Digital Commons Network^™

Your Key(Tag) To Success: A Creative And Customizable Method To Promote Research Guides, Martha Roseberry, Bettina Peacemaker

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

The research guide is one of the most common tools librarians use to communicate with and instruct their audiences. Despite their prevalence and the general consensus that they are useful, research guides remain underutilized. The literature offers many examples of efforts encouraging guide use but little work exists measuring the effectiveness of that promotion.

The VCU Libraries Academic Outreach department promote their guides through inexpensive and small keytags­­ similar to retail customer loyalty keychain tags. The objective of this research is to measure the effectiveness of this approach, using both quantitative and qualitative evidence.

Each tag has a URL printed …

Updating Alma Records With The Worldshare Marc Update Service, Barbara Anderson

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

When the OCLC Bibliographic Notification service was re-incarnated as the WorldShare Collection Manager MARC Update Service, VCU Libraries was eager to sign on. We wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to update our Alma Institution Zone records automatically with RDA fields, FAST subject headings, added content notes, etc. We have created special Alma import profiles, normalization and merge rules to process our MARC Update files, frequently updating several thousand records each work day

Collaborating To Improve Collaboration: Informationist Team Support For An Interdisciplinary Research Group., Margaret E. Henderson, Julie Arendt, Martha Roseberry, John Cyrus, Karen Gau

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

The Primary Investigators and Informationist Team were awarded a National Library of Medicine Informationist Award in 2014. The Informationist Team hopes to show that this model, utilizing the skills of multiple librarians, is a viable way to support the increasing number of interdisciplinary and interprofessional research groups at the university who need help from embedded librarians. By working as a group, the Informationist Team is able to help in many new roles.

A Tale Of Two Digital Projects: Open Source Tools For Awesome User Engagement, Lauren Work

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

What do public media and Flickr have in common with Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries? Both provided the means for VCU to build upon open source tools and create new ways for users to engage with our digital collections.

This snapshot session will discuss the use of NPR's Quotable tool in partnership with the Richmond community featured in an oral history project, and will also showcase how the CONTENTdm to Flickr uploader tool built by VCU's web team was used to further user engagement with a unique digital atlas project.

Constructing The 1889 Baist Atlas Of Richmond, Va: Building Blocks For Digital Projects, Lauren Work

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

The beautiful end product of a digital cultural heritage project is a wonderful thing. But building collaborative digital projects is challenging. VCU Libraries created an interactive 1889 atlas with ideas both old and new about use, access, engagement and collaboration.

Poster Description

The focus of this poster is two-fold. First, the collaborative effort to repair, digitize, preserve, plan and create an interactive website and digital representation of the 1889 Baist Atlas of Richmond will be documented. http://labs.library.vcu.edu/baist-atlas/

Second, the details of the iterative process and various approaches related to feedback, design, outreach, use, access and assessment portions of launching and …

Do Health Sciences Libraries And Librarians Have An Impact On The Cost Of Health Care And Research? A Systematic Review, Margaret E. Henderson, Janet A. Crum, Kathy J. Fatkin, Marie-Marthe Gagnon, Tony Nguyen, Madeleine Taylor, Mark Vrabel

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Objectives: The team worked on a systematic review to answer the question: Do health sciences libraries and librarians have any measurable (statistically significant) positive impacts on consumer health, the outcomes of medical care, the productivity of biomedical researchers, and the knowledge obtained by graduates of biomedical and health sciences training programs, and at what total cost?

Methods: The team used a Google site to collaborate on the review. A spreadsheet was used to brainstorm keywords and list suggestions for subject headings. Databases searched included: PubMed/MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, LISTA, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. The team searched grey literature and …

Show Me The Data: Analyzing Item Level Metrics From Contentdm Reports To Aid Digital Collection Assessment, Lauren Work

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries recently launched several initiatives to increase the accessibility and enable greater discovery of our digital collections. Like many other organizations, we are interested in creating a standardized assessment approach to determine how these initiatives may help grow the impact of our digital collections, as well as demonstrating their overall value and use.

CONTENTdm reports are part of that standardized assessment. This session will provide an overview of how we are using Excel to quickly import, identify, track and report trends derived from CONTENTdm reports at the item level. This working approach has been used for small …

Cataloging University Research Resources To Create Dmptool Templates And A Libguide Research Portal, Margaret E. Henderson, Christopher Wimble

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Objectives: Research data management plans require information about the resources used to create, store, and analyze the data. A table of resources in and outside the university was compiled for use when writing DMPTool templates for grants. The table was also used to create a LibGuide to help researchers learn about all the available resources.

Methods: Initially, resources directly related to data management such as storage availability, sharing options, and database programs available at the university were investigated to find boilerplate language to use in DMPTool data management plan templates. As the data librarian worked on more plans for grant …

Evolving Librarian Participation In A Specialized Primary Care Medical Education Program, John Cyrus, Barbara A. Wright

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Objectives: To describe the extent to which health sciences librarians are embedded into a program that gives medical students focused experiences in underserved international, rural, or inner city primary care settings.

Methods: Since 2009, librarians at a large urban research university have worked with a longitudinal program that gives medical students focused education and experience in underserved international, rural, or inner city primary care settings. Initially, the library offered a meeting space for the program and librarians led a class on library resources prior to students beginning work on a required capstone projects. Librarians cultivated relationships with faculty and students …

Providing Monthly Health And Wellness Presentations In A Patient Library: Program Development And Brief Assessment, Dana Ladd

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Objectives: To describe the development, implementation, and brief assessment of a lunch time health and wellness series of presentations on a variety of consumer health related topics. The presentations were held in the Community Health Education Center, a patient library located inside a large academic medical center and were open to patients, their families, community members, and academic and health care employees.

Methods: We collaborated with marketing to identify topics and potential speakers. Topics included: stress, diabetes, healthy eating, care giving, depression, cancer, and others. Presentations were advertised via mass mail and flyers were posted in the library and relevant …

Bring Out Your Dead: Digging Up Print Reference Issues To Recommend What Is Next For A Collection, Julie Arendt, Nell J. Chenault, John Glover

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

With the rise of online resources and discovery systems, the question of whether print reference is dead yet has been raised. In response to collection changes, VCU librarians assessed usage and issues in Cabell Library’s print reference collection—revealing trends, challenges, and leading to proposed collection designs.

The Power Of Closing Time: Using Library Occupancy Data To Inform Operational Changes, Stephen R. Barkley, Laura E. Knouse

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Objectives: To use hourly building occupancy data over the period of 2012-2014 to determine the effect of changes to library hours of operation on building occupancy near and in the hours leading up to closing time.

Methods: Data were collected using an automated gate count system at the primary entrance to the library. The system tracked the occupancy of the building by comparing the number of entrances and exits hourly each day. Incremental changes to the library’s hours of operation occurred in the same time period for the years 2012-2014. This time period will be compared year-to-year. We will test …

Can You Spare 2 Hours? Target Your Audience With Customized E-News, Bettina Peacemaker, Patricia D. Sobczak, Martha Roseberry, Sue Robinson

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

E-newsletters (built in an affordable or free online mail platform) allow librarians to reach faculty with pointed, subject-based information. This poster features a sample from a series of e-newsletters created by liaison librarians, as well as tips for producing custom newsletters and discussion of impact.

Illiad And Alma Learn To Play Well Together, M. Teresa Doherty

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

In technical terms, VCU Libraries repurposed a plug-in developed for NCIP integration between ILLiad and Alma for borrowing and lending functions in ILLiad. In layman's terms, we created a way to connect ILLiad and Alma so patrons can see all their loans (from us and other libraries) through one account.

The “Aha!” Moment: Library Support For The Cognitive Process Of Creativity, Carla-Mae Crookendale

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Research on creativity in the field of cognitive psychology suggests that creativity is a process, and therefore success in creativity is less about talent or temperament than about the ability to manage that process. Creativity is necessary for all disciplines, though those in art and design fields tend to be more focused on it as an everyday practice.

This poster gives an overview of a session on creativity designed for “Advance Your Research,” a workshop provided by VCU Libraries for graduate students and advanced researchers. Through the in-person session and following webinar the visual arts librarian sought to familiarize attendees …

The Parallel Universe Of Electronic Resource Discovery, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Community Zone, Barbara Anderson

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

The functionality of the Alma Community Zone electronic collections in combination with the Primo Central Index and the development of the OCLC WorldShare Collection Manager and WorldCat Discovery Services have been game changers for the VCU Libraries. We are using the Alma/Primo and WorldShare systems in tandem to manage holdings, availability and discovery of an increasing proportion of our electronic resources automatically.