Digital Commons Network^™

Making Decisions: Using Electronic Data Collection To Re-Envision Reference Services At The Usf Tampa Libraries, Lily Todorinova, Andy Huse, Barbara Lewis, Matt Torrence

Barbara Lewis

Declining reference statistics, diminishing human resources, and the desire to be more proactive and embedded in academic departments, prompted the University of South Florida Library to create a taskforce for re-envisioning reference services. The taskforce was charged with examining the staffing patterns at the desk and developing recommendations to give librarians greater flexibility and to better respond to the information-seeking needs of users. These recommendations were based on statistics of desk usage, collected with the newly adapted online tool Desk Tracker, and structured interviews with library administrators. The taskforce was interested in how these stakeholders use quantitative data in decision-making.

What The Heart Remembers: The Women And Children Of Darfur, Barbara Lewis, Audrey Powers

Barbara Lewis

The University of South Florida Tampa Library received and digitized original materials created by refugee children depicting the atrocities of genocide in Darfur. The development of a performance piece inspired by these materials to promote the Library’s resources and initiatives was proposed; thus, the project What the Heart Remembers: The Women and Children of Darfur was born. This presentation focused on digital image management, technology related to the visual arts, faculty outreach, and collaboration within disciplines such as the Library, Theatre and Dance.

Special Collections And The New Web: Using Libguides To Provide Meaningful Access, Barbara Lewis, Melanie Griffin

Barbara Lewis

Librarians have long struggled to find user-friendly mediums to provide meaningful information to patrons; using bibliographies, pathfinders, and subject guides with varying degrees of success. Content management systems, such as Springshare’s LibGuides, have recently been developed to facilitate the creation of online subject guides. Special Collections units also struggle with this issue. This article examines how special collections are presented on the Web, the use of LibGuides for special collections, and how the use of LibGuides is facilitating the goal to provide information in a meaningful way by Special & Digital Collections at the University of South Florida Tampa Library.

Transforming Special Collections Through Innovative Uses For Libguides, Melanie Griffin, Barbara Lewis

Barbara Lewis

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore the utility of Springshare’s LibGuides platform for special collections repositories and to evaluate the collection guides built by Special & Digital Collections at the University of South Florida in LibGuides.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper explores how academic libraries have used LibGuides previously and provides a case study that suggests new ways for special collections repositories to make the most of the product.

Findings – The simplicity and easy-to-update functionality of LibGuides works well for USF’s Special & Digital Collections collection guides. The flexible API allowed SDC to embed digital content, enable user comments, …