Education Commons^™

Teaching A Credit-Bearing Library Course For Graduate Students: From Proposal To Postmortem, Jill Cirasella

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

For years, library faculty at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York had fantasized about some day offering a credit-bearing course to our master’s and doctoral students. In 2021, we finally transitioned from idle dreams to directed discussion. As we explored how to get a library course on the books at an institution that had never before had one, we had to rethink and rework our plans several times, in unexpected but not unreasonable ways.

For example, we had believed that a one-credit course would be most appropriate—and most palatable to the institution—but we learned that only …

What Should Professors Know About Expensive Textbooks?, Charlene Martoni

All Things Open

Last year during Open Access Week, Georgia State University Library asked its students, "What should professors know about expensive textbooks?" and "What have you done when a textbook was too expensive?" Applying open pedagogical approaches, these questions were displayed on white boards at library service desks on each campus. Students were encouraged to respond to the first question in their own words, and they were asked to respond to the second question by selecting one of five responses. Responses were analyzed and anonymized, and they were then used in faculty professional development to demonstrate the local impact of expensive textbooks. …

Surfacing Services For Students As Scholars: A Case Study, Jill Cirasella

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

This poster presents as a case study the recent library reorganization at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The reorganization was initially spurred by the need to divide the library’s large, hydra-headed Public Services and Scholarly Communication unit into smaller, more coherent units. One of the five resulting units is Scholarly Communication and Digital Scholarship, composed of librarians who provide services related to scholarly communication, the institutional repository, data management, digital scholarship, digital preservation, and theses and dissertations. In other words, this new unit provides services that pertain not to the discovery and consumption of knowledge …

Fake Journals And Conferences: What To Know About The Faux, Jill Cirasella

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

This train-the-trainers presentation models one way to teach students about deceptive journals and conferences. It was developed expressly for graduate students at the request of campus administrators. I have it taught it numerous times, promoting it with this description:

“As a researcher, you are eager to publish your work in journals and present at conferences. But don’t let your eagerness allow you to be fooled by fake (often called ‘predatory’) journals or conferences. These low-quality outlets exist for the sole purpose of profit, not for the dissemination of peer-reviewed research. Indeed, they frequently lie about their peer review practices and …

Creating Transformative Connections With Graduate Students Using A Social Capital Framework, Mary J. Markland, Hannah Gascho Rempel

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Graduate school is a transformative time for many students. It is also a time when they are part of an elite community of learners. For some students, this is an exciting adventure that allows them to explore new ideas and more fully express themselves. However, many graduate students also experience feelings of anxiety, frustration, and exclusion because they don’t feel like they really belong to this academic community. Graduate students sometimes struggle with how to navigate the new social norms, hierarchies, and structures built on many years of accumulated, implicit knowledge. These socially-based struggles frequently lead to lower levels of …

Becoming A Competent Graduate Librarian, Wendy Doucette

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

As I enter my fourth year as a graduate librarian (and my 10^th year of academic librarianship and my 29^th year of teaching), I’m struck by how my approach to graduate students continues to shift. To my surprise, every academic year has brought a new revelation concerning what our students don’t know and do need, which necessitates a corresponding revision of service on my part. Although “competence” is a relative term, I feel strongly that the needs of our graduate students—and the skills necessary for us as providers to fulfill these requirements—are similar to those at other institutions …

Impediments, Partners, And Proposals: Preparing Graduate Students To Start Their Thesis And Dissertation Proposals, Erin M. O'Toole

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

The proposed presentation will share the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries’ experience of creating and refashioning workshops to prepare graduate students to write their dissertation or thesis proposals. Concurrently, it will challenge attendees to consider the impediments graduate students may face at their own institutions and possible partnerships and services to enable students to complete their proposals. Highlights of the presentation will be collaboration with UNT teaching faculty and the Graduate School, the structure and content of the workshops, and the evolution of the workshops in response to student evaluations.

The Library Research Support Services Department (LRSS) works closely …

Panel: Serving Different Populations, Nastasha E. Johnson, Samantha Walsh, Moushumi Chakraborty, Mandy Havert, Roman Koshykar

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Meeting the needs of graduate students systematically and intentionally can be a daunting strategic initiative. The students’ interests, expertise, and career objectives can vary greatly. Understanding and addressing gaps in their knowledge can an insurmountable obstacle, seemingly, as well. Politically there may be silos to contend and barriers to perception of “what libraries can do.” We would like to propose a panel discussion where different institutions discuss the wins and losses of reaching different graduate populations. The objective of the panel discussion is to openly share the strategies that have worked for different populations, as well as strategies that can …

Supporting Scholars In Training: A User Needs Survey Of A Graduate Study Space, Juliet T. Rumble, Adelia B. Grabowsky

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

A separate study area reserved for faculty and graduate students was established at Auburn University’s Draughon Library in 2008, but, for many years, there was no formal effort to study the use of the space. In 2016, recognizing that the needs of these user groups differ in significant respects from those of undergraduates, the presenters developed a questionnaire to gather information on the faculty and graduate students using the area and the adequacy of the space to support their work practices. For two weeks in the summer and four weeks in the fall of 2016, users visiting the area were …

Cultivating Cultural Intelligence For Serving International Students, Wendy Doucette, Mandy Havert, Kyunghye Kim

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

We are proposing a 50-minute panel.

Presenters: Dr. Wendy Doucette, East Tennessee State University; Ms. Mandy Havert, University of Notre Dame; Dr. Kyung Kim, Florida State University

The number of international graduate students continues to rise at American universities nationwide. While academic librarians wish to serve this student population effectively, few of us have received formal training or meaningful exposure to this sector of our student populace. This panel will provide first-person experiences from academic librarians who are actively engaging with and researching international students. Acknowledging and encouraging cultural diversity fosters the awareness of building inclusivity into graduate programming. Rather …

Using Citation Analysis To Develop A Strategic Plan For A Campus-Wide Scholarly Communication Initiative, Scott Lancaster

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

As scholarly communication continues its digitally driven shift away from a publishing model rooted in print culture, it is essential that the academic library maintain its impact by keeping in step with rapidly changing expectations and practices. As future faculty, today’s graduate students must learn the skills to carefully evaluate publishers, consider copyright in a digital environment, use information ethically and responsibly, and avoid unscrupulous vendors and publishers who prey on those who must “publish or perish.” While they develop knowledge in their respective fields, they cannot afford to be unaware of both the opportunities and pitfalls of modern scholarly …

Indispensable: A Library’S One Stone Strategy To Improve Graduate Student Research Skills, Meet Faculty Research Demands And Contribute To Graduate Student Retention, Michelle Lang

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

At Pace University and other master and doctoral universities and colleges, Graduate Students are not usually among the systematically targeted. In the fall of 2016, I undertook to specifically target Graduate Assistants (GA’s) working for faculty in research assistantships. Securing an academic assistantship is a coveted and competitive endeavor, but if the GA does not have the required research skills they can be out after only one semester. While being aware of university retention goals and the gap between GA research skills and faculty research demands, I started a pilot project of creating GA research workshops based on the specific …

Not Just Degree-Seekers: Graduate Students As Scholarly Contributors, Roxanne Shirazi, Jill Cirasella

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Most graduate students are required to produce theses and dissertations that make an original contribution to the field of study. This requirement informs how students and faculty approach graduate research, but colleges and universities often treat the culminating works merely as student records, not scholarly contributions encompassing original research. Librarians, however, are uniquely situated to treat graduate students as emerging participants in the scholarly communication ecosystem and to help them prepare their culminating works for an outside audience. Librarians have the expertise to advise students during the submission process with questions regarding copyright, licensing, fair use, and author’s rights, as …

The Research Savvy Librarians: Boot Camp For Teaching Literature Reviews To Graduate Students, Kyung Kim, Abby Scheel, Kelly Grove

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

Writing literature reviews is among the most common assignments for graduate work, and a requirement for all theses and dissertations. Students find this often a complex and even overwhelming process as the graduate students need to identify and get eligible literature on the topic, read and evaluate literature, and take notes about trends, patterns, and the latest development of the scholarship on the topic. Writing literature reviews involves a number of skill sets from the students, but practical guidance on each step in the process is often not provided by professors. Librarians have helped the students to search databases and …

Make It Happen: How Libraries Can Start A Grassroots Campus-Wide Graduate Writing Initiative, Jen Salvo-Eaton

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

The University of Missouri-Kansas City's University Libraries played a major role in starting a campus-wide Graduate Writing Initiative at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The Graduate Writing Initiative is a campus-wide effort to improve the process, quality, and impact of graduate student writing. Despite the challenges of reaching a graduate student population of commuters, full-time workers, parents, and online learners, UMKC Libraries helped devise ways to extend the reach of the Graduate Writing Initiative to all. Currently, UMKC Libraries remains a core service of the Graduate Writing Initiative and librarians serve on the campus advisory committee. This presentation will describe …

The Borg Revisited: Why Big Data Matters, David Evans

Transforming Libraries for Graduate Students

The Library System at Kennesaw State University has attempted to replicate the Library Cube initiated at the University of Wollongong (Cox and Jantti).The Library Cube is based on a multidimensional data warehouse that joins library usage data and student demographic data and students' GPA.