Digital Commons Network^™

Archiving Academic Governance: A Collaborative Model For Preserving Institutional History, Liliana Galindo, Silvia Patricia Solís, William Flores

University Library Publications and Presentations

Learn how an academic library partnered with the Faculty Senate to preserve and enhance access to the history and contributions of faculty governance through archives and a digital repository. Strategies include building partnerships, engaging stakeholders, curating materials from legacy institutions, and collaboratively developing a sustainable workflow, and demonstrating how libraries and faculty can thrive through shared stewardship and engagement.

Lightweight And Resilient Cryptographic Protocols For Next-Generation Networking Systems, Saif Eddine Nouma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The security of our increasingly interconnected world is strongly dependent on the strength and practicality of the cryptographic tools we deploy. As billions of embedded devices join the Internet of Things (IoT) and interact with remote cloud infrastructures for data processing, analysis, and actuation, they evolve into so-called digital twins. This rapid expansion introduces numerous attack vectors, particularly targeting constrained IoT devices, which greatly increase the attack surface and often become the root cause of large-scale infrastructure compromises. At the same time, the rise of quantum computing threatens the hardness of today’s intractability assumptions that underpin cryptographic primitives currently deployed. …

Foreword: Resisting Erasure: Libraries In Palestine And Palestine In Libraries, Emily Drabinski

Publications and Research

This foreword opens an anthology that explores research and experiences at the intersection of Palestine and libraries. Part one examines how Palestinian librarians, archivists, and individuals resist erasure by preserving Palestinian materials and narratives and by ensuring Palestinians’ access to library resources amidst recurring cycles of destruction and confiscation. Part two explores how librarians in the United States respond to pressure from right-wing and pro-Israel advocacy groups that are quick to label any effort to include Palestinians and their histories as antisemitic.

An Archival Responsibility: A Scoping Review Of Literature Regarding The Documentary Burdens Of Refugees, Ana Roeschley, Kinza Alizai, Crystal Tharayil, Amy Lanier, Merrion D. Frederick, Homero R. Cuevas

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Documented individuals who do not live in conflict zones can usually access and use their records to migrate, begin new careers, enroll their children in educational institutions, and gain access to healthcare through mostly routine record-related procedures. However, these standard processes become impossible obstacles for refugees when they lose access to their personal records as part of their forced displacement. Though ever-present for refugees, these documentary burdens are compounded in times of societal crises and political upheaval—times when documentation is most critical. If archivists and archival scholars are to address these issues, it is important to understand the scope of …

Trusted Forms—The Case Of Barack Obama’S Birth Certificate, Karl-Heinrich Schmidt, Frederik Schlupkothen

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Documents can be understood as containers for information that enable remote communication between people across space and time. They are therefore fundamentally subject to issues of trust. The theoretical treatment of documents as a means of remote communication has a long history and has arrived in the age of electronic document exchange, as shown by the work of R. T. Pédauque, which is taken as a starting point here.

To take theory further, form-based documents are discussed here as an example. Form-based documents control the information provided by fillers by specifying form fields. The core of this paper is to …

Reading Ourselves: Self-Documentation, Infamy, And Collective Health In Brazilian Peripheries, Asy Pepe Sanches Neto

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper explores self-documentation as a social instrument for surviving misrecognition and constructing situated forms of care. Drawing from Foucault’s Lives of Infamous Men, it examines how lives become visible only when touched by power, through brief administrative inscriptions. Building on Documental Fixity (Sanches & Day, 2020), the argument shifts from the stabilizing power of documents to the anticipatory actions of those who know they are read. Rather than asking what a document is, I treat “document” as a modeling frame imposed upon things to manage indexicality. From passports to school uniforms, documentation organizes visibility and authority. In racialized and …

The Documentality Of The American Passport, Melissa Adler

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper outlines an agenda for examining the passport in its emergence in the United States. In the earliest U.S. passports, there is already a paradox that mirrors American liberal democracy itself—a nation founded, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, in the vision of an “empire of liberty.” It lays the groundwork for working through the concept of and processes associated with documentality and what documents do, as well as for understanding the extraordinary conditions and implications associated with the inscription of human lives into documentary systems. Studying the emergence of passports within a broader documentary regime of American surveillance and …

Two Versions Of Documentality: Social Ontology And Neo-Documentation (With An Appendix On Artificial Intelligence), Ronald E. Day

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The article discusses two traditions of documentality: that of social ontology and that of neo-documentation, and it contains an appendix on artificial intelligence.

The Politics Of Remembering: Reconfiguring The Diorama Of Monas As Augmented Living Document, Suprayitno Suprayitno, Zulfatun Sofiyani, Rahmi Rahmi

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper examines the Monas diorama as a central apparatus in Indonesia’s politics of remembering, whose narrative consolidation during the New Order rendered it a state-authored monument of national memory. Drawing on Foucault’s distinction between monument and document, Ferraris’s ontology of documentality, and Perret’s concept of document design as projective epistemology, the study reframes the diorama as a documentary assemblage shaped by inscription, power, and institutionalized forgetting. Through diachronic, synchronic, comparative, and experimental analyses, the paper diagnoses failures across the physical, social, and cognitive dimensions of Monas as a document, revealing narrative authoritarianism, representational rigidity, and the absence of plural …

Calibrating Humanness: Winding Our Own Springs—Comparing Human-Generated And Machine-Generated Response Documents, Jodi Kearns, Jennifer Davis

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The permanent exhibitions at the the National Museum of Psychology at The University of Akron, Ohio, USA, are arranged into three strands that tell a history of American psychology: the profession, the science, and the agent of social change. Visitors see historical objects and archival documents exploring such topics as the history of mental wellness treatment, immigration intelligence testing, study of behavior, gender identity, authority, sensory perceptions, animal studies, sensations, and violence. Before leaving the museum, visitors are invited to reflect on what they learned by responding to the following prompt by writing on a note card and leaving it …

The Robot As A Document For Action: Materiality And Corporeality In The Info-Communicational Approach To Robots, Cécile Payeur, Béa Arruabarrena

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This article explores the emerging materialities of mediating artifacts in the field of Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Drawing on the evolution of documentary environments and the growing hybridization of digital and physical spaces, it extends documentary and communication theories to robots taking into account their socio-technical dimension and their info-communicational implications for human interactions. It posits that examining the robot as a mediating artefact of a documentary nature can enhance both the understanding and the design of collaborative logic in HRI. Using Manuel Zacklad's theoretical framework, Documents for Action (DoPA), the research conceptualizes the robot as a semiotic and mediating document …

Toward Transparent Bureaucracy: Nlp-Based Document Classification And Power Dynamics In The Srikandi System, Zulfatun Sofiyani, Suprayitno Suprayitno, Faisal Fahmi, Mega Putri Mahadewi

Proceedings from the Document Academy

As the Indonesian government advances digital document management through the SRIKANDI system, challenges persist regarding fragmented and subjective classification practices. This study proposes the integration of Natural Language Processing (NLP)-based classification within SRIKANDI to enhance consistency, transparency, and accountability in document management. Framed by an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation, the study synthesizes Michael Buckland’s document theory, viewing documents as dynamic social evidence, with Michel Foucault’s theory of power, highlighting classification as an exercise of institutional authority, and NLP methodologies that enable automated, content-driven categorization. The study positions documents as both technological artifacts and political constructs, whose classification practices simultaneously structure meaning …

Ai-Generated Content And Cultural Preservation: Toward A Research Agenda, Ryo Shiozaki

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper maps the theoretical and practical challenges of preserving AI-generated content (AIGC) and proposes a coordinated research agenda rather than policy prescriptions. AIGC reveals the networked, processual nature of cultural production, challenging assumptions about human authorship, singular intentionality, and linear transmission. We identify forces that dissolve boundaries—indistinguishability, distributed intentionality, and recursive training loops—examine legal patchworks across jurisdictions, and consider evolving social perceptions that shape cultural recognition. Extending document theory toward evaluation that gives priority to function and drawing on social ontology, we argue that preservation and recognition are mutually constitutive. We outline a coordinated agenda across three fronts: theoretical …

Docemes And Document Embeddings, John Kausch

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This position paper takes Niels’ Lund concept of doceme and applies it to an analysis of a contemporary information retrieval system for Wikipedia, constructed using the Vector Database system “Upstash Vector.” It begins with a theoretical analysis of the capacity for machine learning models to comprehend language, situating its position within that wide debate. It proceeds to discuss issues between the use of the term “semantic” in an data science vs. information science context. Finally, it applies theories from Lund’s doceme and Ron Day’s Documentarity to an analysis of the Upstash Vector dataset located on hugging face, closing with a …

A Documentalist Critique Of Information Science, Michael K. Buckland

Proceedings from the Document Academy

The paper examines the claim that new developments in document theory, sometimes referred to as “neodocumentalism,” constitute a radical challenge to orthodox information science theory. Related terminology is clarified and the disparate language needs of information practice and information theory are identified. The use of metaphor and figurative language is beneficial for practice, but detrimental for theory development. Finally, two linear models of documentary activity (reading and writing; reception and expression) are shown to form a single unified model.

Community College Library Digital Branches And Their Communities, Helen Cozart

SLIS Connecting

Community Colleges have long been a staple of American life. They offer an affordable education that is transferable to a four-year school or certification in a trade. Since they are in the community, costs can be further lowered by allowing traditional students to live at home and non-traditional students to be with their families and workplaces (Princeton Review, n.d.). Many community colleges actively engage with their communities, encouraging attendance and offering community enrichment programs. Community college libraries can occupy a powerful position in this relationship, creating an environment for the public that is inviting and encouraging through their physical offerings …

Beyond The Tropes: Viewing The Horror Genre Through The Lens Of Bipoc Readers, Kimberly Wade

SLIS Connecting

Horror novels have been and continue to grow in popularity among all age demographics in the United States. According to a 2020 Book Ad Report study, horror novels were the fifth highest-grossing genre, topping $79.6 million in 2020 (Herold, 2019, para. 16). With the growing popularity of horror novels within the market, authors and publishers have pushed for inclusion and diversity in who is writing the material, who is reading the books, and who is represented within the pages. This drive to include “Black, Indigenous, People of Color” (BIPOC) and other diverse authors and characters is necessary in allowing young …

Disobedient Women: A Quantitative Analysis Of Females In The Lowndes County, Mississippi Circuit Court Felony Criminal Cases Housed At The Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System Billups-Garth Archival Room, 1830-1899, Mona Vance-Ali

SLIS Connecting

This study concentrates solely on the court records dating from 1830 to 1899, comprising 4,740 individual cases. The date range covers local population shifts and larger historical events such as the Institution of Slavery, the American Civil War, and the rise of Jim Crow in the American South. Mississippi became a state in 1817 (Ownby, 2017, Mississippi Statehood). In 1830, Lowndes County formed out of Monroe County (Ownby, 2017, Lowndes County). At that time, the total population of the county was 3,173. A decade later, the population jumped over 357 percent to include 14,513 people. The number continued to rise …

A Citation Analysis Of Post-Postmodern Fiction Scholarship In Proquest Dissertations And Theses Global From 2000 – 2024, Jaren Swann

SLIS Connecting

The purpose of this study is to conduct a citation analysis of theses and dissertations on post-postmodern fiction published from 2000 – 2024, as indexed in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, to identify significant contributors, relevant resources, and important publication venues on this contemporary subject, helping academic librarians to enhance collection development and provide support for teaching, learning and research services.

Best Practices In Virginia School Libraries, Audrey P. Church, Karla B. Collins, Carl A. Harvey Ii, Sheree Garrett

Learning Hub

The National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries (AASL, 2018b) indicate that school librarians should function as teachers, instructional partners, information specialists, leaders, and program administrators, and numerous studies document the important role that the school librarian plays in the teaching and learning taking place in the school (Lance & Kachel, 2018). Strong school librarians positively impact student learning. The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify, explore, and describe traits and activities of award-winning school librarians in Virginia. Data collected from 18 participants through semi- structured interviews identified the common traits of leader, communicator, …

Motivating And Retaining Student Assistants: A Case Study, Catherine Paolillo, Christopher Marcum

Copley Library: Faculty Scholarship

This paper offers specific recommendations for effectively motivating and retaining student employees at an academic library that practitioners may consider as they develop and implement programs for hiring, training, and retaining student assistants at their institutions. It describes a methodology that can be replicated for similar studies at other universities. This paper contributes new knowledge to the subject of academic library employee retention by reporting on the opinions of library student assistants at a small private liberal arts university in Southern California to gain insight into the kinds of retention program elements that students recommend. This study used an online …

Himmelfarb Headlines - February/March 2026, The George Washington University, Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

Himmelfarb Headlines (2009 - present)

News, information, and resources relating to Himmelfarb Library that is of interest to patrons.

Motivating And Retaining Student Assistants, Christopher Marcum, Catherine Paolillo

Libraries Publications

This paper offers specific recommendations for effectively motivating and retaining student employees at an academic library that practitioners may consider as they develop and implement programs for hiring, training, and retaining student assistants at their institutions. It describes a methodology that can be replicated for similar studies at other universities. This paper contributes new knowledge to the subject of academic library employee retention by reporting on the opinions of library student assistants at a small private liberal arts university in Southern California to gain insight into the kinds of retention program elements that students recommend. This study used an online …

From Archives To Public Space: Art Archiving Practices In Indonesia, Ayu Astuti, Ike Iswary Lawanda

International Review of Humanities Studies

Art archives hold a crucial role in the production of knowledge and the writing of art history. In Indonesia, however, the management and accessibility of art archives remain uneven, resulting in significant gaps within art historiography. This article examines how art archives function not merely as repositories of documentation, but as cultural practices and public knowledge infrastructures that shape the conditions of art history writing. Using a qualitative approach, this study combines literature review with case studies of selected archival initiatives in Indonesia, including the Indonesian Visual Art Archive (IVAA), Pusat Dokumentasi Salihara, and Dicti Art Laboratory. The findings reveal …

Usage Statistics: Project Counter R5 Tr_B1 Report Fy2025 - Book Requests Controlled) By Title, Andrée Rathemacher

Technical Services Reports and Statistics

Project COUNTER R5 / 5.1 Report TR_B1 for the University of Rhode Island for the period from July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025. The TR_B1 report is defined as "Book Requests Controlled)." This report presents an annual total only and only includes those platforms successfully configured for automated harvesting via SUSHI.

File for download is Excel spreadsheet generated by Alma Analytics.

Results:

Total Item Requests - 194,197

Unique Title Requests - 60,001

Reviewing Crowdsourcing And Community Engagement In Museums, Paul Longley Arthur, Lydia Hearn, Isabel Smith

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Over the past two decades, museums have increasingly experimented with digital technologies to connect with broader contemporary culture. This review article investigates the role crowdsourcing can play in transforming museums into more engaged environments, raising visibility and inclusivity, and involving diverse voices and populations in knowledge-creation processes. Its contribution is to provide an overview of the history, definitions and concepts of crowdsourcing, and examples of crowdsourcing policies and practices that have been adopted by museums. Participation in crowdsourcing has been influenced by gender, education, and socio-economic and cultural background. In the past, historical structures and traditions and infrastructural complexities have …

Library E-Book Licensing And State Law Reform, Kincaid Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

Libraries don’t “buy” most e-books the way they buy print books; they license them. That reality is at the crossroads of budgetary constraints and patron satisfaction in modern libraries. With print, a library typically pays once, owns the copy, and lends it until it wears out. With e-books, publishers and intermediaries, like platforms such as OverDrive, commonly offer time-limited or loan-limit-ed terms (for example, a license that expires after a set number of checkouts or after a set period), can impose embargoes, and can set prices far above consumer retail. Libraries argue these terms frustrate their public mission and make …

Three Unsung Pioneers Of The East Baton Rouge Parish Public Library System, Eddie Hughes

Southern University and A&M College: John B. Cade Library Publications

The historical narrative of the United States is deeply marked by systemic racial discrimination, particularly against African Americans. White Americans employed race-based strategies to oppress and marginalize African Americans, denying them access to professional organizations and opportunities for socioeconomic advancement. This exclusion extended to the field of librarianship, where African Americans were barred from professional networks, reinforcing perceptions of the profession as a reflection of mainstream racial inequities. This report offers a concise analysis of three pioneering African American librarians who overcame entrenched racist practices to become the first African American information professionals within the East Baton Rouge Parish Public …

Florida Springs: From Geography To Politics And Restoration, Linh Uong

The Southeastern Librarian

Christopher F. Meindl

Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2024

ISBN: 9780813079158

245 pp. $38.00 (Hbk)

Employing The Marketing Mix Framework To Increase Usage Of Academic Libraries, Chantelle Swaren

The Southeastern Librarian

Academic libraries face a regular influx of new students, creating an ongoing need to increase awareness and usage. To accomplish this, many academic libraries rely on short-term outreach tactics that focus on only one element of the marketing mix: Promotion. This article introduces the complete marketing mix framework, including seven elements (7 Ps), and explains how they can be applied in academic libraries. Definitions and library-specific examples are provided for each element: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process, and Physical Proof. The integrated approach of marketing mix theory and planning can be employed by academic libraries to increase patron awareness, …