Michigan State University Libraries Research Articles

Nourishing Love: Documenting the Cookery and Foodways Collections at the Michigan State University Libraries

Food tells stories. All generations of home cooks share commonalities, from poor to rich, recipes and experiences with food for better or worse “feed” one another. Where the art of culinary prose intersects with the palate, the cookery and foodways collections provide unique avenues into lifestyles, nutrition, and the palatable offerings served across the globe. For more than six decades, the Michigan State University Libraries Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections (MSU) has sought to share these epic life stories through the extensive cookery and foodways collections. This article examines the depth and breadth of the cookery and foodways collections which began as a working collection for undergraduate students and has ballooned to more than 40,000 titles with the 2021 acquisition of the cookery collection of Sheila and Marilynn Brass. Subsequent access through open digital sites provides a landmark resource on culinary history. Overall, the development of this curated collection materials has resulted in a more dynamic and diverse collection for all users.

FAST Headings in MODS: Michigan State University Libraries Digital Repository Case Study

The Michigan State University Libraries (MSUL) digital repository contains numerous collections of openly available material. Since 2016, the digital repository has been using Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) subject headings as its primary subject vocabulary in order to streamline faceting, display, and search. The MSUL FAST use case presents some challenges that are not addressed by existing MARC-focused FAST tools. This paper will outline the MSUL digital repository team’s justification for including FAST headings in the digital repository as well as workflows for adding FAST headings to Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) metadata, their maintenance, and utilization for discovery.

Anatomy of a New Copyright Librarian

My journey to working with copyright at the Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries began with images for medical education. I was Coordinator for Health Sciences at the Libraries, during which time instructors creating a new online curriculum asked for clear guidance on images they could include. Over a period of years, I negotiated licenses with major medical publishers to allow image use from our subscription resources for this purpose. Through this project, I grew my expertise and knowledge about copyright issues, which gave me confidence to propose taking on the part-time copyright librarian position when the existing copyright librarian retired. I’m now in the position and enjoy collaborating with people across the MSU Libraries and across subject areas to promote understanding of copyright for teaching, learning, and scholarship.

The Marmaduke Problem

Michigan State University (MSU) is home to one of the largest library comics collections in North America, holding over three hundred thousand print comic book titles and artifacts. Inspired by the interdisciplinary opportunity offered by digital humanities practice, a research collaborative linked to the MSU Library Digital Scholarship Lab (DSL) developed a Collections as Data project focused on the Comic Art Collection. This team extracted and cleaned over forty-five thousand MARC records describing comics published in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The dataset is openly available through a GitLab repository, where the team has shared data visualizations so that scholars and members of the public can explore and interrogate this unique collection. In order to bridge digital humanities with the popular culture legacy ofthe institution, the MSU comics community turned to bibliographic metadata as a new way to leverage the collection for scholarly analysis. In October 2020, the Department of English Graphic Possibilities Research Workshop gathered a group of scholars, librarians, Wikidatians, and enthusiasts for a virtual Wikidata edit-a-thon. This project report will present this event as a case study to discuss how linked open metadata may be used to create knowledge and how community knowledge can, in turn, enrich metadata. We explore not only how our participants utilized the open-access tool Mix’n’match to connect the Comic Art Collection dataset to Wikidata and increase awareness of lesser-known authors and regional publishers missing from OCLC and Library of Congress databases, but how the knowledge of this community in turn revealed issues of authority control.

Benchmarking digital preservation with the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Rapid Assessment Model: A case study

This paper describes how Michigan State University Libraries used the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM) to evaluate its digital preservation practices. Using the model, a small group of librarians established a baseline of digital preservation activities at the Libraries and made recommendations for incremental improvements. By keeping the working group small and consulting stakeholders as needed, the benchmarking process was completed within a short timeline and resulted in a concise report that provided a digestible and accurate picture of digital preservation initiatives at the time of the evaluation, as well as realistic goals for the next 18 months. Sharing the report with library administration led to a charge to establish working groups that would test two preservation systems and evaluate their usefulness as tools for expanding digital preservation practices at the Libraries. The format of the model ensured that evaluation and goal-setting were straightforward, even in the absence of any unit or position dedicated to digital preservation. Speaking with peers at other institutions has revealed a need for a simple tool like the DPC RAM that can be completed more quickly than other preservation evaluation frameworks, especially given the lack of administrative support for digital preservation at many institutions.

What am I looking at: Contextualizing subject headings through linked open data

Many libraries have deployed discovery layers to bring various library resources under a single search interface. These tools, which mostly rely on keyword indexing, do not easily bring together items on similar topics described under different thesauri. Michigan State University Libraries (MSUL) undertook an experimental project to enhance subject discovery through subject knowledge cards that utilize subject authority data and linked open data (LOD). Subject knowledge cards are currently deployed in the MSUL digital repository to improve the subject discovery experience by displaying contextual information on the subject, links to repository items on broader, narrower and related subjects, and links to external library resources on the same subject. This approach demonstrates a new way to enhance the subject discovery experience through LOD.

News from the Field

SDSU acquires pulp collection Michigan State University libraries, press merge ACRL Academic Library Services for Graduate Students Interest Group Notable Works List ProQuest to join Clarivate Project MUSE receives Mellon Foundation grant to study “Subscribe to Open” model for journals UNC-Chapel Hill University Libraries launches Reckoning Initiative

“Old, Old Words, Worn Thin”

This essay examines a probable second draft of the Borges story “El inmortal”, originally published as “Los inmortales” in Los Anales de Buenos Aires in February 1947, and subsequently included as the lead story in the short story collection El Aleph in 1949. The manuscript, which is now in Special Collections at Michigan State University Libraries, includes late revisions, though it seems to have been the copy sent to the compositors for Los Anales. There are several printer’s marks that indicate where to place the illustrations, two by Amanda Molina y Vedia and one by the writer’s sister, Norah Borges. This manuscript does not contain bibliographical references in the left margin, a feature of some other Borges manuscripts from this time, although the story itself includes acknowledged and unacknowledged quotations from a variety of sources. 

Building Bridges: Advocacy as a Tool for the Technical Services Professional

ABSTRACT“The Sharpest Tool in the Shed” column seeks to introduce new systems and tools relating to scholarly publishing, serials, electronic resources, and more. This issue's column will focus on an important but often overlooked tool for anyone engaged in the work traditionally housed in technical services (TS)—advocacy for the work of technical services. This would include both advocacy regarding how technical services work supports the library's mission and the work in other divisions. How to make that work accessible for the novice to facilitate collaboration with other library departments is also discussed. As a serials catalog librarian at Michigan State University Libraries, I have worked to make advocacy a part of what I do and how I think about my work and the work of my colleagues. Locally, this has meant the development of a series of talks around TS expertise and projects to reach out to our colleagues about our work.

Taking Chances: A New Librarian and Curriculum Redesign

ABSTRACTAs technology becomes ubiquitous in designing and delivering medical school curricula, health sciences librarians can embrace emerging opportunities for participation in curriculum design. A new medical librarian at Michigan State University Libraries engaged her user base outside of established duties, learned new skills, and challenged preconceived notions about librarians’ roles. In the process, she became a partner in copyright education, amended license agreements for enhanced curricular multimedia use, and facilitated curriculum mapping through taxonomy building. These projects helped create the informational foundation for a novel hybrid medical education curriculum and introduced new curricular roles for the librarian.

A Case of TMI (Too Much Information): Improving the Usability of the Library's Website through the Implementation of LibAnswers and the A–Z Database List (LibGuides v2)

ABSTRACTThe Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries' Website has a case of TMI: too much information organized by librarians for librarians. Finding relevant information about various library services, including the 24/7 Distance Learning Support Line, and access points to scholarly resources is often cumbersome, and given the limited time and staffing available in Web Services, it was impractical to embark on a comprehensive Website redesign. Instead, the implementation of two systems, LibAnswers and the A–Z Database List in LibGuides v2 CMS, served as a means for addressing the TMI issue and improving the usability of the MSU Libraries' Website. This case study will map the MSU Libraries' experience of implementing the LibAnswers and the A–Z Database List from early vision to launching the end product, as a means for resolving the “too much information” issue and improving the usability of the library's Website.

Qualitative Teaching and Learning Needs Assessment for a Community of Academic Librarians

ASBTRACTThe Information Literacy Unit at Michigan State University Libraries is tasked with providing teaching and learning support to 70+ librarian colleagues at MSU. The unit was asked to conduct a needs assessment to determine supportive needs, attitudes toward teaching and learning, and to lay groundwork for expanding the ability of the unit to provide support through building trust and strengthening relationships with librarian colleagues. An interview-based method grounded in social sciences rather than an assessment with a management focus was employed to accomplish these diverse tasks, which yielded actionable insights.

ON NOT MELTING INTO TEARS: MANAGING MEDITATIVE READING IN MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, MS 1 AND CAMBRIDGE, MAGDALENE COLLEGE, MS PEPYS 2125

IntroductionThis article makes a contribution to the lively field of research into late medieval English religious writing, and it looks specifically at writing on Christ's life and Passion in the fifteenth century. In the abundant texts of Christ's life we find an important expression of mainstream religious sensibility and perhaps the best example of what the German religious historian Berndt Hamm has termed a 'normative centring' in the piety of the time, in which the omnipresent image of Christ in his Passion, together with the exemplary compassion of his grieving mother, come to function as the all-important locus of people's devotion and religious creativity.1The single most important tradition of writing on Christ's life is that of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi (Meditationes), dating probably to the first quarter of the fourteenth century, and traditionally thought to have been composed by St Bonaventure, but now commonly attributed to Johannes de Caulibus, a Franciscan of San Gimignano in Tuscany.2 This Latin meditative treatise, which soon came to be available in proliferating vernacular adaptations, presents scenes from the Gospels, with an emphasis on the theme of Christ's human suffering in his Passion and the cultivation of pity, contrition, and compunction among pious audiences. In the tradition of the affective devotional image, this elaborate textual account of the Passion wraps the viewer in a world of vivid phenomenal detail, often of a bloody and macabre sort, in order to realize the religious imperative of compassion and empathie identification with the tormented Christ. Being constantly exhorted to 'behold' with intensely compassionate eyes, the reader is coaxed into a meditative immersion, central to which is the imaginative re-experiencing of the culminating events of sacred history and a concomitant agitation towards internal feelings of compassion and remorse.The Middle English tradition of pseudo-Bonaventuran writing has been expertly examined by Elizabeth Salter, Michael Sargent, and others, while the broader field of medieval Passion meditation and the development of compassion has been examined in two recent and important diachronic studies by Michelle Karnes and Sarah McNamer.3 Also recendy, the research project Geographies of Orthodoxy: Mapping the English Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ, ?-.1350-15 50 has surveyed and contextualized the rich pseudoBonaventuran corpus of texts in late medieval England.4 What these investigative undertakings have characterized is a particularly resourceful text tradition and a literature of quantity and repetition: today the English material comprises approximately ten distinct texts preserved in just over one hundred manuscripts; all are translations and adaptations (part or whole) of the Meditationes vitae Christi. This Middle English text tradition constitutes a distinct mode of vernacular theology that witnesses to the considerable appeal and inherent adaptability of powerful emotive discourses, and it comprises the texts knows as The Privity of the Passion, The Mirror to Devout People, Meditations on the Supper and the Hours of the Passion, and The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, this last text was written by the Carthusian prior Nicholas Love around the year 1410 and has clearly attracted the lion's share of modern scholarly attention.5This article argues for the importance of two neglected texts to a scholarship that continues to identify the English pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition overwhelmingly with Nicholas Love's Mirror. Where the Mirror occupies a special place in the Middle English tradition as the only text that translates the full narrative scope of the Meditationes (with minor modification), the two adaptations discussed here - those existing in the single copies found in Michigan State University Library, MS 1 and Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125 - are more representative of the corpus as they translate only the Passion sequence of the Latin source. …

Coping with the storm

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a process, as a proof-of-concept, that automates the tracking of updates to name authority records (NARs), the downloading of revised NARs into local catalog system, and subsequent bibliographic file maintenance (BFM), in response to the programmatic manipulation of the Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF). Design/methodology/approach – A proof-of-concept process to automate NAR updates and BFM in local catalog, using OCLC LCNAF SRU Service, MARCEdit, XSLT, and AutoIt, is built and subsequently tested using data from both test and production catalog servers at Michigan State University Libraries. Findings – The proof-of-concept process tested is proved to be successful in general though scalability and diacritics issues have to be addressed before it can become fully operational in a production environment. Originality/value – This process enables libraries, especially those without third-party authority control service, to handle the phased reissuance of LCNAF and related BFM in an automatic fashion with minimal human intervention.

“To Put Beauty into the World”: Music Education Resources in The Ladies' Home Journal, 1890–1919

The musical content of general readership periodicals remains a largely untapped resource in spite of the potential for a broader understanding of music education from the vantage point of music educators, music students, and the general public. The Ladies' Home Journal provides a particularly unique lens into the history of music education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the first American magazine to reach a million subscribers (with thousands of additional copies sold on newsstands), it had the potential for wide impact. (1) Between 1890 and 1919, the Journal contained over two hundred articles specifically on music and music education with hundreds of other articles providing further information on music in the context of daily life. (2) There were also musical advice columns written by the pianist Josef Hofmann, the vocal pedagogue Mathilde Marchesi, and the music critic William J. Henderson, hundreds of pieces of sheet music (both commissioned by well-known composers and submitted by readers in composition contests), and thousands of advertisements for musical products. (3) Previous studies of the Journal's musical content include research on some of its sheet music, a sampling of Hofmann's advice columns, and biographical studies of important contributors such as Hofmann, Marchesi, and Henderson. (4) Studies of other general readership periodicals include examinations of the Victorian-era Godeys Lady's Book and the Civil War--era children's magazine Our Young Folk. (5) As previous researchers have noted, the musical content of general readership periodicals is important to examine because of the prevalence of periodicals in the home in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and because active professional musicians and music educators shared their expertise in a variety of print media. (6) Because the Journal's multifaceted musical offerings have not been thoroughly investigated, the purpose of this study is to document, analyze, and discuss the musical content of the Journal between 1890 and 1919, the years under the editorial tenure of Edward Bok. The focus is on the musical content in the Journal, who contributed to the musical content, and how the Journal's content reflected music education trends of the era. Method A content analysis was conducted on 369 issues of the Journal from 1890 through 1919. (7) This provided a systematic way to analyze the large amount of material (over twenty-eight thousand pages), quantify findings, and seek trends over time such as changes in attitudes, topics of importance, or even values. (8) Resources included bound volumes and microfilm obtained from Michigan State University Library and the Kalamazoo Public Library. (9) With the page as the unit of analysis, the briefest possible reading was used to locate all items of interest. Once musical items were located, broad categories of nonfiction articles, musical advice columns, sheet music, and advertisements were systematically examined in a search for more detailed information on music teaching and learning. (10) The content analysis of the magazine was supplemented with archival research into the Curtis Company records. (11) The Journal was found to contain 227 articles specifically on music or music education as well as 450 nonfiction articles that mentioned music in the context of daily life, public and private school activities, and in the lives of well-known personalities. Along with the articles, there were 154 musical advice columns answering readers' letters, 270 pieces of sheet music (as well as several examples of music embedded within children's plays and nonfiction articles), and over 3,300 advertisements for musical products. Before examining this rich musical content in more detail, an overview of the Journal's early history is provided. An Overview of the Journal Publisher Cyrus Curtis founded the Journal in 1883, with his wife, Louisa Knapp, serving as the editor. …

Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project

In recent years historians have discovered that cookbooks can be rich documents that offer clues not only about what people cooked but also about markets, nutritional ideologies, class and race relations, regional and ethnic cultural differences, immigration, technological change, social movements, ecology, politics, and religion. Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project is an excellent Web site for those seeking to incorporate these sources into their scholarship and teaching. Sponsored by the Michigan State University Library, this site provides access to a select group of seventy-six cookbooks chosen for their significance in representing key themes of American history. The site's mix of important primary documents and interpretation makes it useful for students, food-history enthusiasts, and scholars. The collection includes classics such as Amelia Simmons's American Cookery (1798), considered America's first cookbook, and also unusual volumes such as the butcher Thomas Farrington De Voe's Market Assistant (1867), which provides an incredible...

Acquiring, Promoting, and Analyzing Nursing E-Books: One Academic Library's Experiences

This article describes one academic library's experiences with nursing electronic books (e-books). The majority of nursing e-books at the Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries have been acquired through four e-book platforms: ebrary, Rittenhouse's R2 Library, Wiley, and Wolters Kluwer/Ovid. The MSU nursing librarian has actively promoted these nursing e-books in a variety of ways. Usage statistics from 184 nursing e-books across these four platforms from 2009 and 2010 were examined and compared to determine e-book use and help the nursing librarian better meet the collection development needs of nursing users. Future plans and considerations are also discussed.

The Passion in English: Meditations on the Life of Christ in Michigan State University Library MS 1

This article examines English pre-reformation literary representations of the life and Passion of Christ. Central to this genre of writing is the Pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition of meditative writing; a pan-European literary phenomenon, whose influence extended into preaching, decorative arts, dramatic performance, and other areas. My focus is on a text much overlooked by modern commentators, the Middle English meditation on the Passion and Resurrection of Christ preserved uniquely in Michigan State University Library MS 1. Dating probably to the mid-fifteenth century, this text translates and adapts selected chapters from the key pseudo-Bonaventuran text, the Meditationes vitae Christi. I examine processes of textual translation and adaptation in this vernacular life of Christ, providing extensive comparison between the English adaptation and its Latin source. The picture that emerges from such analysis is of an English adaptation that provides substantial addition to the Latin in its attempt to enflame and guide pious sensibilities. Particularly notable is a sequence of sustained alliterative compositions, which have no parallel elsewhere in the pseudo-Bonaventuran corpus, and which show the original approach of an English writer to the late-medieval religious imperative towards compassion and profound empathy with Christ and his mother. I conclude by examining the close textual links between the text in the Michigan SU manuscript and another Middle English Passion treatise better known to scholarship, the Privity of the Passion of c. 1400.

Issues of Personal Name Authority Control in a Retrospective Cataloging Project

The cataloging department of the Michigan State University Libraries undertook a retrospective cataloging project of digitized Extension bulletins published during the past 100 years. The project's retrospective nature and concentration of authorship created challenges in coordination and execution of personal-name authority work. A decision-making flow chart was created to provide guidelines in searching variant usages and name authority records on OCLC, as well as to help coordinate authority work among project catalogers. Although the project was satisfactorily completed with the help of this flow chart, some issues remained unresolved and the adequacy and efficiency of the existing name authority workflow was questioned.

One Stone, Two Birds: Data Assessment Framework for Digital Collection Audit and Preservation

The digital curation community is currently investigating scalable solutions for digital preservation and access. “As the size and complexity of digital collections increases how will curators classify, prioritize, capture, preserve, and present their historical holdings?” To meet these requirements the Digital Information Division of the Michigan State University Libraries has called for a comprehensive inventory of its preservation quality digital collections. A comprehensive inventory will produce an index of collections and items (inventory), provide descriptive information (classification), summarize the state of preservation (assessment), and inform workflow (policy). The Data Asset Framework, formerly the Data Audit Framework, a standard tool for providing a representative audit, is modified to accommodate the scale and density of digital collections acquired by libraries. Modifications to the DAF include 1) automated tools for metadata extraction, checksum generation, and format authentication 2) file storage summaries using disk analysis reporting and container format specifications, and 3) a modified interview schedule to gather metadata at the collection level.One possible output of modifying the DAF to assess digital collections is the potential to map DAF data into PREMIS records for preservation purposes. This activity is unique on the collection level and enhanced reuse is the main benefit of such mapping. The stored XML data can be compared with new audit data for any updates and affords a novel means for tracking changes to digital objects at the collection level. This paper will detail the process used to 1) modify the DAF, 2) map DAF data elements into PREMIS and 3) build a business case for reuse for future audits. The composition and rationale for the tool set and the results attained form the concluding remarks.