Armstrong Browning Library is hosting a discussion titled “Researching John Kenyon, the Brownings’ Matchmaker” given by Visiting Fellow Scott Lewis of De Montfort University, England, and editor of The Brownings’ Correspondence. This event will take place from 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb.18. The discussion will be held in the Seminar Room, first floor, and refreshments will be served.

For more information, please call Christi Klempnauer at 254.710.4968.

by Amelia Hudson

On Feb. 19, 2009, from 3:00 to 4:15 p.m., a reception will be held in the W.R. Poage Library to welcome Bob Willard, who will be speaking about his collection and study of Lincoln materials.  His lecture, “Collecting Lincoln,” will be held in the Meadows Recital Hall of the Glennis McCrary Music Building from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 19.

Willard is the current vice-president of the Abraham Lincoln Association and a past president and director of the Abraham Lincoln Institute.  From 1998 to 2004, Willard also served as the Executive Director of the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science.  He has been collecting items and studying Lincoln for 50 years and is a member of numerous Lincoln dedicated groups.

Also attending the reception will be former Texas Supreme Court Justice and Baylor alumnae Jack Hightower.  Judge Hightower supplied most of the materials for Poage Library’s  With Malice Toward None: An Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition from his personal collection. The exhibition will be on display until Aug. 28, and the reception and lecture are free and open to the public.

In addition to the Lincoln exhibition, the annual Poage Lecture Series will also be presenting “Charlie Wilson’s War Comes to Waco” on Thursday, March 26, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the Meadows Recital Hall of the Glennis McCrary Music Building.  This lecture will feature Charlie Schnabel, chief of staff to Congressman Charlie Wilson, who will discuss his work with the Congressman and Wilson’s role in assisting the freedom fighters during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

For more information on these events, contact Ben Rogers, director of the W.R. Poage Library, at 254.710.3540 or email Poage_Library@baylor.edu.

Baylor’s Academy for Teaching and Learning is excited to host a presentation by Alan Levine, Vice President for Community & Chief Technology Officer of the New Media Consortium, on Friday, February 27, 2009, from 3:30-5:00 p.m. in Room D110 of the Baylor Science Building.

Baylor University recently became a member of the New Media Consortium, joining over 300 higher education institutions and industry leaders. During his presentation, “NMC 101: Introduction to the New Media Consortium,” Mr. Levine will share the vision and resources of the New Media Consortium for Baylor University.

Alan Levine has over 20 years’ experience researching and creating interactive multimedia and web-based technologies. He regularly presents to educators worldwide on innovative technologies that can revolutionize learning.

If you are interested in learning more about the New Media Consortium, visit www.nmc.org. For more information about this event or the Academy for Teaching and Learning at Baylor University, email Gardner Campbell or call 254.710.4064.

by Pattie Orr
Vice-President for Information Technology and Dean of University Libraries

Welcome to the new format for Access, the primary news vehicle for Information Technology Services and the University Libraries for Baylor University faculty and staff. Previous versions of Access, whether in print or digital format, have been delivered at the beginning of every fall and spring semester to either your mailbox or your inbox. While these methods of communication were effective, they were not particularly timely because our wireless world expects the latest news now! Delivering the latest resources and services provided by Information Technologies and University Libraries bi-annually did not provide just-in-time information.

Enter our new blog format. In this new format we can publish news and information from Information Technology Services and Baylor University Libraries as it happens and, if you subscribe to our RSS feed, you will be notified immediately. We will still send an email at the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters to remind you about Access, but our hope is that you will benefit from the speed of information delivery offered by the new blog format and subscribe to our feed. To subscribe, simply click the word “Subscribe” in the page header above. The feed page that appears should include a “subscribe now” function that will either add our RSS feed to the RSS reader built into your web browser or to the RSS feed reader you regularly use. Click here for a brief explanation of RSS subscriptions and feeds.

We hope that this new approach to providing you with the latest information and services from Information Technology Services and Baylor University Libraries will be helpful to you. If you have questions or suggestions about how we can continue to improve Access, please contact Carl Flynn, Director of Marketing and Communication for Information Technology and University Libraries. Enjoy the following articles and be sure to select the “Previous Entries” link at the bottom of this page to catch all of the content we posted to launch our blog. We hope that you have a wonderful semester.

In an effort to ensure our facilities meet the research and study needs of faculty, staff and both undergraduate and graduate students, the Baylor Libraries have formed a task force and various subcommittees to gather information from these constituencies. Planners intend to use the data in looking at an overall renovation plan for the Central Libraries.

“Recognizing we have different client groups with different need sets, we want to have a better understanding of our clients and how they use the space,” said Jeff Steely, Assistant Director for Client Services.

Committee members have visited other facilities and are using various methods utilized by the University of Rochester, University of Dayton, Georgia Tech and others to determine how our students study. One such method was the placement of flip charts throughout the Central Libraries asking students why they study here and what is missing.

“The instantaneous feedback garnered many useful comments ranging from generic opinions to input on more specific areas within the facility,” Steely said. “These included the temperature of the room, the comfort of the furniture, the tools needed by students and even the social environment.”

During the Fall 2008 semester, an average of 2,570 people per day visited the Moody and Jones Libraries. On December 11, the gate count exceeded 5,000 people, and a manual count revealed that more than 1,200 people were in the Central Libraries at 10 p.m. Clearly the Libraries are a favorite site for those who are serious about studying, and planners want faculty, staff and students to know their opinions matter.

For more information or to offer your own suggestions on how the Central Libraries can help you, please contact Jeff Steely at 254.710.2464 or email jeffrey_steely@baylor.edu.

by Becky King

As a part of the ongoing BearAware campus cybersecurity awareness campaign, ITS published the first BearAware Bulletin in December. This bulletin will be issued quarterly and will briefly cover hot security topics and include reminders of best practices. The subjects included in the first BearAware Bulletin were:

• What to do about a lost or stolen ID card.
• The importance of locking computers with a screen saver.
• A reminder about e-mail phishing scams.

Look for the second BearAware Bulletin in March. If you have a question or concern about computer or network security, please contact the HELP desk at (254) 710-4357 (HELP).

by Derek Tonkin

During the fall semester we made a concerted effort to increase the adoption of PGP on university-owned computers. PGP is a managed, whole-disk encryption product that the University selected to protect data on all faculty/staff assigned laptops. The software is also required on desktop systems that contain personally identifiable information. When PGP is installed, all of the information contained on the computer’s hard disk is encrypted. If a PGP-encrypted computer is lost or stolen, the information it contains is protected. We are currently testing a version of PGP for the Macintosh and hope to be able to deploy it soon so that all university-owned laptop systems will enjoy the same level of protection.

We are very proud to report that by the end of the fall semester we made tremendous progress. All ITS/Libraries laptops are encrypted, and for the campus as a whole, 84.45 per cent of the university’s 700+ Windows laptops assigned to faculty and staff are encrypted.

If you have a university-owned laptop computer that does not have PGP installed on it please contact Derek Tonkin to schedule a time for an install. Installs typically take 20 minutes or less.

by Billie Peterson-Lugo

Looking for a way to manage all of your varied research interests for articles, books, papers and presentations?

RefWorks is a web-based tool (comparable to and compatible with EndNote) that can build a personal database of bibliographic citations by importing the citations from online library databases. Citations can be collected from databases or added manually, organized in folders, cited in papers and automatically formatted for bibliography and footnotes using specific styles (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). The citations can also be searched within your personal RefWorks database.

For more information on RefWorks, go to the Electronic Research Resources “How do I…” page and click on “Access RefWorks” (requires logging in with your Bear ID and password) or contact Billie Peterson-Lugo 254.710.2344.

by Will Telfer

MatLab is a high level language and interactive environment that allows you to perform computational tasks in an efficient manner. You can utilize MatLab in a wide range of applications, such as signal and image processing, communications, control design, test and measurement, financial modeling and analysis and computational biology.

Baylor University purchased a site license for MatLab, which means the software can be installed on any University owned computer, such as faculty / staff workstations, research labs, student labs and computer classrooms. At this time the software is not available for students to purchase for personal computers. For PC users the software will be available via the AppCenter site. For Mac users the software will be available via the Mac Software Server. We are working with ITS to make this software available as soon as our testing is complete.

Below is a list of all the applications and toolboxes that are available for use:

For more information about MatLab, please visit their website: http://www.mathworks.com/.

The Texas Collection is home to nearly 1,000 Texas cookbooks – one of the largest collections in the world. To celebrate the collection, an exhibition titled “Dash of Recipes, Pinch of History” will be featured through May 31, 2009. The main display case highlights the variety of cookbooks found in the collection, including cultural, religious and organizational cookbooks. A second display case features late 19^th and early 20^th century company advertisements for various kitchen-related items. Two additional displays are located in the Reading Room. One exhibit contains photographs of Texas cooks preparing food in a variety of methods and settings. The other display will feature enlarged, framed images of unique cookbook covers and select inside pages.

Dr. Rebecca Sharpless, assistant professor of history at Texas Christian University, will present “Texas Women’s Kitchens, Texas Women’s Words: Cookbooks as Historical Documents” at 3:00 p.m. on Monday, March 2 at the Carroll Library.  If you would like to attend the lecture or need more information, please contact Kathy Hinton at 254.710.1269.

The Texas Collection is located in the Carroll Library Building, Room 101.