer the Zero-Cost Course Materials Grant to support the adoption of OER and use of UC Merced Library licensed electronic resources to reduce textbook and learning materials costs...

Pages