New faces! New positions! Our people are what make every single thing in this report possible. Meet our new employees, and join us in congratulating everyone who was promoted this year.
Yasaswini Allaparthi
Sai Sharmila Bonam
Abbie D. Brown
Chandana Burramukku
Ranga Reddy Chaparapu
Sraawya Chintala
Ian Y. Chung
Wei Dai
Gwendolyn N. DeLaney
Marie L. Gallardo
Luke P. Gilbreth
Mahipal Reddy Gumireddy
Seth N. Hofheins
Hadley Jarvis
Jasmin Joy
Daniel (Max) Koehn
Justin M. Kraus
Jeffrey Leafblad
Colin A. Levins
Srinivas Gowtham Majeti
Shreya K. Menon
Hanad A. Mire
De’onna Moore
Abhinay Reddy Mothe
Marion (Seven) Murray
Datta Teja (DT) Nalluri
Cameron L. Nollman
Joseph O. Olaoye
Mavis Parks
Khushi B. Patel
Vishnuvardhani Pinnapareddy
Sai Teja Pulluri
Mohamed B. Refaat
Grace (Gray) Robison
Katilyn Sanders
Melanie J. Rodriguez Diaz
Nikathyasmeen Shaik
Julia Smith
Sai Mrudula Reddy Sodam
Fabiola Sore
Prathyusha Swarna
James L. Taylor
Brandon S. Thibodeau
Varalaxmi Thota
Olivia Unseth
Sree Ganesh Vaidya
Brianna S. York
Xu Zheng
The Libraries received
in gifts from 39 donors.
Special thanks to a
gift from the Miller Nichols Charitable Foundation.
In addition to serving as the home of the Starr Women’s Hall of Fame, LaBudde Special Collections collects the papers and memorabilia of inductees and makes them available for research and study. The Hall of Fame recognizes extraordinary Kansas City women and preserves the history of their accomplishments as social reformers, volunteers, philanthropists, civic leaders, activists and educators. Access to and preservation of the inductees’ collections is only possible after library staff appraise, organize, house, and describe the materials. To facilitate this labor-intensive work, the Starr Women’s Hall of Fame Internships were created. This year our first intern, History graduate student Katy Anielak, made it possible for the LaBudde team to achieve considerable progress on processing a number of Starr collections. Thanks to the Internship, the LaBudde team will be better able to facilitate ongoing growth of collections connected to the Starr Women’s Hall of Fame.
Processing completed by Dr. Anthony LaBat, Operations and Processing Associate
Processed by Katy Anielak, SWHOF Intern
“Starr Women’s Hall of Fame” designation added to online photograph collections by Garth Tardy, Metadata Librarian
Finding aid newly published online
UMKC Libraries believe that public exhibits are an enriching and stimulating part of any community. For the first time ever, we began exhibiting artwork by UMKC students. Importantly, the Libraries’ Student Art Exhibits Program is not just open to students in Fine Arts programs; any UMKC student can apply to show their creative or intellectual work in a library gallery, and we have dedicated the gallery spaces on the first floor of our main library and at the Health Sciences Library primarily for student exhibits. In our inaugural academic year, we hosted eight student art exhibits by students in degree programs ranging from education to foreign language to jazz studies.
After opening our new Digital Collaboration Studio on the third floor of the library in 2021, the university took the next step toward fully realizing the potential of the Studio space with the launch of a new Center. The purpose of the Center for Digital and Public Humanities is to provide resources to students, faculty, and staff as they develop digital and public humanities projects and conduct original research that integrates digital methods with creative work and scholarship; to offer a robust curriculum that provides students with opportunities for high-impact learning experiences and transferable skills that they can apply in the twenty-first century workforce; and to partner with the community in collaborative research and creative projects. The Center brings together our library’s spaces and technologies with expertise from faculty across campus departments, giving digital humanities projects the support they need and setting a direction for this discipline at UMKC. The library will co-direct the Center, ensuring exciting changes to come.
This April 2023 concert was the inaugural Shining a Light Concert, during which UMKC students performed works from the library’s Shining a Light Collection, created to highlight the works of 21st century composers from underrepresented groups.
To support the physical and mental wellbeing of UMKC library users, we transformed a room formerly dominated by an enormous conference table into a new Active Study Room in the Health Sciences Library. It offers two treadmill desk stations and a standing desk, one of several placed throughout the library. Each low-speed Walkstation has an adjustable-height desk, allowing library users to walk while they read, study, write, or participate in an online class or meeting. The Active Study Room is on the south side of the Health Sciences Library, facing large windows overlooking the Health Sciences Campus quad.
Our new Associate Dean of Library Services, Brenda Linares, joined us in November 2022 and spent the year getting to know all of us – our library workers, departments, spaces, services, and resources – and diving into understanding our mission and values. The Associate Dean is primarily responsible for the operations of our Miller Nichols Library and Health Sciences Library, and provides leadership and oversight on the collections, teaching, learning and research mission of the libraries in support of the UMKC curriculum and research agenda. Every year is exciting around here – just look at this report! – but it was extra exciting for us to have Brenda’s added voice on our library leadership team.