New Library Collections Speak Volumes
Category: Noteworthy

The University of Baltimore’s Langsdale Library continues to enhance services to the UB and local communities by growing its collections in unexpected ways.
Fraud Library
UB is one of only two universities in the country to house a fraud library, the result of a collaboration with the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ Maryland Chapter. Ed Kemery, associate professor in the Merrick School of Business and director of its graduate Certificate in Forensic Accounting program, helped coordinate the partnership.
The association approached Kemery about developing the library, which offers a collection of about 125 titles related to forensic accounting and donated by the association, because of UB’s investment in preparing students to combat fraud through its forensic accounting certificate and its M.S. in Forensic Science – High Technology Crime program. “The materials are a terrific resource for our students and complement materials we have as a result of being an educational partner with the national Association of Certified Fraud Examiners organization,” Kemery says. After Kemery’s initial contact with the association, library staff continued the work to propel the project toward completion.
UB dedicated the fraud library in May 2013, about a year and a half after Stevenson University developed the state’s first such library to accompany its forensic studies program, which offers focuses in accounting and computer forensics.
Game Library
A small but growing collection of vintage and new video games and board games, Langsdale’s game library includes old consoles such as the original Nintendo, Coleco Vision and Magnavox Odyssey 2 as well as board games from the 1950s.
The library provides students with research tools and access to game-design software, critical for those in such programs as the B.S. in Simulation and Digital Entertainment. The collection has even been used by an undergraduate English class to study narratives in games.
The project began nearly two years ago thanks to a technology grant awarded through the Office of the Provost, allowing Stephen Kiel, reference and instruction librarian, to make an initial purchase including several contemporary video game systems along with two gaming computers, a few modern board games and an assortment of current video games. “[This library] can expose [students] to games they otherwise might not have heard of or might be too young to have played,” Kiel says.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Archives
A recent partnership between UB and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center of Baltimore and Central Maryland has allowed records previously stored in the attic of the center’s former 241 W. Chase St. headquarters to be archived in Langsdale Library’s Special Collections.
Documenting the LGBT community’s history in Baltimore, the collection includes organizational records, subject files, photographs, newspapers and videotapes from the 1960s to today. “The collection complements other records in Langsdale’s Baltimore Regional Studies Archives documenting important political, social and cultural changes in the city’s modern history,” says Ben Blake, head of special collections. “This collection will be a valuable educational resource for students, scholars and the general public for generations to come.”
Kathryn Montgomery is a student in the graduate Publications Design program.