News

The University of Maryland Libraries are excited to announce the acquisition of two 19th-century iron Washington hand presses donated to Special Collections and University Archives by Christopher and Patricia Manson of Rockville, MD and Ellie Denker of Potomac, MD. These gifts will be the foundation for a new letterpress printing studio on the ground floor of Hornbake Library, set to open in 2025.

Scopus AI is now fully integrated into the Scopus interface, and accessible via the Libraries’ Database Finder tool.Scopus AI uses generative AI to respond to natural language queries to help researchers navigate the vast amount of information available in Scopus by generating easy-to-understand summaries and concept maps.

Project STAND, a national grassroots archival consortium foster ethical documentation of contemporary and past social justice movements in underdocumented student populations, has received a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.

International Love Data Week is a celebration of dataevery year during the week of Valentine’s Day. This year, the UMD Libraries is partnering with the The Office of Institutional Research, Planning & Assessment (IRPA), the Division of Information Technology (DIT), the College of Information, the STAMP, and the University Career Center to plan a week of data-related activities and events to highlight the use of data on campus.

The University of Maryland has named Holly Mercer dean of University Libraries, effective July 1. As dean, Mercer will lead the most extensive university library system in the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore area. This encompasses seven university libraries that serve as the academic keystone supporting the university's teaching, learning and research goals.

A collection of works by notable American graphic artist J. J. Lankes (1884–1960) has been donated to the University of Maryland Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) by alum and Lankes scholar Welford D. Taylor Ph.D. ‘66, and his wife, Carole W. Taylor. The collection comprises over 600 woodcut prints, dozens of books, and myriad periodicals illustrated by Lankes, as well as correspondences and books from Lankes’s personal library.

Marcus Ortiz and Alona Norwood, the two inaugural Fisher Family Library Faculty Fellows for Inclusive Excellence, arrived at UMD Libraries this fall to get started on their two-year appointments, and they have hit the ground running.

A new program established by the University of Maryland Libraries, Truth, Reconciliation, and Understanding in the University Archives (TRU-UA), will facilitate an in-depth exploration of critical issues associated with the histories and information included in the University Archives. This campus-wide educational and outreach program will provide rich opportunities for research and scholarship as well as special events, exhibitions, and publications to engage members of the UMD community and beyond.

Over the course of the fall semester, the undergraduate students in Dr. Alicia Volk’s Japanese Art in the 20th Century colloquium class (ARTH488J) spent hours on the fourth floor of Hornbake Library. That floor houses the Gordon W. Prange Collection, a vast and unique archive of rare Japanese print media consisting of books, magazines, newspapers, posters, maps, and other printed publications that were subjected to censorship by the occupying American forces from 1945 to 1949.

Every year, the University of Maryland Libraries grants up to four $1,000 awards to undergraduate students who make impressive use of library materials in their research. The Undergraduate Research Awards were created to promote the value and use of library services and information resources in original research projects.