News

The UMD Libraries is pleased to announce that Lae’l Hughes-Watkins has been named the inaugural Associate Director for Engagement, Inclusion, and Reparative Archiving in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA). Hughes-Watkins assumes this new leadership role after serving for over three years as University Archivist. (A search to fill the now-vacant archivist role will be conducted soon.)

While the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is commonly looked back upon as a blemish on American history, the additional imprisonment of tens of thousands of so-called “enemy aliens” does not often receive the same amount of attention in history. On display in Hornbake Library is a new traveling exhibit, The “Enemy Alien” Files. The exhibit, located in the lobby, explores the stories of those who lived through this traumatic and unjust experience.

The archives of Mass Media & Culture (MMC) in Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to announce that 17 episodes of the groundbreaking program PowerPoint are now available for streaming in UMD Libraries Digital Collections.

Last year, the University of Maryland was excited to join the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship, or HELIOS, a new national initiative aiming to spark collective action to advance open scholarship. According to HELIOS, open scholarship (sometimes called “open science” or “open research”) is “an expansive term meant to encompass the rapid and widespread sharing of a range of scholarly activities and outputs, across disciplines,” including the research process itself, open access publication, and data sharing.

To provide our campus community with more flexible, multi-use workspaces, McKeldin Library is reducing the number of public desktop computers on the first and second floors by about 35 percent. This change is based on usage data showing that, on average, no more than 50 percent of the desktop computers are in use at any given time. Libraries’ staff often see library visitors use these workspaces with their own personal laptops already, demonstrating a need for more space that can accommodate library users’ own devices and other materials.

The Libraries are proud to play an instrumental role in the 2022-23 interdisciplinary curriculum program “Decolonizing Education to Meet the Demand of Climate Change: resilient Adaptive Climate Technology (reACT) Testbed Lab.” Over the course of one year, students from across seven departments, from Education to Architecture, will work collaboratively on an architecture and engineering project that’s guided by indigenous knowledge in order to live more sustainably in the face of climate change.

Join the 1856 Project on February 1 for its inaugural symposium in the STAMP Student Union featuring keynote speaker Mary N. Elliott, Curator of American Slavery at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. The symposium will include the following sessions:

As a member of the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) Library Consortium, the University of Maryland Libraries are pleased to announce that it will be migrating to a new integrated library management system in summer 2024. UMD Libraries will migrate to the Alma and Primo systems from Ex Libris®, part of Clarivate, after having been on the Ex Libris Aleph system for over 20 years.

The University of Maryland Libraries will grant up to four $1,000 awards to undergraduates who make impressive use of library materials in their research. The Undergraduate Research Awards aim to promote the value and use of library services and information resources in original research projects.

With finals approaching, the Libraries are here for you. Whether you're studying for an exam or working on a final project, we have the services, resources, and spaces to help you succeed. The new "Find a Space" tool on the Libraries' website allows you to search and filter library spaces by campus location, noise level, whether the space can be reserved, the type of equipment and technology available, adn what kinds of activities are suitable in the space, such as presentation practice or virtual meetings.