Digital Commons Network^™

Information-Seeking Behavior Of Novelists In Archives, Cary G. Osborne

Journal of Western Archives

Archives are a frequently untapped resource for novelists. Accounts of daily life, the lives of individuals, details of specific eras, and other minutiae found in the documents and memorabilia housed in archives can be used to fill out the essential scenes and events of the stories. Such facts and personal details help fiction writers make their stories real to readers and keep misconceptions and factual errors out. This study looks at the limited literature on the subject of authors in archives and presents examples of the types of information housed in particular archives to illustrate the kinds of details that …

Recapturing The Essence Of The Past: Integrating The University Press Into The Library, Richard W. Clement

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

The original role of a press in a research university was to publish and disseminate the research and scholarship of the faculty. The university was willing to undertake a significant level of subsidy because the press was seen as fulfilling a central part of the mission of a research university. In the second half of the twentieth century, many faculty began to be concerned that to publish with one’s own university’s press might be considered a conflict of interest. An unforeseen consequence of this was that a university press was no longer seen as fulfilling a university’s specific mission to …

The Arizona Summit: Tough Times In A Tough Land, Linda A. Whitaker, Melanie I. Sturgeon

Journal of Western Archives

Western repositories have much to gain and little to lose from statewide initiatives that promote cooperative collection management policies. The region's topography, demographics, boom-bust cycles, and flood of new residents threaten their missions and their very existence. Add competition, backlogs, duplication, and fragmented collections to this volatile mix and it renders the collecting environment untenable.

From The Pacific Northwest To The Global Information Society: The Changing Nature Of Archival Education, Randall C. Jimerson

Journal of Western Archives

This essay examines the development of archival education in the United States during the past forty years, in context of the increasingly globalized archival profession of the early twenty-first century. In doing so, it presents a case study of one of the first West Coast archival education programs and its development from a regional program to an international one.

Piloting Purchase On Demand: Collection Development Through Interlibrary Loan, Carol Kochan, Jennifer Duncan, Britt A. Fagerheim

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

This presentation addresses Utah State University’s (USU) philosophy of patron driven acquisition and collection building, the development and workflow of our pilot interlibrary loan purchase on demand policy, and our assessment of the program through spring 2010.

Tilting At Windmills: Reflections On The Establishment Of The Journal Of Western Archives, J. Gordon Daines Iii

Journal of Western Archives

This article discusses how associations form professional identities and reflects on the establishment of the Journal of Western Archives. It highlights the ways in which the establishment of the journal is a manifestation of the development of a Western regional archival identity and underscores the role that individuals play in the creation of associational identities.

Mountain West Digital Library Dublin Core Application Profile, Utah Academic Library Consortium. Digitization Committee. Metadata Task Force, Cheryl D. Walters

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

This Dublin Core application profile supersedes the Metadata Guidelines for the Mountain West Digital Library (2006). It is intended to guide the creation of new metadata (i.e., created after June 1, 2010) by members and contributing partners of the MWDL. The Mountain West Digital Library (MWDL) provides a portal (http://mwdl.org) to digital resources in universities, colleges, public libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, government agencies, and other entities in Utah, Nevada, and other parts of the U.S. West.

Cheryl Walters served as Chair of the Metadata Task Force that wrote this profile.

A Happy Employee Is A Productive Employee, Erin Davis

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

This presentation was given during the 2010 annual American Library Association conference in Washington, DC. It summarizes the different activities planned by a Staff Development Committee in an academic library.

Oral History Workshop, Randy Williams

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

No abstract provided.

Resource Discoverability, Anne Diekema, Cheryl Walters, Liz Woolcott

Liz Woolcott

Resource discoverability is the crossroads where library resources and users should come together, but do they? Librarians “catalog”resources by describing, indexing, and organizing them. Then they make these resources available -- on library shelves, in databases, and on the web. The Internet, however, is changing how people find and use information. Users increasingly are discovering relevant resources outside traditional library systems and expect immediate access to resources at the point of discovery. These changes are challenging traditional thinking on how we should “catalog” and provide access to resources. This panel intends to engage the audience in a lively discussion on …

Making Cents Of Cataloging: Are We Getting What We Are Paying For?, Becky Skeen, Julie Grover, Liz Woolcott

Becky Skeen

Presentation given at the 2010 Utah Library Association annual conference about cataloging costs. Discussion focused on patron needs, workflow, training, and how to do more with less to make the process more efficient.

Making Cents Of Cataloging: Are We Getting What We Are Paying For?, Becky Skeen, Julie Grover, Liz Woolcott

Liz Woolcott

Presentation given at the 2010 Utah Library Association annual conference about cataloging costs. Discussion focused on patron needs, workflow, training, and how to do more with less to make the process more efficient.

Tools For Using And Organizing Online Resources To Enhance Reference And Instruction, Anne R. Diekama, Sheri Haderlie, Heather Leary, Cheryl D. Walters

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Presentation at the 2010 Utah Library Association annual conference. This presentation addressed different tools that can be used to incorporate technology and online resources into teaching and instruction.

Making Cents Of Cataloging: Are We Getting What We Are Paying For?, Becky Skeen, Julie Grover, Liz Woolcott

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Presentation given at the 2010 Utah Library Association annual conference about cataloging costs. Discussion focused on patron needs, workflow, training, and how to do more with less to make the process more efficient.

Reference Desk Consultation Assignment: An Exploratory Study Of Students' Perceptions Of Reference Service, Pamela N. Martin, Lezlie Park

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

This paper describes the experience of three sophomore English composition classes that were required to visit the reference desk for class credit. Student perceptions of reference consultations are analyzed to gain a clearer understanding of the students’ attitudes towards reference services. Findings of this exploratory study indicate that students still suffer from library anxiety and are much more likely to seek out reference help if they are convinced that a consultation will save them time.

Marginalia No. 27, Merrill-Cazier Library

Marginalia

Dean Clement’s Letter: “the library remains an upbeat place”

2009 Winners: Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture awards

"Outcasts United" 2010 common literature experience … Randy Williams

A Genesis … Exhibition of John Ciardi’s poems & Gabor Peterdi etchings. Notes by Rose Milovich.

Research week 2010 … an Exhibit of recent USU faculty publications ... Jennifer Duncan

With Help from our Friends … Brad Cole on recent acquisitions – A Diet & Health book collection & John Suiter’s photographic archives.

Welcome New Merrill-Cazier Librarians: Kacy Lundstrom and Angela Dresselhaus.

The Library by the Numbers: An Annual Statistical Snapshot of the …

Reference Desk Consultation Assignment: An Exploratory Study Of Students' Perceptions Of Reference Service, Pamela N. Martin, Lezlie Park

Pamela N. Martin

This paper describes the experience of three sophomore English composition classes that were required to visit the reference desk for class credit. Student perceptions of reference consultations are analyzed to gain a clearer understanding of the students’ attitudes towards reference services. Findings of this exploratory study indicate that students still suffer from library anxiety and are much more likely to seek out reference help if they are convinced that a consultation will save them time.

Scribal Practice In The Beowulf Manuscript, Richard W. Clement

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

There was a time, not too long ago, when we thought we knew a great deal more about Beowulf than we do now. We knew that the poem, originally a work of oral composition, had first been written down in the seventh century and had been copied repeatedly until the final copy (our extant manuscript: British Library, Cotton, Vitellius, A.XV, ff. 94-209) was made sometime around 1000 AD. That particular manuscript, now known as the Nowell Codex, was the product of a single scriptorium, the work of two scribes, who included Beowulf in a single multi-text volume which emphasized monsters. …

Your Second Selves: Avatar Designs And Identity Play, Y. B. Kafai, Deborah A. Fields, M. S. Cook

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Avatars in online games and worlds are seen as players’ key representations in interactions with each other. In this article, we investigate the avatar design and identity play within a large-scale tween virtual world called Whyville.net, with more than 1.5 million registered players of ages 816. One unique feature of Whyville is the players’ ability to customize their avatars with various face parts and accessories, all designed and sold by other players in Whyville. Our findings report on the expressive resources available for avatar construction, individual tween players’ choices and rationales in creating their avatars, and online postings about avatar …

Stealing From Grandma Or Generating Knowledge? Constestations And Effects Of Cheating In Whyville, Deborah A. Fields, Y. B. Kafai

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Much research has described the various practices needed of gaining access and participation in multi-user game communities. Cheat sites are a continuation of game communities where players engage in knowledge building about game related challenges. In this paper we analyze the cheat sites created by players for a tween virtual world called Whyville.net, which encourages youth to participate in a range of social activities and play casual science games. Through analysis we created typologies for both the cheats and sites related to science content. Further, a case study of an exemplary cheat site elaborates on how some player generated sites …

Linking Opencoursewares And Open Education Resources: Creating An Effective Search And Recommendation System, Brett E. Shelton, J. Duffin, Y. Wang, J. Ball

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

With a growing number of digital libraries and other open education repositories being made available throughout the world, effective search and retrieval tools are necessary to access the desired materials that surpass the effectiveness of traditional, all inclusive search engines. This paper discusses the design and use of Folksemantic, a platform that integrates OpenCourseWare search, Open Educational Resource recommendations, and social network functionality into a single open source project. The paper describes how the system was originally envisioned, its goals for users, and data that provides insight into how it is actually being used. Data sources include website click-through data, …

Knowing And Throwing Mudballs, Hearts, Pies, And Flowers: A Connective Ethnography Of Gaming Practices, Deborah A. Fields, Y. B. Kafai

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Little is known concerning how young players learn to participate in various activities in virtual worlds. We use a new integrative approach called connective ethnography that focuses on how a gaming practice spread across a network of youth at an after school club that simultaneously participated in a virtual world, Whyville.net. To trace youth participation in online and offline social contexts, we draw on multiple sources of information: observations, interviews, videos, online tracking and chat data, and hundreds of hours of play in Whyville ourselves. One gaming practice – the throwing of projectiles and its social uses and nuances – …

Adaptations And Continuities In The Use And Design Of Visual Representations In Us Middle School Science Textbooks, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Visual representations are ubiquitous in modern‐day science textbooks and have in recent years become an object of criticism and scrutiny. This article examines the extent to which changes in representations in textbooks published in the USA over the past six decades have invited those critiques. Drawing from a correlational analysis of a corpus of 34 US middle school physical science textbooks, continuities are established with respect to the purposes that most textbook images serve and the numbers of schematic representations that are used. Changes are observed in the overall total number of representations in textbooks and in the proportion of …

"Blacks Deserve Bodies Too!" Design And Discussion About Diversity And Race In A Tween Virtual World, Y. B. Kafai, M. S. Cook, Deborah A. Fields

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In this paper, we investigate racial diversity in avatar design and public discussions about race within a large-scale tween virtual world called Whyville.net, with more than 1.5 million registered players of ages 8—16. One unique feature of Whyville is the player’s ability to customize their avatars with various face parts and accessories, all designed and sold by other players in Whyville. Our findings report on the racial diversity of available resources for avatar construction and online postings about the role of race in avatar design and social interactions in the community. With the growing interest in player-generated content for online …

Marginalia No. 28, Merrill-Cazier Library

Marginalia

No abstract provided.

Digital Commons Annual Report: Year Two 2009-2010, Heather Leary

Digital Commons Reports

This report shows the progress for Utah State University's Digital Commons repository during it's second year, from Noveber 1, 2009 through October 31, 2010.