Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Library Staff Salary Survey Report: A First Thursday Presentation, Kelley F. Rowan, Annia Gonzalez, Jamie Rogers, Jennifer Scholl, Adriana Harris, Christopher M. Jimenez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This presentation was given by the Salary Task Force (STF) members, Jamie Rogers, Annia Gonzalez, and Kelley Rowan at an FIU Libraries First Thursday's Forum. Members of the task force presented the results from two surveys, including cost of living research and SUS salary analysis and comparisons. Afterwards, attendees were invited to ask questions and express their concerns before the task force publishes the final report. The research in this presentation is based on surveys and research conducted by all Salary Task Force members.

Guidelines For Behavioral Performance Of Reference And Information Service Providers 2023, Melissa Del Castillo, Rebecca Graff, Kate Cordes, Rebecca Crawford, Liz Kocevar-Weidinger

Works of the FIU Libraries

These guidelines are intended for library workers in reference and information services, in all types of libraries, who answer informational questions or conduct reference interviews. The goal of these guidelines is to support excellent, user-centered service. Some guidelines might not prove applicable in all contexts. Where that is the case, the goal should be to adapt these guidelines as appropriate to your environment.

The Threat To Academic & Intellectual Freedom, Christopher M. Jimenez, Melissa Del Castillo, Stephen Thomson Moore, Lowell Bryan Cooper, Jacqueline Radebaugh, George Pearson

Works of the FIU Libraries

The Academic and Intellectual Freedom Ad Hoc Committee presented a First Thursday discussion on May 4 about academic and intellectual freedom. Starting with a brief definition of these terms, they traced the history of Academic Freedom and how current events affect us at FIU. The committee posed several real-life scenarios threatening Academic/Intellectual Freedom in libraries. All library staff were invited to attend this lively discussion.

Decolonizing Your Library: Metadata That Empowers, Kelley Flannery Rowan, Annia Gonzalez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This article explores the impetus, progress, and challenges encountered in developing and managing a library-wide decolonial metadata project at Florida International University (FIU) Libraries. The goal of this initiative is to develop inclusive metadata within our digital collections and finding aids that represent the communities we serve and to develop a metadata remediation plan that ameliorates the harm done by antiquated language. In thinking about the current metadata in our collections, we are engaging a post-colonial mindset that incorporates methods of coping with the ongoing oppression of vulnerable communities. In contrast, our metadata analysis and remediation process is focused on …

We’Ve Come A Long Way (Baby)! Or Have We? Evolving Intellectual Freedom Issues In The Us And Florida, L. Bryan Cooper, A.D. Beman-Cavallaro

Works of the FIU Libraries

This paper analyzes a shifting landscape of intellectual freedom (IF) in and outside Florida for children, adolescents, teens and adults. National ideals stand in tension with local and state developments, as new threats are visible in historical, legal, and technological context. Examples include doctrinal shifts, legislative bills, electronic surveillance and recent attempts to censor books, classroom texts, and reading lists.

Privacy rights for minors in Florida are increasingly unstable. New assertions of parental rights are part of a larger conservative animus. Proponents of IF can identify a lessening of ideals and standards that began after doctrinal fruition in the 1960s …

The Myth Of The Declining Reference Statistic: Revealing Dynamic Reference Services Through Digital Analytics, Melissa Del Castillo, Marissa C. Ball

Works of the FIU Libraries

It seems customary practice now that there is a need for libraries to “justify” their relevance, impact, contributions, and more. Traditionally, we do this by looking at some basics - how many people walk through our doors, how many classes/workshops are we teaching, and how many people did we help at the reference desk? It is hard to deny when looking at these statistics that there are some obvious trends. In the reference realm, this traditionally translates to decreasing statistics - but are these statistics telling the whole story? Are our reference desk statistics really going down? Are there other …

Using Social Science To Create A Better Survey, Kelley F. Rowan

Works of the FIU Libraries

This presentation is a summary of concepts related to survey creation that were originally presented in a 6 week course at the University of Michigan on creating surveys in the social sciences. It includes references and links to the course.

Dpanther: Benefits And Challenges Of Building And Managing Your Own Digital Repository, Kelley Rowan, Rebecca Bakker

Works of the FIU Libraries

This article addresses the benefits and challenges associated with building your own digital repository platform and managing content, technical hurdles, and partners. The authors discuss the advantages of building a repository that can evolve as standards in the field do and how to handle the problems that arise when you are both the metadata manager and technical support. The authors also discuss difficulties their partners have experienced with the platform and lessons learned. It is the hope that this information will provide those who may be either managing a digital repository or considering a new digital platform, relevant information that …

How Libraries Are Meeting Researcher Needs In The Digital Humanities, Kelley F. Rowan

Works of the FIU Libraries

This presentation will provide guidance for those considering the creation of a digital humanities (DH) lab, as well as for those with a current functional DH lab. The Digital Scholars Studio at Florida International University (FIU) was created in 2016 with the purpose of providing needed technology and collaborative space for researchers and students. We will explore the challenges experienced by restricted space and budget and discuss how we resolved these specific limitations before continuing with an in-depth look at programming and usage of DH software and tools. We will take a look at a few current projects our researchers …

Queering The Library Of Congress, Carlos R. Fernandez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This poster will attempt to apply the techniques used in Queer Theory to explore library and information science’s use and misuse of library classification systems; and to examine how “queering” these philosophical categories can not only improve libraries, but also help change social constructs.

For millennia, philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, have used and expounded upon categories and systems of classification. Their purpose is to make research and the retrieval of information easier. Unfortunately, the rules used to categorize and catalog make information retrieval more challenging for some, due to social constructs such as heteronormality.

The importance of this …

Linking Old Librarianship To New: Aligning 5-Steps Of The Innovator's Dna In Creating Thematic Discovery Systems For The Everglades, L. Bryan Cooper, Margarita Perez Martinez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This poster presentation from the May 2015 Florida Library Association Conference, along with the Everglades Explorer discovery portal at http://ee.fiu.edu, demonstrates how traditional bibliographic and curatorial principles can be applied to: 1) selection, cross-walking and aggregation of metadata linking end-users to wide-spread digital resources from multiple silos; 2) harvesting of select PDFs, HTML and media for web archiving and access; 3) selection of CMS domains, sub-domains and folders for targeted searching using an API.

Choosing content for this discovery portal is comparable to past scholarly practice of creating and publishing subject bibliographies, except metadata and data are housed in …