The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) has awarded a 16-month, $23,000 grant to the Special Collections of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery for the creation of collection level records for all archival collections Special Collections and the implementation of an Encoded Archival Description (EAD-XML) compliant workflow.

Chief Curator Tom Beck, Archivist Lindsey Loeper, and Catalog Librarian Vicki Sipe will review, revise, and create collection level records and finding aids for the archival collections maintained by the Special Collections department in the Library. Collections will include the University Archives, the Center for Biological Sciences Archives, and local history collections including the new folklife collections donated by the Maryland State Arts Council and Maryland Traditions. The descriptive records will be mapped for reuse in multiple access systems including the Library Catalog, UMBC’s Digital Collections, and the Special Collections Search. The EAD-XML formatted finding aids will comply with national standards and may be harvested for access through union catalogs such as OCLC’s ArchiveGrid and the National Library of Medicine’s History of Medicine Finding Aids Consortium. The main goal of this project is to increase access to UMBC’s unique archival collections and to reach the researchers, scholars, students and community members that are seeking the high research value materials held at UMBC.

The NHPRC is the granting agency of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), supporting “a wide range of activities to preserve, publish, and encourage the use of documentary sources, created in every medium ranging from quill pen to computer, relating to the history of the United States.” The grant is awarded as part of the Documenting Democracy: Access to Historical Records program. A list of all May 2014 NHPRC awardees is available here.

An interview with Tom Beck, Chief Curator of the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, aired on WYPR’s Maryland Morning this week, in which he discusses the works currently on display in the Library Gallery exhibition, N. Jay Jaffee Photographs from Public to Personal, 1947-1997. Beck talks about the artist’s personal life and work in relation to the photography of his peers, as well as the historical importance of Jaffee’s photographs.

Listen to the interview, “Photographer N. Jay Jaffee Captured the Spontaneous” at WYPR.org.

More information about the exhibition is available at our Arts and Culture Calendar. N. Jay Jaffee Photographs from Public to Personal is on display now through Sunday, March 23 in the AOK Library Gallery.

Tom Beck, Chief Curator, Library & Gallery, was recently quoted in The Baltimore Sun about the Library Gallery’s N. Jay Jaffee exhibit. The exhibit highlights a talented artist who has not received much recognition. “Jaffee never worked as a professional photographer,” says Tom Beck, chief curator at UMBC. “His career was in printing. So it was always a matter of balance between his business and personal obligations, his family. And he never worked very hard at getting exhibitions.”

Read the entire article here.

Beck was also quoted about Lewis Hine in the Waterbury, Connecticut Sunday Republican-American. The Library Special Collections holds 5,000 Lewis Hine child labor photographs.

Craig Saper, professor and chair of Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC), has been named the Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship.

“Dr. Saper is a scholar of large achievement and great energy, whose talents and interests make him a superb choice for the Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship,” said John Jeffries, dean of the college of arts, humanities, and social sciences (CAHSS).

The Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship was established by The Herbert Bearman Foundation to acknowledge and honor the contributions of Dr. Arlene Bearman to the UMBC community. This chair recognizes and supports outstanding teaching skills, an interest in entrepreneurship, and a strong record of scholarship in entrepreneurial studies or a field related to entrepreneurship.

“Since arriving on campus, Dr. Saper has been a whirlwind of research and teaching activity deeply anchored in commitments to social entrepreneurship,” said Bev Bickel, associate professor and former chair of LLC.

This three-year endowed position will provide Saper with funding to integrate entrepreneurship concepts into classroom instruction, advising, and scholarship. Saper will also work with the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and Kauffman grant activities, and with the Administrative and Managerial Sciences program.

“My research is deeply anchored in commitments to social entrepreneurship that I have been studying throughout my career,” said Saper.  His recently-released book, Intimate Bureaucracies, examines social entrepreneurship during the creation of the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan in the 1960s-1980s.

Saper is planning two projects during the course of his Bearman chairmanship.  The first will examine the social entrepreneurship involved in the building of shared memorials and monuments. His research will focus on the entrepreneurs who organized and made the memorials possible.

Saper’s second project will explore the possibility of establishing a digital e-press at UMBC, which is he doing in collaboration with colleagues in the Library, the English department, the media and communication studies program and LLC as part of the campus’s larger Digital Humanities efforts.

“I’m interested in being a participant-observer of this group-entrepreneurial effort that works within, and for, UMBC’s institutional structure and the larger demands of academia and legitimate scholarship,” he said.

But Saper’s objective as the Bearman Foundation Chair isn’t just to achieve his research goals – it’s to offer a new vision of what entrepreneurship can mean.

“Hopefully, at the end of my term I will have promoted a progressive model of entrepreneurship that offers an alternative to Ayn Rand’s outlaw heroes. In the new model, entrepreneurs are part of communities working cooperatively for public space, public schools and the public good not renegades and raiders,” he said.

From Larry Wilt, Director of the Library

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Robin Moskal and Joyce Tenney as Associate Directors, in recognition of their increasing roles in the management and leadership of the Library.

Robin Moskal first came to UMBC in 1989 as an Assistant Reference Librarian. Since that time she has held several positions at UMBC, most notably as head of Collection Management and Interlibrary Loan. Since 2008, she has served on an acting basis as the supervisor of Library Accounting & Receiving and of the Reference Department. These responsibilities are now permanent with her appointment as Associate Director.

Joyce Tenney began as a student assistant in the Library and was appointed Serials Librarian in 1983. She has supervised several other units in the Library on a temporary basis since that time. Since 2008 she has supervised the Circulation and Library Media Departments on an acting basis. These responsibilities are now permanent with her appointment as Associate Director.

Please join me in congratulating Robin and Joyce on their success.

On April 17, Anne Rubin, associate professor of history, and Tom Beck, chief curator of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery and affiliate associate professor, visual arts, will discuss the gallery’s current exhibition, “The Photographer’s Eye: Civil War Photographs Selected from the UMBC Photography Collections.”

Rubin will discuss “Myth, Memory, and the American Civil War,” while Beck will speak about “Civil War Photography as Art and Historical Evidence.”  Their talk will take place at 4 p.m. in the Library Gallery.

The American Civil War coincided with the early years of photography, and the images captured by the early practitioners of this art have helped to shape the memories of this central historical event. Technological limitations, artistic aspirations and societal expectations strongly impacted the images produced by photographers “documenting” the events of the Civil War. This exhibition explores the art and artifice of Civil War photography, while revealing something about why each of the selected 81 images was produced. The exhibit runs through May 31.

The discussion is sponsored by the Library Gallery and the Department of History