Many academic libraries have a strong commitment to open scholarship articulated in strategic planning goals, values statements and policy documents. These ideals exist next to a scholarly communication landscape dominated by corporate publishers, paywalls and licensing agreements that center subscriptions and title lists. Our organizational structures, reflected in our budgets...
The shift to open, and away from subscriptions, will require changes to many OSULP services, and OSULP’s reporting structure can be expected to evolve to accommodate such changes. This position paper recommends starting points for thinking about how OSULP could take on new roles and responsibilities that relate to the...
The Messenger magazine is published twice annually by Oregon State University Libraries and Press. This issue is devoted to the history of OSU Libraries and Press.
This thesis explores the potential applications for 3rd generation activity theory in writing studio spaces, using the Undergrad Research and Writing Studio at Oregon State University as a focal point. David R. Russell, Nedra Reynolds, and Deborah Brandt have all investigated systemic and communal elements in student writing processes, while...
Librarians support student success through partnership with academic success units such as writing centers. This roundtable explored a range of writing center-library models, some based in service design thinking. Discussants sought to highlight practices, such as studio pedagogy, that lead to sustainable, mutually beneficial outcomes for libraries and writing centers....
Librarians support student success in many ways such as partnerships with writing centers. When an opportunity arose to partner with our writing center to create a shared space in our library, we saw it as a great way to support student success. Called the Undergrad Research and Writing Studio, student...
Graduate students are critical stakeholders for academic libraries. As libraries continue to reinvent themselves to remain relevant, spaces, services, and instruction targeted specifically for the needs of the graduate student community are essential. Transforming Libraries to Serve Graduate Students is a practical atlas of how librarians around the world are...
Student success units, like Writing Centers, are logical partners for academic libraries. It is not uncommon to find tutoring or academic support services located in library Learning Commons spaces. At Oregon State University, we recently launched a Research and Writing Studio that takes these partnerships to the next level. This...
Most readers are familiar with (and indeed weary of) the long-running serials crisis: budgets have stagnated as the cost of serials for STEM disciplines continues to rise (Bosch & Henderson, 2016). These circumstances force libraries to cancel journals, affecting researchers’ instant access to articles. Nearly two decades ago, Mobley (1998)...
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...
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...
To help ensure that every library instructor engaged in teaching has the context they need to develop their skills, and to ensure that they can do so in a supportive, collaborative environment, the OSUL Teaching and Engagement Department (TED) has articulated a set of standards for OSUL library instructors. These...
Librarians listened and observed as undergraduate students tackled a typical research-based assignment using broad-based discovery tools, including Google Scholar, Web of Science and Summon. We will discuss what we learned about the research processes our users have developed, how they fit unfamiliar tools into those processes, how they carry early...
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...
At Oregon State University (OSU) Libraries, librarians are evaluating the decade-old information commons in the transition to a learning commons. Visits to commons spaces at libraries across the country provided perspective on this transition. This paper describes the development of the OSU Libraries Information Commons, identifies themes from our trips...
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...
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...
OSU has engaged in surveying entering first year students during the summer START sessions for seven years using the CIRP Freshman Survey. Understanding the experiences, expectations, and goals of first year students aids in planning and developing services that will better meet the needs of this ever-changing population of students....
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...