Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Hidden Opportunity: The Advantages Of Synchronizing Multiple Knowledge Bases, Emily Gross, Soley Somma, Jon Crossno

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Presentations

There are many advantages to synchronizing your knowledge bases that benefit your library. However, with reduced staff, the rapid changes across e-Resources, and working with multiple vendors, synching knowledge bases can seem daunting. Panelists will share why and how they chose to synchronize knowledge bases to support their library's strategy.

Teaching Them How To Fish: Supporting Digital Collection Building Through Regional Partnerships, Marianne Swierenga, Sharon Carlson, Amy Bocko

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Presentations

When asked what the barriers were to digitizing and sharing their unique collections online, many smaller cultural heritage institutions say a lack equipment, systems, and expertise. Our answer to that: mobile digitization lab, training, and digital collections hosting. Western Michigan University Libraries, in partnership with the Gilmore Car Museum and Richland Community Library, has been developing a model that aims to make digitization, metadata creation, and digital collection building possible for smaller-scale regional libraries and cultural heritage institutions. Supported by a LSTA grant though the Library of Michigan, and leveraging digital collection building expertise at WMU, this pilot project will …

Using Robot Animal Companions In The Academic Library To Mitigate Student Stress, Autumn P. Edwards, Chad Edwards, Bryan Abendschein, Juliana Espinosa, Jonathan Scherger, Patricia Fravel Vander Meer

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the relationship between self-reported levels of acute stress, perceived social support, and interactions with robot animals in an academic library. The authors hypothesized: 1. participants would report lower stress and higher positive affect after their interaction with a robot support animal; 2. perceived supportiveness of the robot support animal would positively predict the amount of stress reduction the participants reported.

The authors hosted a robot petting zoo in the main library at a large Midwestern university during finals week. Participants were asked to rate their stress level prior to interacting with the …

Arts À La Carte, Marianne Swierenga, Susan Steuer, Michael J. Duffy Iv

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Publications

Instructions on how to create a series of events to bring music, art, creative writing, and dance into the library, fostering an open, dynamic, and creatively charged library atmosphere.

Composers Of Color In Our Libraries: A Study Of Composers Of Color Included In Rob Deemer's Composer Diversity Database And How They Are Represented In Worldcat, Michael J. Duffy Iv

University Libraries Faculty & Staff Presentations

Michael Duffy will present a study of composers listed in a crowdsourced database of composers of color coordinated by composer Rob Deemer, identifying the corresponding Library of Congress name headings as applicable, and noting how many bibliographic records for scores are listed, and how many libraries hold the most widely-held score upon searching their names in WorldCat.