The University Libraries and Archives will close July 3rd & 4th for the Independence Day Holiday. Mullen Library will be open on Sunday, July 5th from 1pm to 5pm as normal.

For more information, please see Mullen Library Hours.

The Peter Guilday Papers, 55 linear feet; 110 boxes, contain personal and professional correspondence, notes, lectures, and sermons. They also contain the original documents and subject files used by Guilday throughout his career and research as a professor at Catholic University and a leading American Catholic History scholar. The majority of the collection spans his scholastic and professional career from 1904-1947. However, some of the original documents which are included date back to the 18th and 19th century. The collection is divided into three series. Photographs are interspersed throughout each series.

The future of the Bibliography of the History of Art (International Bibliography of Art?) is in doubt.  The Getty Research Institute announced that they will cease supporting it on January 1st, 2010.  There is hope that another institution will save the day.  Columbia University recently made the commitment to pick up the Avery Index to Architecture Periodicals, another database that Getty is letting go.

May 18 through August 8, the University Libraries will be open during the following hours:

For more information including holiday hours please see Mullen Library Hours and Campus Library Hours.

Download the Summer 2009 schedule

Please select the best tutorial acronym(surveys)

Leon Kass, noted bioethicist, gave the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities last night.  More information about Kass’ life, the lecture and an interview in Humanities magazine can be found on the National Endowment for the Humanities web site.

Image 1, Flickr Commons (Library of Virginia)

Article:

de Winstanley, Patricia Ann, and Robert A. Bjork. (2002). Successful lecturing: Presenting information in ways that engage effective processing. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 89, 19-31.

Deets:

Monday afternoon, nine colleagues gathered on the third floor of Mullen library to kick-off the first CUA Library Instruction Journal Club (LIJC).*

de Winstanley and Bjork’s article begins by examining the actual goals behind the lecture—a term that has gained an increasingly negative connotation in recent years. As a group, we brainstormed our own objectives (optimistic and realistic) behind the lecture and came up with the following:

• To impart basic information to large (sometimes small) groups of individuals
• Convey new information
• Increase students’ enthusiasm
• To entertain
• To keep our job

These objectives then led to a discussion about what attributes our favorite past instructors had had.

Again, our list:

• Knowledgeable
• Interested
• Passionate
• Taught with clarity and simplicity
• Told stories
• Involved multiple senses (where one exceptional music instructor used a cake— providing both a visual and gustatory aid)

We listened to a short excerpt from WNYC-Radiolab to better illustrate the complexities of human learners as noted in the article, namely

1) learning is an interpretive process, relating to what

is already known,

2) information retrieval is a fallible process, and

3) retrieving information from memory is a potent

learning event.

After discussing the difficulties of how much should be reviewed and how to deal with unmotivated students, director Dr. Kim Kelley posed the rhetorical question “Are our goals manageable for a 50 min session?” Are they? Perhaps a topic for another LIJC.

Group members were quick to point out seeming contradictions in the article. For example, although PowerPoint was cited as dividing student attention, the use of visual images, mnemonics, graphs, film, and figures was encouraged as a technique to enhance processing.

In closing, I asked group members to share take-away elements of the article. What personally did they want to try in their own instruction? Answers ranged from making the material relevant to using word games and trivia in large groups. Others liked the idea of simple Lessig style presentations and making encoding possible by having students engage with the materials in small group settings. In toto the lively group participation made for an informative hour and a successful exchange of ideas.

More Info:

Missed the first meeting? Join us throughout the summer, the third Monday of each month at 2:00pm, where a different presenter will guide our discussion.

*LIJC is designed as a semi-structured gathering for library personnel to discuss scholarly articles relevant to library instruction and related topics (e.g., technology, pedagogy, students’ perceptions/misconceptions, involving faculty, active learning etc.).

The records of the Commission of American Citizenship of the Catholic University of America spans 1938 to 1970, consists of manuscripts (mostly correspondence) and the publications by the Commission, including guides for social teaching and textbooks for grade schools as well as periodicals for the youths and children. Special thanks to Yuki Yamazaki and Library School practicum student Taras Zvir for assistance in creating this finding aid.

Catholics and Politics: Charles Coughlin, John Ryan, and the 1936 Presidential Campaign Website…
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second President of the United States, served longer than any other President in United States history. Elected to four consecutive terms, Roosevelt served from 1933 until his death in 1945. Millions of Catholic voters helped bring Roosevelt his landslide victory in 1936. Estimates of the number of Catholics voting for FDR range from 70% - 81%.

None of this Catholic support was taken for granted during the campaign of 1936, however, nor did all Catholics support a second term for Roosevelt. To the contrary, relations between certain prominent Catholics and members of the Roosevelt administration were strained. Father Charles Coughlin, a former FDR supporter who had become an outspoken critic of the President during the 1936 campaign, actively campaigned against him in the months before the election. Father John Ryan, on the other hand, publicly supported Roosevelt during the campaign, delivering a national radio broadcast under the auspices of the Democratic National Committee on his behalf. This website features previously unavailable audio and documents related to the presidential campaign of 1936 and the involvement of each priest in that campaign.

The Spring 2009 Newsletter is now available online. Read it to find out what we have been up to at CUA Libraries.

• CUA Library Staff Serve On ALA Committees
• CUA GLPs Create Poster For Symposium
• CUA Libraries Host The WRLC 2009 Spring Forum
• The Edward J. Belanger, Jr. Staff Award For Excellence
• Book Reviews
• New Staff
• Staff Notes