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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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.