Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, And Access Annual Report, Fiscal Year 2023, April K. Anderson-Zorn, Elizabeth Babin, Karmine Beecroft, Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Mallory Jallas, Laura Killingsworth, Heather Koopmans, Maddi Loiselle, Jean Macdonald, Joshua Newport, Vanette Schwartz, Lindsey Skaggs, Caitlin Stewart, Cassie Thayer-Styes, Angela Yon, Eric Willey

Milner Library Publications

Report of Milner Library's activities and initiatives related to Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access in Fiscal Year 2023.

Fy24 Usability Program Test #3: Assessing Awareness Of I-Share And Usability Of I-Share Request Form, Lindsey Skaggs

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The FY24 Usability Testing Program was designed to iteratively assess user experience at Milner Library. The program gathers data through usability testing of the library's website and discovery layer, as well as survey questions about users' experiences with library services. Test #3 focuses on library users' awareness of I-share and the usability of the I-Share request form embedded in Primo VE. Takeaways and recommendations are included in the report.

Open Access, Anne Shelley, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

[Conclusion] While the embrace of Open Access within music scholarship and librarianship has been somewhat spotty and circumstantial to date, there are some patterns to celebrate. Music librarians have collaborated with stakeholders to create a number of high-value and openly-licensed online collections, libraries and publishers are exploring models that will better fund OA research by arts and humanities scholars, professional societies are responding to members’ prompts and formalizing their support through new OA publications, and the increased incorporation of linked open data standards will better connect information that was once siloed. It is challenging to predict the state of the …

Intersections Of Open Access And Information Privilege In Higher Education And Beyond, Caitlin Harrington, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Despite its capacity to reach readers irrespective of affiliation or geographic location, conversations about Open Access (OA) frequently center academic stakeholders in high-income countries. This presentation will examine opportunities for technical services librarians to explore with students some of the inequities of the scholarly communications landscape, including various approaches to and aspects of OA, and to consider the disparate levels of access available to individuals based on institutional affiliation. Because higher education settings afford students a high degree of information privilege, academic librarians face the challenge of teaching students to appreciate the value of information, acknowledge barriers to it, and …

Fy24 Usability Program Test #2: Baseline Catalog And Website Usability Testing, Lindsey Skaggs

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The FY24 Usability Testing Program was designed to iteratively assess user experience at Milner Library. The program gathers data through usability testing of the library's website and discovery layer, as well as survey questions about users' experiences with library services. The purpose of test #2 was to generate baseline observations and user search behaviors to inform future usability testing design. Takeaways and recommendations are included in the report.

What Is Out There? Data Services Offerings At R1 And R2 Doctoral University Libraries, Chad M. Kahl, Lindsey Skaggs, Joshua Newport

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

As librarians at a comprehensive university, we sought to understand the data service offerings among R1 and R2 university libraries to guide initial data services development at our institution. To do so, we undertook an environmental scan to discover the services, information, and resources promoted on R1 and R2 library’s websites, and aggregated our findings into a database for use by other librarians and data services professionals.

During the session, we’ll share our methodology and findings and make the data available to attendees. We’ll highlight how attendees can use this information as a tool for further development of data services …

Fy24 Usability Program Test #1: Assessing Awareness Of Subject Librarians, Lindsey Skaggs

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

The FY24 Usability Testing Program was designed to iteratively assess user experience at Milner Library. The program gathers data through usability testing of the library's website and discovery layer, as well as survey questions about users' experiences with library services. Test #1 focuses on library users' awareness of subject librarians and assesses their ability to find information about their subject librarian on the Milner Library website. Takeaways and recommendations are included in the report.

Sharing Your Scholarly Work Through Open Access Publishing, Rachel E. Scott, Colby Cilento

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Open access publishing is often presented as a monolith, but there are a variety of approaches to making your work available open access. Defined by Peter Suber as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions,” open access initiatives and models have emerged since the movement gained momentum at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Open Access, 2012, 4).

Participants will explore open access publishing to better understand its principles and practices. Facilitators will share campus resources to support a variety of open access publishing models, including institutional funding for open access publishing charges, green …

Texts On Repeat: Examining The Persistence Of Assigned Course Materials, Rachel E. Scott, Julie Murphy, Rachel Park, Anne Shelley, Mallory Jallas

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Many academic libraries’ collection development policies have discouraged the acquisition of assigned textbooks, but recent trends to support textbook affordability, student success, and online learning have caused some library personnel to rethink this approach. Through recent efforts at our library to purchase available e-copies for assigned course textbooks, we became curious about title persistence, or the frequency with which a unique title is assigned across multiple semesters and within a single semester across multiple sections. In this presentation we provide some background and context for our textbook affordability efforts and examine several years of assigned textbook data at Illinois State …

Thinking Outside The Dyad: Incorporating Cohort-Based Experiences Into Mentorship, Angela Yon, Grace Allbaugh, Susan Franzen

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

A benefit of the traditional one-to-one, hierarchical mentoring relationship is the individualized attention and guidance the mentor provides the mentee. This singular mentoring relationship can be effective but is not always sufficient in addressing institutional acculturation and meeting personal needs of the new employee. This paper discusses how an emergent mentoring program at Milner Library blended the dyadic mentoring relationship with cohort-based programming to create a space for participants to learn from colleagues across departments, share experiences, and consider psychosocial issues. These grassroots programming efforts have cultivated holistic engagement and renewed community.

Quality As A Component Of Value: Using Resources For College Libraries To Assess Course Assigned Texts, Julie A. Murphy, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Although potential student savings is perhaps the most meaningful measure of the success of any textbook affordability initiative, as librarians we are nonetheless interested in considering how a significant shift in collections strategy might impact our collections. We demonstrated in the first semester of the project that usage of ebooks assigned in courses is much higher than those that are not currently assigned. We also confirmed that usage is greatly increased when faculty members notify their students that an assigned text is available to them through the library. But beyond savings to students and demonstrated high usage, we wanted information …

On The Same Team: Technical Services And Student Success Tackle Textbook Affordability, Mallory Jallas, Julie A. Murphy, Rachel Park, Rachel E. Scott, Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, student textbook access and affordability have emerged as areas of focus for academic libraries to support student success. Librarians across departments at a public four-year institution developed a program to leverage campus information about textbook selection to inform library e-book purchases. The resulting eTextbook collection became an invaluable resource for students during the pandemic and created a direct connection between the work of Technical Services and Student Success. This presentation provides an overview of the project, discusses assessment elements, and highlights the vital aspects of collaboration within an academic library for student success.

Inclusive Pedagogy Through Digital Scholarship: A Case Study, Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

After a coordinated effort in 2019 to determine faculty activities and needs related to digital humanities, our library began offering outreach and support to faculty using digital humanities in research and teaching. In summer 2020, after two librarians facilitated a faculty development workshop on using digital humanities tools in the classroom, an instructor in educational leadership invited the librarians to help her incorporate multimodal publishing, data visualization, and mapping methods into one of her fall 2020 courses related to community building in K-12 education. The tools incorporated into the course allowed a range of collaborative possibilities between students, creating new …

"Ebooks Are A Life Saver" Vs. "I'M Not A Fan Of Ebooks": Discerning Student Attitudes Towards Academic Ebooks As A Result Of The Covid-19 Pandemic, Mallory Jallas, Grace Ansani, Jennifer Schwartz, Katierose Mceneely

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Librarians from four different institutions of higher learning partnered to create a survey to ascertain student attitudes towards eBook use in academic libraries as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey results have revealed students experienced greater exposure to eBooks in their academic programs as a result of remote learning during the pandemic. Additional student responses will help librarians determine what kinds of investment should be made in eBook collections going forward, and what kinds of support can be provided to enhance academic eBooks experiences.

Covid-19 Pandemic And Student Perceptions And Use Of Ebooks Survey, Mallory Jallas, Grace Ansani, Katierose Mceneely, Jennifer Schwartz

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This survey was created and administered in the spring of 2022 by the CARLI Counts eBook Team to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student perceptions and use of eBooks.

Reuse and adaptation of this survey are encouraged. This document is licensed under CC BY NC 4.0

"Having A Textbook Locks Me Into A Particular Narrative": Affordable And Open Educational Resources In Music Higher Education, Rachel E. Scott, Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This paper reports music scholars' experiences with and perspectives on commercial textbooks and Open Educational Resources and situates these within the context of music instruction in higher education. Interviews with twenty-one music scholars in various subdisciplines explored the course materials they assign and their motivations or obstacles with respect to integrating open or affordable resources in their courses. Participants articulated a variety of concerns about both commercial and open course materials and spoke to institutional support for creating or adopting open and affordable course materials. Analysis of the interviews reveals tension around audience and gatekeeping, the value of music scholars' …

Milner Library Annual Report, 2023, Milner Library

Milner Library Publications

Annual Report for Milner Library, Illinois State University.

Exploring Faculty Perspectives On Open Access At A Medium-Sized, American Doctoral University, Rachel E. Scott, Julie Murphy, Cassie Thayer-Styes, Chad E. Buckley, Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Faculty hold widely varying perspectives on the benefits and challenges afforded by open access (OA) publishing. In the United States, conversations on OA models and strategy have been dominated by scholars affiliated with Carnegie R1 institutions. This article reports findings from interviews conducted with faculty at a Carnegie R2 institution, highlighting disciplinary and individual perspectives on the high costs and rich rewards afforded by OA. The results reiterate the persistence of a high degree of skepticism regarding the quality of peer review and business models associated with OA publishing. By exploring scholars’ perceptions of and experiences with OA publishing and …

Every Good Belletrist Deserves Funding: Arts And Humanities Scholars And Open Access Publishing Fees, Anne Shelley, Rachel E. Scott, Ana Dubnjakovic

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

We undertook this project to learn more about the Open Access experiences of scholars working outside of the sciences, with an emphasis on any related payments and funding sources. In addition to gaining insight into arts and humanities scholars’ engagement with Open Access publishing, we also seek to tease out some of the intersections of privilege, affiliation, disciplinarity, and publishing that are not yet well-documented in the literature.

In addition, we will consider the significance of our findings for librarians who support scholars in the arts and humanities, including but not limited to collection development implications for subscription journals with …

Exploring Faculty Perspectives On Text Selection And Textbook Affordability, Rachel E. Scott, Mallory Jallas, Julie A. Murphy, Rachel Park, Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This paper reports the results of a pilot project conducted Spring 2021 in which Milner Library licensed 75 assigned texts to 52 courses at Illinois State University. The authors used the pilot as a springboard to explore faculty perspectives on textbook selection, textbook affordability, and the role of the academic library in addressing the rising cost of textbooks. The results highlight the strong, and often deeply personal, beliefs faculty hold about textbook selection and textbook affordability, reveal several obstacles to achieving affordable access to course readings, and demonstrate the willingness of some faculty to partner with librarians and other institutional …

If It Pleases The Court, I Present Exhibit One: An Evidence-Based Law Collection Evaluation, Chad M. Kahl

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Describes the evidence-based evaluation of a law collection supporting a paralegal program.

It applies the Koufogiannakis & Brettle's Evidence Based Library and Information Practice (EBLIP) framework to review the law collection development evaluation process.

Textbook Affordability Initiatives And Open Educational Resources: Complementary Or Competing Approaches To A Persistent Problem?, Anne Shelley, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This presentation investigates library support for textbook affordability initiatives and Open Educational Resources (OER) to consider the relative opportunities and limitations of both approaches. The literature has shown that the cost of textbooks—which has increased far beyond the rate of inflation—can be an obstacle to student success, especially for students from underrepresented groups. By sharing findings from published literature and results from focus groups and interviews conducted with teaching faculty, the speakers highlight both the incentives faculty have to collaborate with librarians to address the increasing costs of assigned materials as well as the challenges they face in adopting an …

Wikipedia Pages For Underrepresented Archivists: Creating Representation Through An Saa Foundation Grant-Funded Documentation Project, Stephanie Collier, April Anderson-Zorn

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

In spring 2019, university archivist April Anderson-Zorn and special formats cataloger Eric Willey, both at Illinois State University (ISU), submitted a grant request to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Foundation. The team requested funds to hire an ISU graduate student to create content for Wikipedia pages for underrepresented archivists. The grant aimed to fill a content gap on the site by including the biographies of female, Black, LGBTQ+, and other underrepresented archivists to highlight their accomplishments in the profession. With the help of graduate student Stephanie Collier, the project surpassed its original goal of fifteen pages, with over forty …

Teaching Information Literacy In An Undergraduate Class On The Geography Of The Middle East, Reecia Orzeck

Faculty Publications-- Geography, Geology, and the Environment

Geography instructors have a role to play in helping their students to become more information literate. This is especially important today, given the complex and dynamic nature of our informational landscape, and given the evidence that young people lack much of the knowledge that is needed to engage with information critically. This paper reports on the effectiveness of an information literacy module that was included as part of a course on the Geography of the Middle East. It describes the design and rollout of the module, and the results of a study designed to assess the effectiveness of the module …