Digital Commons Network^™

Say You Want A Renovation: Using Instagram To Document A Library Renovation At Lehman College, John P. Delooper, Michelle Ehrenpreis

Publications and Research

This paper discusses how the Leonard Lief Library at Lehman College is documenting its renovation via the social media platform Instagram. It discusses the origin of project, why we chose Instagram and how we chose to highlight that social media platform on our Library’s web page. We explain what choices we have made and what strategies we chose to effectively document the renovation. We also discuss the challenges we have encountered, and how we overcame those challenges to reach student audiences in new and engaging ways.

Information Literacy In Place-Based Interdisciplinary Teaching And Learning, Anne E. Leonard

Publications and Research

This chapter explores the role of information literacy in virtual or hybrid place-based interdisciplinary courses. Whether teaching as a guest lecturer or as a co-instructor, I infuse information literacy competencies into assignments, relying on the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education. Four of the six frames of the Framework map especially well to interdisciplinary teaching and learning: information has value, authority is contested and contextual, research as inquiry, and searching as strategic exploration. Through searching in special collections and archives and integrating digitized primary sources into research projects students engage in a virtual exploration …

Scaffolded Research Skills Series For Nutrition And Dietetics Students: A Collaboration, Lee Ann Fullington

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Reflection Toolkit: Strategies For Facilitating Reflection In The Classroom, Meghmala Tarafdar, Elizabeth Digiorgio, Alison Cimino, Sebastian Murolo, Miseon Kim, Ilse Schrynemakers

Open Educational Resources

This Reflection Toolkit, compiled by the faculty inquiry group (FIG), includes classroom strategies for integrating reflection into one's existing syllabi. The lesson plans highlight how to encourage effective student reflections.The toolkit includes best practices to facilitate reflection in classes across the disciplines in the context of a variety of student-centered activities (including group-work, online learning, and interactive modules).

Supporting The Changing Practices Of Teaching In Business At Queens College, City University Of New York, James Tasato Mellone, Edward F. Wall Iii, Qiong Xu

Publications and Research

This investigation sheds light on the teaching practices of Queens College (QC) faculty in Business. It identifies the Business faculty’s teaching support needs in order to develop ideas for improving Library services to them. This report is the result of research conducted under the guidance of Ithaka S+R, and in accordance with Office of Regulatory Compliance procedures at QC. Using a grounded theory approach to qualitative research, the investigators conducted in-person audio-recorded semi-structured interviews of seven full-time QC faculty who teach Business courses. Evidence derived from the transcribed interviews informed analysis of the current state of QC’s Business teaching experience, …

Academic Librarians Serving Diverse Populations Of Multilingual Students, Alexandra A. De Luise, Kanu A. Nagra, Bernadette M. López-Fitzsimmons, Michael W. Handis, Jeremy Czerw

Publications and Research

A group of academic librarians working in community and four-year colleges, graduate programs and other settings present strategies and approaches for serving diverse multilingual populations. Multilingual students improve their awareness and understanding of United States academic libraries and higher education when librarians are cognizant of their needs. Encounters can occur at the research desk, in classroom instruction, and during research consultations. Also included are tips on how academic librarians can assist multilingual and international students, including how to improve communication. Based on an ACRL 2019 panel discussion of the same title.

Innovative Collaborations: Social Work Student Interns At Public Libraries, Sarah C. Johnson

Publications and Research

While the collaborative trend among professional social workers and librarians is garnering much-deserved attention, literature about social work students partnering with public libraries is virtually non-existent. In fact, there are at least 73 partnerships yet a scarcity of academic literature addresses social work interns within public libraries. While there are students at Canadian libraries, this research focuses on the bulk of known partnerships based in the United States. Emerging from a mix of interviews and public resources, the author’s inquiry fosters this call to action: Social work educators must initiate interagency collaboration with libraries in order for students to expand …

The Burgeoning Information Universe: Implication For Social Work Education And Practice, Sarah C. Johnson Mslis, Lmsw, Margaret Bausman Lcsw-R, Mslis, Sarah Laleman Ward Mlis, Ma

Publications and Research

The information universe is fierce and ubiquitous, replete with a 24 hour news cycle, trolls, bots, fake news, predatory publishers, and paywalls. The exponential acceleration in access to information during these nascent years of the 21st century is simultaneously a victory for egalitarianism and promotion of social equity as well as a daunting hotbed for scurrilous and obfuscated resources requiring discerning and supple information literacy skills to efficiently and effectively navigate an ever burgeoning wealth of knowledge. If, as the above quotations imply, life-long learning and contribution to the knowledge foundation is an ethical standard for professional social workers and …

Supporting The Changing Practices Of Teaching In Business - Baruch Summary, Ryan Lee Phillips, Louise Klusek, Charles Terng

Publications and Research

This report details the results of a study examining the teaching practices of business faculty at the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, City University of New York. The contents within cover how instructional resources and services are developed and used to support business faculty and their pedagogy. This report is the local results of Baruch College and the Newman Library’s portion of a larger suite of parallel studies with several other institutions of higher education in the U.S., coordinated by Ithaka S+R, a not-for-profit research and consulting service. Conclusions and recommendations detail targeted library programs and potential collaborations …

Lacuny Interlibrary Loan Roundtable Meeting Minutes, October 2019, Lacuny

Meeting Minutes

No abstract provided.

Citations Needed: Wikidata And The Scholarly Publishing Ecosystem, Megan Wacha

Publications and Research

Since Wikidata’s launch in 2012 as an open, collaboratively edited knowledge base, it’s held great promise for the library and scholarly communication community more broadly. Institutions and individual information professionals turned Wikidatans are using Wikidata to build a community-owned infrastructure for the bibliographic ecosystem, including open source tools that generate profiles of scholars, organizations, and publications. This workshop will introduce participants to Wikidata and its linked data infrastructure, including opportunities for hands-on editing and an overview of tools that facilitate data contribution and use. Participants will leave prepared to connect with existing Wikidata initiatives, and with entry points to launch …

Digital Collaborations: A Survey Analysis Of Digital Humanities Partnerships Between Librarians And Other Academics, Jessica Wagner Webster

Publications and Research

The present study will investigate the perceptions of information professionals about their role in the work of digital humanities scholars, as well as the perceptions of digital humanities scholars on the role of information professionals in their research. While other scholarly literature has considered collaborations between these groups via surveys or interviews with small project teams, the present study will provide a large-scale analysis of collaborations using survey responses from more than 500 scholars, librarians, and archivists. Questions sought to determine the extent to which these groups collaborate with one another on project teams; how these collaborations unfold and who …

Special Issue Introduction: Labor In Academic Libraries, Emily Drabinski, Aliqae Geraci, Roxanne Shirazi

Publications and Research

Labor in academic libraries has reemerged as an area of critical interest in both academic library and archives communities. Librarians and archivists have long worked to counter the diminishment of their labor within an academy that centers the concerns of disciplinary faculty who may, in turn, see knowledge workers as a footnote to the scholarly enterprise. Recent years have seen a renewed attention to the social and economic conditions of our work, as researchers turned to topics such as affective labor in libraries and archives, attitudes toward labor unions, and information work under capitalism (Sloniowski 2016; Mills and McCullough 2018; …

Creating And Deploying Usb Port Covers At Hudson County Community College, Lotta Sanchez, John P. Delooper

Publications and Research

In 2016, Hudson County (NJ) Community College (HCCC) deployed several wireless keyboards and mice with its iMac computers. Shortly after deployment, library staff found that each device’s required USB receiver (a.k.a. dongle) would disappear frequently. As a result, HCCC library staff developed and deployed 3D printed port covers to enclose these dongles. This, for a time, proved very successful in preventing the issue. This article will discuss the development of these port covers, their deployment, and what worked and did not work about the project.

“Don’T Make Me Feel Dumb”: Transfer Students, The Library, And Acclimating To A New Campus, Matthew Harrick, Lee Ann Fullington

Publications and Research

Objective – This qualitative study sought to delineate and understand the role of the library in addressing the barriers transfer students experience upon acclimating to their new campus.

Methods – A screening survey was used to recruit transfer students in their first semester at Brooklyn College (BC) to participate in focus groups. The participants discussed the issues they encountered by answering open-ended questions about their experiences on campus, and with the library specifically.

Results – Transfer students desired current information about campus procedures, services, and academic support. They often had to find this information on their own, wasting valuable time. …

Teaching Students To Critically Evaluate Textbooks, Christopher Mchale, Ian Mcdermott, Steven Ovadia

Publications and Research

This chapter is a case study describing how library faculty combined service learning and information literacy to help students evaluate textbooks, comparing commercial ones to Open Education Resources. The underlying idea was to give students not only a scholarly grounding that would help them as they move through their academic careers but also a practical vocational orientation to help them succeed in the workforce and, hopefully, become future contributors to the free culture movement.

Makin’ Bots: Using Hands-On Workshops To Teach Essential Coding Skills, Mark E. Eaton

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Local Language, Local Knowledge, And Local Publishing: What Can We Learn From Latin And South America?, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Scholarly publishing is hegemonic: a handful of international, commercial publishers dominate. Because the system favors English-language authors at well-resourced institutions, many academics and scientists are left out. But what if there was an alternate vision for scholarship that focuses on research in local languages, where research addresses issues of local concern, and open access occurs without fees to authors? In this presentation, we’ll learn more about initiatives in other countries, why bibliodiversity and local research is so important, and more about how local research is supported internationally.

Latin and South America have proven that they can “do it for themselves.” …

Usability Study For A Community College Library Website: A Methodology For Large-Scale Data Gathering, Mark E. Eaton, Carlos Arguelles

Publications and Research

Usability studies (UX) are increasingly common in libraries. A UX methodology is a useful tool to support librarians’ decision-making processes during a website (re)design. This article describes a UX process using a custom-built usability-testing environment and a data-collection tool, written in JavaScript and Python respectively. The resulting automated approach allowed us to collect usability data from a sample of 225 students. The methodology described in this study will be of interest to those considering or planning a UX study in their libraries.

Shifting The Balance Of Power: Asking Questions About The Comics-Questions Curriculum, Stephanie M. Margolin, Sarah Laleman Ward, Mason Brown

Publications and Research

We shift the balance of power in this paper by discussing a particular library lesson, the Comics-Questions Curriculum, with some of the students who participated in it, several years after they completed the workshop. By interviewing students and including them as co-authors of this paper, we re-center students in our analysis of this curriculum. In the process of reflecting on our work with the students and each other, we begin to see ways to engage in more meaningful, longer-term assessment of our classroom work while involving student voices in the process. We share our experiences here in order to take …

Cruzar Fronteras Em Espaços Acadêmicos: Transgressing “The Limits Of Translanguaging”, Brendan H. O’Connor, Katherine S. Mortimer, Lesley Bartlett, María Teresa De La Piedra, Ana Maria Rabelo Gomes, Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Gabriela Novaro, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Char Ullman

Publications and Research

Scholarship on translanguaging and related concepts has challenged traditional assumptions about how people use their multiple languages, urging us to move beyond the boundaries of named linguistic codes and toward conceptualizations of multilingual language use as flexible use of a speaker’s whole linguistic repertoire. Critiques of this theoretical shift have included assertions of translanguaging’s conceptual and practical limits—limits to its transformative potential as well as limits to its practical use. This paper takes up, in particular, the question of why we academics may assert the value of translanguaging in schools and communities while still largely failing to move beyond monoglossic …

In Search Of China’S First Library: Materials, Housing And Arrangement, Junli Diao

Publications and Research

Historically, the origin of libraries has an intimate association with written records supporting administrative or ritual functions at the palace or temple. This article attempts to discuss the possibility of the existence of China’s first library in the Shang dynasty (c.1570-1045 BCE) during the beginning of the formative period of Chinese civilization. The article analyzes and synthesizes both paleographical and archaeological evidence from the perspective of available materials, houses, and arrangement, which answers the questions of what the books were made of, where they were stored, and how they were arranged. The article ends with a conclusion that there is …

Your Ir As The Centerpiece For Scholarly Communications Outreach At Your Institution, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Getting buy-in and awareness for your institutional repository can be challenging, especially when we have limited time and staff to devote to the IR. Outreach success requires persistence, flexibility, savvy marketing, and a focus on the long view. Before our IR, Academic Works, went live in 2016, my colleagues and I gave talks and workshops on open access and other topics. With Academic Works, our efforts now have focus and coherence. A varied outreach approach has been very helpful. In particular, print marketing has been effective. We designed a poster and other media promoting our tag line “amplify your scholarship …

"To Be Honest I’M Not Sure If We Have A Textbook:" Undergraduate Access To Course Reading, Maura A. Smale

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Anecdotes, Barriers, Cooperation: The Abc's Of A Library/It Collaboration, Lee Ann Fullington, Mariana Regalado, Jane Cramer

Publications and Research

Aim Our library’s three main computing areas are the primary computer labs on campus, with two of them managed by librarians. Our staff mediated sign-in system made for long lines, delays, and more than a few misplaced student ID cards. After several semesters of monitoring issues and securing funding, the library implemented a new sign-in system for computers in the library’s labs. This presentation discusses the types of evidence we collected and used over several stages of this transition to launch and continually improve the self sign-in process.

Methods After selecting and deploying the new self sign-in software, library staff …

Evidence-Based Library Instruction For Nutrition Research: Librarian And Faculty Collaboration, Lee Ann Fullington, Melissa Fuster, Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky, Susan Jakuboski

Publications and Research

Aim Undergraduate nutrition and dietetics students need to develop research skills and professional competencies to identify evidence-based nutrition and food studies research. Research skills are essential for student success in dietetic internships, graduate school, and future professional practice as nutrition and dietetics professionals. In a collaborative effort to improve student research skills, teaching faculty, the program director, and the liaison librarian developed a series of research skills one-shot sessions for an accredited undergraduate program in Foods and Nutrition at a public liberal arts college. Using a scaffolded approach, the library sessions were designed to help students build research skills essential …

Partnering For Social Justice: Social Work Students’ Placement At Public Libraries, Sarah C. Johnson

Publications and Research

While the collaborative trend among professional social workers and librarians is garnering much deserved attention, literature about social work students partnering with public libraries is virtually nonexistent. Public librarians can advocate for social justice by initiating partnerships with master-level social work (MSW) students to enhance small- and large-scale programs to address the unique needs of patrons. In this chapter, I highlight existing collaborations among public libraries and student social workers to raise awareness of possibilities.

Critical Information Literacy, Emily Drabinski, Eamon Tewell

Publications and Research

This encyclopedia entry presents a brief introduction to critical information literacy, an approach to teaching people how information is produced, organized, circulated, and preserved.

Listening To What Students Are Asking: The Role Of An Academic Library In Institution-Wide Knowledge Management, Elizabeth Jardine

Publications and Research

Students at our public, urban community college were experiencing difficulties finding correct, consistent answers to their questions about navigating college processes, information students needed to succeed in school. These difficulties were fueled not only by our students’ backgrounds—they are often the first generation in their family to attend college, may require additional academic preparation, or lack support for their higher education dreams—but also by the siloed information environment prevalent in academia. When our college president realized the extent of student challenges in this area, she looked to the college’s librarians, campus experts in knowledge organization and provision, for direction with …

Partnering For Social Justice: Msw Interns In Public Libraries, Sarah C. Johnson

Publications and Research

While the collaborative trend among professional social workers and librarians continues to grow, literature about the utilization of student social workers partnering with libraries is non-existent. Over 64,000 students are currently enrolled in M.S.W. programs through the United States and nearly all are required to complete approximately 900 hours of fieldwork. Such students provide the skills, knowledge, and values that can help take diversity in public libraries to the next level. Public librarians play a critical role in advocating for social justice and change. By reaching out to MSW programs, they invite budding social workers to help advance tolerance for …