Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Hands Across The University: Partnering To Advance Scholarly Communication, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

The University of Massachusetts – Amherst, the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system, has long been a leader in exploring new models of scholarly communication with a particular emphasis on partnering with faculty. The library has been key in the Open Education Initiative at the university, working closely with the Office of the Provost. This presentation will describe the services developed by the library, particularly through its institutional repository – ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst – and how these services have facilitated new partnerships and relationships with faculty and other stakeholders across the university. It will provide practical advice on the …

Innovative Representations Of Light, Behaving As Both Particles And Waves, Among The Paintings Of Monet And Renoir, Charles Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Monet and Renoir, friends collaborating in open air about 1865, discovered that sunlight filtering through a canopy of tree leaves does not produce the splotches and dapples that studio artists conventionally represented at the time but circles of light. Sometimes the circles of light punctuating the shade are clear, separate and crisp, as though light is being propagated as particles, but if the pin-hole gaps between leaves are very close together, they will project compound or superimposed circles that look like the waves that Thomas Young saw in his double slit experiment in 1803-4. Newton’s Opticks published in 1704 had …

Libraries Leading The Way On The Textbook Problem, Marilyn S. Billings, Charlotte Roh, William M. Cross, Brendon O'Connell

Marilyn S. Billings

No abstract provided.

Spreading The Word, Building A Community: Vision For A National Oer Movement, Nicole Allen, Steven J. Bell, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

Three experts in the use of open education resources as alternatives to high-cost textbooks describe their work and argue for the development of a national OER movement in higher education.

Preparing Climate Leaders: One Syllabus At A Time, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

Poster presentation at the 2014 Presidential Summit on Climate Leadership which highlighted the Sustainability Curriculum Initiative, a library-funded faculty mini-grant program that provides support for teaching sustainability courses across a wide range of disciplines. The poster illustrated the partnership between faculty members and subject specialist librarians. Also available was the Library’s Sustainability Research Guide, curriculum-building material which integrate library resources, photographs, and a White Paper outlining the history of the program. The Summit, held in Boston October 1-2, 2014 and hosted by Second Nature, was designed by Presidents for Presidents and Sustainability Staff in higher education. The focus of the …

For Information On The Social Interaction And Culture Graduate Focus, Dept Of Communication, Click On "Download" Button, Benjamin Bailey

Benjamin Bailey

No abstract provided.

Seeking Alternatives To High-Cost Textbooks: A Case Study Of The Umass Amherst Open Education Initiative, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

The high cost and lack of availability of commercial print textbooks is a major concern to both students and their parents. To address these concerns, the Provost's Office and the University Libraries of the University of Massachusetts Amherst launched the Open Education Initiative in the Spring of 2011, having saved over $1 million to date. This model has an implementation strategy that is easy for others to adopt.

Librarian Engagement In Oer Adoption Leadership And Roles, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

This presentation provides an overview of the potential for library leadership of open education resources initiatives.

Seeking Alternatives To High-Cost Textbooks: A Case Study Of The Umass Amherst Open Education Initiative, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

The high cost and lack of availability of commercial print textbooks is a major concern for both students and their parents. To address these concerns, the Provost’s Office and the University Libraries of the University of Massachusetts Amherst launched the Open Education Initiative (OEI) in the Spring of 2011, having saved over $1 million to date. This presentation provides a case study of the UMA experience. This model has an implementation strategy that is easy for others to adopt.

Participatory Design Ethnography In The Learning Commons: Initial Research Findings, Krista Harper

Krista M. Harper

Presentation on initial findings from research at the UMass Amherst Learning Commons using participatory design ethnography and Photovoice. In this Spring 2014 project, I guided students through a semester-length research study of students' perspectives on and practices in the library.

Are Medical Students Comfortable Managing Research Data?, Rebecca Reznik-Zellen

Rebecca C. Reznik-Zellen

Objectives: The Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School seeks to evaluate medical students’ awareness of and comfort with data handling and data management concepts. This study will help to triangulate populations and topics for integration of data management curriculum modules.Background: A medical student’s work life is unique due to the demands of their curriculum. In addition, expectations for the stewardship of research data require that students manage their data appropriately. However, data literacy is not a formal component in most undergraduate and graduate student curricula. Libraries have filled this gap by creating educational resources and training …

Libraries And Faculty Partnering To Advance Scholarly Communication, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

Since the 1990s serials crisis brought a struggle for university libraries to keep up with the escalating cost increases to maintain collections of scholarly materials, libraries have been exploring new models of scholarly communication. This presentation will discuss open access journals as one of these new models and examine trends in open access mandates, data management plans for scholarly research and new alternative metrics.

Youth Participation In Changing Food Systems: Toward Food Justice Youth Development, Krista Harper, Catherine Sands, Diego Angarita, Molly Totman

Krista M. Harper

We present results from a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project in which young people from Holyoke studied the school food system in order to make positive interventions in their school district. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of youth so that they themselves could document and discuss their concerns and perspectives (Wang, et al., 1996). The research was designed to gain insight about the students’ knowledge of food, nutrition, and community food systems. The research also illuminated students’ impressions of public policy, active citizenship, and community building that have arisen out of food justice …

Seeking Alternatives To High-Cost Textbooks: A Case Study Of The Umass Amherst Open Education Initiative, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that either reside in the public domain or carry a license that permits their free use, sharing and adaptation by all users. From textbooks to course materials, videos to software, journals to digital collections, the creation and sharing of open materials can reduce the cost of textbooks, expand access to knowledge, and support student success. This webcast features Marilyn Billings, Scholarly Communication & Special Initiatives Librarian, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, who provides an overview of the Open Education Initiative project, discusses the impact achieved for students, and provides practical …

American Inequality, A Prose/Poem 3/2/2014, Charles Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Science has made possible an increased productivity that creates an economic surplus--science continually teaches us how to do more with less resources. Why should the fruits of science be enjoyed only by the rich, since most of the innovations of science and technology have been funded or subsidized by citizen taxes. If the added productivity of science were shared among all citizens instead of only the 1%, poverty and homelessness could be ended.

Hadrian's Beard, A Prose/Poem 2/26/2014, Charles Smith

Charles Kay Smith

In his official portraits, Roman Emperor Hadrian sported a Greek beard rather than the clean shaven face that all Roman leaders had shown before him. What was his purpose in shattering precedent?

Seeking Alternatives To High-Cost Textbooks: A Case Study Of The Umass Amherst Open Education Initiative, Jay Schafer, Marilyn S. Billings

Marilyn S. Billings

The high cost and lack of availability of commercial print textbooks is a major concern to both students and their parents. To address these concerns, the Provost's Office and the University Libraries of the University of Massachusetts Amherst launched the Open Education Initiative in the Spring of 2011, having saved over $750,000 to date. This model has an implementation strategy that is easy for others to adopt.

Reinstitutionalizing Families: Life Course Policy And Marriage In The Military, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu

Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist

The transition to adulthood has become an increasingly telescoped process for Americans with marital formation occurring increasingly later in the life course. It is therefore striking to find a context like the U.S. military where marriage rates bear an anachronistic resemblance to those of the 1950s era. Using narrative data from life history interviews with military affiliates collected as part of a larger study on the impact of institutions on families, we show that the military has reinstitutionalized military families at the same time that civilian families are becoming deinstitutionalized. Structural conditions of modern military service, such as war deployment …

Residential Segregation: The Mitigating Effect Of Prior Military Experience, Fischer Mary, Jennifer H. Lundquist

Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist

This paper uses the case of military service to test the premise of the social contact theory-- that minority-majority social contact will lead to higher levels of racial tolerance and integration (Allport 1954, Robinson and Preston 1976; Sigelman and Welch 2001). As the only large-scale institution in which African Americans are over-represented and in which blacks and whites come into frequent and prolonged contact with one another, the military may be one of the most well situated US environments in which to test social contact theory. In this paper we ask whether there are long term implications for race relations …

Canadian Raising With Language-Specific Weighted Constraints, Joe Pater

Joe Pater

The distribution of the raised variants of the Canadian English diphthongs is standardly analyzed as opaque allophony, with derivationally ordered processes of diphthong raising and of /t/ flapping. This paper provides an alternative positional contrast analysis in which the pre-flap raised diphthongs are licensed by a language-specific constraint. The basic distributional facts are captured with a weighted constraint grammar that lacks the intermediate level of representation of the standard analysis. The paper also provides a proposal for how the constraints are learned, and shows how correct weights can be found with a simple, widely used learning algorithm.

Review Of Reclaiming Basque By Kathryn Woolard, Jacqueline Urla

Jacqueline L. Urla

Book Review of Reclaiming Basque by Kathryn Woolard. American Ethnologist February 2014.

On The Effects Of E-Government On Political Institutions, Jane E. Fountain

Jane E. Fountain

Research on e-government typically focuses on disruptive technologies and their presumed transformational effects on government. Yet the Internet and associated technologies are more than two decades old, and even cursory observation demonstrates that institutional change in government is often painstakingly slow. To theorize longer term developments in e-government, an institutional perspective on e-government is sketched and illustrated in this chapter. An institutional approach invites one to examine interactions among people, technologies and structures over time and in political environments characterized in part by conflict over ideas, rights and resources to uncover mechanisms that contribute to stability and change.

To extend …

Good Intentions, Limited Impact: The Technical Assistance For Student Assignment Plans Program, Kathryn A. Mcdermott, Elizabeth Debray, Erica Frankenberg, Anna Fung-Morley, Ann E. Blankenship

Kathryn A. McDermott

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 (PICS), invalidated the student assignment policies of Seattle, Washington and Jefferson County, Kentucky. The Court ruled that the government has a compelling interest to promote diversity, while simultaneously arguing that racial balance and diversity should be considered different and separate goals. Thus, the PICS decision sent mixed messages to school districts across the country. To help school districts navigate the legally uncertain environment, the federal government created a small, one-time competitive grant called the Technical Assistance for Student Assignment Plan (TASAP) grant. …

E-Resource Acquisitions In Academic Library Consortia, Christine N. Turner

Christine Turner

Scholarly publishing is the information marketplace in which academic libraries function, and major shifts in traditional publishing and pricing models are in process. Library consortia have long been viewed as a means of increasing purchasing power and reducing costs. In late 2010, the Five College Libraries (FCL) hired R2 Consulting, LLC to investigate and make recommendations regarding how the Libraries cooperate more closely on the acquisition, management, and delivery of electronic resources. This study examines and evaluates how other academic library consortia are licensing and acquiring electronic books, databases, journals and streaming media. The organizations, activities, processes, history and trends …

Do Black-White Racial Disparities In Breastfeeding Persist In The Military Community?, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu, Wanda Barfield, Irma Elo

Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist

Objective: We conduct a comparative analysis of breastfeeding behavior between military and civilian-affiliated mothers. Our focus is on African American mothers among whom breastfeeding rates are lowest. The military context may mitigate conditions associated with low breastfeeding prevalence by a) providing stable employment and educational opportunities to populations who face an otherwise poor labor market and b) providing universal healthcare that includes breastfeeding consultation. Methods: Using Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) data for which we received special permission from each state to flag military affiliation, we analyze civilians and military affiliate in breastfeeding initiation using logistic regression and breastfeeding …

Academic Librarians And The Sustainability Curriculum: Building Alliances To Support A Paradigm Shift, Madeleine K. Charney

Madeleine K. Charney

Sustainability is a fast evolving movement in higher education demonstrated by a proliferation of academic programs and co-curricular initiative and projects. After a review of sustainability-related LibGuides (online resource guides) created by academic librarians, a survey was administered to their developers during the spring of 2011 and posted on library listservs. Librarians returned 112 survey responses which reflected active roles in the paradigm shift toward sustainability through the forging of partnerships across campus and development of teaching resources and events. Telephone interviews conducted with 24 of the respondents showed librarians’ wide-ranging personal and professional interest in sustainability, and their initiatives …