Digital Commons Network^™

Preparing Climate Leaders: One Syllabus At A Time, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

Poster presentation at the 2014 Presidential Summit on Climate Leadership which highlighted the Sustainability Curriculum Initiative, a library-funded faculty mini-grant program that provides support for teaching sustainability courses across a wide range of disciplines. The poster illustrated the partnership between faculty members and subject specialist librarians. Also available was the Library’s Sustainability Research Guide, curriculum-building material which integrate library resources, photographs, and a White Paper outlining the history of the program. The Summit, held in Boston October 1-2, 2014 and hosted by Second Nature, was designed by Presidents for Presidents and Sustainability Staff in higher education. The focus of the …

The Ark: Grafting Productive Programs Onto Contemporary Waste-Space, Caryn Brause, Carey Clouse

Caryn Brause

As the intertwined issues of climate change and resource scarcity profoundly alter the shape and scope of urban life, emerging designers must be positioned to respond in meaningful ways. This paper documents a research and design project that foregrounds several key design considerations for the future city: the expanded role of animals, the necessity for communal spaces to share knowledge, tools, and materials, and the waste-spaces that can be appropriated for that purpose. In doing so, it critically considers how we can prepare future design professionals to propose architectural and landscape program types that have yet to be invented, to …

Academic Librarians And The Sustainability Curriculum: Building Alliances To Support A Paradigm Shift, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

Sustainability is a fast evolving movement in higher education demonstrated by a proliferation of academic programs and co-curricular initiative and projects. After a review of sustainability-related LibGuides (online resource guides) created by academic librarians, a survey was administered to their developers during the spring of 2011 and posted on library listservs. Librarians returned 112 survey responses which reflected active roles in the paradigm shift toward sustainability through the forging of partnerships across campus and development of teaching resources and events. Telephone interviews conducted with 24 of the respondents showed librarians’ wide-ranging personal and professional interest in sustainability, and their initiatives …

Seven-Part Sustainability Action Plan For My Library, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

Librarians may use this template as a "jumping off point" for initiating or advancing sustainability at their own library and within the library profession. Created for academic librarians but adaptable for other library types as well. From "The Sustainability Movement on Campus: Forming a Library Action Plan for Engagement." Library Juice Academy course. 2013.

The Library And You: Sharing Our Vision, Madeleine K. Charney, Bonnie Smith

Madeleine K. Charney

Networking session to illuminate academic library resources and services which support campus sustainability goals and enrich student learning. Ideas were exchanged about collaborating with campus libraries to co-create resources, co-host events and exhibits, guide collection development and make use of institutional repositories.

Embedded: A Sustainability Studies Librarian Finds A New Home, Madeleine K. Charney, Katie Campbell Nelson

Madeleine K. Charney

“Sustainable Living” is a 4-credit General Education course taught through the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at UMass Amherst. Overall, the course directs students to reflect on their values and behaviors related to economic viability, social justice and environmental responsibility. This year, an Information Literacy (IL) component was added -- a weekly online assignment and discussion called “Beyond Google.” Learn how this embedded librarian model increased understanding of course content, provided a forum for articulating values and ideas, and developed IL skills to empower students as sustainability leaders and advocates. Discussion will include brainstorming ideas for how this model might be …

Society Of The Quarter: Sustainable Agriculture Education Association, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

A expose of the organization's innovative educational approaches for sustainable agriculture through the development, application, and research of teaching and learning practices. Includes the history, past conferences, and plans for an open access curriculum library.

A Sustainability Librarian's Manifesto: Your "Take Action" Checklist, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

Use this checklist to reflect on your institution's involvement in the sustainability movement. What else can you do to bring the voice and resources of the Library to the table? Includes resources for librarians to support this process (e.g listserv, webinars, reading material).

A Sustainability Librarian's Manifesto: Your "Take Action" Checklist by Madeleine Charney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Success And Abandonment In Open Source Commons: Selected Findings From An Empirical Study Of Sourceforge.Net Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English, Qimti Paienjton, Sandy Haire

Charles M. Schweik

Some open source software collaborations are sustained over long periods of time and across several versions of a software product, while others become abandoned even before the first version of the product has been developed. In this study, we identify factors that might be responsible for one or the other of these collaborative trajectories. We examine 107,747 open source software projects hosted on Sourceforge.net in August 2006 using data available through the FLOSSmole Project. We employ Classification and Regression Tree modeling and Random Forests statistical approaches to begin to establish an understanding of how various project attributes, especially physical and …

Factors Leading To Success Or Abandonment Of Open Source Commons: An Empirical Analysis Of Sourceforge.Net Projects, Charles M. Schweik, Robert English, Sandra Haire

Charles M. Schweik

Open source software is produced cooperatively by groups of people who work together via the Internet. The software produced usually becomes the “common property” of the group and is freely distributed to anyone in the world who wants to use it. Although it may seem unlikely, open source collaborations, or “commons,” have grown phenomenally to become economically and socially important. But what makes open source commons succeed at producing something useful, or alternatively, what makes them become abandoned before achieving success? This paper reviews the theoretical foundations for understanding open source commons and briefly describes our statistical analysis of over …

Open Source And Open Content: A Framework For Global Collaboration In Social-Ecological Research, Charles M. Schweik, Tom Evans, J Morgan Grove

Charles M. Schweik

Traditional approaches to the communication and validation of scientific research, e.g., peer review, and to the communication of findings, e.g., refereed publication, have been in place in some form since shortly after the development of the printing press in the 16th century (Ziman 1969, Johns 2001). This process of peer review as a mechanism to check for credible information (Burnham 1990, Kronick 1990) and journal publication has resulted in great progress in scientific knowledge over the last four centuries. The process also provides an example of how advances in technology, such as the printing press coupled with systems for the …