Pistol Pete assisting students at the Help Desk in Coe Library.
Celebrating Our Students – Past and Future
Spring is all about students at UW Libraries! We're thrilled to highlight some of our graduating student employees—it's bittersweet to say goodbye, but we're excited to see what lies ahead for them.
If you're visiting the Libraries, be sure to congratulate our outstanding seniors.
At the same time, we’re looking forward to welcoming the next generation of Cowboys.
Throughout April, Coe Library hosted New Student Days, where incoming students and their families meet with advisors and register for classes.
Even our athletics coaches and Pistol Pete have joined us in the library in to give
these students a warm UW welcome!
UW Academic Advisor working with a student and parent to look at classes for the
fall 2025 semester.
Charting the future of innovative technology
This May, UW Libraries is proud to co-host the inaugural Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Summit, in partnership with the Wyoming State Library and the Wyoming State Archives.
We’re excited to welcome librarians and archivists from across the state to explore
the evolving role of AI in libraries and archives. The event will feature a keynote from Dr. Daniel Reed, Presidential Professor of Computer Science at the University
of Utah, who will share his insights on the future of AI in our field. The summit will also
highlight Wyoming-based experts discussing current AI practices and applications.
In addition to leading conversations about technology, UW Libraries is committed to
supporting research and data sharing. Our Digital Initiatives team has launched two
innovative, free tools for Wyoming faculty and graduate students:
- Dataverse – A data repository where researchers from UW and Wyoming community colleges can
store, publish, and manage their research data.
- Wyoming Research and Data Index (WRDI) – A searchable index of research outputs by UW authors, designed for ease of discoverability,
statewide collaboration, and exploration of institutional publishing trends.
These tools are key in supporting UW’s new R1 status as a university with very high research activity. We're grateful for the collaboration
of the School of Computing, the Advanced Research Computing Center (ARCC), and the
Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC) in bringing these resources
to life.
The Lexx Ferrin Quartet performing in the Emmett Chisum Special Collections Reading
Room.
Building a 21st Century Collection
UW Libraries’ collections are extensive and spread across multiple locations, and
we’re committed to making them as accessible and discoverable as possible. In 2025,
we’re launching two exciting initiatives to support this mission.
First, as part of our participation in the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST),
we’re joining a pilot project with the Internet Archive to digitize selected UW journal
holdings. This will preserve these materials long-term and make them available online and
accessible to all WEST partners through interlibrary loan.
Cass Kvenild, Dean of Libraries
Second, we’re kicking off a large-scale RFID tagging project. This effort will tag our entire physical collection—over 2 million items—with Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID). Many of you are familiar with RFID from public libraries
and retail stores. This technology will streamline checkouts and returns, improve
accuracy in locating materials, and significantly reduce lost or missing items.
If you stop by the libraries this spring or summer, don’t be surprised to see RFID
teams at work in the stacks. They’ll be hard at work helping us modernize and future-proof
access to our collections.
See you in the stacks,
Cass Kvenild
Dean of Libraries
