Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Rda: Preparing For The Change Together, Sue A. Gardner, Robin Bernstein

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Details the origin and purpose of the Nebraska RDA Practice Group, active in 2012.

Up From Under The “Open Access” Bus, Paul Royster

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

For most of the past seven years I had thought I was working to promote open access to academic scholarship and creative works. I helped place more than 40,000 articles and documents in a freely accessible repository, from which they could be (and were) browsed, downloaded, saved, printed, and linked to.

But I find now that these efforts failed to meet the standards of the open access advocates as represented by (among others) SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, a library membership organization formed and sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries. As was made excruciatingly clear at …

Announcement Of Website: "The Treaty Of Waitangi, 1840: A Levenshtein Edit Distance Analysis Of English Language Variants", Charles D. Bernholz, Brian T. O'Grady, Brian Pytlik Zillig

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The British, in their worldwide program of colonization, consummated treaties with the indigenous peoples of North America, Africa, Asia, and the Far East and Pacific in a process to administer these acquisitions. The Treaty of Waitangi, 1840 is the primary document illustrating this behavior in New Zealand but, over time, variants of this important instrument have appeared. A text analysis of forty-three of these renditions was performed by applying Levenshtein’s edit distance algorithm.

Table I and Table II (Excel spreadsheets) are attached (below).

Papers Resulting From Research Conducted At Arapaho Prairie, Arthur County, Nebraska, Kathleen H. Keeler, Sue A. Gardner, Scott Lyell Gardner

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The Nature Conservancy owns Arapaho Prairie, a 1,298-acre property in Arthur County, in western Nebraska.

On the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Cedar Point Biological Station, Habitats Web page (available at http://cedarpoint.unl.edu/research/habitats/index.shtml), Arapaho Prairie is described: “Arapaho Prairie [is] home to numerous experiments that have shaped our understanding of nature. … Arapaho Prairie, owned by the Nature Conservancy, is two square miles of ungrazed sandhills prairie in Arthur County. It is managed by Cedar Point and was purchased expressly for our researchers and courses. There is a …

Announcement: The Indians Of The Northern And Southern Districts Of North America: Levenshtein Comparisons Of The Tribe Lists From The 1764 ‘Plan For The Future Management Of Indian Affairs.’, Charles D. Bernholz, Brian T. O'Grady

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The Northern and Southern Districts of the British government in America contained tribes of Indians that were specifically enumerated prior to the preparation of the 1764 Plan for the future management of Indian affairs. That Board of Trade policy reassigned the responsibility for Indian affairs to the imperial government, rather than leaving it to be mediated by the individual colonies. Fourteen variants of those lists, from official and public sources, were compared with Levenshtein’s edit distance algorithm to assess similarity and provenance. Table I and Table II (Excel spreadsheets) are attached (below).

Rda: Nebraska’S Approach To Preparing For The Change, Sue A. Gardner, Robin Bernstein

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Details the origin and purpose of the Nebraska RDA Practice Group, active in 2012.

Adding Website Flair With Buttons, Marcia Dority Baker

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Dority-Baker discusses how librarians at the University of Nebraska Schmid Law Library developed a plan of action to corral a specific number of resources for faculty pages using hotlinked buttons, such as those for the UNL Digital Commons, SSRN, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

The Quantification Of A Forced Convergence Of Similar Texts: The 1870 And The 1875 Okmulgee Constitution And Levenshtein’S Edit Distance Metric - Website Announcement & Link, Charles D. Bernholz

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Government Documents and the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries are pleased to announce the release of a World Wide Web site, entitled The quantification of a forced convergence of similar texts: The 1870 and the 1875 Okmulgee Constitution and Levenshtein’s edit distance metric.

The Okmulgee Constitution, created in the Creek capital of the Indian Territory in December 1870, provided a model for a new full-fledged and federally supported Indian state to replace the Territory. In a previous study, the variants of that document’s text from the official and unofficial record were …

Cresting Toward The Sea Change: Literature Review Of Cataloging And Classification 2009-10, Sue Ann Gardner

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

This review covers cataloging and classification literature published in 2009 and 2010, including relevant explorations of knowledge organization systems and theory. Only English-language literature is reviewed, though not all of the literature covered is U.S.-based. Overarching themes presented in the literature include the merging of library metadata into the Web environment, the continuation of cooperative cataloging in libraries, the role of both controlled and uncontrolled headings in catalog records, and reconsiderations of workflow in light of impending changes to cataloging rules. Notably, several relevant foundational documents were either completed or revised during the review period.

Preservation And Access In An Age Of E-Science And Electronic Records: Sharing The Problem And Discovering Common Solutions, Claire Stewart

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

As academic libraries grapple with the challenge of preserving their own digitized special collections, intensification of interest in preserving other electronic content may present opportunities to collaborate with organizations on campus. This article offers a brief introduction to some of the core issues in digital preservation and suggests an orientation to the problems that can be helpful in thinking about how to join forces with others on campus.

West Of Eden: Resource Wars And Nature-Cultures In The American West, Scout Calvert

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The richness and variety of the western landscape is what is at stake in hot political contests for the resources of the West: much of this public land is available to economic activity, including for mining, grazing, logging, and recreation. These uses threaten to outpace the land’s ability to renew these resources along with others, like air and water. Now in the first decade of the millennium with a new environmental awareness emerging partly from media coverage of global warming and peak oil, The American West at Risk offers a wide-ranging look at the degradation of the environment in the …

Insights From Editions Of The Annual Register Regarding Later Variants Of The Royal Proclamation Of 1763: An Application Of Levenshtein’S Edit Distance Metric - Website Announcement & Link, Charles D. Bernholz, Brian T. O'Grady

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Variants of King George III’s Royal Proclamation of 1763, found in ten editions of the sixth volume of The Annual Register for that year, were examined through the application of Levenshtein’s edit distance metric to identify textual discrepancies across these renditions. Induced textual errors were carried into later editions of the 1763 Annual Register. The presence of distinct faults in Proclamation texts taken from other independent publications indicated that the latter must have used deviant Register versions as their sources.

Table I and Table II (Excel spreadsheets) are attached (below).

An Analysis Of The Variants Of The Okmulgee Constitution, Charles D. Bernholz

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The creation of the Okmulgee Constitution was a significant chapter in the history of Indian Territory and Oklahoma, but it is less well-known beyond those boundaries. This instrument was initially fashioned in 1870 and later contemplated at joint tribal meetings mandated by the federal government following the Civil War. The Five Civilized Tribes had been removed from the southeastern United States to lands obtained through the Louisiana Purchase in the first half of the nineteenth century, and at the beginning of the Civil War these and other tribes of Indian Territory consummated nine treaties with the Confederate States of America. …

Continuing Education For Distance Librarians, Mary Cassner, Kate E. Adams

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Distance librarians as engaged professionals work in a complex environment of changes in technologies, user expectations, and institutional goals. They strive to keep current with skills and competencies to support distance learners. This article provides a selection of continuing education opportunities for distance librarians, and is relevant for all practicing librarians. Suggestions include physical and virtual conferences, professional journals for reflective reading, short-term webinars about current topics and innovative approaches, blogs for sharing ideas, and discussion and interest groups for networking with colleagues about best practices, leadership, and serving academic populations.

The Ogallala Aquifer In Nebraska: Gray Literature (1891–2010), Adonna Fleming, Leslie M. Delserone, Elaine Maytag Nowick

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The Ogallala Aquifer is a key water resource for several U. S. states. TransCanada, a Canadian company, proposes to construct the Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sands crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Texas; one proposed route would bury the pipeline in the Aquifer, raising water quality and environmental concerns. A rich inventory of information about the Aquifer predates the current controversy. This article presents a key subset of an extensive, ongoing bibliography: 128 citations to gray literature about the Ogallala Aquifer in Nebraska, which are inaccessible online and/or held in only a few libraries. The authors present …

Inciting Curiosity And Creating Meaning: Teaching Information Evaluation Through The Lens Of “Bad Science”, Catherine Fraser Riehle

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Ability to evaluate information is a critical component of information literacy. This article provides strategies for engaging students in learning about information evaluation in the contexts of the scientific publication cycle and communication in the digital age. Also included are recent findings regarding undergraduate student research behavior and ideas for integrating constructivist learning theory in order to develop effective learning activities that encourage curiosity and critical thinking.