Reading Time: 3 minutesJason Boczar, Digital Scholarship and Publishing Librarian, and Carol Ann Borchert, Sr. Associate Dean, introduce a new project of the USF Libraries to create the Searchable Ornithological Research Archive (SORA) in USF’s Digital Commons. SORA is a digital collection of important international ornithological journals.

Reading Time: 5 minutesTo help celebrate and raise awareness for Endangered Species Day, Digital Dialogs is highlighting a recent dusky seaside sparrow exhibit released by the former FLENH Coordinator, Erin Peel, who also shares some other endangered species resources from within the Florida Environment & Natural History (FLENH) Collection.

Reading Time: < 1 minuteIt’s that time of the year: Public Domain Digitization! We’ve pulled a list of titles from our collections that will fall into the public domain on January 1, 2025, and now we need your help selecting the 25 items that we will scan to celebrate Public Domain 2025. 

Reading Time: 3 minutesGuest Post by Marlena Carrillo, Student Assistant, tells the story of a whirlwind 19th-century, long-distance romance will make you feel like you’re reading a novel – but the courtship was far from fiction. 

Reading Time: 4 minutesBy Stephanie Mackin, Visiting Assistant Librarian, Special Collections  Since its arrival in 1983, the Sociedad la Union Marti-Maceo collection has been a popular and heavily utilized collection at the University of South Florida Libraries’ Tampa Special Collections. The uniqueness and historical significance …Continue Reading

Reading Time: 3 minutesFor six years now, the USF Libraries have celebrated this transition of copyrighted work by digitizing a selection of material from our collections. After a public vote, we added 23 titles across collections including three growing Digital Collection areas:  Florida Studies, Environmental and Natural History, and Sheet Music.

Reading Time: 3 minutesGuest post from Erin Peel, Coordinator, Library Operations: FLENH, on connecting new archival collections from the Florida Ornithological Society with Art classes at USF.

Reading Time: 3 minutesGeorge “Skip” Gandy IV, 1942-2020, captured images of a Tampa Bay very much in transition. In 2012, Gandy donated over 80,000 images to Special Collections as photographic negatives, slides, and prints. A small sample of 218 of these have been reformatted and …Continue Reading

Reading Time: < 1 minuteHelp us choose the material that will be digitized for January 2024 as part of the Libraries’ annual celebration of the public domain! We have searched our physical collections to find the rarest titles whose copyright will expire in 2024, and now we need your help to figure out which 24 to digitize.  Please vote for your favorites below (choose up to 24)! 

Reading Time: 2 minutesUSF Libraries is excited to share that a new Open Educational Resource (OER) is launching in Spring 2023!  The EcoLiteracies for Climate Action in Florida (ELCAF) portal is part of a larger collaborative effort between faculty in the USF Libraries, the College …Continue Reading

Reading Time: 3 minutesJoin the USF Libraries in our annual celebration of the public domain through digitization! The USF Libraries have selected material from the Libraries’ collections published in 1927 that are newly in the public domain to digitize in celebration. This is the fifth year we have celebrated through digitization! 

Reading Time: 4 minutesAndrew Huse, Librarian and Curator for Florida Studies at Special Collections, USF Libraries, Tampa campus recounts his attendance and contributions to the 50th annual meeting of the Florida Ornithological Society.

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe USF Libraries’ Florida’s Great Hurricane Exhibit shares the history of some of the most influential hurricanes to make landfall on Florida’s shores, as captured in the archives.

Reading Time: 2 minutesWe are happy to announce a new, consolidated, Institutional Repository at the USF Libraries!  The new repository, Digital Commons at the University of South Florida, highlights the research of USF faculty, students, and staff across our three campuses as well as features conferences, scholar profiles, digital collections, theses and dissertations, and open access textbooks and journals.

Reading Time: < 1 minuteEvery year in January, a new group of material will have their copyrights expire and become part of the public domain, where creative work is free to use by anyone for any purpose. We have poured over the list of items in our collection that will have their copyright expire in 2023, finding the rarest titles we have that fit into our Digital Collections. We need your help to decide which 23 items we should digitize.

Reading Time: 4 minutesJoin the USF Libraries in our fourth year of celebrating the public domain through digitization! Once again, we asked the USF community what it would like to see digitized for the 2022 celebration.  414 votes decided the 22 titles that would be selected from a curated list drawn from the USF Libraries collections. The digitized materials fall into four existing Digital Collections foci: Florida Studies, Environmental Collections, Sheet Music, and Children’s Literature. 

Reading Time: 2 minutesUSF Libraries – Tampa Special Collections is home to all types of exciting resources from historic documents to rare books, vintage photographs, and digital recordings. Preserving and providing access to these materials requires periodic evaluation of the collections, media types, and their …Continue Reading

Reading Time: 4 minutesIn celebration of July being Park and Recreation Month, we are highlighting our USF Libraries research developed by the Digital Heritage and Humanities Collections (DHHC) relating to work in our national, state, and local parks and recreation areas.

Reading Time: < 1 minuteEvery year in January, the copyright protection of a new group of material will expire and those items will become part of the public domain. In celebration, the USF Libraries select titles from our physical collections to digitize. This year we intend to digitize 22 items.  We have narrowed the possible titles down to 50 and need your help to decide which will be highlighted by our public domain celebration.  Vote for your favorites by July 21st! 

Reading Time: 4 minutes2021 marks the third year that USF Libraries participated in a project to digitize works in our collections that have passed into the public domain. What is the public domain? 

Reading Time: < 1 minuteEvery year in January, since 2019, a new group of material will have their copyright protection expire and will become part of the public domain. We need your help in deciding what 21 items USF Libraries will digitize to celebrate the public domain in 2021.  Tell us which ones you want scanned! 

Reading Time: 2 minutesEvery day, students, creators, teachers, and consumers benefit from copyrighted material because of the fair use exception in the United States copyright law.  Fair Use Week, February 24 through February 28, celebrates the creative potential and achievements made possible by this powerful exception to copyright law

Reading Time: < 1 minuteGuest Post by Matthew Torrence, Research Platform Team Librarian for the Geosciences In order to protect and improve our environmental future, it is important to preserve the past! The new Florida Environmental Interface (FEI) offers an excellent opportunity for researchers to access …Continue Reading

Reading Time: 5 minutesGuest post by Dr. Lori Collins,  Research Associate Professor and co-Director of the Digital Heritage & Humanities Collection (DHHC) in the University of South Florida Libraries. The Digital Heritage and Humanities Collections (DHHC) at the University of South Florida Libraries, working in …Continue Reading

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThis month, 61 years ago, a group of friends meeting for dinner and conviviality proposed the idea that friendships help humanity. This idea was championed by the World Friendship Crusade and in 2011, the 65th General Assembly of the UN passed Resolution …Continue Reading

Reading Time: 2 minutesAugust 18, 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which established women’s right to vote, and nicely coincides with the 2020 presidential election. To celebrate the anniversary, honor the advocates, and document the …Continue Reading

Reading Time: < 1 minuteGuest post from Drew Smith, Associate Librarian specializing in genealogical research, engineering, information sciences, and technology. The USF Libraries has begun production of a regular podcast showcasing research being done by faculty and doctoral candidates in the USF School of Geosciences. Hosted …Continue Reading

Reading Time: < 1 minuteThere is nothing new under the sun. The more things change, the more they stay the same. It is curious that while most people will agree to the above quotes, most would also consider current events as unique to their own time. …Continue Reading

Reading Time: < 1 minuteHappy Birthday City of Tampa. For people who like cake, July 15th was another day to indulge without guilt. It’s also a time to remember Tampa’s history and take part in Archive Awareness Week. During the week of July 15 – 21, local archivists …Continue Reading

Reading Time: < 1 minuteDigital Scholarship Services at the USF Libraries is planning a celebration of the public domain in January 2019.  We have compiled a list of items in our collections and now we need your help in picking out what we are going to …Continue Reading

Reading Time: 2 minutesThe world is at our fingertips, and we are awash with information. This exciting experience can become a predicament when quality resources are required and time is short. There is so much “stuff” returned with a search string. If the building is …Continue Reading