Digital Commons Network^™

The Vermont Digital Newspaper Project And The National Digital Newspaper Program: Cooperative Efforts In Long-Term Digital Newspaper Access And Preservation, Tom Mcmurdo, Birdie Maclennan

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The Vermont Digital Newspaper Project (VTDNP) is a state partner in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Developed by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), the NDNP is a long-term, national effort to build a freely accessible, searchable Internet database of historical US newspapers. NEH provides funding to state projects to select and digitize historic newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. LC provides the technical support and framework for preservation digitization. Digitized newspapers are archived by LC and made freely available through the website Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Vermont joined the NDNP …

A Fresh Look At Privacy--Why Does It Matter, Who Cares, And What Should Librarians Do About It?, Trina J. Magi

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Provides a brief introduction to several reasons privacy is important to people and society, cites numerous studies reporting on people's attitudes about privacy, and recommends ways librarians can work to protect patron privacy.

What Students Need From Reference Librarians: Exploring The Complexity Of The Individual Consultation, Trina J. Magi, Patricia E. Mardeusz

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The article reports on an exploratory study that identified the skills used by reference librarians during individual research consultations with undergraduate and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines. The skills fell into eight categories. As expected, librarians needed knowledge about information sources and their effective use, but the project revealed that consultations often involve higher-order skills, as well, such as knowing how to approach and organize the research endeavor, shaping a topic appropriate for the scope of a project, making connections among various pieces of information and applying them to the problem at hand, and identifying alternative research …

Mapping The Literature Of Radiation Therapy, Frances A. Delwiche

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Objective:

This study characterizes the literature of the radiation therapy profession, identifies the journals most frequently cited by authors writing in this discipline, and determines the level of coverage of these journals by major bibliographic indexes.

Method:

Cited references from three discipline-specific source journals were analyzed according to the Mapping the Literature of Allied Health Project Protocol of the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section of the Medical Library Association. Bradford’s Law of Scattering was applied to all journal references to identify the most frequently cited journal titles.

Results:

Journal references constituted 77.8% of the total, with books, government …

Aligning Library Instruction With The Needs Of Basic Sciences Graduate Students: A Case Study, Donna O'Malley, Frances A. Delwiche

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Question: How can an existing library instruction program be reconfigured to reach basic sciences graduate students and other patrons missed by curriculum-based instruction?
Setting: The setting is an academic health sciences library that serves both the university and its affiliated teaching hospital.
Methods: The existing program was redesigned to incorporate a series of seven workshops that encompassed the range of information literacy skills that graduate students in the basic sciences need. In developing the new model, the teaching librarians made changes in pedagogy, technology, marketing, and assessment strategies.
Results: Total attendance at the sessions increased substantially in the first 2 …

Rethinking Information Literacy In A Globalized World, Laurie Kutner, Alison Armstrong

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

As a profession, librarians have an important and unique role to play in higher education in producing information literate students equipped to be successful in a complex, twenty-first century global society. It is our contention that our guiding professional information literacy definitions and standards need to be reconsidered in order to remain relevant within the global learning context. Our preliminary conclusion is that the predominantly skills-based approach facilitated by the current ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, is not sufficient to facilitate teaching of twenty-first century “deep information literacy,” which we feel encompasses additional content-based engagement with the …

Promoting Food Security: The Community Food Security Coalition, Elizabeth A. Berman

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This article discusses community food security as a socio-economic issue, and highlights the Community Food Security Coalition (http://www.foodsecurity.org/), a non-profit organization that is “dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times."

Fourteen Reasons Privacy Matters: A Multidiscipinary Review Of Scholarly Literature, Trina J. Magi

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Librarians have long recognized the importance of privacy to intellectual freedom. As digital technology and its applications advance, however, efforts to protect privacy may become increasingly difficult. With some users behaving in ways that suggest they do not care about privacy and with powerful voices claiming that privacy is dead, librarians may question whether privacy is worth protecting. This article reviews some of the extensive scholarly literature on privacy from disciplines outside the field of library science, including anthropology, law, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology, and it identifies fourteen reasons privacy matters to individuals, relationships, and to society. It …

The Personal Librarian Program At The University Of Richmond: An Interview With Lucretia Mcculley, Lucretia Mcculley, Cy Dillon

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

In the fall of 2010, two well-known liberal arts institutions, Drexel University in Philadelphia and Wesleyan University of Middletown, Connecticut, began programs that provided “personal librarians” for incoming freshmen. This apparently new idea received some notice in higher education news feeds, and was even featured in Library Journal’s Newsletter.

Academic librarians are always inquisitive, of course, and a national discussion about the history of such programs began quickly in a variety of listservs. Within a few days it was revealed that the concept was far from new, and that the first successful version was still flourishing at the University of …

The Nyu Survey Service: Promoting Value In Undergraduate Education, Samantha Guss, David M. Mcgarry, Jason B. Phillips

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

New York University's Data Service Studio has recently launched the NYU Survey Service, whose ultimate aim is to support the development and administration of surveys of all types. For the web-based component, we utilize a product called Qualtrics, which allows university affiliates to develop and administer web-based surveys. This article describes the process by which we at NYU came to offer the service during a time when concerns abound about the ability of libraries to support and expand services while still meeting service imperatives such as robust data services. While many considerations went into this evaluation and the ultimate conclusion …

Digital Curation Education In Practice: Catching Up With Two Former Fellows, Samantha Guss, Lisa Gregory

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

From 2008-2010, as part of the grant: ‘DigCCurr I: Preserving Access to Our Digital Future: Building an International Digital Curation Curriculum’ (DigCCurr I) funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a number of fellows at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) were comprehensively trained by library and archive professionals in digital curation theory and practice. This paper examines the curriculum skill areas matrix of the DigCCurr I program from the perspective of two former fellows, now employed in professional positions that utilize digital curation principles. Each …

Creating A Community Food System: The Intervale Center (Http://Www.Intervale.Org), Elizabeth A. Berman

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Implementing The Information Prescription Protocol In A Family Medicine Practice: A Case Study., Marianne Burke, Anna Peggy Carey, Laura L. Haines, Alan P. Lampson, Fred C. Pond

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

QUESTION:

Can an information prescription protocol be successfully integrated into a family medicine practice seeking to enhance patient education and self-management?

SETTING:

Milton Family Practice, an outpatient clinic and resident teaching site of the University of Vermont and Fletcher Allen Health Care, is located in a semirural area fifteen miles from main campus.

OBJECTIVES:

The objectives were to increase physicians' knowledge and use of information prescriptions, sustain integration of information prescription use, and increase physicians' ability to provide patient education information.

METHODS:

Methods used were promotion of the National Library of Medicine's Information Rx, physician instruction, installation of patient and …

A Content Analysis Of Library Vendor Privacy Policies: Do They Meet Our Standards?, Trina J. Magi

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Librarians have a long history of protecting user privacy, but they have done seemingly little to understand or influence the privacy policies of library resource vendors that increasingly collect user information through Web 2.0-style personalization features. After citing evidence that college students value privacy, this study used content analysis to determine the degree to which the privacy policies of 27 major vendors meet standards articulated by the library profession and information technology industry. While most vendors have privacy policies, the policy provisions fall short on many library profession standards and show little support for the library Code of Ethics.

Information-Seeking Behavior Of Basic Science Researchers: Implications For Library Services, Laura L. Haines, Jeanene Light, Donna O'Malley, Frances A. Delwiche

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Objectives: This study examined the information-seeking behaviors of basic science researchers to inform the development of customized library services.

Methods: A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was conducted on a sample of basic science researchers employed at a university medical school.

Results: The basic science researchers used a variety of information resources ranging from popular Internet search engines to highly technical databases. They generally relied on basic keyword searching, using the simplest interface of a database or search engine. They were highly collegial, interacting primarily with coworkers in their laboratories and colleagues employed at other institutions. They made little use …

Information Use In History Research: A Citation Analysis Of Master's Level Theses, Graham Sherriff

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This article addresses the need for quantitative investigation into students' use of information resources in historical research. It reports the results of a citation analysis of more than 3,000 citations from master's level history theses submitted between 1998 and 2008 at a mid-sized public university. The study's results support the hypotheses that the predominant format in history research is the monograph and that history research entails use of older resources, and in greater proportions, than other disciplines. Results also support the conclusions that journal usage is comparatively low and that there is a high degree of citation dispersal across journal …

Knowledge-Based Information In Vermont Hospitals: A Survey Of Library And Information Services In 2010, Marianne Burke, Anne Exler

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Introduction: This report contains the results of a 2010 survey of Vermont hospitals. The purpose of the survey was to provide a snapshot of the health sciences information services currently available to health care providers through Vermont hospitals. We proposed to determine the status of Vermont hospital libraries and the extent of medical information resources (knowledge-based information) available to health care professionals through the hospitals.

Adapting A Learning 2.0 Program, Donna O'Malley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

A presentation on a pilot technology training program at the Dana Medical Library

Youtube: Are We Really Using It Effectively?, Laura Haines, Selene Colburn

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This poster describes a study into library uses of youtube. This study uses a methodology adapted from a number of related studies in the field of medicine[2] to locate library-related content on YouTube. The study sorted library-generated content into sub-categories such as general promotion, orientation/tour, or instruction/tutorial, and assessed the effectiveness of the videos using a number of metrics.

Think Locally, Act Globally: Understanding Home Institution Library Engagement Among Study-Abroad Students, Laurie Kutner

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This study focuses on developing an understanding of U.S. study-abroad students’ knowledge and confidence levels in using their home institution libraries from abroad. Data from a questionnaire survey administered to students at the time of active engagement in ten different study-abroad programs in Costa Rica are presented; the data reveal relative uncertainty by the students about the possibilities of interfacing with their home institution libraries while abroad. Further consideration of this distinct user group is warranted, and the article includes data-driven recommendations for better serving our study-abroad students.

A Medline Station In The Clerkship Clinical Skills Exam, Donna O'Malley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The UVM College of Medicine's clerkship curriculum includes hundreds of learning objectives divided into several themes and topics. Two objectives in the areas of communication and clinical decision-making encompass the classic EBM skills: PERFORM database searches for patient or disease specific information. DIFFERENTIATE between practices that are based upon different strengths of evidence for effectiveness. What are the benefits and drawbacks of using a clinical skills exam workstation to evaluate student mastery of these two objectives? Librarians and clinicians worked together to create a paper case scenario for students to use in generating a clinical question, performing a search to …

Information Rx As Patient-Physician Communication Tool And Community Health Information Program, Marianne Burke, Peggy Carey, Fred Pond, Laura Haines, Alan Lampson

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Patient education, communication and empowerment are critical aspects of management of chronic conditions. Patient involvement and education is encouraged as part of patient safety goals, but, physicians have little time for discussion and a handout collection for all conditions is hard to maintain. On the other hand, Americans of all ages, genders, and groups are seeking and finding health information on the Internet. Though effective for many, problems include ineffective searching, unreliable sources, and prevalence of commercial interests. The Information Prescription Program (Information Rx) developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the American College of Physicians (ACP) Foundation …

Benefits Of Integrating The Library Reserve Function With Blackboard, Donna O'Malley, Tina Kussey

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

When the University of Vermont College of Medicine moved their curriculum to the Blackboard Course Management System, no provisions were made to integrate electronic reserve materials with Blackboard. Knowing intuitively that students wanted to have access to everything they use from a single page, and not have to travel to different university web sites to accomplish different tasks, College of Medicine faculty found a variety of ways to link from Blackboard to documents that they wanted students to read, resulting in declining use of the Library's Reserve function. The UVM Dana Medical Library reexamined the role of the library in …

Report Of Staff Development Training & Consulting At Medical Library Of Muhimbili University Of Health & Allied Sciences (Muhas), Paul Philbin, Fred C. Pond

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Taking The Best Of Both Worlds: Success And Challenges With The Hybrid Model Of Library Instruction, Lucretia Mcculley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The University of Richmond (UR) is an independent, privately endowed institution, with a total student body of around 5,000 students. Undergraduate and graduate degrees are offered in the liberal arts, business, law, and leadership studies. Library instruction has been an integral part of the university libraries program since the 1970s, initiated by a five-year grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities College Library Program and the Council on Library Resources. During the past thirty years, the program has continued to grow and reinvent itself. Overall, the instructional services program can be described as a "hybrid library instruction model," emphasizing …

A Study Of Us Library Directors' Confidence And Practice Regarding Patron Confidentiality, Trina J. Magi

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This article reports the results of a paper survey mailed to all 213 directors of public and academic libraries in Vermont. The purpose of the study, which yielded a 71 percent response rate, was to learn how many libraries take specific measures to protect patron confidentiality other than having a written policy, to measure library directors' confidence in their own ability and that of their workers to follow confidentiality policies, and to learn what types of support directors need to better protect confidentiality.

The Library And Its Place In Cultural Memory: The Grande Bibliothèque Du Québec In The Construction Of Social And Cultural Identity, Birdie Maclennan

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The province of Québec, the sole province in Canada where the citizens are a French-language majority, is also the only province with its own national library. The Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and other significant libraries around the world collect and preserve memory in ways that create a context for cultural recall. The first part of this article traces the heated debates that took place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries over the creation of a public or municipal library in Montréal. The second part traces the events leading to the development of the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec and …

Drinking Milk With Republicans: Lessons Learned While Building A Center For Digital Initiatives, Winona Salesky, Chris Burns

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Managing Digital Resources, Or, How Do You Hold Electrons In Your Hand?, Anna L. Creech

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

In the 1995 publication New Automation Technology for Acquisitions and Collection Development, Nancy Markle Stanley wrote a chapter entitled "Purchasing Electronic Resources: an Acquisitions Perspective"¹ in which she outlines the challenges of managing electronic resources. I had to chuckle a bit when l read the book, because at the time of its publication, my undergraduate library was in the process of finally automating their catalog. The evolution of electronic resources in libraries has all of the characteristics of technological innovation. There are libraries with the funding and vision to be early adopters, and there are libraries on the tail …

Connecting With Aim: The Search For A Virtual Reference Niche, Lucretia Mcculley, Olivia Reinauer

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Launching virtual chat reference services at Boatwright Library at the University of Richmond has been an interesting challenge of “trial and error” over the years. After trying several different software programs and staffing options, librarians have finally found a niche with AOL’s Instant Messenger service. The first section of the article describes a path of experimentation, including early collaborations with the computing services help desk, staffing patterns within the library, technical and financial challenges with virtual reference software, and attempts to get students to use reference chat services. The second half of the case study will describe the great success …