Many libraries offer workshops on research topics such as data management and information organization for graduate students and faculty. We recommend that library workshops focus on teaching skills rather than principles or theories, especially if the goal is to improve data management practices. At Oregon State University Libraries, we have...
Objective: Best practices such as the FAIR Principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) were developed to ensure that published datasets are reusable. While we employ best practices in the curation of datasets, we want to learn how domain experts view the reusability of datasets in our institutional repository, ScholarsArchive@OSU. Curation workflows...
Data Management Plans (DMPs) have been used in the last decade to encourage good data management practices among researchers. DMPs are widely used, preventive tools that encourage good data management practices. DMPs are traditionally used to manage data during the planning stage of the project, often required for grant proposals,...
Paper describes the formation of a Center for Digital Scholarship and Services at Oregon State University Libraries with a focus on how the library accomplished digital library and scholarly communication services. The paper describes the goals of the library in this area and the organizational and staffing changes that were...
Diversity literary awards and other sources were used to create a list of high-quality titles written by and about underrepresented groups. This list was used to assess the diversity and inclusiveness of the library collections of a land-grant university. Gaps in the collection and acquisition processes were identified and will...
Following trends in higher education that emphasize quantitative analytical approaches to assess educational outcomes, academic libraries are increasingly attempting to quantify their impacts on student learning and demonstrate their value to the university’s educational mission. By applying learning analytics techniques to library use and instructional data, libraries have especially focused...
Following trends in higher education that emphasize quantitative analytical approaches to learn about educational outcomes, academic libraries are increasingly attempting to quantify their impacts on student learning and demonstrate their value to the university’s educational mission. By applying learning analytics techniques to library use and instructional data, libraries have especially...
An essay reflecting on the collection of molecular models held in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, with particular mention made of specific models about which amusing or insightful anecdotes are known. Reference is made to Pauling's involvement in the development of CPK models; his use of models in...
A detailed biographical sketch of Ralph W. Spitzer (b. 1918), a graduate student of Linus Pauling's and promising academic who joined the Oregon State College chemistry department in 1946. Promoted to Assistant Professor in 1947, Spitzer was nonetheless fired from the OSC faculty in 1949 by President August L. Strand,...
Despite the clear negative impact of high textbook costs on students, limits including space, funding, and policies prevent many academic libraries from fully supporting textbook collections. Partnering with other campus units on textbook lending requires creative thinking but can provide students access to other services in addition to the books...
Users interested in customizing their Primo installation are required to configure specific settings, files, and code during the View setup process. A consequence of this is that unique customizations are not easily sharable between institutions. With the release of the new Primo User Interface, Ex Libris has enabled institutions to...
Digital repository managers rely on usage metrics such as the number of downloads to demonstrate research visibility and impacts of the repositories. Increasingly, they find that current tools such as spreadsheets and charts are ineffective for revealing important elements of usage, including reader locations, and for attracting the targeted audiences....
This article details the creation and development of the Oregon State University Queer Archives (OSQA) as the product of collaboration between an archivist and professor. The authors provide an overview of the history of OSQA, including theoretical foundations of queer archival methods; discuss community-based initiatives that have helped to build...
In the spring of 2015, I began the oral history project Latinos en Oregón to document the stories of Oregon’s Latino/a communities. As the curator and archivist of the Oregon Multicultural Archives (OMA) at the Oregon State University (OSU) Special Collec-tions and Archives Research Center, my job is to assist...
Oregon State University Libraries and Press has reorganized its circulation, reference and building management services into a new department, focusing directly on the experience of library users. The Library Experience and Access Department (LEAD) was designed to meet evolving needs with access to user-focused, proactive, and flexible services and spaces...
This article presents Oregon State University’s experience launching an innovative Open Textbook initiative in spring 2014. The partners, Open Oregon State and the Oregon State University Libraries and Press, aimed to reduce the cost of course materials for students while ensuring the content created was peer-reviewed and employed multimedia capabilities....
INTRODUCTION: Academic libraries have experimented with a variety of services to encourage article deposit to institutional repositories, with varying degrees of success. Universities now face the challenge of meeting federal agency public access requirements. Following the White House Office of Science Technology and Policy public access directive in 2013, Oregon...
When multicultural educators and archivists collaborate to design projects that engage students with multicultural history through archival research, students can learn in-depth research skills with primary source documents, creatively share their knowledge, and, on a broader level, engage with their local community history. The projects shared in this article serve...
Recent trends in librarianship point to themes of crafters, artisans, and makers in library spaces. The American Library Association's Center for the Future of Libraries includes the Maker Movement as one of its trends. Librarians can support these makers and entrepreneurs by thinking of libraries as a place to create...
As long-standing keepers of democracy and information stewardship, library professionals are a natural fit for advocating and promoting sustainability within their communities. From seed libraries to Occupy Wall Street libraries, their view of sustainability extends beyond environmental concerns to include community activism, economic development, and social equity. Empowering people, facilitating...
A nivel profesional los bibliotecarios han proclamado un responsabilidad ética que asegure acceso a la información a la población entera. Aún así existen muchas barreras para cumplir este cometido, entre ellos distintos niveles educativos y tecnológicos alrededor del planeta, costes a la hora de obtener información de investigación y concentración...
When we think of voices in the library, we have tended to think of them as disruptive, something to control and manage for the sake of the total library environment. The stereotype of the shushing librarian pervades public perception, creating expectations about the kinds of spaces libraries want to create....
Arts organizations can beautifully express a community's identity through music, dance, and theatre. Through their performances and outreach activities, performing arts organizations can engage audiences in transformative experiences. However, an arts organization is more than just "the performance." The behind-the-scenes of an arts organization provides its own unique narrative documenting...
Collaborations between tribal and nontribal organizations bring diverse communities together, often for the first time, to educate and learn, to address misinterpretations of the past, and to share cultural resources and knowledge. By examining data obtained through a nationally distributed survey, this research explores how successful partnerships between tribal and...
Sharing of research data has begun to gain traction in many areas of the sciences in the past few years because of changing expectations from the scientific community, funding agencies, and academic journals. National Science Foundation (NSF) requirements for a data management plan (DMP) went into effect in 2011, with...
This study explores how researchers choose a bibliographic management tool and what makes them continue using this tool. This exploratory, observational study combined a naturalistic work-practice method, interviews, and journal reflections to collect qualitative research data from researchers actively using a bibliographic management tool. The unified theory of acceptance and...
Open Educational Resources (OER) are increasingly used
in the higher education landscape as a solution for a variety of
copyright, publishing and cost-prohibiting issues. While OERs are
becoming more common, reports of usability tests that evaluate how
well learners can use them to accomplish their learning tasks have
lagged behind....
Like other academic libraries, Oregon State University Libraries (OSUL) diligently reaches out to a wide variety of campus groups as part of its mission to develop user-focused services that contribute to student success. Outreach to student groups focuses on equipping “students with tools and resources needed to succeed in and...
Much of the focus of digital collections has been and continues to be on rare and unique materials,
including monographs. A monograph may be made even rarer and more valuable by virtue of hand
written marginalia. Using technology to enhance scans of unique books and make previously
unreadable marginalia readable...
As mobile technologies continue to evolve, libraries seek sustainable ways to keep up with these changes and to best serve our users. Previous library mobile usability research has examined tasks users predict they might be likely to perform, but little is known about what users actually do on a mobile-optimized...
A panel of speakers from three universities explored their challenges and progress in building programs to support research data management, whether within the library system or with research offices or computing groups. Since 2012 Oregon State University has partnered with its research office and graduate school, helping students prepare data...
In this case study, a special collections librarian and a history instructor partner to develop a series of cumulative exercises teaching primary source literacy skills for a small history survey course. This sequence of lab sessions is implemented to improve student performance in the history survey and to test this...
Our institutions of record are facing a new digital knowledge management challenge: stakeholder communities are now expecting customized Web interfaces to institutional knowledge repositories, online environments where community members can contribute content and see themselves represented, as well as access archived resources. Digital curation can be used to address these...
PURPOSE – The purpose of this article is to provide a vision for how academic libraries can assume a more central role in a future where Open Access publishing has become the predominant model for disseminating scholarly research articles.
DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – The authors analyze existing trends related to Open Access...
Among the many issues associated with integrating e-books into library collections and services, the revision of existing workflows in cataloging units has received little attention. The experience designing new workflows for e-books at Oregon State University Libraries since 2008 is described in detail from the perspective of three different sources...
This has been a banner year for open access, and the momentum shows no sign of letting up. College and university faculties, and the granting agencies that fund a significant amount of their research, are increasingly embracing open access to ensure research findings across disciplines are freely accessible to the...
As someone who believes scholarly communication and information literacy will continue to be essential growth areas for academic libraries, I welcomed the recent appearance of Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment. This white paper, developed by an ACRL working group, advocates...
In August 2011, a cohort of 30 Oregon State University Libraries and Press librarians and staff received free e-readers (Kindle Keyboards, Nook Simple Touches, Kobo Touches, and Sony PRS-350 Reader Pocket Editions) to use and adopt as they wished. In return, they were asked to participate in a year-long study...
The article discusses effective methods for measuring the success of classroom instruction using original primary sources in special collections and archives and how to translate these effects to demonstrate learning impact that can be used in other assessment projects. The global economic crisis has reportedly pushed assessment activities in libraries...
This paper explores the use and creative application of library metaphors. Unfortunately, the facts aren’t always able to speak for themselves. Simply stating reference statistics, gate counts, and resource circulation numbers are not persuasive narratives in and of themselves. Voice and context needs to be given to these forms of...
Students today perform research in a disintermediated environment, which often allows them to struggle directly with the process of selecting research tools and choosing scholarly sources. The authors conducted a qualitative study with twenty students, using structured observations to determine the processes students use to select databases and choose sources...
The article discusses how to bring the educational benefits that come from analyzing and interpreting physical materials to a bigger class environment and whether these benefits are worth the costs. It notes the growth of literature on instruction in special collections environments and the creative instructional methods presented by its...
In response to the burgeoning practice of collaborative, networked, data-intensive research (known as eScience), university and research libraries are devoting significant consideration, effort and resources toward expanding their responsibilities to include research data services. The jargon that the librarianship community uses to discuss data-driven research is inconsistent and confusing, especially...
This article is a case study of a collaboration between the Oregon Multicultural Archives of Oregon State University, Portland State University Library's Special Collections, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), and the Northwest News Network to preserve and make accessible a recovered box of Oregon Chinese disinterment documents. By examining...
Libraries deploying the LibQUAL+™ survey can offer a lottery incentive and many do in the hope of increasing response rates. Other libraries may be prohibited from offering one because of Institutional Review Board restrictions, as is the case at [institution name]. We wanted to discover why libraries offer lottery incentives...
Librarians at Oregon State University undertook a teaching competency project to lay the
foundation for practices that improve teaching by adapting the core teaching proficiencies in the
ACRL Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators. This article
describes one model for locally adapting those proficiencies, the Oregon State University...
An overview of the 2012 Oregon Tribal Archives Institute published in the Society of American Archivist's newsletter "Archival Outlook" as part of the Jan/Feb 2013 issue, pages 8-9 and 26.
New unified discovery tools are designed to help students easily identify and retrieve library content. Students want quick and easy discovery of quality sources in a “Google-like” environment. Librarians have often expressed frustration with federated and metasearch systems that cannot take full advantage of discipline specific database features. As new...
Web-scale discovery systems, such as Serial Solutions’ Summon™ Service, are replacing older federated search technologies as the tool for users to access library resources quickly and easily. The impact of Web-scale discovery systems on instruction is not known. This study of instruction librarian perceptions of Summon’s impact on instruction and...