Spotlight

For any other story that doesn’t easily fit into the above categories but merits attention, e.g., BorrowDirect, UBorrow, Scan & Deliver, Platzman Fellowship, Brooker Prize, Science Writing Prize.

Help the Library improve services for College students by taking survey

Update: March 3 is the final day to take this survey.Complete our undergraduate survey by March 3

The University of Chicago Library is conducting a survey of currently enrolled undergraduates. The survey explores many facets of students’ experience at the University, with specific focus on the ways the Library’s collections, services, spaces, and staff contribute to students’ higher education and career goals.

Previous surveys conducted by the Library resulted in the implementation of the Library’s Scan and Deliver service, as well as the creation of new group study spaces in Regenstein Library. Results gathered from the Library’s last survey of undergraduates, conducted in February 2011, are available online.

The survey was distributed by email on February 7. Undergraduates, please check your email for a message from the University of Chicago Library with your individualized link to the survey.

For more information or to report problems with the survey, please contact the project team by email at ithaka@lib.uchicago.edu.

Win a Brooker Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting

Second- and fourth-year College students at the University of Chicago with a theme-focused book collection are invited to apply for the T. Kimball Brooker Prize for Undergraduate Book Collecting.   The University of Chicago Library is pleased to sponsor this prize, which was established by Mr. Brooker, PhD’96, to foster a love of the book and to encourage book collecting among undergraduates.

A book from Mox Schults’s 2014 Brooker Prize-winning collection

A book from Mox Schults’s 2014 Brooker Prize-winning collection, A Library for Babel(ing): Books for Reading Aloud.

Prizes include $1,000 for a second-year student and $2,000 for a fourth-year student.

Applications and instructions for how to apply are available on the Library website. Evaluation of applications is based on the care and judgment by which the student has shaped the collection. Collections may encompass a specific subject matter or the work of a particular author, or they may relate to special interests within a field. Bibliographical and physical features such as editions, illustrations, or bindings may also be the basis upon which a collection is developed. Whatever its defining quality may be, the organizing principle should be apparent in every item of the collection.

Past winners have collections focusing on subjects ranging from Homer and His Students to The History of Mathematics to Zines, Punk Rock, and Empowerment.

Applications are due on Wednesday, March 1, 2017.  Learn more about the Prize and how to apply at www.lib.uchicago.edu/brooker .

DEADLINE EXTENDED Applications open for 2018 Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowship Program

Robert Platzman

Robert Platzman in 1941

Application deadline is March 19, 2018.

The University of Chicago Library invites applications for short-term research fellowships for the summer of 2018. Any visiting researcher, writer, or artist residing more than 100 miles from Chicago, and whose project requires on-site consultation of University of Chicago Library collections, primarily archives, manuscripts, rare books, or other materials in the Special Collections Research Center, is eligible. Support for beginning scholars is a priority of the program. Applications in the fields of late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century physics or physical chemistry, or nineteenth-century classical opera, will receive special consideration.

Awards will be made based on the applicant’s ability to complete the proposed on-site research successfully within the timeframe of the fellowship.  Applicants should explain why the project cannot be conducted without on-site access to the original materials and the extent to which University of Chicago Library collections are central to the research.  Up to $3,000 of support will be awarded to help cover estimated travel, living, and research expenses.  Applications from women, minorities, and persons with disabilities are encouraged. Awards may be used between June 1, 2018 and September 28, 2018.

Applicants must provide the following information:

  • A cover letter (not to exceed one page) including the project title; a brief summary; estimated dates of on-site research; and a budget for travel, living, and research expenses during the period of on-site research
  • A research proposal not to exceed three double-spaced pages. Applicants should include references to specific archival finding aids and catalog records of particular relevance to their proposed project whenever possible.
  • A curriculum vitae of no longer than two pages
  • Two letters of support from academic or other scholars. References may be sent with the application or separately.

Submit application in one electronic file to: scrcfellowship@lib.uchicago.edu

Letters of reference in electronic form are preferred; print letters of reference can be sent to:

Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships
Special Collections Research Center
The University of Chicago Library
1100 E. 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

For additional information contact:
Daniel Meyer, Director, Special Collections Research Center

For additional background on the Platzman Fellowship, and to see a list of last year’s recipients please see our website: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/about/platzmanfellowships.html

Library Strategic Directions, 2016-2019

I am pleased to share with you today this statement of our Library Strategic Directions for 2016-2019: Inquiry, Innovation, and Impact.

These Strategic Directions have been developed through a planning process that began in 2015 and will inform the Library’s activities for the next three years.

Cover of Library Strategic Directions, 2016-2019

 

2016 Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships Awarded

Robert Platzman

Robert Platzman in 1941

The Special Collections Research Center is pleased to announce the recipients of the Robert L. Platzman Memorial Fellowships for 2016.

Established through a bequest of George W. Platzman (1920-2008), Professor in Geophysical Sciences, the research fellowships are named in memory of George’s brother Robert Platzman (1918-1973), Professor of Chemistry and Physics and a member of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago during World War II.

The annual Platzman Fellowships provide funds for visiting researchers whose projects require on-site consultation of University of Chicago Library collections, primarily but not exclusively materials in Special Collections, with priority given to beginning scholars. Additional information on the Platzman Fellowship program is available on the Special Collections web site: http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/about/platzmanfellowships.html

2016 Robert L. Platzman Fellows

Kate Bellamy
PhD candidate, Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Netherlands
Consulting the papers of Paul Friedrich and Norman McQuown
“Rediscovering Lost Voices: Two Approaches to Indigenous Literacy in Purépecha (Mexico)”

Lucie Claire
Maître de conferences, UFR des lettres, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France
Consulting editions of works of Marc-Antoine Muret in the rare book holdings
“The American Destiny of the Humanist Marc-Antoine Muret (1526-1585)”

Azra Dawood
PhD Candidate, History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art, Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Consulting the records of the University of Chicago Department of Buildings and Grounds and the papers of Harold H. Swift, Julius Rosenwald, Robert M. Hutchins, and others
“John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the Architecture of Protestant Internationalism (1919-1946).”

Raquel Escobar
PhD candidate, History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Consulting records of the American Indian Chicago Conference in the Native American Educational Service records, and the papers of Robert Redfield, Sol Tax, and others
“Reconcile the Indian, Reconcile the Nation: Indigenismo, the Nation, and Transnational Networks of the Inter-American Indian Institute”

Louis Fletcher
PhD candidate, School of Social & Political Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Consulting the records of the Social Science Research Committee and the papers of Quincy Wright, Charles E. Merriam, and Beardsley Ruml
“A Genealogy of Democratic Peace”

Ilnyun Kim
PhD candidate, History, Ohio State University
Consulting the records of the International Association for Cultural Freedom
“The Liberal Persuasion: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Intellectual Cold War in the World, 1950-1967”

Paul Putz
PhD candidate, History, Baylor University
Consulting the papers of Amos Alonzo Stagg and related archival collections
“Creating the Christian Athlete in the Twentieth-Century United States”

Aulii Silva
PhD candidate, Educational Foundations, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Consulting the papers of Henry Northrup Castle
“Worth Another Look: A Native Hawaiian Review of the Henry N. Castle Papers”

John Suval
Ph.D. candidate, History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Consulting the papers of Stephen A. Douglas
“Dangerous Ground: Squatters, Statesmen, and the Rupture of American Democracy, 1830-1860”
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