Tag Archives: resources

Events

Libraries Welcomes Longhorns with a Week of Fun, Creativity, and Community

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The Libraries kicked off the fall semester with a slate of engaging events as part of Longhorn Welcome Week 2025 (9/25-29), offering students opportunities to connect, create, and explore library resources and spaces in new ways. From trivia contests and art-making to zine collaging activities, the Libraries helped set the stage for a vibrant start to the academic year.

Game Night

The week began on Monday evening at the Perry-Castañeda Library with Game Night, where nearly 90 attendees gathered for an evening of friendly competition, pizza, and prizes. Students tested their knowledge in UT- and Austin-themed trivia rounds, winning much-coveted Labubu collectibles, while others played Bingo for UTL swag. Tables buzzed with card and board games like Uno, Bananagrams, Connect 4, and dominos. The library also showcased game-related books from its collections – Dungeons & Dragons titles proved especially popular. Beyond the games, the event provided opportunities for connection and community-building, with students exchanging numbers to plan future gaming sessions and meet-ups.

Exploring Color and Geometry in Islamic Art

The Fine Arts Library hosted Color & Geometry in Islamic Art on Tuesday, where more than 30 students explored traditional and contemporary craft techniques. Participants painted wooden puzzles, decorated fabric and paper with Foundry-made stamps, designed jewelry, and experimented with Arabic calligraphy. Foundry tours highlighted the library’s creative technologies, and puzzle- and bead-stringing activities were crowd favorites. The event blended hands-on learning with cultural exploration, giving students a chance to engage with both artistic traditions and cutting-edge library resources.

Zine Making Party

The popular annual Zine Making Party drew about 55 participants on Wednesday, where attendees flexed their DIY muscles, collaging, cutting, and creating minimalist artworks. Students used magazines donated by UTL staff to craft one-page zines on topics meaningful to them, and many explored the Fine Arts Library’s extensive zine collection. Faculty even joined in the fun, underscoring the event’s wide appeal. Past years’ collages remain on display at the library’s entrance, offering a living archive of student creativity.

Bibliogarden

Activities returned to PCL on Wednesday, where the Libraries’ Bibliogarden brought together nearly 50 attendees and UT Libraries staff from across disciplines. Students designed bookmarks, explored leisure-reading recommendations from the new “leisure cart,” and browsed a curated selection of zines, chapbooks, cookbooks, and global literature. Highlights included Southeast Asian cookbooks paired with homemade photos, and a table from Austin Public Library where students could sign up for local library cards. The event fostered community while showcasing the breadth of UT Libraries’ collections and services.

Closing with Cinema: Minari Screening

The week concluded on Friday with a screening of Minari, the acclaimed 2020 film about a Korean American family building a life in rural Arkansas. Students and community members gathered at the Perry-Castañeda Library to share in the story of resilience and belonging – an apt reflection of the welcoming spirit that defined the week. Co-sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies’ Korea Program and the Center for Asian American Studies, the film drew a full house, and capped an excellent week of introductory experiences for new and returning Libraries users.

The Libraries’ efforts did not go unnoticed. The Libraries’ Game Night was honored as a Longhorn Welcome Event of the Year, a recognition that underscores the event’s positive impact on helping new and returning Longhorns feel at home on the Forty Acres.

Through Longhorn Welcome Week 2025, the Libraries underscored its role not only as a resource hub but also as a vibrant community space where students can learn, create, and connect. Whether through games, art, zines, or shared stories, the Libraries offered students multiple ways to launch into the new academic calendar with curiosity and connection.

Resources, Services, Students

Graduated? Don’t Forget Your Libraries

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You did it! (Or your graduate did.) Congratulations. After four years (more or less) of hard work and long nights in PCL, you’ve earned your degree and are looking toward the next phase of life as you head out into the world.

And though your time at UT has officially come to a close, you’ll still have some access to library resources on which you’ve come to rely through the summer.

Spring Graduates

Hold on to your student ID card, as you’ll retain privileges through the following summer. These privileges include:

  • regular student check-out privileges
  • access to interlibrary loan services
  • access to most UT Libraries electronic resources
  • use of study rooms, carrels. or lockers under the same guidelines that apply to enrolled students
  • online renewal

Your privileges will remain active until the 12th day of classes in the fall semester.

Courtesy Borrower Privileges

There are several options for getting a Courtesy Borrower card:

Join the Texas Exes

There are several alumni membership levels available–sign up quick, recent grads get special deals! After you’ve joined, bring a photo ID to Courtesy Borrower Services to apply for your card. You’ll also get remote access to three article databases, Academic Search Alumni Edition, Business Source Alumni Edition, and JSTOR Alumni Edition.

Get a TexShare card

The TexShare Library Card Program is a reciprocal borrowing program, coordinated by the Texas State Library, which provides access to materials from many Texas libraries. If you’re a patron in good standing at a participating public library, you can get a TexShare card from that library and bring it to Courtesy Borrower Services to apply for your UT Libraries courtesy card. While the card is free, each participating library has its own qualifications for eligibility. For example, Austin Public Library requires their patrons to be in good standing for a period of six months before qualifying for a TexShare card. Check with your local library for details.

Are you a Texas resident?

If you are a Texas resident, but you don’t qualify for a TexShare card, just bring proof of address, a photo ID, and $100 to Courtesy Borrower Services to apply for borrowing privileges at UT Libraries.

Courtesy borrowers can:

  • check out print and media materials from all UT library branches
  • access most electronic databases from onsite library workstations
  • access online renewal and recall services

Courtesy borrowers cannot:

  • access databases remotely
  • check out equipment
  • use interlibrary loan services
  • access Jamail Center for Legal Research, the Harry Ransom Research Center, or the Center for American History

For additional resources, bookmark the “Access the Library After Graduation” LibGuide.

 

 

Parents, Research, Services, Students

A Parents’ Survival Guide for Finals

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Photo courtesy UT Division of Student Affairs.
Photo courtesy UT Division of Student Affairs.

Imagine this — your student just returned to campus from Thanksgiving Break and realized that finals are just around the corner.  What do they do?  Panic?  Eat more mashed potatoes or pie and try to forget about it?  I’ll never argue with more pie, but when your student calls to talk about this stressful time, tell them that instead of panicking or eating their feelings, they can take advantage of services offered within the libraries.

University Writing Center at PCL.
University Writing Center at PCL.

PCL houses several partner organizations who offer great services to students:

  • The Writing Center (in PCL) offers help at any point in the writing process.  Tell your student that good writers seek feedback!  Appointments here
  • The Sanger Center’s Public Speaking Center is now open in PCL – their consultants can offer suggestions on any presentation or speech assignment.  Appointments here  
  • Tutoring for intro-level Calculus, Biology, and Chemistry courses is now available in PCL’s UFCU room.  See the schedule

Help at the desk.

The UT Libraries house many new services for students, but librarians have always been available to help with research.  Students can ask us questions about finding sources of information, about choosing or narrowing a topic, about when and how to cite sources, and about which sources of information are credible.  We are available to help in several ways.  Your student can:

If your student has an assignment that involves technology, we can help with that too!  They can:  

We know that finals are stressful, so we want to help with your student’s work AND help them de-stress.  With dogs!  We have therapy dog study breaks a few times at the end of the semester:

Kona from Austin Dog Alliance.

Events, Research

Five years old

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Five years after it first launched an all-branches presence during Research Week at UT, the Libraries is again returning its Libraries Fair to the PCL plaza.

Ten campus branches of the Libraries will converge at the PCL from 11:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. to provide a one-stop shop for students to drop by and learn about resources and services available to them across the campus. Staff from the branch libraries, and from Libraries service divisions (InterLibrary Services, UT Digital Repository and Ask A Librarian, to name a few) will be on hand to answer questions and raise awareness of various library resources, and booths will feature contests for prizes, along with treats provided by Cloud 9 Cotton Candy and Cornucopia Popcorn.

Also, for the first year, the Libraries will be joined by campus partners, including the Harry Ransom Center, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History and the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports, as well as by typewriter poet Jena Kirkpatrick, who will be on hand to help promote the April 19 screening of “The Typewriter (in the 21st Century)” at the Fine Arts Library.

Again this year, the Fair has been scheduled to coincide with the Longhorn Research Bazaar across the street at Gregory Gym, providing students the chance to get information about undergraduate research opportunities at the university, as well as the resources behind the research, all within the distance of a stone’s throw.

Research Week is a campus-wide celebration of undergraduate research and creative activity. It unites existing programs, events and activities that showcase undergraduate research and highlights the many research opportunities available to students.

Instruction, Research, Technology

Breaking Down Tools

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Our First-year Experience Librarian, Cindy Fisher, is a guest blogger over at the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s ProfHacker site. In her post, she lauds LibX, a pretty complex, library-specific browser extension from a couple of innovators at VaTech that makes finding and accessing available resources in your library exponentially simpler.

Like I said, it’s pretty complex, so I’ll let Cindy explain it to you.

 

Collections, Fine Arts Library, Historic Musical Recordings Collection, Preservation

This Donation Sounds Great

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William Vanden Dries of the Audio Preservation Fund and Fine Arts Music Library David Hunter. Photo by Emilia Harris, Daily Texan Staff

An unexpected gift can sometimes be the most invaluable.

Thanks to a generous donation from the Audio Preservation Fund – an Austin-based nonprofit formed by three UT alumni in 2009 – the already extensive Historic Musical Recordings Collection (HMRC) just got a little more so with the addition of 1,000 vinyl albums.

Chairman of the Audio Preservation Fund William Vanden Dries hand-delivered the eclectic mix of recordings to the Collections Deposit Library on Tuesday. After an extensive review of the HMRC’s holdings, the group determined where their reserves might bridge gaps in the collection’s catalog, and the gift was amassed from the cache of an unnamed individual collector.

The Audio Preservation Fund acts as a facilitator for the collection and preservation of sound recordings, and for the distribution of donated items to suitable recipients including public archives, libraries, museums, universities and research centers. The Fund’s goal is to make private collections available to the public in an effort to improve access to rare, unique and historical audio.

We express our gratitude to the Audio Preservation Fund on behalf of the Libraries and the patrons who will benefit from their generous gift.

 

Outreach, Research

Surviving the Crunch

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The days get shorter in more ways than you can imagine this time of the year, especially around the university campus as the final push of the semester evinces itself in the form of projects, papers and tests.

The Libraries does its part to help minimize the stress with a program meant to promote those resources and services that make the tasks at hand a tad less imposing.

This year’s Crunch Time outreach initiative highlighted library services and resources for students at The University of Texas at Austin between the hours of 11am-3pm on November 9, 10 &11. The program purpose is to promote the availability of in-person, drop-by assistance, subject librarian consultations, and the UT Libraries Ask a Librarian IM and email services.

During Crunch Time students are provided with Ask a Librarian contact cards attached to mini-Nestle Crunch bars, a series of time saving handouts and increased staffing at service points.  A brief survey to determine awareness of service options is made available from UT Libraries computer workstations across the campus, and students who participate are entered in a prize drawing.

First introduced by the Reference and Information Services department at UT’s Perry-Castaneda Library in 2008, Crunch Time has become an annual event and three additional UT Libraries locations participated this year, increasing its reach.

Statistics indicate that students took advantage of the program and more of them were connected with the information they wanted, at point of need, as a result. Of the three locations reporting, there were 536 queries, with a large number of those (199) occurring on Wednesday, November 10, at the Perry-Castañeda (105) and Fine Arts (94) Libraries. There were also 193 participants in the services web survey.

Jenifer Flaxbart is Head of Reference & Information Services for the University of Texas Libraries.

See more images from Crunch Time programs here.