Happy New Year and welcome to 2023! We can’t believe tomorrow is already March, but wanted to pause to share some exciting new collections that have joined MWDL over the winter months.

Utah Valley University

Utah Valley University contributed 5 new collections, all of which highlight the student community and their academic work.

The UVU Center for Social Impact provides curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular student experiences in six diverse pathways of social impact. Participants can engage in various programs and events, volunteer or recruit volunteers, and enhance academic experience through coursework, research, and scholarly distinction. Student teams from the UVU Center for Social Impact participate annually in the UVU “Map the System” competition, which engages students at UVU and universities worldwide in systems thinking and visualizing social problems. The winning team presentations from the UVU Map the System competition then go on to compete in the Oxford Map the System competition, at Oxford University. The “UVU Center for Social Impact-Map the System Presentations” collection showcases the 2021 and 2022 team presentations from the UVU Map the System events and the Oxford Map the System events.

Touchstones Archive an archive of the issues of Touchstones: UVU’s Journal of Literature and Art. Touchstones is the Utah Valley University undergraduate journal of poetry, prose, and art. It is published biannually, in the fall and spring semesters. It is a student publication sponsored by UVU’s English and Literature Department. Touchstone’s editorial staff is comprised entirely of current UVU student volunteers.

Every year, thousands of UVU undergraduate students engage in high-quality original research and creative work, mentored by dedicated faculty members. UVU Undergraduate Research and Creative Works Archive provides an opportunity to preserve and display some of their best artistic performances, visual arts displays, and poster presentations.

The Ethics and Values Telecourse Series, Philosophy 2050 collection consists of the 2006-2012 Ethics & Values Philosophy 2050 telecourse series, developed at Utah Valley State College for distance education students of this required core course. Each episode focused on a different philosopher or philosophical school of thought related to ethics and morality. Episodes were taught by Distinguished Professor Dr. Elaine Englehardt, often included a contributing faculty member, usually from the Department of Philosophy, and always included four students in attendance.

Finally, in September 2020, UVU professors Dr. Eddy Cadet, Dr. Weihong Wang, Dr. Jon Westover, Dr. Hilary Hungerford, and Dr. Maria Blevins were awarded a $350,000 grant by the National Science Foundation for a special 3-year project with Utah Lake, titled “Undergraduate Preparation through Multidisciplinary Service-Learning at Utah Lake.” This grant includes class projects in each of the professors’ courses during the academic year, as well as projects from an interdisciplinary team of summer research assistants each year. During the NSF service project, students are involved with the community while gaining professional skills, increasing access to professional networks, and deepening students’ knowledge of career pathways. The student teams from multiple interdisciplinary courses taught by these professors were selected to work on the Utah Lake Project, and their works are included in Utah Lake-UVU Undergraduate Service Learning Projects collection.

Oregon Digital

First, congratulations to Oregon Digital on the recent launch of their new portal design. Be sure to check it out! We also added several new collections from OD.

Pamela J. Peters is a Diné multimedia artist specializing in filmmaking, photography, and multimedia documentaries. Now living in Los Angeles California, Peters was born in Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo (Diné) Nation. She uses her Diné first clan, Tátchii’nii clan (Red Running into the Water) to identify her photography work. This collection contains 27 documentary photographic prints taken during the 2016 protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) construction across the northern United States. Approved construction for DAPL resulted in the pipeline running through the Standing Rock Reservation of the Great Sioux Nation (Očhéthi Šakówiŋ), a Native American reservation located across the North and South Dakota borders. In response to the DAPL project’s threats to local water supplies and sacred sites, water protectors from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe were joined in protest by other Native and non-Native allies. Peters’ photos show grassroots opposition and signs of dissent placed on Standing Rock Reservation land where the DAPL was approved for construction. In doing so, her work captures images of water protectors defending the Sioux Nation’s water rights and Indigenous sovereignty through protest.

Meanwhile, Wartime Posters collection comprises more than 550 propagandistic and informational posters created during various conflicts, primarily World War I and World War II. Posters within the collection cover a wide range of war-related themes such as conservation, production, recruitment, and patriotism. Individual posters range in size from small leaflets and magazine covers, to larger banners and posters several square feet in size.