Collaborative Approaches To The Management Of Geospatial Data Collections In Canadian Academic Libraries: A Historical Case Study, Leanne Trimble, Cheryl Woods, Francine Berish, Daniel Jakubek, Sarah Simpkin

Western Libraries Publications

Special Issue: Geospatial Data Management, Curation, and Preservation - Part 2

The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is a consortium of the twenty-one university libraries in Ontario, Canada. Since 1967, OCUL member institutions have worked together to share costs and workload through collective purchasing and licensing of information resources and more recently through the establishment of a shared digital infrastructure known as Scholars Portal. Under the auspices of OCUL, Ontario's university map librarians formed the OCUL Map Group in 1973 to seek opportunities to communicate and collaborate to improve the collections and services they offer their users. The opportunities …

A New Approach To Evaluating Information: A Reflection On Radar, Kevin Tanner, Kim Mcphee

Western Libraries Presentations

For instruction librarians, teaching information literacy (IL) skills is often an important aspect of any lesson plan. One area of IL includes the critical evaluation of sources, an essential skill that students need to succeed as aspiring scholars and researchers. This ability to differentiate “good” from “bad” information is beneficial to students beyond their academic careers, and will help them navigate the “sea of information” for the rest of their lives. Typically, such evaluation skills are taught through applying the CRAAP test: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. While humorous and memorable, the name of this test devalues the usefulness …

Leveraging Resources Across Units And Universities To Address Academic Literacies And Research Skills In Ontario Graduate Students, Melanie Mills, Elan Paulson

Western Libraries Presentations

Student2Scholar (S2S) is a fully online and open course that aims to teach academic literacies and research skills to social science graduate students. Set to launch in December 2015, S2S was conceived of and created by a diverse and distributed team of academic librarians, university staff, and graduate students from three Ontario Universities: Western, the University of Toronto, and Queen’s. Members of the project team brought with them varying degrees of experience and expertise across a range of disciplinary and teaching and learning backgrounds, including: adult education, information literacy, and online learning (to name only a few).

S2S serves as …

Altmetrics Concepts And Practices, Janice Winkler

Western Libraries Presentations

Researchers are often asked to demonstrate their productivity and the impact of their research when they apply for funding, as well as when they go up for promotion and tenure. One of the ways they do this is by using traditional bibliometrics. Librarians, publishers, and institutions are other stakeholders with sometimes widely varying use cases for research impact metrics. Unfortunately, some traditional research impact metrics have been identified as barriers to open access initiatives, including Scholarship@Western.

Altmetrics provide an alternative or complement to traditional metrics. They generally use information available on the web to determine how research output is used …

Professional Identity And You: Why Self-Concept Matters In Librarianship, Kevin Tanner

FIMS Presentations

Kevin Tanner addresses the importance of professional identity in librarianship. In the Summer 2015 semester, he completed an independent study on the construction of professional identity of librarians on Twitter through professional development and networking. During this session, he shares the results of that study and give suggestions on how you can begin to find your own professional identity while still retaining your individuality. While there are many stereotypes about librarians, they are not “one-size-fits-all” professionals, and a new modern image of the professional has begun to emerge in the digital age through a thoughtful reflection on identity.

Academic Data Library Services In Canada Over Time, S Vincent Gray, Elizabeth Hill

Western Libraries Publications

This Excel spreadsheet both supplements and was used to create the maps (also included) presented in The Academic Data Librarian Profession in Canada: History and Future Directions, a chapter by Vincent Gray and Elizabeth Hill in the forthcoming (2015) ACRL volume The Academic Data Librarian in Theory and Practice. Data were compiled from information sent from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and Statistics Canada.

Enhancing Key Digital Literacy Skills: Information Privacy, Information Security, And Copyright/Intellectual Property, Jacquelyn A. Burkell, Alexandre Fortier, Lisa Di Valentino, Sarah T. Roberts

FIMS Publications

Key Messages

Background

• Knowledge and skills in the areas of information security, information privacy, and copyright/intellectual property rights and protection are of key importance for organizational and individual success in an evolving society and labour market in which information is a core resource.
• Organizations require skilled and knowledgeable professionals who understand risks and responsibilities related to the management of information privacy, information security, and copyright/intellectual property.
• Professionals with this expertise can assist organizations to ensure that they and their employees meet requirements for the privacy and security of information in their care and control, and in order to ensure that …

Interrogating Course-Related Public Interest Internships In Communications, Sandra Smeltzer

FIMS Publications

This article examines the benefits and drawbacks of for-credit, unpaid internships geared towards the public good. Attention is focused specifically on communication internships with non- governmental, non-profit, and community-based organizations. Drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with students, staff, faculty, and host organizations, the author advances a critical model of service learning that more fully recognizes the labour of community partners and encourages students to consider what role they can and should play in advancing the public good. The article also highlights two key issues vis-à-vis public interest internships that are of particular relevance to the field of communications. …

Watching Storytelling: Visual Information In Oral Narratives, James Ripley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Oral narratives, though prolific, are increasingly being shared via some form of electronic mediation, and yet they are often glossed over in regard to the study of narrative. This study was designed to address the unique nature of oral narratives focusing on the information channels utilized by participants in their co-creation of stories.

A comparative case study was undertaken of three groups who employed a variety of synchronous and asynchronous electronic mediation in their storytelling. Viewed through the lenses of Narratology and Social Presence Theory a combination of participant observation and qualitative semi-structured exploratory narrative interviews were undertaken with participants …

Tactical Destabiliazation For Economic Justice: The First Phase Of The 1984-2004 Rhythm & Blues Royalty Reform Movement, Matt Stahl

FIMS Publications

This article examines an early (1980s) phase in a two-decade effort towards ‘royalty reform’ in the US recording industry, whereby ageing African American rhythm & blues performers sought to redress systematic underpayment of record royalties. The record companies to which these performers had signed in the 1940s and 1950s had contractually obligated themselves to provide biannual statements of royalty accounts, and to pay artists record royalties, once initial costs had been recouped. Yet this is rarely how things turned out, and many performers found themselves broke and vulnerable as they reached retirement age, even though many of their records had …

Awareness And Perception Of Copyright Among Teaching Faculty At Canadian Universities, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

In this talk I discuss the results of a survey of Canadian university faculty members undertaken from October to December 2014. The survey sought to determine teaching faculty awareness of copyright law and institutional policy and training, and how they would respond in various scenarios.

Analysis of the results suggests that while faculty members are aware of the existence of their institution's copyright policy, much fewer know whether their institution offers training. Of those who do know about training, only one-third have attended. However, faculty who have attended copyright training find that their knowledge is enhanced by the experience.

It …

Multilingual Information Access: Practices And Perceptions Of Bi/Multilingual Academic Users, Peggy I. Nzomo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The research reported in this dissertation explored linguistic determinants in online information searching, and examined to what extent bi/multilingual academic users utilize Multilingual Information Access (MLIA) tools and what impact these have on their information searching behavior.

The aim of the study was three-pronged: to provide tangible data that can support recommendations for the effective user-centered design of Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR) systems; to provide a user-centered evaluation of existing MLIA tools, and to offer the basis of a framework for Library & Information Science (LIS) professionals in teaching information literacy and library skills for bi/multilingual academic users.

In the …

Contentious Information: Accounts Of Knowledge Production, Circulation And Consumption In Transitional Egypt, Ahmad Kamal

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

While the 2011 Egyptian Uprising renewed attention to revolutionary news platforms such as Al-Jazeera and Facebook, citizens continued to be understudied as active consumers of information. Yet citizens’ perceptions of their informational milieu and how they responded in consuming, processing, and interpreting facts offer crucial insight into the turbulent transition that followed the initial uprising. This study analyzes Egyptian citizens’ accounts of their information environment and practices amid socio-political change. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 politically-engaged citizens from various political and professional backgrounds. Participants were asked to discuss the state of public discourse, the institutions responsible for the circulation …

The Library Is Our Lab: The Case For Print Books In An Academic Library, Fran Gray, Peggy Ellis

Western Libraries Presentations

Humanities researchers consider the library to be their laboratory, and its print collections their essential research equipment. In spite of anecdotal evidence that both students and faculty in the Humanities prefer print materials over e-books, academic libraries are allocating a steadily increasing proportion of their acquisitions budgets toward the purchase of e-books across all disciplines. What is the impact of this trend on the work of these researchers? At Western University in London, Ontario, we surveyed faculty members and graduate students in the Arts and Humanities faculty and those in the History department to gain a better understanding of their …

Using A Pearl Harvested Synonym Ring For The Creation Of A Digital Index On Giftedness, Nichole E. Mortimer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examined the use of a pearl harvested synonym ring in the creation of a digital index on the subject of giftedness, with the goal of better defining the available information in the field and facilitating information retrieval. The pearl harvested synonym ring was used in the retrieval of citations relating to giftedness in the ERIC database. A content analysis of these citations provided the list of topics that would form the basis of a digital index. When the topics retrieved using the pearl harvested synonym ring were compared to the indices of two textbooks on gifted education, they …

Western Libraries Casting A Wide Net For New Plan, Western University

Western Libraries Events

As part of FLIP: Future Library In Progress, a process to shape the Western Libraries strategic plan, flip charts were positioned in libraries asking students to provide input and answer the question of the day, such as, “What can the library do to inspire you?”

The makeover is just beginning for Western Libraries.

Words To Live By: How Experience Shapes Our Information World At Work, Play And In Everyday Life, Angela Pollak

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Background: A considerable amount of effort has been spent studying information behaviours and practices associated with formal, professional contexts and documentary, tangible sources of information. Comparatively, relatively little is known about non–documentary and experience-based information found in informal, nonformal, blue collar and rural contexts. Experiences of everyday life are often neglected from a research standpoint because they are seen as common, familiar, and unremarkable. Research Question: By exploring familiar experiences of everyday life in one specific, marginalized context, my goals were to contribute to the body of interdisciplinary literature describing non–problem–based phenomena and non–documentary, experience-based sources of information; to extend …

Creating A Comprehensive Search Strategy For Research On Learning Disabilities Using The Pearl Harvesting Information Retrieval Framework, Salsabel Almanssori

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The migration of libraries to the digital realm has created new opportunities for information sharing; however, the abundance of available literature has made locating relevant research studies on specific learning disabilities a difficult task, one that existing search strategies have not adequately addressed. Moreover, definitions of specific learning disabilities have evolved and the nature of this field is interdisciplinary, creating a confusion of possible search terms for the topic. The present investigation used the Pearl Harvesting Information Retrieval Framework to create a comprehensive search strategy for locating research on learning disabilities. The analysis produced four groups of harvested search terms …

The Mcdonaldization Of Academic Libraries And The Values Of Transformational Change, Karen P. Nicholson

FIMS Publications

No abstract provided.

Adr Presentation: Open Access, Joanne Paterson

Western Libraries Presentations

Publishing in an open access repository gives your research global reach. Wide dissemination of your work can mean more citations and more impact. Getting your scholarly work published is as easy as uploading a paper to a website. Find out how Scholarship@Western can benefit you and how it can help you meet the requirements of funding agencies for open access.

Scholarship@Western & Open Access: What's In It For Me?, Joanne Paterson

Western Libraries Presentations

Publishing in an open access repository gives your research global reach. Wide dissemination of your work can mean more citations and more impact. Getting your scholarly work published is as easy as uploading a paper to a website. Find out how Scholarship@Western can benefit you and how it can help you meet the requirements of funding agencies for open access.

Transitioning & Preparing Library Students: Canadian Pd Programs, Amanda R. Kelly, Sajni Lacey

FIMS Publications

In an increasingly competitive job market, extra-curricular professional development (PD) opportunities prepare and equip Masters-level LIS students to secure employment and excel in their careers. In addition to reviewing and examining existing extra-curricular PD initiatives available through current ALA accredited Masters-level programs in Canada, a potential structure for developing, framing, and delivering PD programs is proposed. Findings from a review of university websites reveal a lack of consistency across schools in PD opportunities geared to transitioning and preparing students for future careers. Prospective directions for educational organizations to further develop their program offerings for students and recent graduates are explored.

Towards News Verification: Deception Detection Methods For News Discourse, Yimin Chen, Victoria L. Rubin, Niall Conroy

FIMS Presentations

News verification is a process of determining whether a particular news report is truthful or deceptive. Deliberately deceptive (fabricated) news creates false conclusions in the readers’ minds. Truthful (authentic) news matches the writer’s knowledge. How do you tell the difference between the two in an automated way? To investigate this question, we analyzed rhetorical structures, discourse constituent parts and their coherence relations in deceptive and truthful news sample from NPR’s “Bluff the Listener”. Subsequently, we applied a vector space model to cluster the news by discourse feature similarity, achieving 63% accuracy. Our predictive model is not significantly better than chance …

Open Access Funds: Getting A Bigger Bang For Our Bucks, Bobby Glushko, Crystal Hampson, P L. Moore, Elizabeth Yates

Western Libraries Publications

Many libraries offer open access publishing funds to support authors in paying article processing charges (APC) levied by some OA journals. However, there are few standard practices for managing or assessing these funds. The Open Access Working Group (OAWG) of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) was asked to investigate and articulate best practices for successful open access fund management. In spring 2015, the OAWG surveyed Canadian academic libraries with OA funds to review their criteria and collect feedback on current practices. The survey proved timely because many OA funds are under review. Shrinking budgets, ending pilots, and questions …

Balancing Visions And Values: An Exploration Of Market Rhetoric In Canadian Academic Library Strategic Plans, Courtney L. Waugh

Western Libraries Publications

Strategic planning documents are key sites to institutional discourse and reflect the public face of the library. This research explores the extent to which market rhetoric permeates the strategic planning documents of three Canadian academic libraries, and examines the ways in which these institutions engage in market discourse to construct their institutional identity. What are the implications of adopting a "customer service" stance? What does it mean to be “innovative”? How do "personalized services" influence ideas of choice? Through content analysis and a critical lens, this exploratory research examines the tension between libraries as public good and libraries as a …

Integrating Library Instruction Into The Course Management System For A First Year Engineering Class: An Evidence-Based Study Measuring The Effectiveness Of Blended Learning On Students’ Information Literacy Levels, Qinqin Zhang, Maren Goodman, Shiyi Xie

Western Libraries Publications

This research examines students in a first-year engineering course who receive library instruction by using a newly developed online module and attending optional in-person tutorials. It aims to evaluate the outcomes of library information literacy instruction using this module combined with in-person help. Results show a significant improvement in information literacy skills from a pre-test to a post-test. Focus group and survey data indicate that most students preferred the self-paced learning style of the online module and that the content of the module helped them to conduct library research for the course. This study also considers best practices for online …

Differences Over Discourse Structure Differences: A Reply To Urquhart And Urquhart, Jennie A. Abrahamson, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Publications

Purpose – In this paper we respond to Urquhart and Urquhart’s critique of our previous work entitled “Discourse structure differences in lay and professional health communication”, published in this journal in 2012 (Vol. 68 No. 6, pp.826 – 851, doi: 10.1108/00220411211277064).

Design/methodology/approach – We examine Urquhart and Urquhart’s critique and provide responses to their concerns and cautionary remarks against cross-disciplinary contributions. We reiterate our central claim.

Findings – We argue that Mann and Thompson’s (1987, 1988) Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) offers valuable insights into computer-mediated health communication and deserves further discussion of its methodological strength and weaknesses for application in …

Awareness And Perception Of Copyright Among Teaching Faculty At Canadian Universities, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Publications

This article describes the background, methodology, and results of a study undertaken in 2014 to determine university faculty awareness and perceptions of copyright as it affects their teaching. An online survey questionnaire was distributed to teaching faculty across Canada, seeking feedback about the copyright policies and training opportunities at their institutions, where they go for copyright assistance, and how they would respond to various copyright-related scenarios that may arise in the course of teaching.

Most of the respondents are aware of the copyright policies or guidelines at their universities, but much fewer know whether or not their institution offers copyright …

Hidden Online Surveillance: What Librarians Should Know To Protect Their Privacy And That Of Their Patrons, Alexandre Fortier, Jacquelyn Burkell

FIMS Publications

Librarians have a professional responsibility to protect the right to access information free from surveillance. This right is at risk from a new and increasing threat: the collection and use of non-personally identifying information such as IP addresses through online behavioral tracking. This paper provides an overview of behavioral tracking, identifying the risks and benefits, describes the mechanisms used to track this information, and offers strategies that can be used to identify and limit behavioral tracking. We argue that this knowledge is critical for librarians in two interconnected ways. First, librarians should be evaluating recommended websites with respect to behavioral …

A Matter Of Time And Academic Discipline? Exploring The Use Of Resources, Lori Mckay-Peet, Anabel Quan-Haase, Dagmar Kern, Peter Mutschke

FIMS Publications

This paper reports on a survey of 26 social scientists and computer scientists. Through the vignette technique, resource use in situations in which scholars have a lot and very little time were explored. Findings suggest academic discipline and time may play a role in resource use.

Cette présentation rend compte d’une enquête auprès de 26 spécialistes en sciences sociales et en informatique. À l’aide de la technique de la vignette, nous avons exploré l’utilisation des ressources dans les situations où les savants ont beaucoup et à l’inverse très peu de temps. Les résultats suggèrent que les disciplines scientifiques et le …