Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Review: Checkcite (In A Few Of Our Favorite Things: Part Ii), Kelly Giles

Libraries

No abstract provided.

Towards Successful Implementation Of An Institutional Repository In A Cross-Border Environment, Mary Ngure, Peter Gatiti, Catherine Wanyingi

Libraries

Globally, institutions are increasingly using Institutional Repositories (IR) to manage their digital resources more effectively. An IR collects, showcases, archives, and preserves the intellectual and scholarly output of an institution. There are many available platforms including Open Source, Proprietary and Custom-built platforms (Sharif 2013; Jain et al. n.d). The focus of this paper is the implementation of Institutional Repository (Digital Commons), a proprietary hosted institutional repository platform by Bepress. Digital Commons is a suite of tools and services that enable institutions to manage, display, and publish on the web in a highly visible online showcase. It has professional-grade publishing tools …

Better Together: Building Strategic Library Partnerships, Peter Gatiti, Margaret Law

Libraries

Forming partnerships to achieve institutional goals is a growing trend both within libraries and in the broader academic community. Such partnerships allow the sharing of expertise, provide access to a wider range of resources than may be possible within one’s own area or organization, and strengthen the library’s position within the university. This paper reviews library partnerships and highlights the benefit of such endeavors for the libraries and their partner institutions.

The objective of this paper is to identify important areas of partnerships for librarians in Kenya. It explores important considerations on which the library draws up partnership strategies, identifies …

It's Debatable: Tracking Changes In Student Opinions On Drug Policies After Classroom Debate, Carolyn Schubert, Lara Sapp, Elizabeth Howley

Libraries

This poster provides a case study integrating ethical reasoning and debate into an undergraduate Health Sciences course on drugs uses, effects, and policies. The course instructor, Health Sciences and Nursing Librarian, and JMU Debate Team coaches collaborated on building the tiered assignment of annotated bibliographies and classroom student debates. The results document pre and post surveys of student opinions regarding each of the debate topics, providing insight on how opinions changed through the course of this assignment.

Flow (Proquest), Carolyn Schubert, Amanda Hedrick

Libraries

Flow is a new citation management product released by ProQuest in 2013, bridging the robust features in RefWorks with other popular characteristics from its competitors like Mendeley or Zotero. Additional features such as document annotations and revised folder sharing are great additions. However, Flow still lacks a full mobile-friendly interface and complete ADA-accessible navigation. Overall, Flow is a huge step forward in design and usability for those already familiar with RefWorks and who need a very robust citation management tool.

Distance Support Services: Defining, Discussing, And Determining Future Roles, Carolyn Schubert, Margaret Hoogland

Libraries

Introduction:

With over 6 million students now taking at least one course online, higher education is significantly shifting educational and outreach approaches (The Sloan Consortium, 2011). This trend is particularly strong in the medical field, as “fully online health sciences programs show higher growth than online programs in other disciplines” (The Sloan Consortium, 2011). To meet these emerging needs, library support must now occur via Learning Management Systems, Guides, Tutorials, and Websites. In parallel with the education trends, telemedicine consultations are becoming options more readily available to patients and practitioners making online learning and collaboration a professional skill.

In …

Enriching Conference Participation Using Social Media At #Macmla2013, Carolyn Schubert

Libraries

Objectives: Social media's growing presence in personal interactions, news reporting, and education are just some of the ways this technology is changing our in-person and virtual interactions. While social media has been used in conjunction with the past few annual Mid-Atlantic Chapter (MAC) meetings, understanding who is participating and how they participate can help identify other patterns for year-round networking.

Methods: The meeting planning team created an outline identifying all key communication channels and groups, including the MAC Messages blog and Twitter, to promote the annual conference. The author used several quantitative methods to track social media posts related to …

Give Yourself An Orcid: Boosting Your Visibility Through Researcher Profiling Networks, Carolyn Schubert, Steven W. Holloway

Libraries

Looking for researchers who share your interests but not sure where to find them? Struggling to quantify all the different ways your research impacts your discipline? A number of free and subscription-based initiatives exist to promote researcher identification, manage researcher profiles and publications, and facilitate collaborative networking. The actors in this academic ecosphere include individual researchers, national governments, umbrella organizations, librarians, publishers, and research funding agencies.These platforms move beyond the historical citation metrics and enhances how we define the impact of scholarship by maintaining up-to-date researcher profiles and synchronizing their data. We will cover the nature of these researcher profiling …

Pulp In The Ivory Tower: One University Library's Development Of A Pulp Magazine Collection, Brian Flota, Mark Peterson

Libraries

No abstract provided.

Chat Reference: To Schedule Or Not To Schedule?, Michael Mungin

Libraries

Students in distance programs often have no way of visiting the physical reference desk to seek assistance from and engage in a reference interview with a librarian. Lack of access to this crucial research resource presents a major challenge to distance education. Luckily, chat reference services, available through various products and software, are becoming an increasingly common service offered by libraries. This technology allows the students and librarians to work together in real time to achieve the back and forth dialogue required in reference interviews. Unfortunately, the literature on creating and providing a chat reference service does not delve deeply …

Contributing Material To Jmu Scholarly Commons – Jmu Faculty, Laura Drake Davis

Libraries

No abstract provided.

An Evaluation Of Pharmacogenomic Information Provided By Five Common Drug Information Resources, K.T. L. Vaughan, Kelly L. Scolaro, Heidi N. Anksorus, Mary W. Roederer

Libraries

No abstract provided.

The Dimensions Of Library Service Quality: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis Of The Libqual+ Instrument, Jody Condit Fagan

Libraries

The LibQUAL + instrument has been widely adopted by libraries to evaluate user perceptions of library service quality. Studies combining groups (e.g., Lane et al., 2012) have shown high correlations between two factors, suggesting the possibility that a two-factor model may fit as well as the three-factor model theorized by the developers. Also, previous studies have not closely examined residuals to analyze local misfit in the context of theory but instead have often correlated error terms to improve model fit. This study uses LibQUAL + responses from undergraduates at a public, comprehensive university to test three-factor, two-factor, and one-factor models …

The Suitability Of Web Analytics Key Performance Indicators In The Academic Library Environment, Jody C. Fagan

Libraries

As the demand for library assessment grows, academic libraries are becoming more interested in Web analytics. Data are automatically gathered and provide information about a wide variety of online interactions. Libraries have long used simple counts such as visits and page views, but have more recently begun to choose strategic benchmarks, also known as key performance indicators (KPIs). Many common KPIs were created for commercial websites and are challenging to adapt for libraries. However, the underlying concepts are sufficiently valuable that libraries should explore their use. By evaluating the validity of web metrics, libraries can further the development of standards …

Role Of A Required Information Literacy Competency Exam In The First College Year, Kathy E. Clarke

Libraries

James Madison University has had required information literacy competency exam situated within the first year of University’s General Education Program for over a decade. This test, previously the Information Seeking Skills Test (ISST) and now, Madison Research Essentials Skills Test (MREST) is directly mapped to the Association for College & Research Libraries’ (ACRL) Information Literacy Standards for Higher Education. For many years, the only data regularly gathered noted if the students were passing, passing at the advanced level or not, and how the students performed on each objective. With this paper, the author explains how the test data is currently …