Collaborations and Innovations

By Sala Levin '10Gloves were plentiful. Full-body plastic suits were available. “If you feel like you’re going to be grossed out by any of the liquids, put one of these on,” warned Jessica Janney ’25, a recycling coordinator with UMD’s Facilities Management. On top of a long row of plastic tables, heaping garbage bags oozed, their dripping residue collecting on black tarps laid out on the ground. Smells, all of them unpleasant, wafted through the springtime air.

On May 5, 2025, in honor of the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives (MMIR),  the Living Memory: Honoring Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives installation will open in the Portico Room on the second floor of McKeldin Library. The exhibition was curated by Britney Bibeault, Assistant Director, Indigenous Futures Lab (IFL) and PhD candidate, Information Studies

Team FSH edged out Teams HEMD and Valve to clinch the UMD Libraries’ Gemstone Research Award at the finalists presentations on March 26, where each team presented their research to a panel of judges. UMD Libraries awarded a first place prize of $2,000 and a $1,000 prize to both runners up. The Gemstone Research Award recognizes student teams that demonstrate excellence in the integration of principles of information literacy into their work and who conduct research with integrity and diligence.

A group of undergraduate students have created a limited podcast series using archives from the Hornbake Library. The series, With Love & Struggle—researched and written by Janete Amaya, Hannah Bray, Maliyah Daniels, Ashley Mazur, Katherine Guerrero Rivera, Viviane Stackhouse, and Fibee Ybanez—dives into the Libraries’ archival collection of Off Our Backs, an underground feminist magazine that ran from 1970 to 2008.

This spring, explore themes of speculative futures, queerness, gender and survival in conversation with our current world with “alternative universe: visualizing queer futurisms,” an exhibit in the STAMP Gallery curated by Marjorie Antonio and it’s accompanying Pop-Up Library curated by the Art Library.

Section body - TOME@UMD, a two-year pilot program of the national TOME initiative, is now accepting applications for three grants of up to $15,000 each that will sponsor the publication of open access, digital monographs by UMD faculty members. With a deadline of November 15, 2021, the process calls for applications from eligible faculty in all disciplines, but with preference given for those in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.