University Libraries

John Irwin, the Head of Access Services and an Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University Libraries, has been selected to fill one of the vacancies on the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium Inc. (PALCI)’s EZ Borrow Advisory Council.

PALCI membership consists of nearly 70 academic and research libraries (including Seton Hall University Libraries), private and public, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, and New York. Member institutions range from small liberal arts colleges to publicly funded universities to ARL institutions to the State Library of Pennsylvania. Libraries in PALCI have holdings in excess of 36 million volumes and a combined FTE of more than 500,000 students.

During his term, which will run from November 2016 through June 2017, Professor Irwin will be advising on services and system enhancements to improve access to member collections. Member libraries enjoy an active program of resource-sharing, cooperative purchasing, collaborative collection development, and professional engagement.

Congratulations John!

Over the course of the last three and a half years, the library’s appearance and functionality have steadily been revised to provide among other things, a clearer sense of place. One recent change in this vein was the addition of a hand-painted sign above the circulation desk.  The new sign gives a robust welcome to students and other patrons of the library. It was painted by a young artist and hand sign-painter named Jon Bocksel.  Jon learned the arcane trade of hand sign-painting over several years as an apprentice to experts in hand-lettering from the time preceding digitally-produced signs.  In planning for a commission, he absorbs a large amount of visual information before embarking on the design process.  For the Seton Hall sign, he spent a morning on campus conferring with University Archivist Alan Delozier and took back many images to his studio. Alan had gathered yearbooks, insignia, and the Seton family’s as well as the University’s crest as a corpus of visual context for Jon on Seton Hall.  Alan also showed Jon two fascinating and little-known murals of SHU sports teams, located in the University Sports Center and painted in the 1940’s by a recognized fresco painter of Italian cathedrals, and immigrant to New Jersey, Gonippo Raggi (https://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Gonippo_Raggi).

Jon’s final sign references the history of SHU publications as well as sports uniforms which, according to him, are often rich carriers of institutional self-expression in the form of typeface choices.  All in all, his sign sets off the entrance space to the library in an emphatic way that provides directness and warmth. Welcome to SHU Libraries!

For the Spring 2016 Semester, the Curriculum Resource Center will once again become the Graduate Student Lounge (GSL) space. Starting Monday, January 11th for the first 11 weeks of the semester, the GSL will run Monday – Thursday, 4:30PM-7:30PM. The space features 2 hard-wired Mac computers, a digital projector and monitor, whiteboard and flexible group seating. The room will be staffed by trained graduate students who can provide basic information regarding resources on campus such as the ID process, course registration, parking, career services, PirateNet, IRB documents, and classroom locations.

In addition, ‘guest’  presenters from various areas, such as financial aid and library services, may participate at key points in the semester when those services are most needed. And of course the Library is always staffed with Reference librarians, Circulation staff, technology help, and specialized information consultation services which can be scheduled. This space provides support for the range of needs and issues that graduate students face: quiet space, group study space, research support, IT support, presentation practice/equipment, and an opportunity to connect with other graduate students.