Lovejoy Library & Dunham Hall, SIUE

Join us in celebrating the 100th birthday of Ruth Slenczynska, world-renowned concert pianist and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville Artist-in-Residence and music professor emerita. As the last surviving student of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ruth Slenczynska has performed over 3,000 recitals and concerts worldwide, appearing with many of the world’s greatest orchestras.

The symposium will feature lectures, a piano masterclass, library exhibit, and culminates with a celebration concert.

To see the symposium program, visit: Symposium Program

The celebration concert on Sunday, May 4th at 3PM in Dunham Hall Theater will feature performances by former SIUE Ruth Slenczynska students, including Drs. Stan Ford, Randy and Mary Jo Pembrook, and also some current SIUE pianists, notably Dr. Angela Kim.

The concert is free, but tickets are required. For concert tickets, visit: SIUE Music Events

In lieu of purchasing tickets, we invite you to make a donation towards a new Slenczynska Legacy Scholarship. It will directly benefit SIUE undergraduate and graduate music students majoring in piano studies. To donate to the new Slenczynska Piano Legacy Scholarship, visit the SIUE Department of Music website and select Fund 7078 (General Scholarship). A related option is Fund 8106, for an existing Ruth Slenczynska Award given to an SIUE piano major in their senior year.

The Slenczynska Centennial Celebration Symposium and Concert at SIUE on May 2-4, 2025 are sponsored by Library and Information Services, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Graduate School, and the Departments of Music, Mass Communication, and Theater and Dance.

For further information contact Fine Arts Librarian Therese Dickman by email at tdickma@siue.edu and phone at 618-650-2695

In response to the changing dynamics of information consumption, in early 2022, U.S. GPO Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern appointed a Task Force on a Digital Federal Depository Library Program. The Task Force, after thorough analysis, reached a consensus that the FDLP "can and should move to a digital platform."

Key benefits of this digital transition include:

1. Enhanced Accessibility: The move to digital resources enables Lovejoy Library to improve the description and access of publications that are exclusively available online. This enhancement ensures that users can efficiently locate and access valuable resources while preserving them for the benefit of future researchers.
2. Operational Flexibility: The digital platform empowers Lovejoy Library to serve more users with greater flexibility and efficiency, even with reduced staffing. This flexibility enhances the library's capacity to meet the evolving needs of its students and faculty and will allow the library to repurpose some of its physical space to support growing, high-impact university programs.

SIUE's Lovejoy Library is excited to contribute to this transformative shift in the FDLP. Over the next few months, the library will remove the outdated, redundant, and superseded U.S. Government Documents Print Collection on the third floor of Lovejoy Library to align its collections with GPO’s recommended FDLP digital transition. The electronic government documents collection at Lovejoy boasts over 60,000 titles, with regular monthly updates, providing an ever-expanding repository of invaluable resources.

As the library embraces this digital future, Lovejoy Library invites the community, scholars, and the public to explore the enriched online collection of Federal Government documents, including prominent titles such as the Budget of the United States Government, Code of Federal Regulations, and the Compilation of Presidential Documents.

Over the last few years, the faculty and staff of Library and Information Sciences have been engaged in a wholesale reinvention and transformation of Lovejoy Library. A number of things have been happening simultaneously. Various other units have been welcomed into Lovejoy Library: the Honors Program offices, the Faculty Development Center, and part of the Writing Center. In conjunction, the primary physical collection of Lovejoy Library has been examined and ‘weeded.’ ‘Weeding,’ or deselection, is a process of intentionally removing a large number of physical books or documents. The deselection process was complicated and labor-intensive. It is not an end in itself, but a necessary step toward a reinvigorated library, one that is at the center of the academic life of the campus.

When you come to Lovejoy Library, you will see a library that is changing itself and that is what libraries do. In order to be dynamic sites for emancipatory exploration, discovery, learning, and invention, libraries have to metamorphosize. They are historical, dynamic institutions; they are not—and have never been—static. They change over time because both the content, structure, and contours of knowledge and the dominant forms of media change over time. We should remember that libraries are not ‘warehouses of books;’ they don’t look just like unique and rare books reading rooms that are popular on Instagram. As knowledge changes, librarians regularly curate the physical and electronic holdings of libraries. Deselection is a routine process in libraries.

Now, it is true, that there is something unusual about what has been happening in Lovejoy and that is the scale of the deselection. Deselection at scale was necessary because of the particular history of the development of the physical holdings of Lovejoy Library. Since I am a historian, you will forgive me for telling you a little of the story.

It is important to understand a number of things about Lovejoy’s primary physical collection. It numbered approximately 588,000 volumes in 2019. Much of that collection had not been intentionally developed. It was the product of gifts and large-scale institutional acquisitions. A substantial portion of it was never catalogued. Approximately 20% of it was damaged or moldy. Fully 68% of the collection had never circulated. Its average age was over 50 years (that is to say, the book was acquired around 1967). Large parts of the physical collection were out-of-date and, in some cases, embodied expressions of social and cultural standards that are now seen to be prejudicial, without having any offsetting historical or scholarly value.

Not surprisingly, the library faculty and staff, in dialogue with faculty around the campus, determined that such a collection was misaligned with the needs and goals of the university in the second decade of the Twenty-First Century. This misalignment was signaled in a number of ways. For example, the borrow to loan rate of Lovejoy Library was (and is) substantially out of balance (this is the ratio of our requests to other libraries through inter-library loan to their requests from our library). Healthy academic libraries should be lending approximately the same number of books as they are requesting from other libraries and the ratio should be around 1. In 2019, Lovejoy’s borrow to loan rate was 1.75. That means that we are borrowing substantially more books than we are lending to other libraries. This imbalance signals a collection that is out of date, insufficiently funded, and/or fundamentally imbalanced to the needs of its core patrons. These problems were identified internally and then confirmed by an external review of LIS that was conducted in 2019 by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). These internal and external evaluations were the impetus for the major deselection project that has been undertaken.

After that internal review of usage and circulation statistics by the LIS faculty and staff in AY2015/16, the deselection project was piloted with small ranges in 2017 to determine feasibility, process, necessary labor, and time. The basic rules that were developed were that all books that were published, acquired, or circulated in the last 6 years would be kept. In AY18/19, the LIS developed lists of ranges to be deselected for faculty in units; at the same time, the LIS dean and other librarians discussed the project at a variety of levels, down to, in some cases, specific departments. The deselection lists were provided to departmental faculty with the intention that faculty could elect to keep books that they deemed valuable to their discipline, teaching, or research. There were disparate levels of engagement with this process across the campus. As lists were returned, careful attention was paid to what should be kept outside the basic parameters of the project. The project was slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It was accelerated in 2021, by the new dean, Lis Pankl; extra help was hired. The deselection process was completed last month in February 2022. There are now approximately 155,000 physical volumes in the primary, circulating holdings of Lovejoy Library.

That story brings us back to the present and what you see in Lovejoy Library: a work-in-progress. The completion of the large-scale weeding project lets us begin the next step of its reinvention. The next step is to conduct an inventory of the primary circulating collection; an inventory is a reconciliation of what is on the shelves with the catalogue records. It is itself a complex process that I will describe subsequently, in the coming weeks.

By undertaking these major projects, we are resetting the foundations of Lovejoy Library. We are committed to making Lovejoy Library the central site of student academic success while simultaneously supporting the teaching and research missions of the faculty. The timing of these projects has been a little off: we have been slower than we would have hoped.  You’ll forgive us, I hope. Like you we have been doing all of the things you have been doing: reinventing our practices to survive and thrive during the pandemic. We are setting up the procedures and workflows for the inventory right now.

I want to thank the dedicated faculty, staff, extra help, and student workers who carried out the deselection project. They have set the stage for LIS’s future.

We invite you to request books that you need for your teaching and research and we will, within the parameters of a finalized collection policy, acquire them. Beyond that, we will keep you informed about the next stages of the reinvention of Lovejoy Library and will work collaboratively and collegially with the university faculty and other stakeholders to build its future.

Sincerely

Eric W. Ruckh, Ph.D.
Interim Dean, LIS

If you have any questions or concerns, please email library@siue.edu.

Thursday, 10/22, 1-2pm - Halloween Face Masks
Thursday, 11/5, 1-2pm - Make your own Buttons 
Thursday, 11/19, 1-2pm - Fall Craft
Thursday, 12/3, 1-2pm - Paint by Number
12/17, 1-2pm - New Year’s Eve Masks and Hats

We're ready for you to come out and craft with us. Take some time to create your own masterpieces and take them with you! Just take a break and craft! Come to the Lovejoy Library and create your own masterpiece! Check out the new MakerLab. If you need a to take a minute for some self-care or to relax with friends schedule your appointments now!  PPE Required. Masks required. Hand sanitizer/wipes available.

Click the link to register for the event:
https://getinvolved.siue.edu/event/6551468

This is a lecture series made possible by a generous endowment to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Lovejoy Library and the College of Arts and Sciences: Mathematics and Statistics Departments respectively, by Dr. Ann and Earl P. Lazerson. The purpose of the endowment is to supply funding for a yearly lecture series. For Fall 2020, it is Lovejoy Library's role to plan and coordinate this event for our campus, this year's event will be held online with the theme, "Conversations in Mathematical Pedagogy".

Beginning Wednesday, June 24, you can access Primo VE by typing keywords into the search box on the Library’s homepage and clicking search. The initial search from the homepage will search everything (library catalog, databases, etc.) and direct you to a page of search results where you can explore other ways to customize your search. Additionally, one of the greatest features for SIUE faculty, students and staff includes integration with the University’s e-ID authentication system.

Once Primo VE is available, you can login with your e-ID and password to request books and media. 

Faculty and staff can sign up for a one-hour training session by emailing library@siue.edu. You can also view tutorials on Primo VE at this link. LIS faculty and staff will be available via email and live chat to assist you with any questions. 

Thank you,
Lydia Jackson
Interim Dean
SIUE Library & Information Services

Click here to access.

Both expressed the importance of creating an environment of openness in the library with a desire to coordinate with other groups on campus. “All are invited. The center is open to all levels from people who have no experience to those with many years of experience," said Gray. Lovejoy Library's Meditation Room is a space open to all, regardless of religious affiliation or philosophy. It has been designed for silent meditation, contemplation, or prayer.

Questions or feedback about the room can be sent to:

Juliet Kerico Gray
Health Sciences Librarian
jkerico@siue.edu

Marlee Graser
Metadata Librarian
magrase@siue.edu

• September 10, 2019
• October 8, 2019
• November 12, 2019
• February 11, 2020
• March 10, 2020
• April 14, 2020

Bring your lunch and learn with us!

*Interested in presenting a journal article or your research? Contact: Shelly McDavid, STEM Librarian at smcdavi@siue.edu or 618-650-2377.

Stop by Lovejoy Library’s Open House:

9:30 a.m.-3 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 28

Come explore Lovejoy Library's resources and services, and meet our friendly faculty and staff! Enjoy free kettle corn and win prizes! Stop by anytime during our welcome week event--we hope to see you there!  Play to Win!

Register on First Floor, Lovejoy Library  

For more information, contact us at 650-4636.

In Lovejoy Library’s Friends Corner

10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 21

Join us to hear excerpts from her new book, discuss and share stories of watershed activism, and introduce the Milagros project for endangered species.

Stop by Lovejoy Library’s Open House:

9:30 a.m.-3 p.m.

Wednesday, Aug. 29

Explore the library's resources and services, engage in conversation with librarians and staff, and experience a tour of the newly renovated first floor.

Prizes and kettle corn will be provided! For more information, contact us at 650-4636.

• Friends Corner: With the relocation of music materials to the third floor, the space for the Friends Corner doubled. The space also features new soft seating and a larger TV monitor to highlight news and events.
• Seating: the rest of the first floor has new soft seating, café tables & chairs, new rolling chairs at desks, and booth style seating.
• Group study rooms & tables: SIUE faculty, students, and staff now have access to two new group study rooms and 8 group work tables featuring monitors. These monitors will be equipped with WiFi screen-mirroring in October 2018.
• Coffee Shop Shell: The south entrance (quad side) is noticeably different! This space was built to accommodate a coffee shop in the near future.
• MakerLab: Coming soon! This space will feature a variety of high-tech tools.

Library faculty member, Elizabeth Kamper, has been hard at work to create a course-integrated program. To schedule a session with a librarian, please complete this new form.

• gathering input from library faculty, library staff, and other campus stakeholders in drafting the strategic plan that addresses SIUE student, faculty, and partner needs and expectations;
• Communicating progress on the planning process to the library faculty and staff;
• And preparing a strategic plan for submission to the Provost no later than the end of January 2019.

“We are excited to have Al Holliday performing, whose band has built its reputation for its world class R&B and distinct brand of soul music,” said Library & Information Services (LIS) Interim Dean Lydia Jackson. “Revenue from the event will support Lovejoy Library’s renovations and enhancements to allow for a better user experience for students, faculty and community members who utilize the library.”

Part of the fundraising efforts included a silent auction that included items from performers of the Mississippi River Festival, as well as other unique items.