Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Disciplinary Differences And Scholarly Literature: Discovery, Browsing, And Formats, Chad E. Buckley, Rachel E. Scott, Anne Shelley, Cassie Thayer-Styes, Julie A. Murphy

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This study reports faculty experiences regarding the discovery of scholarly content, highlighting similarities and differences across a range of academic disciplines. The authors interviewed twenty-five faculty members at a public, high-research university in the Midwest to explore the intersections of discovery, browsing, and format from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Although most participants rely on similar discovery tools such as library catalogs and databases and Google Scholar, their discovery techniques varied according to the discipline and type of research being done. Browsing is not a standard method for discovery, but it is still done selectively and strategically by some scholars. Journal articles …

The Fast And The Curious: Accelerating Literature Reviews With Ai, Jennifer Freer, Natalia Tingle Dolan, Gabrielle Wiersma

Presentations and other scholarship

As the world of academic research shifts gears into the digital age, AI-powered tools are beginning to shape the scholarly landscape. Just as high-performance vehicles transformed the world of car racing, AI-powered tools like scite, Elicit, and Research Rabbit have the potential to revolutionize the traditional literature review process. This presentation will accelerate your understanding of AI literature review tools and how these technologies can turbocharge the research process. Navigating between traditional library tools and AI-powered systems can be like choosing the right vehicle for the race. AI tools can enhance the speed, depth, and breadth of literature reviews, allowing …

Toward Ethical And Inclusive Descriptive Practices, Shira Peltzman, Kelly Besser

Journal of Critical Digital Librarianship

This case study describes the context which galvanized our Collection Management unit at UCLA Library Special Collections to collectively craft a descriptive practices statement within a study group focused on an anti-oppressive approach to discovery and access. This paper discusses the planning and design of the study group, our direct engagement at meetings, collaborative iteration, and liberatory pedagogical strategies that enabled the statement’s publication, and its impact within our department, library, and beyond. This work speaks to radical descriptive change and provides a potential path for the development of ethical and inclusive descriptive practices at other institutions.

Sul Odi Conformance Checklist 2022, Juan Denzer, Abdulrahman Alzahrani

Libraries' and Librarians' Publications

Nurtured by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), the Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) aims at defining standards and/or best practices for the new generation of library discovery services that are based on indexed search. These discovery services are primarily based upon indexes derived from journals, ebooks and other electronic information of a scholarly nature. The content comes from a range of information providers and products—commercial, open access, institutional, etc.

Law Library Blog (February 2022): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Covid-19 On The Use Of Academic Library Resources, Ruth Connell, Lisa Wallis, David Comeaux

Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted higher education, including academic libraries. This paper compares the use of library resources (including interlibrary loan, website and discovery tool pageviews, database use, patron interactions, etc.) at three university libraries before and after the pandemic. The latter part of the 2019 and 2020 spring semesters are the timeframes of focus, although two control timeframes from earlier in those semesters are used to determine how the semesters differed when the coronavirus was not a factor. The institutions experienced similar patterns of use across many metrics.

Managing User Needs And Librarian Expectations: Results Of A Survey Of User Behaviors In Summon, Kristin Rogers

The Southeastern Librarian

Since 2016, the University of Mississippi Libraries has used ExLibris’ Summon for their discovery service, locally known as One Search. During the implementation, customizations for the search results page were determined by a committee of librarians. As new settings and customizations were implemented over the years, librarians began to question if certain settings were appropriate or if the patrons were actually using them. An IRB approved survey was distributed asking library patrons about their use of One Search while library employees were asked to answer how they perceived patrons used it. Results showed the differences between library employee perception of …

Establishing Best Practices In Institutional Repository Organization, Scott Bacon

Digital Commons Southeastern User Group 2020

On the one-year anniversary of the CCU Digital Commons repository the organization of the Collections / Communities.html page was reviewed to gauge the need for revisions. Over 100 Digital Commons sites were examined to see how other repository managers organized their Collections pages. Top-level communities were coded into Community Types and were analyzed to surface trends in current practice. This presentation reviews trends in practice that emerged during research, as well as some of the best practices that were identified, including planning, iteration, labeling, limiting jargon, and finding a balance with top-level and nested content. Suggestions for improvement are given …

Review Of Otis And Will Discover The Deep: The Record-Setting Dive Of The Bathysphere By Barb Rosenstock, Taylor R. Phillips

Library Intern Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Library Services Toolkit For Enhancing Discovery And Scholarship, Barbara M. Pope

Faculty Submissions

This presentation detailed how to use library resources for improving the discovery and scholarship process of students, faculty, and support staff. Faculty were invited to bring along their own wireless device to try out the resources.

Archivesspace To Primo Pipeline: Harvesting Finding Aids For Discovery, Marianne Swierenga, Emily Gross

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Presentations

WMU Libraries' next step in making our archival collections more discoverable is to harvest finding aids from ArchivesSpace into our library's discovery layer, Primo, appearing alongside print materials, electronic resources, and digital collections in a single search. This poster will provide details of the process: from setting the granularity of harvested description in ArchivesSpace to creating a pipe into Primo using the Open Archives Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

The Scholarly Communication Cycle, Margaret Phillips, Dave Zwicky, Aly Edmondson

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

This image illustrates the modern scholarly information landscape, as a reflection of discovery, knowledge, and time. The image provides examples of publication types and dissemination outlets at various stages of the scholarly communication cycle and is not intended to be all inclusive.

Masked By Trust: Bias In Library Discovery, Matthew Reidsma

Books and Contributions to Books

The rise of Google and its integration into nearly every aspect of our lives has pushed libraries to adopt similar "Google-like" search tools, called discovery systems. Because these tools are provided by libraries and search scholarly materials rather than the open web, we often assume they are more "accurate" or "reliable" than their general-purpose peers like Google or Bing. But discovery systems are still software written by people with prejudices and biases, library software vendors are subject to strong commercial pressures that are often hidden behind diffuse collection-development contracts and layers of administration, and they struggle to integrate content from …

Use Of Discovery Tools In Arl Libraries, Deeann Allison, Margaret Mering

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Libraries provide discovery tools as a means to bring together resources that will assist researchers in locating the best sources for their information needs. As the Web evolves and user expectations for library resources change, librarians are questioning the effectiveness of these tools and are considering if libraries should explore other options that could provide a similar or better user experience. Survey invitations were e-mailed to academic libraries that were members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to investigate current trends in the use of discovery tools at their institutions. Twenty-five of the 112 libraries responded. The survey results …

Econtent In A Flash: Delivering Digital Resources To Patrons Using Nfc Technology, Christopher M. Jimenez, Barbara M. Sorondo

Works of the FIU Libraries

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology is a short-range, wireless communication technology that transfers data between two chips while they remain in close proximity with one another.

We applied NFC technology across the library and campus in a variety of contexts to promote digital resources, collections, and services. Our @FIULibraries: Tap, Scan, Read project marries digital resources with physical objects, allowing library users to access digital materials and information in a flash. The project has evolved into a multifaceted endeavor that includes smart posters, e-resource cards, a course reserves binder, library displays, and wayfinding tools. Project details are available in our …

Plugged In: Identifying Open (& Subscribed) Access, Aaron Tay

Research Collection Library

Scholars have unprecedented access to subscription and open access (OA) content, yet figuring out how to discover and access legitimate versions of articles remains an aggravating experience for many researchers. They face authentication hoops, myriad vendor platforms with uncertain holdings, and mystifying an obscure OA source. Researchers that start with Google Scholar may bypass library authentication and face paywalls. Conversely, library discovery tools fail to expose and deliver much of the available OA content, and especially under-represent Green OA from repositories. Our panel discusses several approaches to improving access discovery by giving scholars tools to identify accessible content and using …

The Privileged Link: Open Access, Version Of Record, Or Let The User Decide?, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, Aaron Tay, Maria Aghazarian, Johan Tilstra

Research Collection Library

As the availability of open access (OA) copies continues to grow, platforms and libraries are increasingly facing the possibility of linking users to version of record copies as well as to OA but non-version of record copies of the same article. Some advocate prioritizing linking to OA copies while others argue that the version of record should be prioritized. In many cases, this is a question of whether to link to a copy that the library has licensed over the copies that are freely available; however, the same conundrum can occur with respect to publisher-hosted OA content vs. copies available …

Sirsi Integration With A Discovery Tool, Denise O'Shea, Kathleen Hughes, Mary Mallery

Denise O'Shea

Presentation at regional Sirsi conference on integrating Symphony Dynix with Ebsco's EDS Discovery tool.

A Spatial Collaboration: Building A Multi-Institution Geospatial Data Discovery Portal, Mara Blake, Karen Majewicz, Ryan Mattke, Kathleen W. Weessies

Collaborative Librarianship

As academic education and research increasingly take advantage of geospatial data and methodologies, we see a corresponding exponential growth in the number of available geospatial resources in the form of GIS datasets and scanned historical maps. However, users can experience difficulty finding these resources due to the unconnected multitude of platforms and clearinghouses that host them. Additionally, the resources are not always well described with web semantic metadata that facilitates discovery. In response to this challenge, The Big Ten Academic Alliance Geospatial Data Project began in 2015 to provide discoverability, facilitate access, and connect scholars to geospatial resources. Our project …

Collaborative Growth Toward Discovery: Becoming Stronger Through Change, Margaret Heller, Hong Ma

Hong Ma

The radical act of replacing a traditional OPAC and ILS with a hosted library services platform (LSP) and web-scale discovery (WSD) system creates the impetus for libraries to rethink core workflows and practices. Both of these tools have the potential to greatly improve access to library collections and enhance user experience, but only if the implementation is a collaborative effort between different stakeholders, technical experts and subject librarians, grounded in a thoughtful selection process that emphasizes user needs. Furthermore, because this model removes the traditional OPAC, subject librarians must take on the challenge of understanding the tool and work as …

Introducing An Automated Subject Classifier, Pru Mitchell, Tine Grimston, Robert Parkes

Pru Mitchell

The library community understands the value of controlled vocabularies in enhancing resource discovery. There is however ongoing tension between that value and the cost of maintaining and applying specialist vocabularies. This paper presents the outcomes of a 2014-15 trial of automated subject indexing at the Australian Council for Educational Research. The integration of a machine learning classification tool has resulted in streamlined workflows and increased use of machine-readable data. Insights were gained into the decisions human indexers make in using a controlled vocabulary, and into the importance of quality abstracts and metadata.

What’S New? Deploying A Library New Titles Page With Minimal Programming, John Meyerhofer

John Meyerhofer

With a new titles web page, a library has a place to show faculty, students, and staff the items they are purchasing for their community. However, many times heavy programing knowledge and/or a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) or APIs separate a library’s data from making a new titles web page a reality. Without IT staff, a new titles page can become nearly impossible or not worth the effort. Here we will demonstrate how a small liberal arts college took its acquisition data and combined it with a Google Sheet, HTML, and a little JavaScript to create a new …

What’S New? Deploying A Library New Titles Page With Minimal Programming, John Meyerhofer

Staff Publications

With a new titles web page, a library has a place to show faculty, students, and staff the items they are purchasing for their community. However, many times heavy programing knowledge and/or a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) or APIs separate a library’s data from making a new titles web page a reality. Without IT staff, a new titles page can become nearly impossible or not worth the effort. Here we will demonstrate how a small liberal arts college took its acquisition data and combined it with a Google Sheet, HTML, and a little JavaScript to create a new …

Providing Access To And Discovery Of Oral Histories At The University Of Kentucky, Marsha Seamans, Kathryn Lybarger

Library Presentations

The Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky is recognized around the world as a leader and innovator in the collection and preservation of oral histories. The more than 9,000 interviews in our collection provide a unique look into Kentucky and American history.

While the Center for Oral History has developed an excellent stand-alone catalog of the collections, projects and interviews in the collection utilizing Drupal and DACS, we wanted to provide discovery through our online catalog, our discovery system (InfoKat Discovery) and WorldCat.

This project had a number of decision points:

• Since discovery is …

Two Roads, One Destination: A Journey Of Discovery, Karen Joc, Peta J. Hopkins, Jessie Donaghey, Wendy Abbott

Peta Hopkins

The adoption of resource discovery platforms has been a growing trend in libraries. However, few libraries have reported on the transition from one discovery layer to another, and only a few institutions have discussed two discovery layers available in the same institution at the same time. Bond University Library recently implemented Alma as its library management system, and with this change a new discovery platform, Primo, was implemented to supersede the existing Summon platform. This paper presents the results of a usability study undertaken at Bond University Library in the move from one discovery layer to another.

Chapter 04 - Onesearch, Rebecca M. Marrall

The Research Process: Strategies for Undergraduate Students

Learn how to search, retrieve results, and navigate throughout the user interface of Western Washington University Libraries’ shared catalog.

Two Roads, One Destination: A Journey Of Discovery, Karen Joc, Peta J. Hopkins, Jessie Donaghey, Wendy Abbott

Karen Joc

The adoption of resource discovery platforms has been a growing trend in libraries. However, few libraries have reported on the transition from one discovery layer to another, and only a few institutions have discussed two discovery layers available in the same institution at the same time. Bond University Library recently implemented Alma as its library management system, and with this change a new discovery platform, Primo, was implemented to supersede the existing Summon platform. This paper presents the results of a usability study undertaken at Bond University Library in the move from one discovery layer to another.

Collaborative Growth Toward Discovery: Becoming Stronger Through Change, Margaret Heller, Hong Ma

Margaret Heller

The radical act of replacing a traditional OPAC and ILS with a hosted library services platform (LSP) and web-scale discovery (WSD) system creates the impetus for libraries to rethink core workflows and practices. Both of these tools have the potential to greatly improve access to library collections and enhance user experience, but only if the implementation is a collaborative effort between different stakeholders, technical experts and subject librarians, grounded in a thoughtful selection process that emphasizes user needs. Furthermore, because this model removes the traditional OPAC, subject librarians must take on the challenge of understanding the tool and work as …

Two Roads, One Destination: A Journey Of Discovery, Karen Joc, Peta J. Hopkins, Jessie Donaghey, Wendy Abbott

Wendy Abbott

The adoption of resource discovery platforms has been a growing trend in libraries. However, few libraries have reported on the transition from one discovery layer to another, and only a few institutions have discussed two discovery layers available in the same institution at the same time. Bond University Library recently implemented Alma as its library management system, and with this change a new discovery platform, Primo, was implemented to supersede the existing Summon platform. This paper presents the results of a usability study undertaken at Bond University Library in the move from one discovery layer to another.

Two Roads, One Destination: A Journey Of Discovery, Karen Joc, Peta J. Hopkins, Jessie Donaghey, Wendy Abbott

Wendy Abbott

The adoption of resource discovery platforms has been a growing trend in libraries. However, few libraries have reported on the transition from one discovery layer to another, and only a few institutions have discussed two discovery layers available in the same institution at the same time. Bond University Library recently implemented Alma as its library management system, and with this change a new discovery platform, Primo, was implemented to supersede the existing Summon platform. This paper presents the results of a usability study undertaken at Bond University Library in the move from one discovery layer to another.