Organizing and Indexing Photo Collections

Historical photo archives or collections can put an organization on the map and make it into a destination for patrons. Conversely, if not well organized and indexed, collections and archives can languish in obscurity and occupy valuable space and resources with no tangible return for the organization. The Milwaukee Public Library’s (MPL) Historic Photo Archives (HPA) contain around thirty thousand historic images; of those images, most are located in the Historic Photo Collection, one of the archives’ 45 individual collections. The HPA has evolved over the decades. Various reference librarians have been assigned the archives, and the rotation of responsible parties has left its mark. The challenge created by having many individuals with different backgrounds, priorities, areas of interest, and time to devote to the maintenance of the collection has been mitigated by a strong collection development policy

A note on the rate of convergence for a sequence of random polarizations

It was shown by Burchard and Fortier that the expected $L^1$ distance between $f^*$ and $n$ random polarizations of an essentially bounded function $f$ with support in a ball of radius $L$ is bounded by $2dm(B_{2L})||f||_{\infty}n^{-1}$. The purpose of this note is to expand on that result. It is shown that the same expected $L^1$ distance is bounded by $c_nn^{-1}$ with $\limsup_{n\rightarrow \infty}c_n \leq 2^{d+1}||\nabla f||_1$ for every $f \in W_{1,1}(B_L) \cap L^{\infty}(B_L)$. Furthermore, the aforementioned expected $L^1$ distance is $O(n^{-1/q})$ for $f \in L^p(B_L)$ with $p>1$ and $\frac{1}{p} + \frac{1}{q} = 1$. An exponential lower bound is provided for the expected measure of the symmetric difference between the random polarizations of measurable sets and their Schwarz symmetrization. Finally, the rate $n^{-1}$ is shown to be, in a sense, best possible for the random polarizations of measurable sets: the expected symmetric difference between the random polarization of a ball and its corresponding Schwarz symmetrization decays at the rate $n^{-1}$.Comment: 13 pages. Improved the presentation, added rate of convergence estimates for unbounded functions, and made major changes to the section on the random polarization of ball

Conformal grafting and convergence of Fenchel-Nielsen twist coordinates

We cut a hyperbolic surface of finite area along some analytic simple closed curves, and glue in cylinders of varying moduli. We prove that as the moduli of the glued cylinders go to infinity, the Fenchel-Nielsen twist coordinates for the resulting surface around those cylinders converge.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figure

Public Exposure to Outdoor Bioaerosols in Particulate Matter in Las Vegas: Daily and Seasonal Variations

Bioaerosols are airborne particles of biological origin including viruses, bacteria, pollen, fungi, and fragments of their metabolic products. Bioaerosol exposure may represent a health risk, in particular for risk groups such as immunosuppressed persons, and those suffering from allergies or respiratory diseases. Bioaerosols of sizes This study seeks to assess outdoor bioaerosol number concentrations and size distributions in Las Vegas, NV, as the first step in understanding their health risks. PM2.5 and PM10 were collected on black polycarbonate filters for 24-hour duration using MiniVol air samplers on UNLV campus in the spring and fall of 2017. Bioaerosols in these samples were counted by a direct-stain fluorescence microscopic (DS-FM) method. The size of each particle was also measured, on a daily basis, from which the bioaerosol number concentrations, were determined. DS-FM results were analyzed by statistical methods to examine if there were significant differences between spring and fall with respect to bioaerosol number concentration and size distribution. The samples were also classified by wind conditions to explain the day-to- day variability. A significant difference was found between the means of bioaerosol concentrations during spring and fall for both PM2.5 and PM10. Bioaerosols of 1 - 2.5 μm diameter were found to be the most common and peaked in PM10 samples collected during the fall. Windier conditions corresponded to higher concentrations of bioaerosols for both PM10 and PM2.5.This study could be a catalyst for further research on the bioaerosol-public health linkage, which would help refine the National Ambient Air Quality Standards to reduce adverse health outcomes

The holomorphic couch theorem

We prove that if two conformal embeddings between Riemann surfaces with finite topology are homotopic, then they are isotopic through conformal embeddings. Furthermore, we show that the space of all conformal embeddings in a given homotopy class deformation retracts into a point, a circle, a torus, or the unit tangent bundle of the codomain, depending on the induced homomorphism on fundamental groups. Quadratic differentials play a central role in the proof.Comment: 70 pages, 13 figures. Sections 4 and 8 modified following referee's repor

Marketing an Established Institutional Repository: Marquette Libraries’ Research Stewardship Survey

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the results of Marquette University Libraries’ survey measuring faculty knowledge and attitudes about the institution’s repository, for the purposes of creating a marketing plan for the institutional repository (IR). Design/methodology/approach The paper adopts a quantitative approach through the use of a survey. Findings Like many other endeavors to measure faculty engagement with the IR, the investigators discovered that faculty knowledge of the IR is not universal. Moreover, the perceived values and motivators for faculty use of the IR were also not surprising, with faculty viewing online dissemination of their work to be the most valuable feature offered by the IR, and furthering their own careers was the prime motivator. The importance of continual and varied methods of marketing is reaffirmed. Originality/value Whereas many articles on faculty recruitment for IRs agree on the importance of marketing, very few suggest specific strategies. The investigators make suggestions for continual and varied marketing methods based on their findings