The end of the school year can be a liberating time for much of the population of the university. Most students get an extended break from the rigors of learning, or they complete a successful college career and move on to the next phase of life. Faculty transition from honing lectures and grading papers to scholarly or research pursuits, or just take some time to recuperate from teaching consecutive semesters. And for staff it generally means shorter lines, less traffic and time to catch up on all the projects that went on the back burner during the school year.
This nascent liberation can sometimes spur creative bursts as there are the beginnings of a collective exhale across the campus. Being on the front lines as we are when the library becomes a strategic center for student end-of-year projects and finals, we sometimes get the opportunity to witness, or even document, this extraordinary behavior.
We recorded two such examples just last week. Continue reading A Medium for Expression
The Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection gets a lot of use.
UT Women’s Athletic Director and incoming Libraries Advisory Council President 
After a brief postponement due to illness, this “memorable” 
I love books. I mean real books, the ones that I can open with my hands. One of the joys of working in a library is being surrounded by millions of books. Just for the record I like audio books also. However, e-books are not as appealing to me. I know they are “the future,” but I believe we still have a good hundred years or so with the real thing. It is hard to imagine The Library of Congress being obsolete!
As more and more information goes digital, the questions around the storage of all this data grow ever more important. UT Libraries is working on that question through its participation in a key university-wide initiative: the ITS Central Data Storage project committee. As the Associate Director for Digital Initiatives, I represent UT Libraries on this committee, which is working to cost-effectively expand centralized data storage services for the whole campus.