Meet Vicki,

She is a Media and Communications Studies major and summer researcher. She graduated cum laude this past spring and currently works for Burness Communications, a public interest communications firm in Bethesda, MD. 

Her research investigates how to better understand and define what constitutes the “language” of television and involved a cross-cultural comparative quantitative and qualitative analysis of episodes from a Greek adaptation of the British medical series, Doc Martin. This research is particularly relevant due to the increasing volume of deterritorialized and localized narratives circulating within the global television format trade. She will conduct a cross-cultural analysis of components like narrative structure, sound, music, camera, lighting, and dialogue and demonstrated how these contribute to adapting for cultural proximity in the new setting. This comparative methodology led to an analysis of cultural components such as gender, masculinity, and community. 

Read more about her research here…

Prove It! (originally named Improve It!) was a campaign that was launched by the SGA in November of 2007 to give students the opportunity to submit proposals of a campus improvement plan and win $50,000 to put towards implementing their proposed plans. The very first Prove It! winner's proposal was the construction of a green space on campus near the Gallery Entrance of the Fine Arts building. Recent project winners and finalists include a community garden across from the Performing Arts and Humanities Building (2014), an extension of Pura Vida's hours (2012), and a mural in the Biological Sciences building (2012). 

Learn More: 

-History of UMBC Research Guide 

-University Archives Webpage 

-UMBC Co-Create Post "What is Prove It?" 

-Prove It! Homepage 

View All: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/library/posts?tag=archives-gold

UMBC administrators first began planning for the construction of the Performing Arts and Humanities building in 2004 with physical construction finally beginning in 2010. The new building is currently the largest on the UMBC campus and as President Hrabowski said after its construction, it is meant to "speak to the central role that the arts and humanities play in shaping our students as thinkers and as citizens." Above is a packet of dirt that was given at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the building on September 17, 2010. 

Learn More: 

-History of UMBC Research Guide 

-University Archives Webpage 

-Article in The Retriever Weekly (Volume 45, Issue 1) "New Performing Arts and Humanities Facility Breaks Ground; Phase I Begins" 

-Performing Arts and Humanities Building Homepage 

View All: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/library/posts?tag=archives-gold

Meet Markus,

He is an Technology Entrepreneurship and Organization Management major and a summer researcher. His main focus is to bring technology to the masses - mainly into elementary schools. During his senior year he was the Vice-President for the Interdisciplinary Studies Council of Majors. Markus was also a speaker on the panel “Youth and Diversity in Entrepreneurship” at Baltimore’s inaugural Light City U Creative Innovation Conference in April 2016.

His research explores the technological world of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs has the potential to provide education to billions across the globe at little to no cost to learners. However, most individuals who start these free online courses do not watch the first video or complete the course at all. The purpose of my study is to compare the approach to MOOCs by American and Switzerland institutions and what practices are being used to address these issues and how the quality of distance education impacts the completion rates of online courses.

Read more about his research here…

The first fraternity recognized on the UMBC campus was Tau Upsilon in 1969. Tau Upsilon was a chapter of the national drama honors fraternity, Alpha Psi Omega. Members of this first fraternity included both males and females who were working in areas of drama on campus. To become members of the fraternity students were required to have performed both a major and minor role in a theater production as well as worked as a member of the stage crew for at least one production. 

Learn More: 

-History of UMBC Research Guide 

-University Archives Webpage 

-Article in The Retriever (Volume 3, Number 21) About UMBC's First Fraternity 

-UMBC Fraternities and Sororities 

View All: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/library/posts?tag=archives-gold

 

 

Discovering that an album is of a not-so-famous person can be deflating, after all who does not want a picture of a famous person? Imagine you are cataloging a vast array of photos. Looking at album after album, looking at photo after photo of persons whose identities have been lost to time, then, what is this? A familiar face! What luck! How did a collection of John Wilkes Booth’s head-shots get into our collection?! It is very easy for our excitement to carry away our imaginations—even we librarians are prone to it. 

However, just because an image appears to be of a person, does not mean that it is of that person. In cases like this provenance proves to be a very important tool. Think of provenance as the biography of an item, the story of where it was created, all the adventures it had, and places it traveled before it finished its journey in your possession. For librarians and archivists, provenance can help confirm who is in a photo. Trying to discover what a photo is of is much like putting it on trial. Images are assumed to be mundane until they are proven to be exceptional. In the case of this actor’s album, there is not enough evidence in the provenance to prove that these 40 photos are of John Wilkes Booth.  Now the question is, who is this actor?

In addition to provenance and comparing the image similar images, there are other ways to investigate and analyze the subject of a photo.  Become an image detective: use your visual literacy skills! Are there any captions, notes, or other metadata accompanying the image?  Can you verify them?  See Standard 3 of the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency Standards for more clues.  

      

Have you ever seen a doppelgänger; and how do you know the doppel you’ve seen is not, in fact, the original? 

Special Collections is open to anyone with a photo ID, in the summer by appointment Monday - Friday from 9:00am - 4:30pm. Contact: 410.455.2353 | speccoll@umbc.edu. Fall and spring semesters open M-W 1-4, Th 1-8, F 1-4, and other times by appointment.

Sources:

Gardner, A., photographer. (1865) [John Wilkes Booth / Alex. Gardner, photographer to the Army of the Potomac]. [Washington, D.C.: Philp & Solomons; ca] [Image] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2008680389. 

John Wilkes Booth. (1925) [Image] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/npc2008007647. 

Actor's Portfolio-Cartes de Visite, The Photography Collections, Collection 237, Special Collections, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD).

Thanks, Austin!

Meet Jamshaid,

He is a Mathematics and Statistics major, Meyerhoff Scholar and MARC U*STAR Scholar. Jamshaid was also a participant of UMBC’s Young Scholars program, which allowed him to take classes as a high school student and earn credit. After graduation, he plans to attend graduate school focusing on either applied mathematics, bioinformatics, or computer science. He is interested in a career that involves mathematical modeling, statistics, and computer science.

His research will explore the world of microscopy; one of the main tools in cell biology. The overall goal of his research project is to quantify the differences between image features computed by several feature extraction tools. His approach to this project will be to identify implementations of the same image features across multiple software packages, extract numerical values of image features, and compute statistical variance of image features. 

Read more about his research here…