Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Shush: A Creative (Re)Construction, Kathleen Spring

Faculty & Staff Publications

Shush: A Creative (Re)Construction stems from work conducted during a sabbatical in fall 2017. The audio piece, Shush Me Awake, is a composition that explores the shush as a performative act. The accompanying framing essay uses an autoethnographic approach to provide a contextualized look at the composition process for this piece, while simultaneously situating it within existing scholarship in library and information studies on the image of the librarian and stereotypes. The composer notes provide additional technical details about the audio piece itself.

Improving Primo Usability And Teachability With Help From The Users, Barbara Valentine, Beth West

Faculty & Staff Publications

In the aftermath of a consortium migration to a shared cloud-based resource management and discovery system, a small college library implemented a web usability test to uncover the kinds of difficulties students had with the new interface. Lessons learned from this study led to targeted changes, which simplified aspects of searching, but also enhanced the librarians’ ability to teach more effectively. The authors discuss the testing methods, results, and teaching opportunities, both realized and potential, which arose from implementing changes.

A Grape Idea: Competitive Collaboration Is A Win-Win For Regional Archives, Rachael Cristine Woody, Melissa Salrin

Faculty & Staff Publications

In the summer of 2014, Linfield College and Whitman College archivists Rachael Woody and Melissa Salrin teamed up to document the history of the Walla Walla wine industry. While collaboration in the archives isn’t new, Woody and Salrin offer their perspective on the benefits of such partnerships even when the institutions wish to acquire the same materials and work with the same donors. The authors argue this project can serve as a blueprint for other repositories that wish to document community history and/or work collaboratively with a competing institution. Woody and Salrin outline the respective histories of their institutions and …

How Is That Going To Work?: Part Ii – Acqusitions Challenges And Opportunities In A Shared Ils, Kathleen Spring, Damon Campbell, Carol Drost, Siôn Romaine

Faculty & Staff Publications

Building on a presentation given at the 2013 Charleston Conference, this article continues the discussion about acquisitions policies, workflows, and consortial collaboration in a next‐generation shared ILS. The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a consortium of 37 public and private academic institutions in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. In January 2013, the Alliance began a two‐year process of migrating all 37 institutions (in 4 cohorts, with a new cohort going live every 6 months) to Ex Libris’s Alma and Primo in order to realize efficiencies and increase collaboration within the consortium. The authors, who represent institutions in the first and third cohorts, …

How Is That Going To Work? Rethinking Acquisitions In A Next-Generation Ils, Kathleen Spring, Megan Drake, Siôn Romaine

Faculty & Staff Publications

What do acquisitions policies and workflows look like in next-generation systems? How can institutions leverage automated processes to improve efficiency, and what happens when you also belong to a consortium that is looking to increase collaboration? The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a consortium of 37 public and private academic institutions in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. In January 2012, the Alliance began a 2-year process of migrating all 37 institutions to a shared ILS. Migrating in four cohorts every 6 months, the first cohort of six institutions went live with Ex Libris’s Alma and Primo in June 2013. Representatives from three …

Fostering Rn-To-Bsn Students’ Confidence In Searching Online For Scholarly Information On Evidence-Based Practice, Carol Mcculley, Melissa Jones

Faculty & Staff Publications

Graduates of bachelor of science in nursing (BSN) programs are increasingly expected to take an active role in assessing and improving nursing practice, and nurse educators are expected to prepare BSN students for this expanding role. Information literacy, the ability to search for, find, get, and use scholarly information to inform nursing practice, should be a critical component of nursing education. This article focuses on five strategies for teaching information literacy to registered nurse (RN)-to-BSN students in an online continuing education environment. These strategies include the addition of an embedded librarian to the online courses, collaboration between the librarian and …

Following The Roots Of Oregon Wine, Rachael Cristine Woody, Rich Schmidt

Faculty & Staff Publications

Terroir is a French term widely used in wine circles to mean “the taste of the place.” The terroir of Oregon wine combines environmental and human elements to produce distinguishing flavors and reveals the histories of grape growers and winemakers in the state. A new archive at Linfield College, the Oregon Wine History Archive (OWHA), collects that history and makes it available to researchers and the public. Library professionals Rachael Cristine Woody and Rich Schmidt tell the story of OWHA’s origins and mission, which is to document all aspects of the wine industry by collecting and preserving historical materials such …

Building Bridges With Boats: Preserving Community History Through Intra- And Inter-Institutional Collaboration, Kathleen Spring, Brenda Devore Marshall

Faculty & Staff Publications

This chapter discusses Launching through the Surf: The Dory Fleet of Pacific City, a project which documents the historical and contemporary role of dory fishers in the life of the coastal village of Pacific City, Oregon, U.S. Linfield College’s Department of Theatre and Communication Arts, its Jereld R. Nicholson Library, the Pacific City Arts Association, the Pacific City Dorymen's Association, and the Linfield Center for the Northwest joined forces to engage in a collaborative college and community venture to preserve this important facet of Oregon’s history. Using ethnography as a theoretical grounding and oral history as a method, the …

“Takin’ It To The Web”: Updating Operations Manuals For Today's Techno-Realities, Kathleen Spring

Faculty & Staff Publications

This article describes the process of revamping an existing operations manual for the interlibrary loan department at a small, private liberal arts college. It documents how staff met their goals of integrating traditional reference materials and training information, utilizing Web-based tools for content creation and delivery, consolidating assessment and evaluation mechanisms, and facilitating updating of content. By incorporating theories of blended learning into the design of the new resource, supervisors were able to shift their existing documentation from 2D to 2.0. Strategies for implementing an interactive training resource and operations manual are provided.

Ask Them—They’Ll Tell You! Eliciting Student Perspectives To Improve Services, Barbara Valentine

Faculty & Staff Publications

Most people avoid doing qualitative research because they think it is not scientifically rigorous and requires time and lots of money. In fact, there is a lot one can do with little overhead that reaps immediate benefits for improving services and gaining unexpected valuable insights. This study uses a web redesign and assessment project to showcase some simple ways to get useful information from students.

Library web pages provide the main access point to many of the library’s services and resources, which also continue to change and accrue. Does the web site really serve students' research needs today? Where do …

Mixing And Matching: Assessing Information Literacy, Carol Mcculley

Faculty & Staff Publications

Authentic assessment of student learning outcomes is much in demand. This paper reviews a variety of assessment methods that measure cognitive, behavioral, and affective levels of learning that can be used to design library class instruction and assessments to improve student learning and teaching of information literacy concepts. The intentional use of these methods to assess undergraduate student learning in many disciplines through working collaboratively with faculty and integrating the assessments in a learner-centered environment is discussed.

What Do Freshmen Really Know About Research? Assess Before You Teach, Jean Caspers, Steven Mark Bernhisel

Faculty & Staff Publications

The article describes an effort to assess the information literacy skills of entering first-year college students. An instrument was developed and information was gathered on students' experience and comfort in conducting library research as well as their perceived competence with specific information literacy skills. In addition, students completed a skills test to assess specific knowledge and skills relating to information literacy. Entering first-year students generally self-reported their skills to be less than "excellent." This finding was supported by the results of the skills test. Strengths and weaknesses in information literacy skills are reported, as well as implications for librarians who …

Research Agenda For Library Instruction And Information Literacy, Melissa Becher, Jean Caspers

Faculty & Staff Publications

This guest editorial summarizes the updates to the published research agenda for library instruction and information literacy within the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL).

Students Versus The Research Paper: What Can We Learn?, Barbara Valentine

Faculty & Staff Publications

If we are to develop library services that meet the expectations of our patrons in this changing technological environment, we must first understand how they currently interact with our information services and systems. This paper presents preliminary results from a qualitative study that elicits perspectives of undergraduates engaged in writing research papers. Because this study has been in progress since the early nineties, results also reflect ways in which technological advances such as the Internet may have altered strategies. Findings highlight some commonly used information gathering strategies, issues which impact motivation and use of time, and sources of help students …