Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Evolution Of An Institutional Repository: A Case History From Nebraska, Paul Royster

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The 13-year history of the institutional repository (IR) at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is recounted with emphasis on local conditions, administrative support, recruitment practices, and management philosophy. Practices included offering new services, hosting materials outside the conventional tenure stream, using student employees, and providing user analytics on global dissemination. Acquiring trust of faculty depositors enhanced recruitment and extra-library support. Evolution of policies on open access, copyright, metadata, and third-party vendors are discussed, with statistics illustrating the growth, contents, and outreach of the repository over time. A final section discusses future directions for scholarly communications and IRs in particular.

Your Internet Data Is Rotting, Paul Royster

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The internet is growing, but old information continues to disappear daily.

Many MySpace users were dismayed to discover earlier this year that the social media platform lost 50 million files uploaded between 2003 and 2015. The failure of MySpace to care for and preserve its users’ content should serve as a reminder that relying on free third-party services can be risky. MySpace has probably preserved the users’ data; it just lost their content. The data was valuable to MySpace; the users’ content less so.

Preserving content or intellectual property on the internet presents a conundrum. If it’s accessible, then it …

Academic Library As Learning Space And As Collection: A Learning Commons' Effects On Collections And Related Resources And Services, Deeann Allison, Erica Defrain, Brianna D. Hitt, David C. Tyler

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

A tremendous amount has been written about the library as a learning space and about this model's two most popular outgrowths, the information commons and the learning commons. Little to nothing, however, has been written about how reshaping an academic/research library and repurposing library space affects the library as a collection, its resources, and its collections-related services. This study looks at the immediate impact of opening a learning commons in an academic/research library on circulation, document delivery and interlibrary loan requests for returnables, and on- and off-campus database accesses at one institution.

Additional tables and statistical analysis are contained in …

Resource Management In A Time Of Fiscal Scarcity: Combining Qualitative And Quantitative Assessment For Journal Package Cancellations, Casey D. Hoeve

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

As a result of continual resource inflation and a decreasing budget, Kansas State University Libraries were required to conduct a large-scale electronic journal cancellation project. The current organizational model does not require librarian subject specialists to perform comprehensive collection development duties; therefore, content development librarians developed a methodology of collecting quantitative and qualitative statistics to collaboratively evaluate journals. This article will demonstrate the methodology of assessment, and serve as a working model for libraries operating under circumstances of labor shortages, budget cuts, and leadership restructuring.

Through Faculty's Eyes: Teaching Threshold Concepts And The Framework, Lorna M. Dawes

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

This study investigates faculty perceptions of teaching information literacy. Using 24 semi-structured interviews, a phenomenographic approach identified four qualitative ways in which faculty experienced teaching information literacy (IL). This paper analyzes the challenging information literacy concepts that faculty identify—known to many librarians as threshold concepts— and their relationship to the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.” The study highlights the transdisciplinary nature of IL instruction and indicates that, although unaware of the ACRL Framework, faculty already teach at least three concepts from that document. This finding suggests new opportunities for collaborations between …

Plan Your Impact: Stacking Your Skills To Make Yourself Irreplaceable [Chapter 12], Kiyomi D. Deards, Leo S. Lo

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

• construct and maintain a professional reputation in order to advance in the profession and be sought after for service and scholarship opportunities;

• describe effective methods of becoming involved in professional associations in order to bypass the barrier of needing-to-have-experience-to-get-experience; and

• construct effective narratives in order to effectively advocate for promotion and/or tenure.

Introduction

Success, defined as career progression, is a primary concern for new librarians and library school students in this era of constantly shifting priorities. Stacking your own unique skill sets establishes your professional reputation and can …

Dissemination, Access, Preservation: A Case Study Of Publications From The Organic Agriculture Research And Extension Initiative, Leslie M. Delserone

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative, administered by USDA-NIFA, is the major federal funder of organic agricultural research. Analysis of 733 publications produced during the initiative’s first five years explored the dissemination of this research, and accessibility to and preservation of the publications. Publications associated with conferences (e.g., abstracts) were most numerous (36%). Many publications (69%) were openly accessible online in 2017 but fewer than 10% of these appeared in a stable digital repository. In four of the eight publication categories, access disappeared over time. No program exists to systematically collect and preserve these outputs of organic agricultural research. …

The Scholarly Impact Of Books Acquired Via Approval Plan Selection, Librarian Orders, And Patron-Driven Acquisitions As Measured By Citation Counts, David C. Tyler, Brianna D. Hitt, Francis A. Nterful, Mckenna R. Mettling

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Patron-driven acquisition has been an important, if contentious, topic for decades, with numerous programs having been piloted, adopted, and reported on, largely favorably, in the library literature. Still, questions and doubts persist for academic libraries, especially where the composition of vendor plans and packages and the judgment of patrons are concerned. Past literature has approached the assessment of patron-driven acquisition by analyzing circulation/usage, comparing peer-library holdings, seeking patrons’ or librarians’ judgments of utility and suitability, looking for evidence of collection imbalances, and testing for overlap in patrons’ and librarians’ purchases. To contribute to this literature, this study addresses scholarly impact …

The Complete Guide To Personal Digital Archiving, Blake Graham

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

As one of the more recent professional publications on PDA, The Complete Guide to Personal Digital Archiving provides practitioners in libraries and archives with a collection of thoughtful essays on common practices, case studies and instructional programs, and ethical implications related to the management and preservation of personal data. The book’s editor, Brianna Marshall, is a bright information professional quickly rising in the ranks of the library and archives community. Since earning an MLS from Indiana University Bloomington in 2014, Marshall has held a leadership position in data curation and research services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, and recently …

This Is Not A Library! This Is Not A Kwik-E-Mart! The Satire Of Libraries, Librarians And Reference Desk Air-Hockey Tables, Casey D. Hoeve

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Librarians are obsessed with stereotypes. Sometimes even so much so that, according to Gretchen Keer and Andrew Carlos, the fixation has become a stereotype within itself (63). The complexity of the library places the profession in a constant state of transition. Maintaining traditional organization systems while addressing new information trends distorts our image to the outside observer and leaves us vulnerable to mislabeling and stereotypes. Perhaps our greatest fear in recognizing stereotypes is not that we appear invariable but that the public does not fully understand what services we can provide. When we lose our ability to maintain relevancy, we …

Re-Centering Teaching And Learning: Toward Communities Of Practice At The University Of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Erica Defrain, Leslie Delserone, Elizabeth Lorang, Catherine F. Riehle, Toni Anaya

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) presents important opportunities that can transform learning, but many academic librarians at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln (UNL) struggle to find a scholarly center when their teaching roles are frequently that of external collaborator. Challenges such as access to student data, meaningful evaluations of instruction, limited opportunities for funding and professional development, and uncertainty over how to negotiate for these have contributed to librarians remaining on the periphery of SoTL work. Hoping to overcome some of these hurdles, UNL librarians are developing a community of practice (CoP) around teaching and learning.

In the …