Cleveland State University Library, a medium-sized academic library serving approximately 15,000 students, is engaged in large-scale efforts to digitize and make accessible online collections of unique Cleveland-related materials. The Cleveland State University Library Special Collections digitization and cataloging efforts use staff from several different library organizational units. The collaboration of...
To guide the design, content, and development of a natural resources digital library, the Oregon State University Libraries commissioned a needs assessment. Interviews with citizens, policy makers, and scientists show that potential users want to quickly find, retrieve, integrate, and synthesize well organized and geo-referenced information on Oregon's natural resources,...
Cultural background influences information-seeking behaviors and verbal and non-verbal communication styles both in reference encounters and in our interactions with colleagues on the library staff. Recognizing these differences will help us create an inclusive work environment as well as build on the high-quality reference service we provide to our changing...
In this paper, we describe a fusion approach to finding opinion about a given target in blog postings. We tackled the opinion blog retrieval task by breaking it down to two sequential subtasks: on- topic retrieval followed by opinion classification. Our opinion retrieval approach was to first apply traditional IR...
A multispectral optical sensor collects data at select wavebands or channels. An example is the Sea-viewing Wide-Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) ocean color satellite, which measures eight wavebands between 402 and 885 nm (20-40 nm bandwidth with peaks centered around 412, 443, 490, 510, 555, 670, 765, and 865 nm). Optical oceanographers...
We present new observational data on small-angle light scattering properties of natural, random shaped particles, as contrasted with spherical particles. The interest in
this "shape effect" on scattering arises from the need for a suitable kernel matrix for use in the laser diffraction method (LD) of particle sizing. LD is...
In Fall 2006, a faculty member in George Washington University's University Writing 20 (UW20) program began incorporating service learning into her theme-based first-year writing course. Along with her librarian partner, they linked two research assignments to the service work of the students. An end-of-semester survey was administrated over three semesters...
To raise the library's profile within the campus community, it is critical to create a strategic plan and align library goals with those of the university. At George Washington University's Gelman Library, the instruction librarians gained internal and external support to hire two new instruction librarians to better support collaboration...
At George Washington University, librarians and faculty have partnered to provide an effective introduction to information literacy to all freshmen. The structure of the new writing program promotes goals that are at the intersection of the Council of Writing Program Administrators and Association of College and Research Libraries. Furthermore, the...
Using off-the-shelf search technology provides a single point of access into library resources,
but we found that such commercial systems are not entirely satisfactory for the academic library
setting. In response to this, Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries designed and deployed
LibraryFind, a metasearch system. We conducted a usability experiment...
For the past six years, the Oregon State Library and the Fujian Provincial Library have collaborated in the Horner Exchange a program that fosters mutual understanding between librarians from Oregon and Fujian. In odd-numbered years, an Oregon librarian visits Fujian Province while in even-numbered years two Chinese librarians visit Oregon....
Trip report and summary of conference content of Fifth Plenary Session, International Workshop on Implementing a Maghreb Digital Library for Education, Science & Culture held Jan. 25-28, 2007.
In the late 1850s, few young Jews, recently arrived in the United States from Poland, chose to live in Florida. Fortunately, one who did, Max White, wrote down his memoirs of those years, leaving us a remarkable, very personal account of life on the Florida frontier as well as a...
Subject reference librarians at OSU create subject guides to assist library patrons to locate pertinent sources on their own. These guides direct patrons to information in a variety of formats, including books, series, and journals, but often lack Internet resources. The original intent of the CAMEL Project was to set...
The Library of Congress (LC) decided to suspend creating series authority records on May 1, 2006 and to transcribe all future series statements as untraced. To evaluate the impact on cataloging workload at Oregon State University (OSU), bibliographic records were examined for untraced series statements from June 1, 2006 to...
Oregon State University has trained paraprofessionals to assign subject headings to theses and dissertations. This article describes the training program for the paraprofessionals and the ongoing support provided by weekly meetings to discuss works that are difficult to analyze. The transition from copy cataloging to subject analysis is a major...
Paper presented at Information Interoperability And Organization For National And Global Forest Information Systems (IUFRO D4, D6), September 17-19, 2003 Satellite event of the XII World Forestry Congress.
Conference predates the naming of OSUL's "Oregon Explorer" but covers the collaboration and need for partnership building that was the hallmark of...
Research to address the question of whether OSU Libraries (OSUL) should have a circulating video game collection?
Rationale for a video game collection included: A circulating video game collection could support learning, bring new users to the library, and help students make connections with their peers. Good video games are...
An investigation of current practices among other university libraries (and "best practices" should they exist), to establish what needs to be in place for Oregon State University Libraries to implement a centralized rights management service for its digitization projects?
The Oregon Multicultural Archives (OMA) investigation team from the Research and Innovative Services Department was charged with exploring the future directions of this program. Team members make recommendations about future actions including effective ways to engage internal and external stakeholders based on website and literature review findings.
Research and Innovative Services (RIS) conducted focus groups with the OSU Libraries faculty and staff to promote the mission of the department and to identify potential research areas. We saw the focus groups as a way to elicit input and tap the reservoir of ideas from people across the library....
At Oregon State University a library collection assessment is a required part of the review process for every new academic program proposal. Over time, this assessment has moved away from a brief statement regarding the adequacy of the collection to support the new program to a more thorough evaluation and...
This is a redacted version of a two-week investigation of academic libraries offering "24/7" services within the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA). It was undertaken to better inform Oregon State University Libraries (OSUL) administration of the staffing, security and costs associated with providing such a service. OSUL undertook a pilot...
Abstract:
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate librarians' attitudes towards instruction in virtual reference transactions and to review relevant literature.
Design/methodology/approach – Librarians who provide virtual reference services are surveyed about attitudes towards providing instruction via virtual reference software. In addition to gathering demographic information respondents...
Oregon State University Libraries tossed out our old subject guides and re-imagined them as dynamic, interactive and user-centered. We adapted our freely available open source tool, Library à la Carte, and created guides that appeal to students by including Web 2.0 applications alongside traditional library resources. OSU librarians easily make,...
This report is a redacted version of the report presented to the University Librarian. Dec. 30, 2009 report of the Oregon State University Libraries Discovery Search Task Force to the University Librarian. Report recommends the 2 year purchase of the Serials Solutions Summon discovery product.
Although the Dunns’ learning styles and Gardner’s multiple intelligences theories are two distinct areas of research, they do not oppose each other and can be used together to improve learning. The design of this tutorial is an attempt to integrate students’ learning styles and their unique blend of intelligences in...
Oregon’s two marine laboratory libraries (located at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport and UO’s Oregon Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston) have collaborated for 17 years on collection development. We share the same research environments– the Northeast Pacific Ocean and the Oregon coast. While our researchers and students...
In 2005, Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries conducted a needs assessment to determine the best approach for connecting students with the wealth of information available to them through the library. The needs assessment revealed that undergraduates are assignment driven and focused on particular courses. To address these needs, OSU Libraries...
In September 2005 LAMP charged the Virtual College Library task force to begin work on the University Libraries Strategic Plan Goal 2 Strategy A-a. The VCL task force was charged to co-develop “with faculty ‘virtual college libraries’ to make targeted information easily available to students.” The VCL task force engaged...
Library a la Carte is software developed at Oregon State University that lets you build customized Web pages by choosing exactly what you want from a menu of choices. Jane Nichols, Oregon State University subject librarian, will demonstrate how to create course Web pages, assignment tip sheets and subject guides...
The Oregon State University Archives has a robust photograph collection, which is reflected in its hearty companion digital collection. These collections document the history of the university, as well as the agriculture and natural resources of the Pacific Northwest. While the physical and online collections are popular, we were interested...
Usability, user studies, and evaluating user experiences have been a part of academic libraries for many years. In the last 20 years libraries have created ad hoc usability teams to do user studies. Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries started its ongoing team in 2006, resulting in an increased focus on...
Diminishing access to seafood technology literature, both the published and the unpublished “gray” literature, is perceived, due to closures of labs and libraries, and loss of expertise by retirement and funding reductions.
Our response in 1998 was to initiate a project that would measure interest and need, while demonstrating a...
A poster presentation for the 2009 Annual American Library Conference.
In 2005 Oregon State University librarians set out on a quest to update their pathfinders. Through focus groups and surveys we found that students wanted course-driven guides as well as subject guides. The question then became, how can we enable...
On September 10, 2008, the Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries shut its doors for the annual In-Service Day event. Eighty employees from all three OSU libraries gathered at the Valley Library on the OSU main campus. Karyle Butcher, university librarian, strongly supports this annual event planned by library staff for...
ticTOCs, a new journal table of contents service, provides users a free resource for managing RSS feeds for new content from selected journals. This service could be used as a complement and in some cases as an alternative to other table of contents providers. Using RSS feeds provided by publishers,...
In July 2005, the Oregon State University Libraries began accepting electronic versions of student theses and dissertations into ScholarsArchive@OSU, the library’s institutional repository. By January 2007, all Oregon State University graduate students were required to deposit their final research. This paper compares past processes and workflows for print theses and...
The Internet enables global dissemination and
retrieval of information at any time, as a result, it has
a tremendous impact on how libraries provide
reference services to this new web-based clientele.
One impact is the increase in off-site library users
who make in-person reference interviews impossible.
To serve this new...
Fisheries scientists persistently create, communicate, and use information. In
fact, if they did not, there would be no fisheries science. To exist, science must be
part of a continuum where shared information, from casual hallway communications
to rigorously reviewed articles, documents the questions asked and
the solutions suggested. Relevant information...
Our oceans surround us, and we depend upon them for food, transportation, and recreation. They affect us daily as they shape our climate and rattle our world with unexpected events. Current headlines indicate that they are in flux and perhaps in trouble. Coral reefs are dying due to rising ocean...
Our culture has been shifting toward an expectation of self-service for over a decade. In banks, grocery stores, gas stations and airports, people are becoming accustomed to self-service. Libraries have also joined this larger trend by implementing ways to allow patrons to interact with services in a disintermediated manner if...
In this article, the authors share how they turned themselves from hesitant library blog readers into dedicated bloggers. The authors share how they started their blog named infodoodads and why they started writing it. The authors also share how blogging with partners is a great way to maintain a frequent...
This article describes a technique using the Thomson Reuters' Journal Citation Reports and the SHERPA RoMEO Web site to identify a set of core journals in a discipline and determine whether the journals' publishers allow preprint or postprint archiving in their copyright transfer agreements.
This article presents a case study of how Oregon State University Libraries (OSUL) organized to accomplish digitization activities. Digitization activities are broken down into 6 major categories: management, copyright, digital imaging, metadata, hardware/software/web design, and selection. The OSUL departments responsible for tasks within each of these sets of responsibilities are...
Since September 2006, the Oregon State University (OSU) Archives has concentrated on the preparation of collection-level finding aids for all new collections received by the Archives and for collections that have no descriptive information available online. This article presents a preliminary analysis of the results of this approach, demonstrates the...
Research Guides Remixed. Springshare's Libguides, Oregon State University's open source ICAP (Interactive Course Assignment Pages) and other systems are making it easier to create web-based research guides that appeal to the aesthetic sensibilities of our patrons and lead them to the scholarly resources they need. In this year's discussion group,...
This presentation, given at ALA 2008 in Anaheim, covers Czech history, the history of libraries and librarianship in the Czech Republic during the 20th century, cultural differences encountered while teaching library school students and librarians during two visits to the Czech Republic by the author in 2005 and 2007, and...
In addition to addressing the backlog of unprocessed and undescribed collections, repositories must address the arrangement and description of new collections and incoming accessions in a timely manner. This presentation was made in a session at the Northwest Archivists conference focussing on the application of the principles of minimal-level arrangement...
Estuaries are once again emerging as important ecosystems for scientific study. Consequently, knowledge of what research has been conducted helps us identify benchmarks and plan new projects. A comprehensive bibliography of published research, technical reports, local documents, and data sets is one means of recording this knowledge. Yaquina Bay, located...
This set of presentations was used in July-August, 2007, to train staff at Oregon State University in the application of the Library of Congress Classification system and related shelflisting practices. The presentations cover basic notation, cuttering, geographic cutters, special formats such as continuing resources, congresses, and biographies, and many other...
Librarians often lament the difficult nature of keeping up with new online tools and trends in the face of shrinking staff and increasing duties. When the writers of infodoodads began blogging in December 2006 they hoped to pool their collective intelligence and make keeping up a little bit easier. The...
Patrons are most open to library services when they have specific information needs. At Oregon State University Libraries, we addressed the information literacy needs graduate students have while writing their thesis, and as a result created a workshop focusing on the literature review process. This unique approach of providing instruction...
Oregon Explorer (www.oregonexplorer.info), a natural resources digital library developed by Oregon State University Libraries and the Institute for Natural Resources, was created for Oregon’s natural resource decision-makers to promote informed and streamlined public and private decision-making. Examples of projects and successes of the Oregon Explorer include a basin portal for...
Colleges and universities across the country are feeling pressure from accrediting agencies and others to measure just what it is their students learn. Librarians at Oregon State University saw this as an opportunity to being information literacy into a campus-wide conversation about what all OSU graduates should know. Working directly...
During the 27-month period of this project (July 1, 2005-September 30, 2007), the Northwest Digital Archives achieved significant growth in membership, in its finding aid database, and in usage of the database by researchers; conducted extensive testing of the finding aids database with a variety of researcher communities; continued dialogue...
Expectations for technology proficiency in counseling and counselor education have increased; nevertheless, very little information is available in the counseling literature which describes how to effectively evaluate online resources from a design and utility standpoint. This study provides a model for such assessments, employing an affordable small scale usability study...
This article details the development of the Library Instruction Wiki (http://instructionwiki.org): an effort to develop a web-based, knowledge sharing resource. Though some library instruction is specific to a given institution or class, much of what instruction librarians teach is similar. Library instructors have repeatedly expressed the desire to share resources,...
At Oregon State University (OSU), writing instructors and librarians collaboratively teach research writing and information literacy in first year composition courses (FYC). A four-week unit focuses on the connections between critical thinking, writing and learning, and information literacy. This paper describes the process of developing, implementing, and refining this collaborative...
Between 1907 and 1941, Portland architect John V. Bennes designed more than thirty five new buildings for Oregon State University and designed several other building additions and renovations. This presentation explores Bennes' OSU work as well as his archtectural designs in Portland, Baker City and other Oregon communities.
The ALCTS Technical Services Administrators of Medium-Sized Research Libraries Discussion Group discussed several topics within an overarching theme at the 2006 annual conference in New Orleans: “Threats to and Opportunities for Technical Services Departments”. Topics discussed within that general theme included: Future of the Catalog, Future of Cataloging as a...
Oregon State University’s recent response to the crisis in scholarly communications recognizes that teaching faculty must be involved in communicating an appropriate response to their faculty colleagues. As authors, editors, and peer reviewers, direct faculty action can encourage publishers to lower costs and can enhance the availability of research. The...
This report was presented to the Finance and Administration Committee of PICES at the 16th Annual Meeting on October 31, 2007. It will appear as part of the Committee's annual report in the 2007 PICES Annual Report. Elements of the report were presented at the 33rd IAMSLIC Annual Conference with...
Objective ‐ The authors describe a simple and effective tool for selecting digitization
projects from competing alternatives, providing decision makers with objective,
quantitative data.
Methods ‐ The paper adopts the value engineering methodology for the selection,
evaluation and ranking of digitization project proposals. Project selection steps are described. Selection criteria...
The Valley Library Reference Collection is under-utilized, occupies valuable physical space, and represents a significant investment in collection funds. As reference resources are available electronically, we have not effectively shaped our print or digital reference collection. The physical collection ages as we cancel reference continuations without replacing them with electronic...
Document represents a historical record of the electronic theses document mapping from OAI-PMH to MARC21XML for record loading into OCLC and the library's local ILS.
Since 2001, librarians at Oregon State University’s Valley Library have been working to build a “teaching library” supported by a clearly articulated instruction program. From the start, we believed that we needed to assess the “teaching library’s” impact, not only to determine the success or failure of our efforts but...
Reviews 5 multicultural poetry books for children and young adult that are appropriate for counselors working with culturally diverse young clients. Cultures addressed include Native American, Black American, Asian Pacific American and Hispanic American.
Program description: Do users want simpler access to "best sources" for subject research? Should libraries filter information by discipline, subject area or course? Should information be tailored to undergraduate level? This presentation will present findings from research on these and other questions.