The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It serves as the archival agency and the reference library for Virginia's seat of government. The Library moved into a new building in 1997 and is located at 800 East Broad Street, two blocks from the Virginia State Capitol building. It was formerly known as the Virginia State Library and as the Virginia State Library and Archives.Formally founded by the Virginia General Assembly in 1823, the Library of Virginia organizes, cares for, and manages the state's collection of books and official records, many of which date back to the early colonial period. It houses what is believed to be the most comprehensive collection of materials on Virginia government, history, and culture available anywhere. Its research collections contain more than 808,500 bound volumes; 678,790 public documents; 410,330 microforms, including 45,684 reels of microfilmed newspapers; 308,900 photographs and other pictorial materials; 101.8 million manuscript items and records; and several hundred thousand prints, broadsides, and newspapers.
Millions of people are exposed to cold environments daily. Adverse health risks are prominent for outdoor and cold storage workers. Therefore, a systematic risk management approach is highly motivated. This scoping review aimed to describe the current knowledge regarding risk management of cold exposure hazards in the occupational setting. We also examined differences between sexes in risk management practices regarding cold exposure. The review included 25 peer-reviewed papers from 1980 to current in English and the Nordic languages, which could be divided into two categories: risk assessment and risk treatment. The risk assessment category included 17 papers, which investigated specific topics such as personal protective equipment, models for thermal balance, and individual differences regarding sex and body mass index. The risk treatment category included eight peer-reviewed papers, which emphasised the use of different protective or preventive measures and highlighted the importance of successful implementation and improvement of good practices. To conclude, the previous literature on risk management of cold work was mainly oriented around technical risk assessment. However, there seems to be a lack of knowledge regarding implementation, resulting in inadequate protection for workers. Moreover, research was scarce regarding sex-dependent differences in risk management among workers exposed to cold.
This case study shares the experience of Alexandria Library during its participation in the American Library Association’s pilot program Resilient Communities: Libraries Respond to Climate Change. An explanation is given for why Alexandria Library participated and how programming was developed. Brief descriptions are included for the planned events. Outcomes and shortcomings of the series are discussed, as well as how the Library plans to proceed in the future. Resources are included to help interested readers learn more about how climate change and sustainability can be explored for library systems, along with a few questions to consider when beginning.
Committee work is a requisite job function for many in academia, yet designing a productive collaborative experience often remains a challenge. In this article, we reflect on our experiences as part of a successful cross-institutional working group and describe strategies to improve leadership structure, group dynamics, accountability, and incentives for collaborative projects.As of January 2023, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Data Management & Sharing (DMS) Policy requires investigators applying for funding to submit a Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMS Plan) that describes how scientific data will be managed, preserved, and shared. In response to this new policy, a community of more than 30 librarians and other research data professionals convened the Working Group on NIH DMSP Guidance, collaboratively producing comprehensive guidance about the policy for researchers and research support staff. In less than a year, the working group produced glossaries of NIH and data management jargon, an example data management and sharing plan, a directory of existing example plans, checklists for researchers and librarians, and an interactive repository finder.This group was a successful grassroots effort by contributors with diverse expertise and backgrounds. We discuss practical strategies for each stage of activity throughout the lifecycle of the working group; from recruiting members, designing pathways to encourage participation from busy professionals, structuring the meetings to facilitate progress and productivity, and disseminating final products broadly. We invite fellow librarians, data professionals, and academics to apply and build upon these strategies to tackle cross-institutional challenges.
The Kotroni Archaeological Research Project (KASP) seeks to understand the relationship between the natural and human landscape of Aphidna from prehistory through to the present, and how such rural communities contributed to the economic, social and cultural life of larger, ‘core’ centres in the region. As one of the constitutional demes of Classical Athens, Aphidna was steeped in the foundational history of the Athenian polis, which saw in it a primordial, ancestral place tied to myths and legends. It accommodated a Middle Bronze Age cemetery, a Mycenaean/Late Bronze Age citadel, a Classical-Hellenistic fort on the citadel, and a Geometric, Archaic, Hellenistic, and Roman settlement. Furthermore, it was later settled in the form of Byzantine and Frankish monastery estates, Turkish chifliks, Arvanite villages, and the contemporary community of nearby Kapandriti. Being that the area of interest (AOI) is both remarkably well preserved due to construction prohibitions necessitated by the nearby Marathon water reservoir and features a diverse history spanning four millennia, it is an excellent case-study for human landscape inquiry, i.e. understanding diachronic inhabitation and the changing meanings of landscape in the longue durée. Important tasks in this direction include clarifying the spatial extent, chronological framework, and nature of settlement as well as the environmental affordances of the landscape, the combination of which permits a thick description of its cultural history. The main method for this investigation is intensive pedestrian survey. Additional conventional methods include the study of ground historical photographs, conventional maps, older field reports, published scholarship, ancient literature and inscription corpora, traveller accounts (17th-19th century AD), in situ buildings or architectural membra dispersed in the landscape, and artefacts (both those collected during the survey and legacy finds in museum storage, e.g. the National Archaeological Museum). Science-based methods consist of geophysical prospection, geological/geomorphological study, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) analysis, as well as geospatial informatics focusing on satellite and aerial imagery and Lidar-derived digital terrain models. The results of the intensive survey, the geophysical prospection, and the geological/geomorphological and OSL study are presented elsewhere. In this paper we present the outcomes of remote sensing, arguing that the relevant tools play an important role in the study of human landscapes at all stages of archaeological inquiry (prior, during and after ground truthing), especially when revisiting underexplored areas and employing a multimodal ‘third-wave’ survey methodology. The latter weaves in a multitude of analyses, both conventional and digital, and integrates old and new data.
