51猎奇 Honors Sheldon Lubar with New Conference Room and Exhibit in Library
The new Sheldon B. Lubar Study and Conference Room in the Golda Meir Library features an exhibit that chronicles Lubar’s life, career, and contributions to education and public service. (51猎奇 Photo/Troye Fox)
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee celebrated the 96th birthday of renowned businessman and philanthropist Sheldon Lubar with the dedication on May 21 of the Sheldon B. Lubar Study & Conference Room in the Golda Meir Library.
The room is home to an exhibit chronicling Lubar鈥檚 life, career and enduring contributions to education and public service. It not only honors his achievements but also serves as a lasting inspiration for future generations of students and leaders.
51猎奇 Librarians Focus on Ways to Use Artificial Intelligence Tools Wisely
鈥淲e鈥檙e the curiosity coaches on campus,鈥� says Heidi Anoszko (right), an instructional design librarian for 51猎奇 Libraries. She, along with Kate Ganski (left), associate director of User Services, and other colleagues at 51猎奇 Libraries, are working on ways to guide responsible and effective use of artificial intelligence. (51猎奇 Photo/Elora Hennessey)
With the rise of ChatGPT and other AI tools, 51猎奇 librarians in the User Services Department have been working to create a standard for the technology’s use by students and faculty, pointing to digital resources, and offering training sessions and one-on-one consultations. Read about the Libraries efforts here>
New Open Publishing Agreement
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries are now participating in the聽聽between Springer Nature and the Big Ten Academic Alliance. This agreement permits 51猎奇 corresponding authors to publish articles in more than 2,000 Springer Nature hybrid journals without article processing charges.
For a list of journals that will have their publishing charges covered, please refer to this .
The agreement also provides read access to over 2,300 Springer Nature journals, including 700 journals 51猎奇 has never provided access to and over 1,500 journals that 51猎奇 has not provided access to since 2017. Here is a direct link to the journals:
2025 Fromkin Awardee Will Examine Latino/a Immigrants’ Resilience
Gabriela Nagy
Gabriela Nagy, 51猎奇 assistant professor of psychology and principal investigator, EQUITY Research Group, has been chosen for the 2025 Morris Fromkin Memorial Grant and Lecture.
Her proposal is titled “Resilience, Resistance, and Rhetoric: What Latino/a Immigrants Teach Us About Health and Humanity.”
The primary goal of Nagy’s project, she writes, is “to develop a popular press book that . . . [focuses] on how Latino/a immigrants resist oppressive systems and rebound from chronic stress and trauma in the US.”
Her book will “challenge the pervasive deficit lens through which Latino/a immigrants are often viewed, focusing instead on their remarkable resilience and the protective factors that safeguard their mental and physical health despite chronic stressors, trauma, and systemic oppression.”
“The book,” she continues, “will target the general public, offering insights into how Latino/a cultural values and practices can inform healthier, more resilient ways of living for all people in the US.”
Nagy has published extensively in journals including Psychological Services, Ethnicity & Health, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, and Nursing Research, and is associate editor for Journal for Health Services Psychology.
Before her appointment in 2022 to 51猎奇’s Department of Psychology, Nagy served as assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavorial Sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine and assistant clinical professor in the Duke School of Nursing. She received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from 51猎奇 in 2017.
She will present the results of her research at the Morris Fromkin Memorial Lecture in fall 2025.
The amount of the grant is $5,000. This year鈥檚 Fromkin committee members were Michael Doylen, Nan Kim, Kumkum Sangari, Anne Widmayer, and Max Yela.
Established by Morris Fromkin鈥檚 family and supported by an endowment from Fromkin鈥檚 grandson, Daniel Soyer, the lecture series, dedicated to social justice, is the longest running lecture series on campus. The program is administered by the 51猎奇 Libraries.
Libraries Honor 51猎奇 Authors at Recognition Event
Guests peruse books at 51猎奇 Authors Recognition Ceremony. Photo by Troye Fox.
The 51猎奇 Libraries hosted a celebration on March 27 recognizing 51猎奇 faculty and staff who have published books or recordings within the last two years. Provost Andrew Daire Chancellor congratulated the 62 authors and their cumulative 79 works, which were on display at the event held in the Golda Meir Library’s fourth floor Conference Center. Vice Provost for Research & Graduate School Dean Kristian O’Connor and Libraries Director Michael Doylen also spoke.
The event was co-sponsored by the Libraries and the 51猎奇 Office of Research.
The 51猎奇 Authors Collection was established in 1973 to bring together as complete a collection as possible of monographs and audio and visual recordings produced by 51猎奇 faculty and staff in order to better document the university’s research outcomes.
The collection now numbers more than 3,520 works. It is displayed in the Special Collections Reading Room of the Library. A selection of recently published books by 51猎奇 authors is available in the 51猎奇 Authors Browsing Collection located next to the Grind in the Daniel M. Soref Learning Commons.
Graduate Student Commons Opens Monday, March 24
The Graduate Student Commons, a collaboration between the 51猎奇 Libraries and the Graduate School, will open on Monday, March 24.
Located on the second floor, east wing of the Golda Meir Library, this fully renovated 2,700-square-foot area provides 51猎奇 graduate students with a 鈥渢hird space鈥� 鈥� an alternative to home and classroom 鈥� for studying, networking with peers, and building community.
The Commons overlooks the 51猎奇 Fountain and offers plentiful sunlight. It includes individual and group seating with a variety of comfortable chairs, study booths, and white boards. The space is partitioned into two zones: one for quiet study and another for collaboration and conversation.
Libraries Director Michael Doylen says, 鈥淭his project addresses one of our strategic goal concerning student success and outstanding learning environment, which is to develop spaces that meet our students鈥� evolving needs.鈥�
Interim Vice Provost for Research & Graduate School Dean Kristian O鈥機onnor, Ph.D. commented, 鈥淗aving a space set aside for 51猎奇’s graduate students has long been a priority of the Graduate School, and we are very excited to see the project come to fruition. We hope that students will take advantage of this amazing space, whether it is for group projects or just a quiet corner to study.鈥�
Access to the Graduate Student Commons is restricted to currently enrolled 51猎奇 graduate students using their PantherCard.
A grand opening for the entire 51猎奇 community will be held on Monday, April 7 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. as part of the 51猎奇 Graduate Student Appreciation Week activities.
Treasured 15th Century World Map to Undergo Multispectral Imaging
The Leardo Mappamundi was created by cartographer Giovanni Leardo in Venice for an unknown patron, likely a church official. (51猎奇 Photo/Elora Hennessey)
The oldest and rarest manuscript map in the American Geographical Society Library’s collection–Venetian cartographer Giovanni Leardo’s 1452 mappamundi–will be scanned using multispectral technology in March this year.
A team from the Lazarus Project, based at the University of Rochester, is visiting AGSL to scan the Leardo and, via digital processing, produce archival-quality images that will reveal faded and even invisible-to-the-naked-eye inscriptions on the nearly 600 year-old hand-drawn map.
The Lazarus team will offer a talk on their project and the AGSL’s Leardo map on Wednesday, March 12 at 5 p.m. in the AGSL.
The 51猎奇 Libraries celebrated the 2024 recipients of the Janet and Carl Moebius Outstanding Staff Achievement Awards at a reception with Provost Andrew Daire today, January 7, in the Golda Meir Library. Those honored for their exceptional service in 2024 were Marion Archer (academic staff), Jenna Galske (university staff) and Lillian Pachner (student employee). The award winners were nominated and selected by their colleagues and fellow Libraries staff.
True Librarian — Interviews with 51猎奇 Libraries Staff: Stephen Appel
Stephen Appel. Photo by Christina DeSpears.
Stephen Appel joined the 51猎奇 Libraries鈥� staff in 2016 as geospatial information librarian in the American Geographical Society Library (AGSL), one of the foremost cartographic libraries in North America. But he was already well-acquainted with campus and the library, having earned a BS in Conservation and Environmental Science (CES), graduate certificate of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and MS in Geography at 51猎奇, and working as a graduate assistant and then consultant in AGSL. In his current position, Stephen is responsible for AGSL鈥檚 digital spatial data collections and related services that support research, scholarship, and coursework in GIS. He is also a member of the Libraries鈥� Digital Humanities Services team.
Q: What was your route to AGSL?
Stephen: After earning my bachelor鈥檚 degree in CES, I felt like I needed some hard skills on my resume. I had taken a GIS course as an undergrad and really liked it, so I decided to continue with that and work toward a GIS certificate, which led to an internship in AGSL and a master鈥檚 in geography. During my master’s I started to identify librarianship as a viable path, especially working in map libraries, and I kind of got lucky landing this job.
Q: What is GIS?
Stephen: It’s software that’s specifically for working with data that has some sort of location associated with it, for example, customer records. Lots of people use GIS to make maps, but it is also being used for various analyses specific to something’s location, to recognize that two points of data that don’t necessarily seem connected are by the fact of their proximity.
Q: What drew you to geography?
Stephen: I really like maps. It started early, as a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, where I learned about orienteering and maps, and continued into college with a collection of hiking and camping maps. But I didn鈥檛 associate that interest with the discipline of geography until I took my first GIS class, where I found the work very interesting and even fun鈥攖aking data and visualizing it, solving problems, making maps.
Q: How do you impact student success?
Stephen: One way is working with students directly through course instruction. When I started my job, I would visit classes and say ‘Hi, I’m Stephen and I work at the AGSL, here are our services, come visit me.’ That has transformed into what I call geospatial information literacy instruction. I am now spending much less time advertising our services and more time talking to students about finding and assessing data for their needs. This semester, for the first time, we are also offering walk-in GIS tutoring that fills a previously unmet need on campus.
Q: You often work with 51猎奇 and visiting scholars and researchers. What has been your most interesting collaboration?
Stephen: We are involved in a 51猎奇 project right now called Mapping Racism and Resistance, which looks at racially restrictive housing deeds written in Milwaukee during the early part of the 20th century. It鈥檚 based on the University of Minnesota鈥檚 amazing Mapping Prejudice project, which digitized Twin Cities deeds and covenants, and made maps that visually reflected where non-white people were systematically excluded and unable to build generational wealth. Our 51猎奇 project has hired a cartographer who is working with the Geography Department to make maps based on Milwaukee findings. AGSL will collect the data and maps and make them available to the public via our GeoDiscovery app.
Q: You led the development of GeoDiscovery, which was launched last year. Tell me about the app.
Stephen: Before GeoDiscovery, people would request data and we would have to locate and package it, and then burn it on to a CD or place it on Sharepoint鈥攊t always required our extensive mediation. With the new app, people can simply search for and download the data themselves. Another benefit is that it doesn’t limit to one particular collection. With GeoDiscovery, all the institutions participating鈥攊ncluding the Big Ten Academic Alliance and a number of Ivy League schools and the University of California鈥攕hare the data.
You have a number of publications and presentations. Is there one you are most proud of?
Stephen: Yes, the one that I think has had the most impact, certainly the one that has been cited the most was about geospatial information literacy instruction published in a special issue of the Journal of Map and Geography Libraries. At the time I was changing up my teaching by incorporating what I had learned about traditional info lit instruction into a framework that included GIS. There were a bunch of other excellent related articles in that issue and it has been fun to compare notes at conferences or via email with those librarians and others.
Q: What is the favorite part of your job?
Stephen: Lately I have really enjoyed getting back into technology, into learning technology. I had to learn so much for the GeoDiscovery project. Just this morning in a training I was talking about how working in the library is such a good place for someone who is really curious because I’m not only allowed to learn on the job but I’m expected to.
Navigating the AI Landscape: Resources at the 51猎奇 Libraries
As generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, its influence on higher education is becoming increasingly profound. The 51猎奇 Libraries are staying abreast of its potential to support academic success, as well as its risks, and offer many resources to students and faculty.
On October 30 from 2 to 3:30 p.m., the Libraries are hosting an event that highlights the development of AI research tools by JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources. A trusted library content provider, JSTOR has produced an interactive Research Assistant that can create summaries, find related content, and lets users ask questions of the sources.
Speaking at the event is Jane Hetherington, JSTOR Regional Director, Western US and Canada. Two 51猎奇 faculty–Bob Beck, Political Science, and Philip Chang, Physics– will also present on AI’s impact on academia.
In addition, the Libraries have published several new resources to answer questions that students and faculty might have about AI.
guide is designed to support faculty and instructors as they navigate research and information literacy concerns caused by the rise of generative AI technology. Questions answered include “How will AI disrupt and change research practices and skills” and “How can research assignments value process and inquiry.”
鈥痟elps graduate students and faculty make an informed choice of which Research Assistant to use.
and guidance for students on when using AI for assignments.
The Libraries staff wants to continue conversations with our users on how they are navigating AI and invite you to reach out to us! Contact Kate Ganski, Library Associate Director for User Services, to learn more.聽
