Newsletter 09.2023
1. Welcome to the university library!
Winter semester has begun and we’re welcoming a lot of new faces to the library! More than 300 first year students attended our kick-off event »More than just books«. The library tours also proved popular: over 400 new students discovered the library together with librarians and their tutors during individualized tours in German and English. For anyone who still wants to get the basics on how to use the library we have all the most important info to get started still all in one place on our website.
And with that: have a good start to the semester, and we’re looking forward to seeing you in the library!
2. Improvements to our special collection services
On October 23rd we will start a trial period where you will receive your special collection requests at the Limona information desk during service hours. You will be able to work with your items at the marked spaces opposite the desk. Your advantages: You will no longer need to make appointments and will be able to work with the items until 6pm from Monday to Friday!
We aim to make working with these special items as convenient as possible for you. University members can now use the campus delivery service for special collection items as well, enabling digital reception of excerpts free of charge.
In addition, we are already planning a second trial period, during which you will receive your requested items in the main building under similar conditions.
To evaluate the two variants we ask you to give us feedback on the process and each environment. Please use the feedback forms available or contact us at the desks or by e-mail (info@ub.uni-weimar.de).
3. Increased visibility for 19th century female writers on new online platform
In September 2023, after three years of work, the results of the German-Polish research project »Female Writers in the Varnhagen Collection – Letters, Works, Relations« were published online on a website hosted by the Thuringian university and state library (ThULB). The Varnhagen Collection is one of the most important collections of manuscripts from the 19th century. It contains letters, work manuscripts, diaries, prints and notes of various kinds, but also non-written documents, for example portraits, drawings and natural objects.
As a project partner the university library director, Dr. Frank Simon-Ritz, was crucially involved in formulating the requirements for the digital edition, which was realized in close cooperation with our project partners at v3 Consulting (Munich).
You can find more information in our press release.
4. Open Access Week 2023 – Community over Commercialization
»Community over Commercialization« is the motto of this year’s International Open Access Week, which will take place from October 23rd to 29th. Institutions around the world will hold events in that week to spread information on »free access« to scientific research, to point out new trends and developments and to network the community. The open-access.network keeps a public list of events in German language areas that will be held during this year’s Open Access Week. The list is being updated continually.
5. Exhibition »Gefesselte Blicke« - leaving Weimar after October 21st
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Take the opportunity this week to visit the film poster exhibition »Gefesselte Blicke« in the Weimar university library. From November 24th the historic large format posters can be seen in the Erfurt university library.
6. Book art exhibition in the university library presents contemporary designs for Walt Whitman’s cycle of poems »Song of Myself«
On October 27th at 3 pm the next exhibition will be opened in the university library: »Song of Myself« - buchkünstlerische Positionen 1923 und 2023«.
In a stroke of luck, print sheets for Walt Whitman‘s cycle of poems »Song of Myself«, a book printed in 1923 for the Weimar-based publisher Utopia, have survived until today first in the former Dorfner workshop in Weimar and then at the art school Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle. Students in Prof. Sabine Golde’s book art class at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle in the summer semester 2023 received the opportunity to give form to the historic print sheets with a contemporary eye. The results of this debate can be seen in the library until December 14th.
Stefanie Röhl
Sachgebietsleiterin
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