Explore the Homer Babbidge Library with us on Friday, August 23 from 12-2pm. Grab a card and visit all 8 stations around the library to learn about all the great services we provide. Grab some swag, get your card signed and the first 100 students to visit them all will get a prize!
Stations include
Level B
Facilities & Security – learn how we keep you safe and happy while you are here.
Liberated Zine Zone – get your creativity on and make a zine.
Wellness & Leisure Reading – it isn’t all about studying – we have great resources to help you find your way and read for fun.
Level 1
Archives & Special Collections – rare books, cool collections and so much more to explore.
Library Assessment – interested in how we get information from you on what you’d like to see?
Level 2
Research Services – have a research project to do? Our librarians can help.
Interlibrary Services – what happens when you need an article that we don’t have? Ask!
Level 3
Conservation Lab – ever wonder what we do with gum stuck in books or ripped binding?
It’s that time of year again when you have a love-hate relationship with finals! Finals are hard, but it means Paws to Relax is back in Homer Babbidge and how can you not love that?!?!
Below is both a flyer of the schedule to share with your friends or you can find the straight list. Any changes will be posted inside Homer Babbidge.
Tuesday, April 30 12-1 Shadow, Cocker Spaniel 1-2 Ryder, Mini Australian Labradoodle 2-3 Mazzie, Cocker Spaniel 3-4 Gracie, Pug 4-5 Benny, Shih-Tzu
Wednesday, May 1 12-1 Wrigley, Newfoundland 1-2 Andy, Golden Retriever 2-3 Seneca, Yellow Lab 3-4 Finley, Yellow Lab 4-5 Tori, Golden Retriever
Thursday, May 2 12-1 Shelby, Golden Retriever 1-2 Dugan, Australian Shepherd 2-3 Grant, Golden Retriever 3-4 Cora, Bernese Mountain Dog 4-5 Tucker, Golden Retriever
Friday, May 3 12-1 Toby, Golden Retriever 1-2 Sheena, Hound Mix 2-3 Willow, Foxhound
After a review of our market research databases and in consultation with the UConn School of Business, we will not renew our subscription to two databases – Passport GMID and Mergent Intellect.
Passport GMID
UConn will lose access on December 31, 2023.
Due to decreasing usage and growing costs, Passport GMID (Global Market Information Database), Euromonitor International’s global market research database will be cancelled as of December 31, 2023.
For more information, contact our Library’s Acquisitions and Discovery team at ermsupport@uconn.edu.
Mergent Intellect
UConn will lose access to Mergent Intellect after January 31, 2024.
Mergent Online offers the same comprehensive business information to global public and private businesses. This is supplemented by our access to S&P NetAdvantage, S&P Capital IQ, and LSEG Workspace. For a full list, see the Business Subject Guide
Access to Mergent Archives, Mergent Bond Viewer, Mergent Investext, First Research, and Key Business Ratios will continue unchanged.
For more information, contact our Library’s Acquisitions and Discovery team at ermsupport@uconn.edu.
It’s that time of year when we balance your stress with some of the best doggos around! Come ease your stress all week long – December 11-15. Starts at noon on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday and 1:00 on Wednesday, all on Level 1 in Homer Babbidge Library. The schedule can change so make sure you check back for any updates. Good luck on finals – you’ve got this!
Monday December 11 12pm Benny – Shih-Tzu 1pm Fireball – Golden Retriever 2pm Dodger – Golden Retriever 3pm Comet – Golden Retriever
Tuesday December 12 12pm Hunter – Shetland Sheepdog 1pm Finn – Labradoodle 2pm Willow – Foxhound 3pm Grant – Golden Retriever
The Future of Journals strategy, which shifts us away from cost prohibitive just-in-case collection building to a budget sustainable just-in-time approach, has resulted in both large cost savings and better efficiency in providing UConn researchers articles with speed and accuracy. In fact, between January and September, the overall efficiency of the service delivery for faculty and graduate students has improved; 97% of the article retrieval requests through the new system from journals previously subscribed to (those part of the Future of Journals strategy) took less than a minute to be delivered via email, and 99% within an hour. Interlibrary loan services for all other requests (including articles outside of the project) remain within the industry standard of 11 hours. We are committed to getting researchers the articles they need.
Beginning in 2020, it became clear to the UConn Library and the Provost that managing the library budget amid decreasing state aid and rising annual costs of journal subscriptions was going to require new ways of thinking. At that time the library permanent rescissions and loss of one-time collections support for that fiscal year totaled ~$2.8M. The strategy developed in consultation with the Future of Journals Committee, composed of faculty and researchers from a variety of fields, is entering its fourth year of successfully shifting how we provide access to scholarly information, with a primary focus on getting researchers what they need easily and quickly. With the shift we met the rescissions, and annually spend between $150K-$200K on providing articles through the new service. Additionally, the budget is not affected by the annual journal subscription cost increases of 6%-10%.
Simply stated, the scholarly publishing crisis of escalating journal costs, rising exponentially over the last two and a half decades, is unsustainable. For “Big Deal” subscription bundle packages, once a way for libraries to pay for access to large amounts of packaged content, the costs have outpaced both inflation and library budgets. Additionally, many of the journals included in the bundles are used very little (very much in line with the Pareto 80/20 principle). “Big Deals” put pressure on the entire library budget and forced academic libraries, including UConn, to eliminate not only journal subscriptions and other material purchases (books, databases, etc.), but also staff, programming, and support services to meet those increases.
One of the most significant changes to date that came out of the Future of Journals strategy, was the non-renewal of the bundled contract with Elsevier at the end of 2022. Since the start of 2023, the article processing statistics through this new system show a successful rate of delivery, with 97% arriving instantly, usually within a few seconds. Additionally, we have streamlined the process of accessing materials by combining two services into one link, called ‘Get This PDF’, for a more seamless user experience.
According to our timeline, this January we will not be renewing contracts with the publishers Wiley and Taylor & Francis. We will provide access at the article level to researchers from those publishers through our expedited article delivery system for faculty and graduate students and the UConn community via Interlibrary Loan.
Academic libraries across the globe regularly cancel journals or end publisher contracts, including schools such as MIT, Rutgers, Purdue, and UNC Chapel Hill, to stay within their budgets, and our strategy has been taken note of by our peers. We have been working with other academic libraries, regional organizations, and attending conferences helping other institutions struggling with finding solutions to their own budget crises.
It will always be a top priority for UConn Library to support the research mission of the university. The Future of Journals approach has given UConn the flexibility to be nimble in how we provide access to the library materials you need as the publishing landscape continues to change. Looking ahead our collection strategy will continue to be fine-tuned to allow us to continue to provide the materials, services, and spaces you also rely on. We build responsive and relevant collections by regularly assessing use, publishing models, usability, and monitoring and adopting new functionalities. Our collections remain reflective of the current scholarly communication environment.
Nancy Dryden at retirement reception at the Stamford Library, June 2023
Nancy Dryden retired from the position of Research & Instruction Librarian at the UConn Stamford Library on June 28, 2023.
Throughout her tenure, Nancy has been a beacon of knowledge, professionalism and dedication. Nancy joined UConn in 1981. Forty-two years later, she has had a huge positive impact on UConn Library across UConn’s Regional Campus Libraries and in collaboration with colleagues on the Storrs campus.
Nancy first worked as a cataloger/ILL Librarian at the Jeremy Richard Library at UConn Stamford at its former space on Scofieldtown Road. The UConn Stamford Campus relocated to its current location in the heart of downtown Stamford in 1998.
Nancy has held many positions within the library from cataloger, Head of Cataloging, Head of Technical Services, Director of the Jeremy Richard Library, and the Director of the Regional Campus Libraries for 11 years, which covered Avery Point, Greater Hartford, Stamford, Torrington and Waterbury.
Nancy, 2007 file photo
As the Regional Campus Libraries Director, Nancy was instrumental in coordinating the learning commons projects at each regional campus library. Her work helped create beautiful and vibrant student-centered library spaces. At Stamford, Nancy led a project to build a wireless classroom, The Thomson eClassroom, from grant funds and a $200,000 donation from The Thomson Corporation (now Thomson-Reuters Corp). She also in collaboration with a past campus director, Dr. Michael M. Ego, had installed a WPA mural by Connecticut artist, James Daugherty in the library. This historic WPA mural is one of seven murals painted by James Daugherty and on loan from the City of Stamford.
The Stamford Library staff from L-R, Phara Bayonne, Nancy Dryden, Jenny Gregory
Nancy has been an invaluable mentor and well-respected colleague of the UConn Stamford campus and her retirement is a tremendous loss to the many faculty, student, and staff she has engaged with for so many years. Her kindness, patience, and willingness to help our students has made the Jeremy Richard library a welcoming place. Her commitment and contribution to the UConn Library has significantly shaped its success. Her presence in our library will be sorely missed.
Please join us in wishing her a well-deserved retirement filled with relaxation and new adventures!
Written by Phara Bayonne, Director, UConn Library Stamford.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month is celebrated each year in the month of June to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan. The Stonewall Uprising began at the Stonewall Inn, a bar located in New York City’s Greenwich Village, when patrons and neighborhood residents fought back against a violent police raid on the gay club in the early morning hours. The crowd’s fierce resistance against law enforcement quickly grew into an uprising that lasted six days and signaled the arrival of a militant and confrontational movement for the liberation of LGBTQ+ people.
The UConn Library has several great resources and activities to help you learn more of the history, challenges, and victories around LGBTQ+ issues in celebration of Pride Month.
Archives & Special Collections
Connecticut has deep roots in the movement, including here at UConn which can be found in several archival collections.
Foster Gunnison, Jr.
Foster Gunnison, Jr. Papers. In the early 1960s, Foster Gunnison, Jr., who had arrived in Hartford, Connecticut, to pursue a master’s degree at Trinity College, immersed himself in the homophile movement by working with local organizations and founding his own, the Institute for Social Ethics (ISE). A collection of his materials includes correspondences, organizational records, posters, fliers, buttons, newspaper clippings, and photographs relating to LGBTQ+ activism in the 1960s and 1970s. Finding Aid Digitized Materials
The UConn Gay Alliance was founded in 1967 and had their own Stonewall moment in 1971-72 when one of their dances was met by an angry crowd. There are several collections that are available for researchers interested in learning more about the movement here at UConn including:
University of Connecticut, President’s Office Records most notably presidents Homer D. Babbidge (1962–1972) and John A. DiBiaggio (1979-1985). Both contain material relating to LGBTQ+ issues on campus, such as the emergence and activities of the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s.
Alternative Press Collection (APC) includes national and international publications, ephemera, and artifacts documenting activists and organizations from the 1800s to present as well as LGBTQ+ organizing at UConn. Especially notable are materials from the Storrs Gay Coalition and the UConn Gay Alliance. The APC can best be consulted using the card catalog available in the archives, though some digitized materials can be accessed here.
Daniel R. Campbell Papers. Daniel R. Campbell attended UConn in 1967-1968 and was one of the first openly gay students on campus. The collection describes Campbell’s experiences at UConn and elsewhere, and offers insight and perspective on pre-Stonewall LGBTQ+ culture on campus.
UConn Rainbow Center Records. Founded in 1999, the Center is dedicated to supporting the needs of the LGBTQIA+ members of the campus community. The collection documents the center’s history and activities up to the present day.
Don’t stop there! There are a wide variety of books of poetry, and children’s literature from the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection, and several more great resources for research in Archives & Special Collections, with thanks to Shaine Scarminach for the compilation.
Wellness Collection
LBGTQIA Wellness titles includes books, many available electronically, related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual communities’ wellbeing, and identities. The LGBTQIA Community Wellness Guide features selected memoirs, advice, and other books by authors for the LQBTQIA + (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual) community which relate to mental health or wellness.
UConn Health Library
With the assistance of a Collection Equity Award from the National Library of Medicine, a new collection of LGBTQIA+ materials is available at the Health Library which was recently highlighted in UConn Today.
Databases
LGBT Magazine Archive. Articles from journals covering LGBT interests from 1954-2015.
Independent Voices. Alternative press publications produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals and the New Left, Native peoples, antiwar activists, Black Power advocates, Latino/as, LGBT activists, right-wing extremists, and more.
LGBT Thought and Culture. Influential books, periodicals, letters, speeches, interviews, and ephemera covering LGBTQIA political and social movements in the 1900s and 2000s.more.
LGBT Life. Covers gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues including civil liberties, culture, employment, family, history, psychology, and religion.
Gender & Sexual Minorities (LGBTQIA) Studies Subject Guide provides tips and resources for locating books, films, journal articles, news sources, and websites for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual, and other gender and sexual minorities studies.
Exhibits
If you happen to be on campus – we have displays of published materials in the Homer Babbidge, Avery Point, and UConn Health libraries.
It’s finals time which means it’s time to welcome the doggies! Mark your calendar for your favorite puppers and make it a date! This year we will also be having a little brunch on Friday, May 5 from 10-12 in the Homer Babbidge Lounge on the Plaza Level with snacks and therapy dogs to celebrate YOU and the end of finals week!
Monday, May 1 12:00 – Gracie (Pug) 1:00 – CC (Irish Wolfhound) 2:00 – Grant (Golden Retriever) 3:00 – Benny (Shih-Tzu) 4:00 – Millie (Spaniel Mix)
Focusing on the theme of Black Resistance, we have many ways you can join our celebration of Black History Month. There will be exhibit in multiple locations that include Homer Babbidge Library, our regional campuses, and Archives & Special Collections. We will be hosting a screening of Rosewood (1997), the cinematic retelling of a true-to-life racial pogrom that decimated a predominately African American town in Florida, and a discussion with Lizzie Robinson Jenkins, founder and president of the Real Rosewood Foundation, Inc. We are also co-sponsors of the African American Cultural Center’s Black History Month Closing Ceremony.
Exhibition – Disorder in the Night: Narratives of Black Resistance, 1723-2023 February 1-28, 2023 Located in multiple locations including: Homer Babbidge Library Plaza Avery Point Campus Library Hartford Campus Library Waterbury Campus Library Stamford Campus Library
Disorder in the Night explores the Black resistance in its various forms, from the period of enslavement to the present. Organized by three broad themes: everyday subversions – small acts of resistance taken in everyday life or daily activities; cultural revolution – the use of creative expression through media or the arts to create social, political, or cultural change; and collective action – the power of people and the use of cooperative organizing or mass mobilization throughout history. _______________
Event – Film Screening – Rosewood (1997) This blockbuster film is the cinematic retelling of the true-life destruction of an African American community in 1923. It Jim Crow-era violence and the Black radical tradition of resistance. February 21, 6:00-8:30pm Homer Babbidge Library Class of 1947 & Virtual Free! Registration required _______________
Event – Discussion: Rosewood Film & History with Mrs. Lizzie Robinson Jenkins, Founder & President of the Real Rosewood Foundation, Inc. and Rosewood descendant. February 22, 6:00-7:30pm Virtual only Free! Registration required _______________
Dr. Rik Stevenson, courtesy of the University of Florida’s African American Studies
Event – Black History Month Closing Ceremony We are a proud co-sponsor of African American Cultural Center’s Black History Month Closing Ceremony with a keynote address by Dr. Rik Stevenson, a professor of African American Studies at the University of Florida. Dr. Stevenson’s research examines Black resistance in the Middle Passage. February 27, 6:00pm Student Union Ballroom _______________
Resources to learn more including research guides and featured collections on our website.
In 2005, 60 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, the UN urges every member state to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and millions of other victims of Nazism and to promote Holocaust education to help prevent future genocides and create a safer future. Following is a list of resources available to the UConn community to honor the day through education.
You can also check out the one credit course UConn is running starting March 6 – “Why the Jews? Confronting Antisemitism.”
Kristallnacht: Art installation from the Collection of Irena Urdang deTour
Irena (Ehrich vel Slusny) Urdang de Tour
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmbtelilung (SA) and Schutstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9-10 November 1938. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Historically viewed as a prelude to the Final Solution, the month of November marks the anniversary of this dark period of history and genocide. This art installation has been created by Connecticut resident and Holocaust survivor, Irena Urdang deTour.
Connecticut Soldiers Collection, Carl Viggiani Papers. arl Viggiani, Emeritus Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Wesleyan University, was a member of a “Spearhead Military Government Team” attached to the 83rd Infantry Division during World War II.As the 83rd moved down toward the Elbe in April 1945, Viggiani’s unit took over a Nazi official’s home in Braunschweig for a night.
Series VII: Nuremberg Trials from the Thomas J. Dodd Papers. The Thomas J. Dodd Papers consists primarily of material from Dodd’s Senate years (1959-1971) and the Nuremberg war crimes trial before the International Military Tribunal from 1945-1946.
Dedication of the Dodd Research Center by Elie Wiesel. Elie Wiesel was an Auschwitz survivor and human rights activist. Author of Night, Wiesel devoted his life to educating the world about the Holocaust. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank. Translated by Arnold Pomerans, B. M. Mooyaart-Doubleday, and Susan Massotty. The revised critical edition. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
