Category Archives: In the News

Wanna buy an 8-track?

iStock_000010319628SmallA very timely article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed discussing endowment spending today. Do universities  “spend enough of their endowments for society’s benefit to justify the tax exemption they get”?  Senator Charles Grassley is pushing for legislation requiring universities to spend a minimum 5% of their endowment income annually. His solution is a one-size-fits-all answer to a complex situation that has evolved over many years.

The Libraries benefit from a modest but growing number of endowments.  But is our endowment portfolio big enough to continue to support the increasing costs of growing and maintaining world-class collections?  Not by a long shot.  Endowments for collection enhancement, electronic resources, and preservation activities play a key role in maintaining an academic library’s pivotal place in the lives of students, faculty, and researchers.

It isn’t all about the size of the endowment.  In the case of the Libraries, and for many other academic libraries in the US, the endowment’s specific spending guidelines can have a huge impact.  Continue reading Wanna buy an 8-track?

A-B-C. Well, except in this case…

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David Mamet on set of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" (1981), 1980. David Mamet papers. Unknown photographer. Harry Ransom Center.

Our friends at the Harry Ransom Center just announced the opening of the David Mamet papers for scholarly research.

The archive covers his entire career, so it includes the source materials for all of his major plays (Glengarry Glen Ross, American Buffalo, Oleanna), as well as his screenwriting work (The Postman Always Rings Twice – the 1981 adaptation, The Untouchables, The Spanish Prisoner).

Find out more at Cultural Compass.



Michigan says goodbye to an old friend

card_catalogThis article on the departure of the legacy catalog at the University of Michigan recalls the renovations in Life Sciences Library here at the University of Texas, where card catalogs were removed to create space for new seminar rooms for the Undergraduate experience, as well as the removal of a large bank of card catalogs from the Perry-Castañeda Library almost three years ago.

The Michigan move also presages a similar development for those remaining catalog records at the PCL as the library responds to growing demands for student spaces.

Perhaps, though, we’ll follow our colleague Paul Courant’s lead and retain as an artifact a solitary catalog over which the students of tomorrow can ponder a more austere time.

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Choate’s electric cars go national

texlibris_choate copyA couple of weeks ago, the local Fox affiliate in Austin ran a piece on the burgeoning business of electric car conversion featuring Technology Integration Services Project Coordinator Aaron Choate. When he’s not keeping the Libraries up to speed in the realm of new technologies, Aaron is co-owner of Revolt, a local company that converts automobiles from gasoline to electric.

It’s satisfying, no doubt, to have your work gain recognition from local news, so it must be doubly thrilling to see your work recognized by a national news organization as Choate did today when the original story was picked up by CBS MarketWatch.

We assume that Aaron will spend this evening working through email/voicemail inquiries….

UT Digital Repository ranked among the world’s top institutional repositories

TDL.org stacked logoThe UT Digital Repository received some welcome recognition recently when it was ranked #50 in the Ranking Web of World Repositories’ list of the top 400 institutional repositories worldwide. We are excited to see that the repository, which is less than two years old, is already among the best.

The Ranking Web of World Repositories is an initiative of the Cybermetrics Lab, a research group that is part of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain. The group creates the rankings, Continue reading UT Digital Repository ranked among the world’s top institutional repositories

Studies on the future of scholarly communication

scholarly_communicationTwo recent publications cap lengthy inquiries into the impact of Web 2.0 upon scholarly communication practices, and each merits review by library administrators and planners everywhere.

The Mellon-funded study by the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at UC Berkeley, Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication:  An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines assesses the views of 160 researchers at some 45 research institutions. Continue reading Studies on the future of scholarly communication

Payne takes over CBCF Chairmanship

We do our best to keep apprised of the activities of our partners, and we recently noticed this item about the election of a new chair to head the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

WASHINGTON – The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. (CBCF) Board of Directors has elected Rep. Donald M. Payne of New Jersey as board chairman. Rep. Payne succeeds former chair Rep. Kendrick B. Meek who resigned from the Board to focus attention on his campaign for U.S. Senator. Continue reading Payne takes over CBCF Chairmanship