Library and Information Science Commons^™

Tools For Using And Organizing Online Resources To Enhance Reference And Instruction, Anne R. Diekama, Sheri Haderlie, Heather Leary, Cheryl D. Walters

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Presentation at the 2010 Utah Library Association annual conference. This presentation addressed different tools that can be used to incorporate technology and online resources into teaching and instruction.

Making Cents Of Cataloging: Are We Getting What We Are Paying For?, Becky Skeen, Julie Grover, Liz Woolcott

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Presentation given at the 2010 Utah Library Association annual conference about cataloging costs. Discussion focused on patron needs, workflow, training, and how to do more with less to make the process more efficient.

Resource Discoverability At The Crossroads, Anne R. Diekama, Liz Woolcott, Cheryl D. Walters

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

The Internet is changing how people find and use information. Users increasingly are discovering relevant resources outside traditional library systems and expect immediate access to resources at the point of discovery. These changes are challenging traditional thinking on how we should "catalog" and provide access to resources.

Panel discussion engaged the audience in a lively discussion of discoverability, trends in user information seeking behavior, the role of librarians in information seeking and finding, and implications for library system design. Audience comments are summarized in a wiki created to support this panel discussion: http://findability.wikispaces.com/ The wiki also contains a list of …

Dublin Core Application Profiles And The Oclc Digital Gateway: New Tools For Improving Discoverability Of Digital Collections, Allyson Mower, Cheryl D. Walters, Sandra Mcintyre

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Discusses how some new tools such as Dublin Core application profiles and the OCLC Digital Collection Gateway can improve discoverability of digital collections.

An Entrepreneurial Approach To Librarianship, Flora Shrode, Jennifer Duncan, Wendy Holliday

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Librarians from Utah State University explain recent efforts to encourage subject librarians to take a more holistic view of their roles. We are shifting from a traditional emphasis primarily on collection development and refocusing on natural connections between collections, instruction, liaison, and reference service. The poster provides background about Utah State University’s situation and explains our approach to analyzing local needs and culture to inform development of a new organizational structure. We describe our vision of subject librarianship, the process by which we assessed librarians’ ideas and goals for performing as subject librarians, and the actions we are taking to …

Marginalia No. 27, Merrill-Cazier Library

Marginalia

Dean Clement’s Letter: “the library remains an upbeat place”

2009 Winners: Leonard J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture awards

"Outcasts United" 2010 common literature experience … Randy Williams

A Genesis … Exhibition of John Ciardi’s poems & Gabor Peterdi etchings. Notes by Rose Milovich.

Research week 2010 … an Exhibit of recent USU faculty publications ... Jennifer Duncan

With Help from our Friends … Brad Cole on recent acquisitions – A Diet & Health book collection & John Suiter’s photographic archives.

Welcome New Merrill-Cazier Librarians: Kacy Lundstrom and Angela Dresselhaus.

The Library by the Numbers: An Annual Statistical Snapshot of the …

Reference Desk Consultation Assignment: An Exploratory Study Of Students' Perceptions Of Reference Service, Pamela N. Martin, Lezlie Park

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

This paper describes the experience of three sophomore English composition classes that were required to visit the reference desk for class credit. Student perceptions of reference consultations are analyzed to gain a clearer understanding of the students’ attitudes towards reference services. Findings of this exploratory study indicate that students still suffer from library anxiety and are much more likely to seek out reference help if they are convinced that a consultation will save them time.

An Entrepreneurial Approach To Subject Librarianship, Jennifer Duncan, Wendy Holliday, Flora Shrode

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Librarians from Utah State University explain recent efforts to encourage subject librarians to take a more holistic view of their roles. We are shifting from a traditional emphasis primarily on collection development and refocusing on natural connections between collections, instruction, liaison, and reference service. The poster provides background about Utah State University's situation and explains our approach to analyzing local needs and culture to inform development of a new organizational structure. We describe our vision of subject librarianship, the process by which we assessed librarians' ideas and goals for performing as subject librarians, and the actions we are taking to …

Digital Commons Annual Report: Year Two 2009-2010, Heather Leary

Digital Commons Reports

This report shows the progress for Utah State University's Digital Commons repository during it's second year, from Noveber 1, 2009 through October 31, 2010.

Marginalia No. 28, Merrill-Cazier Library

Marginalia

No abstract provided.

The Library As Publisher: Increasing Library Relevance Through Institutional Repository Services, Richard W. Clement

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

No abstract provided.

Scribal Practice In The Beowulf Manuscript, Richard W. Clement

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

There was a time, not too long ago, when we thought we knew a great deal more about Beowulf than we do now. We knew that the poem, originally a work of oral composition, had first been written down in the seventh century and had been copied repeatedly until the final copy (our extant manuscript: British Library, Cotton, Vitellius, A.XV, ff. 94-209) was made sometime around 1000 AD. That particular manuscript, now known as the Nowell Codex, was the product of a single scriptorium, the work of two scribes, who included Beowulf in a single multi-text volume which emphasized monsters. …

Linking Opencoursewares And Open Education Resources: Creating An Effective Search And Recommendation System, Brett E. Shelton, J. Duffin, Y. Wang, J. Ball

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

With a growing number of digital libraries and other open education repositories being made available throughout the world, effective search and retrieval tools are necessary to access the desired materials that surpass the effectiveness of traditional, all inclusive search engines. This paper discusses the design and use of Folksemantic, a platform that integrates OpenCourseWare search, Open Educational Resource recommendations, and social network functionality into a single open source project. The paper describes how the system was originally envisioned, its goals for users, and data that provides insight into how it is actually being used. Data sources include website click-through data, …

Knowing And Throwing Mudballs, Hearts, Pies, And Flowers: A Connective Ethnography Of Gaming Practices, Deborah A. Fields, Y. B. Kafai

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Little is known concerning how young players learn to participate in various activities in virtual worlds. We use a new integrative approach called connective ethnography that focuses on how a gaming practice spread across a network of youth at an after school club that simultaneously participated in a virtual world, Whyville.net. To trace youth participation in online and offline social contexts, we draw on multiple sources of information: observations, interviews, videos, online tracking and chat data, and hundreds of hours of play in Whyville ourselves. One gaming practice – the throwing of projectiles and its social uses and nuances – …

Stealing From Grandma Or Generating Knowledge? Constestations And Effects Of Cheating In Whyville, Deborah A. Fields, Y. B. Kafai

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Much research has described the various practices needed of gaining access and participation in multi-user game communities. Cheat sites are a continuation of game communities where players engage in knowledge building about game related challenges. In this paper we analyze the cheat sites created by players for a tween virtual world called Whyville.net, which encourages youth to participate in a range of social activities and play casual science games. Through analysis we created typologies for both the cheats and sites related to science content. Further, a case study of an exemplary cheat site elaborates on how some player generated sites …

Your Second Selves: Avatar Designs And Identity Play, Y. B. Kafai, Deborah A. Fields, M. S. Cook

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Avatars in online games and worlds are seen as players’ key representations in interactions with each other. In this article, we investigate the avatar design and identity play within a large-scale tween virtual world called Whyville.net, with more than 1.5 million registered players of ages 816. One unique feature of Whyville is the players’ ability to customize their avatars with various face parts and accessories, all designed and sold by other players in Whyville. Our findings report on the expressive resources available for avatar construction, individual tween players’ choices and rationales in creating their avatars, and online postings about avatar …

"Blacks Deserve Bodies Too!" Design And Discussion About Diversity And Race In A Tween Virtual World, Y. B. Kafai, M. S. Cook, Deborah A. Fields

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

In this paper, we investigate racial diversity in avatar design and public discussions about race within a large-scale tween virtual world called Whyville.net, with more than 1.5 million registered players of ages 8—16. One unique feature of Whyville is the player’s ability to customize their avatars with various face parts and accessories, all designed and sold by other players in Whyville. Our findings report on the racial diversity of available resources for avatar construction and online postings about the role of race in avatar design and social interactions in the community. With the growing interest in player-generated content for online …

Weedsin The Flower Garden: An Exploration Of Plagiarism In Graduate Students' Research Proposalsand Its Connection To Enculturation, Esl, And Contextual Factors, Joanna Gilmore, Denise Strickland, Briana Timmerman, Michelle Maher, David F. Feldon

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Existing literature provides insight into the nature and extent of plagiarism amongst undergraduate students (e.g., Ellery, 2008; Parameswaran & Devi, 2006; Selwyn, 2008). Plagiarism amongst graduate students is relatively unstudied, however, and the existing data are largely based on self-reports. This study investigated the rates and potential causes of plagiarism amongst graduate students in master’s and doctoral programmes in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and science or mathematics education by examining actual research proposals written by graduate students. Results indicate that plagiarism is a prevalent issue at each of the three university sites sampled and across all of the investigated disciplines. …

Adaptations And Continuities In The Use And Design Of Visual Representations In Us Middle School Science Textbooks, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

Visual representations are ubiquitous in modern‐day science textbooks and have in recent years become an object of criticism and scrutiny. This article examines the extent to which changes in representations in textbooks published in the USA over the past six decades have invited those critiques. Drawing from a correlational analysis of a corpus of 34 US middle school physical science textbooks, continuities are established with respect to the purposes that most textbook images serve and the numbers of schematic representations that are used. Changes are observed in the overall total number of representations in textbooks and in the proportion of …

Optimizing For Broader Discoverability: Metadata With Web Crawlers And Oai Harvesters In Mind, Cheryl D. Walters, Sandra Mcintyre

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

Wondering how to get your CONTENTdm resources featured more in Google, OAIster, and other web crawlers and harvesters? The Mountain West Digital Library regularly harvests nine CONTENTdm repositories in Utah and Nevada, along with two other Open Archives Initiatives (OAI) repositories. The result is a central regional index with over 270,000 records representing 1.2 million digital files, accessible via search and browse in an online portal at http://mwdl.org. Members of the MWDL's Best Practices and Standards Working Group are revising and expanding recommendations for assigning metadata in CONTENTdm collections to optimize their discovery in MWDL, as well as other crawlers …

Beyond Research: Opencourseware In The Institutional Repository, Heather Leary, Brett E. Shelton, Marion Jensen

Library Faculty & Staff Presentations

Presentation given at the 2009 LITA National Forum in Salt Lake City, Utah on archiving OpenCourseWare in the Institutional Repository.

The main function of OpenCourseWare is to provide open access to collections of educational materials used in formal courses. The main function of an Institutional Repository is to collect, preserve, and disseminate intellectual output of an institution. Since OCW is a significant portion of the intellectual output of a university, archiving OCW in an institutions repository seems a perfect marriage of means and opportunity.

Using Digital Primary Sources For Teaching K-12, Cheryl D. Walters, Anne R. Diekama, Sheri Haderlie, Heather Leary

Library Faculty & Staff Publications

USU faculty and northern Utah K-12 teachers and library media specialists talk about how to identify and integrate digital primary sources such as photographs, letters, diaries, interviews and more into the curriculum to create engaging lessons. Digital resources such as the Library of Congress' American Memory, Mountain West Digital Library, and Utah Digital Newspapers, as well as tools for organizing the digital objects will be discussed.

Vision For The Future, G. Sayeed Choudhury, Jean-Gabriel Bankier, Kenning Arlitsch, Jessica Branco Colati, Sue Kunda, Marilyn Billings

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

This discussion will include 5 minute lightening talks by each presenter with an open floor discussion about the future of Institutional Repositories.

The Institutional Repository As A Publishing Platform, Richard W. Clement, Jean-Gabriel Bankier, Jeffrey Belliston, Marilyn Billings, Jay Burton

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

J.G. will speak about the Edikit journal software. Jeff will speak about Open Journal Systems software. Rick and Marilyn will speak about publishing on their campus. Jay will talk about using online journal software.

Burning Questions: Participant Contributed Questions Discussion

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

This open discussion will involve all conference participants and will be generated from questions submitted at registration.

Moderated by Marilyn Billings, Scholarly Communication & Special Initiatives Librarian, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

What Is Working Today: Success Stories In Marketing, Rights Management, And More, Heather Leary, Allyson Mower, Michelle Armstrong

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

This panel session will be a discussion of success stories by various IR Coordinators in their daily work with marketing, copyright clearance, workflow, distinctions between the Digital Library and IR, and more.

Institutional Repository Platforms, Jean-Gabriel Bankier, Kenning Arlitsch, Jessica Branco Colati, Sue Kunda

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

J.G. Bankier will be speaking on Digital Commons, a hosted platform by The Berkeley Electronic Press. Kenning Arlitsch will be speaking on CONTENTdm, a platform by OCLC. Jessica Colati will be speaking about Fedora. Sue Kunda will be speaking about dSpace.

Keynote - The Value Of Institutional Repositories, G. Sayeed Choudhury

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Digital Commons Eposter, The Berkeley Electronic Press

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

Electronic poster about Digital Commons, Institutional Repository software created and managed by The Berkeley Electronic Press.

Fedora Eposter, Fedora Commons, Duraspace

Institutional Repositories: Disseminating, Promoting, and Preserving Scholarship

Electronic poster on Fedora Commons Repository Software, open source software for managing, preserving, and linking content.