The post UWM Libraries Analyze Faculty and Graduate Student Library Satisfaction Survey Results appeared first on UWM Libraries.
]]>Overall, faculty, staff, and graduate-student respondents are satisfied with the services and spaces provided. In particular, interlibrary loan and general support for teaching and research are viewed as successful and needed services. Respondents also identified areas of concern and areas for growth or improvement. Respondents use the Libraries differently depending on their role and whether they are remote employees or online-only students. The Libraries’ Grind coffee shop is valuable for meetings and taking a break, and several comments suggest that small improvements to study spaces could improve the graduate-student experience. The new Graduate Student Commons has caught on, with 41% of graduate-student respondents using the space. As for respondents’ most frequently used resources:
- 64% of all respondents routinely use online journals
- 55% of all respondents routinely use subscription databases
Comments regarding the Libraries’ collections reflected anxiety about cuts to the collection, affirming their support of the Libraries as a pillar of academic success.
An additional theme that emerged from the survey is that faculty, staff, and graduate students are often unaware of everything the Libraries have to offer. Survey questions about digital scholarship and publishing services elicited the most comments pointing to lack of awareness of the Libraries’ support in these areas:
- 18% of respondents indicated they had needed consultations on open access publishing in the past
- 47% of respondents anticipated needing those services in the future
The same pattern could be seen for consultations on authors’ rights and other publishing-related services.
When asked directly about how respondents learn about the Libraries’ services, collections, and events:
- 44% rely on UWM Report and other campus-wide announcements
- 31% rely on the Graduate Student Newsletter
- 30% rely on receiving a direct email from a librarian
The UWM Libraries task force will continue to analyze the survey results and strengthen the Libraries’ collections, services, and spaces.
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]]>The post American Geographical Society Library to Conserve Rare Atlases With Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Grant appeared first on UWM Libraries.
]]>Part of a more than 20,000-item rare collection, the navigational atlases (also called pilots or neptunes) to be conserved include: Le Neptune Francois ou Atlas Nouveau des Cartes Marines, 1693; Suite de Neptune Francois ou Atlas Nouveau des Cartes Marines, 1700; De Nieuwe Groot Licthende Zee-Fakkel, 6th volume, 1753; and The East-India Pilot, and Oriental Navigator, two volumes, 1780.
Navigational atlases came to prominence during the 17th and 18th centuries when European empires expanded with the establishment of companies like the East India Company. The British and Dutch East India Companies were the largest, and they colonized much of south and east Asia during this era. Sea captains and navigators used expensive, utilitarian navigational atlases for exploration – different from the broad-market atlases of the late 18th century. Given their practical applications at sea, the navigational atlases experienced significant wear. Repairs for these folio-size atlases range from cover board replacement to complete rebinding.
Though during the age of their creation, these atlases’ sole purpose was navigation, today they serve as key resources for information on history, colonization, exploration, and, of course, water. Conservation of these rare maritime atlases is one project in the AGSL’s efforts to preserve cartographic resources related to water, such as its vast collection of rare and unique 19th-century nautical charts.
The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, based in New York City, encourages excellence in scholarship and the arts, with one such area of focus being wide access to research library collections. Through the foundation’s grant, the AGSL will ensure the information contained within these rare maritime atlases will live on for hundreds more years. Conservation will be completed by August 2027. The UWM Libraries is grateful for the support.
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]]>The post American Geographical Society Library Announces 2026 Fellows appeared first on UWM Libraries.
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Cy Abbott, University of Oregon PhD candidate in geography, will examine the influence of American geographers and cartographers on drawing borders in Central Asia and the ‘Turkic world’ during the first quarter of the 20th century using the AGSL’s collection of maps loaned by the American Geographical Society to the Peace Conference at Versailles, 1918-1919. Abbott will also use the AGSL map collection to study Central Asia and Turkey, specifically maps mentioned in the “New Maps” or “Map Notices” section of various Geographical Review volumes.
Jon Jablonski, University of California, Santa Barbara Library DREAM Lab director, will consider how urban historic cartography reflects the dramatic political and economic transformations of late 20th-century China. To investigate these transformations, Jablonski will examine the AGSL’s contemporary city maps of China, as well as its collections of US Army Map Service maps of 20th-century China. Jablonski’s fellowship also marks a return to his alma mater, where he served as a library services assistant during his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Caroline West, Princeton University PhD candidate in history, will investigate the historically incoherent mapping of the Appalachian region and explore how 20th-century public and private actors have grappled with the question of the region’s identity, or avoided it altogether. Given the project’s focus on the flexibility of the region in terms of geographic space, West will pull from a variety of AGSL materials, including reports by the Ozarks Regional Commission, as well as pamphlets highlighting the southern highlands, the Appalachian Mountains/Trail, and the Tennessee Valley Authority. West will also dig into the monographs, articles, data collections, and correspondence of American cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky, in addition to the unpublished dissertation of Scottish geographer Neil Smith, and the scrapbooks of Flora Carlos, documenting her travels throughout the American South in the 1930s.
Entirely funded by generous donors, the AGSL Research Fellowship program was created to give scholars from around the world an opportunity to pursue their work in proximity to AGSL’s distinguished collection of primary sources, which include over 635,000 maps of all types covering the world at a wide range of scales; an extensive photographic collection of more than 900,000 images in a variety of formats; and a number of important archives in the field of geography. The library also owns over 320,000 volumes of atlases, books, and periodicals related to geography and cartography.
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]]>The post UWM Libraries Honor Outstanding Staff appeared first on UWM Libraries.
]]>Since joining the UWM Libraries in 2021, Building Assistant Chris Baxter has always been a team player, working diligently to ensure the Golda Meir Library is safe, clean, and comfortable for patrons and staff. This past year has been especially busy for Baxter as he prepared the Graduate Student Commons for its spring 2025 grand opening, merged service desks from the lower level to the first floor, moved staff offices, and refreshed student study spaces throughout the Golda Meir Library.
Elizabeth Rhinehart, a graduate intern in Special Collections, also joined the UWM Libraries in 2021. She started as a shelver in the Golda Meir Library during her undergraduate studies but quickly advanced to take on additional responsibilities. Rhinehart completed the Access Services & Operations Internship in 2025, going beyond the scope of her duties to complete specialized training in cataloging, project management, and leadership. In Special Collections, Rhinehart handles shifting projects for the general materials and comics collections, cataloging verification of new materials, assessment of gifts for possible acquisition, and general maintenance of the various collections.
The UWM Libraries Outstanding Staff Awards were established in 1983 through a generous gift to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from Janet and Carl Moebius. The award winners were nominated and selected by their colleagues and fellow Libraries staff.
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]]>The post American Geographical Society Library Exhibit Subverts Visitors’ Expectations appeared first on UWM Libraries.
]]>Interim Head of AGSL and Public Services Librarian Georgia Brown and her interns Jayne Kilander and Catie Mendivil set out to subvert visitors’ expectations by curating a collection of maps where north is not at the top – a departure from the Western cartography many Americans are used to. The exhibit is divided into three approachable sections to guide your visit: religion, water, and nationalism.
The religion section features AGSL’s oldest map – the 1452 Mappamundi by Venetian cartographer Giovanni Leardo. For European Christian mapmakers like Leardo, you can expect to find maps oriented to the east because “it’s the direction that Jerusalem is, which is the most holy city,” Brown explained. Some of the maps in the religion section also feature imagery like a depiction of Jesus Christ or cross symbols. Similarly, Islamic cartography tended to place emphasis on centering Mecca, so many maps of this kind are oriented with south at the top, so the holy city is prominently displayed.
Other maps use different markers as points of orientation, like those seen in the water section of the exhibit. The 1939 map Venezuela Viewed from the North-Northeast by Richard Edes Harrison depicts the South American nation from the perspective of someone who might be flying in from East Coast hubs like New York City or Washington D.C. With maps like these, it’s important to look at them with a critical eye, because “there are certain hidden implications you have to tease out,” Brown said.
But for some mapmakers, the purpose of their maps is rather straightforward – to shine a spotlight on a country that’s normally relegated to the lower right-hand corner. This is the case for a couple of maps in the nationalism section of the exhibit: the 2014 Gregory’s Down Under Map of the World and the 2001 Kiwi Upside Down World Map. In these scenarios, the cartographers chose to put Australia and New Zealand right on top because, after all, those countries are “front and center in (their) own narrative,” Brown noted.
By the time you’ve made your way through the exhibit, you’ll have gotten a whole new perspective on what the world can look like. Brown wants visitors to know that the maps you’ll find in “Whose North Is It Anyway?” are not only intriguing to look at, they’re precise too.
“I try to really convey that just because it doesn’t look like what we’re used to, doesn’t make it less accurate in any way,” Brown said.
AGSL is free and open to UWM students and the public. Visitors can view “Whose North Is It Anyway?” Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. through the end of January, or online by checking out the digital exhibit StoryMap.
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]]>The post UWM Libraries Enter Transformative Agreement with ACS Publications appeared first on UWM Libraries.
]]>Through this arrangement, also called a “read and publish agreement,” UWM Libraries cover article processing charges associated with publishing ACS journal content. UWM authors can publish articles in 13 open access journals and 73 hybrid journals (publications where some articles are paywalled). As of Dec. 4, UWM has contributed six articles to ACS Publications, saving UWM authors over $24,000 in APCs.
Regardless of which type of journal UWM authors use to publish their articles, under the ACS Publications transformative agreement, UWM users can read that content. To begin reading journal content, visit ACS Publications.
This transformative agreement supports long-term goals of making research articles immediately available online and represents a major step in the UWM Libraries’ initiative to support university-affiliated authors in publishing their research to the widest possible global audience. The agreement also encourages a move away from expensive, subscription-based publishing and toward a more sustainable and open access model. This arrangement with ACS Publications is the seventh transformative agreement negotiated by UWM Libraries.
Among the benefits of the agreement are immediate access to the UWM scholarly articles worldwide upon publication, copyright retention by authors, no additional financial contributions by authors, and automatic indexing in PubMed.
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]]>The post Library Satisfaction Survey appeared first on UWM Libraries.
]]>What is the Library Satisfaction Survey?
In spring 2024 UWM Libraries conducted a satisfaction survey to better understand how satisfied undergraduate students are with library services, collections, and spaces. In response to what we heard, we improved quiet study spaces in the library, redesigned the web site, and much more. In fall 2025 UWM Libraries will solicit input from research and instructional staff and graduate students to improve alignment of our services, collections, and spaces to their changing needs. Results from the survey will inform library strategic plans and budget decisions.
FAQs
+Who can participate in the survey?
-Participation is voluntary and by invitation only. All UWM faculty and teaching staff as well as all currently enrolled graduate students will receive an invitation to participate.
+When does the survey begin?
-The survey opens on October 28, 2025 and closes on November 11, 2025.
+How long is the survey?
-The survey should take 10-15 minutes to complete.
+How is participant privacy protected?
– The UWM Libraries Satisfaction Survey is confidential but not anonymous. However, your responses will be kept strictly confidential, analyzed collectively, and reported only in the aggregate. For more information, see UWM Libraries Privacy Information.
+I didn’t receive an invitation; can I still help make the library better?
-Yes! If you are willing to participate in future discussions about improving the libraries, please email Kate Ganski at [email protected].
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]]>The post Libraries Invite Proposals for 2026 Fromkin Social Justice Research Grant and Lecture appeared first on UWM Libraries.
]]>The application deadline is Friday, January 9, 2026. All full-time faculty and academic staff are encouraged to apply, individually or as a group. More information is available here.
The 2025 Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Gabriela Nagy, assistant professor in the UWM Department of Psychology, on Thursday, October 30, 2025 at 4:30 p.m. in the 4th floor Conference Center of the UWM Golda Meir Library, 2311 E. Hartford Avenue. The title of her talk is “Resilience, Resistance, and Rhetoric: What Latino/a Immigrants Teach Us About Health and Humanity.”
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]]>The post Library Pilots an After-Hours Chat Bot appeared first on UWM Libraries.
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The library is piloting an after-hour chat bot in Fall 2025. LibChat is a pre-programmed, logic-based assistant, not a Generative AI tool. It provides the user with a selection of common questions and answers from our Frequently Asked Questions knowledge bank and library website. Users also have the opportunity to submit a ticket to receive a follow-up from a librarian the following business day.
LibChat will be available on the Ask A Librarian webpage when Research Help Desk is closed.
Contact Kate Ganski, Associate Director for User Services, if you have questions or would like to provide feedback.
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]]>The post UWM Honors Sheldon Lubar with New Conference Room and Exhibit in Library appeared first on UWM Libraries.
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The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee celebrated the 96th birthday of renowned businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Lubar with the dedication on May 21 of the Sheldon B. Lubar Study & Conference Room in the Golda Meir Library.
The room is home to an exhibit chronicling Lubar’s life, career and enduring contributions to education and public service. It not only honors his achievements but also serves as a lasting inspiration for future generations of students and leaders.
Read more about the new Sheldon B. Lubar Study and Conference Room here>
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