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...
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...
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...
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...
The Oregon Spatial Data Library (http://spatialdata.oregonexplorer.info/) provides easy and convenient ways to find, access, and share geospatial data. Developed in partnership with the Oregon Department of Administrative Services (DAS), the Oregon Spatial Data Library provides access to spatial data including "framework" data for the State of Oregon. Framework datasets serve...
Undergraduate students are expected to find, evaluate and use peer-reviewed or scholarly literature, but they rarely learn about the process of creating new knowledge or the roles the literature plays in the work of scholars. A desired outcome of undergraduate education is the understanding that knowledge is created, evolving and...
Some academic libraries no longer assign subject headings to bibliographic records for dissertations, but have not evaluated the impact this might have on dissertation usage. In this study, bibliographic and circulation records for a sample of 248 academic dissertations were examined to determine the effect of controlled subject headings in...
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...
Focus group methodology was used to investigate graduate students' cross-campus technology, space and service needs. Although the library provides valued services and spaces, graduate students need enhanced and more equitable support for their roles as teachers and scholars. Librarians can provide leadership and act as advocates for graduate student needs...
The value proposition of academic library consortia often focuses on the
benefits a member library expects to receive in return for its paid membership in a
consortium. This article takes a look at the literature of library and information science
as well as the websites of 45 academic library consortia...
Objective – This study investigated the image-seeking preferences of university freshmen to gain a better understanding of how they search for pictures for assignments.
Methods – A survey was emailed to a random sample of 1,000 freshmen enrolled at Oregon State University in the fall of 2009. A total of...
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...
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...
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...
Faculty and librarians agree on the qualities of a good research question. However, in an exploratory study, they differed on when students should develop their research question. While librarians stated that students should develop their question early, first-year writing faculty advocated for delaying the development of the research question. The...
Collaborative planning to streamline as well as to provide citizens with easier access to geospatial data has a long history in Oregon. A milestone in this process was the launch of the Oregon Spatial Data Library (OSDL) in November 2009. The Oregon Spatial Data Library is a joint effort between...
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...
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...
Public outreach and access are becoming more and more important across institutions of higher education. Sustainable information technology approaches are necessary to communicate and preserve public education materials generated as part of this new era of “outreach and engagement.” This paper describes the partnership between Oregon State University’s Extension Service...
Purpose – This paper aims to describe a project conducted by the University of Oklahoma Libraries
to create a digital collection consisting of three-dimensional scientific objects.
Design/methodology/approach – The University of Oklahoma Libraries developed the following
methodology for creating a digital collection of three-dimensional objects. Digital still photographs of
six...
The Oregon Multicultural Archives (OMA) at Oregon State University (OSU) is dedicated to preserving and making accessible the histories of traditionally under-represented groups. OMA curator Natalia Fernández and Tiah Edmunson-Morton, the OSU Libraries’ Instruction and Outreach Archivist, highlight three OMA collections that reflect the impact women of color have had...
Academic and public libraries have begun to purchase e-book readers and make them available for check-out to their users. The nature of the e-books on these devices necessitates new approaches to workflow for acquisitions and cataloging departments. In addition, the application of cataloging rules and conventions presents a number of...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Report on an investigation carried out under Contract Nonr-2771 (04), Project NR 388-062, between the University of Oregon and the Office of Naval Research, U.S. Department of the Navy.
Final project report to U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station and Missoula Equipment Development Center, under cooperative agreement number 228.