As part of the Graduate Division's week-long Graduate Student Showcase celebrating graduate students and their remarkable accomplishments, the Library will present Grad Slam Round 7 on Wednesday, April 17 at 4pm in the Mary Cheadle Room (Main Library, 3rd Floor). Grad Slam is a campus-wide competition for the best three-minute research talk.

The Library will present a brief informational slideshow about its upcoming construction project at Wednesday's Associated Students (AS) Senate meeting, 6:30pm in the Flying A Room in the UCen. This is a scaled-down version of the information session offered to undergraduates last quarter in the Library. All undergraduate students are welcome to attend the AS Senate meeting and to learn what the project and the new library mean for you. Groundbreaking on the project is slated for June 2013. The Library will take questions immediately following the slideshow presentation.

The Ethnic and Gender Studies Library (EGSL) on the second floor of Davidson Library is currently showing a display about Martin Luther King, Jr. entitled "Remembering."

The UCSB Library's Special Collections Department is staying open especially this Saturday, April 13 from 10am-4pm for Spring Insight. Visitors are invited to stop by and view the current exhibit, "Who Freed the Slaves?: Emancipation as a Social Movement". The exhibit, curated by UCSB History professor John Majewski and Ph.D. candidate Maria Fedorova, marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation with a selection of items from the vast Civil War-era holdings of the Library's William Wyles Collection.

On Saturday April 13, the Library welcomes admitted and prospective students and their families to campus for Spring Insight. Come tour the UCSB Library to learn about our services and collections, and to pick up tips on how librarians can help students succeed at UCSB. You can even grab a cup of coffee in the Library these days, and you won’t want to miss the view from the 8th floor! Thirty-minute tours begin at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., each limited to 40 people. Pick up tickets and meet your student and librarian tour guides at the Tour Tent on the Campus Green.

The Library is currently administering LibQUAL+ -- a library quality survey that evaluates user perceptions of Library resources, services, and spaces. If you received an email inviting you to participate, please take the time to complete the survey; it takes only ten minutes. Your input will allow us to assess where the UCSB Library is today, compare ourselves to our peers, and prioritize future directions.

The Winter 2013 issue of the Lens newsletter for faculty and scholars is out. You can pick up a copy at either Davidson or the Arts Library, or read it online (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/lens).

On Wednesday, April 10, renowned comics artist and theorist Scott McCloud will present the free Regents' Lecture on "Understanding Comics and Visual Communication" at 8pm in Campbell Hall. The Library is a co-sponsor of McCloud's visit to campus.

Check out the latest issue of the Gaucho Guardian police newsletter to read an article by Rebecca (better known as Viper), one of the Library Community Service Officers, about her role in keeping students and materials safe in the Library during Overnight Study.

Open Access (OA) literature is defined as being online, free of charge, and free from most copyright and licensing restrictions. Most often, the term is used to refer to articles in OA journals or OA repositories. The UCSB Library supports open access publishing as a way for faculty to retain the rights to their work and to distribute their work quickly and globally.

OA Journals (“Gold OA”)