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Engaging Faculty in Scholarly Communication Change: A Learning Community Approach
Full text linkINTRODUCTION As the landscape of scholarly communication and open access continues to shift, it remains important for academic librarians to continue educating campus stakeholders about these issues, as well as to create faculty advocates on campus. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM Three librarians at Miami University created a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) on Scholarly Communication to accomplish this. The FLC, composed of faculty, graduate students, staff, and librarians, met throughout the academic year to read and discuss topics such as open access, journal economics, predatory publishing, alternative metrics (altmetrics), open data, open peer review, etc. NEXT STEPS The members of the FLC provided positive evaluations about the community and the topics about which they learned, leading the co-facilitators to run the FLC for a second year. The library’s Scholarly Communication Committee is creating and implementing a scholarly communication website utilizing the structure and content identified by the 2012-2013 FLC
Change as Opportunity: Re-Vamping LibGuides to Better Engage Students
No full textChange can be a positive opportunity to evaluate how we engage students with our services and contribute to their success. We will share our experiences surrounding our migration to LibGuides 2.0 and how it presented an opportunity for the library to update and improve not only on format and function, but on content. Usability testing guided our decisions in LibGuides 1.0 and was used again to analyze student preferences through a direct comparison with LibGuides 2.0. Results were used to make decisions on format and content and will be shared along with the Standards we created to improve usability, consistency and accessibility. We will discuss our methods for training staff to ensure a cohesive approach for using LibGuides to engage students. This presentation will discuss simple but effective improvements and will give audience members a framework for coordinating and implementing their LibGuides efforts
The National Aging Network Survey: 2013 Results
Full text linkThe 2013 National Survey of Area Agencies on Aging builds on previous surveys to assess the evolving role of AAAs in the new health care delivery system. Findings from this survey highlight the changing population served by AAAs and how these agencies are building partnerships throughout the delivery system to better meet the needs of consumers as well as the ways they are leveraging multiple funding sources to provide more services to a larger consumer base
The Value of Purchasing E-Books From a Large Publisher (Springer E-Books)
No full textPresentation given at the Charleston Conference on November 3, 2011. Usage analysis of Springer e-books at Miami University Libraries
Seeing the Forest by Counting the Trees [slide deck]
No full textLibraries, particularly academic libraries, are swimming in a sea of data. Librarians often contribute to this by counting every possible patron interaction in an attempt to both define their current situation and to predict future staffing, budgetary, and collection needs. This investigation assessed the effectiveness of using various data sources in predicting future library activity and needs. The authors collected data on in-person and chat reference transactions, electronic journal downloads, database queries, and catalog searches from 2009–12. By analyzing these data points, the authors hypothesized they would find correlations that might be predictive of changes in related library services. Results indicated that the strongest correlations track activity over the course of the academic calendar. While none of the data points examined had predictive properties, the strong correlations between the data points over the period of time studied indicated that any one of them might serve as a stand-alone indicator of usage
The Value of Purchasing E-Books From a Large Publisher: A Usage-based Analysis of Oxford University Press E-Books
Full text linkPresentation given at the Acquisitions Institute (Timberline) on May 20, 2012. Usage analysis of Oxford University Press e-books at Miami University Libraries
Layer City: Redesign Skyscrapers
Full text linkMy thesis is dealing with the urban construction---skyscrapers,nowadays, the urban fabric is pronominally skyscraper driven in major cities. I started my paper from my own city experience. While the skyscraper in New York City is a passive existence to fulfill density demand, most of the world’s big cities are building skyscraper purposefully other than functionally. This is the main reason that causes rampant consumerism within City of Beijing. Culture heritages are now gradually replaced by decorative buildings in order to obtain the title of “metropolis”. Skyscraper is more a political measure. The concept of metropolis is developed from tribe, where in the ancient times people gathered together to exchange stuff and communicate with others. Therefore, city has nothing to do with skyscraper, building skyscraper is just one of many solutions to solve the density problem. Furthermore, skyscraper is causing chaos and disconnecting us from urban fabric by vertically heighten us above the cityscape, which further on disconnecting culture connectivity that sustains a healthy city. In order to fully realize the relationship between architecture culture and humanity, it’s necessary to utilize certain features that are overlooked in current cities, such as horizontality compactness interacting with streetscapes, façade development depth, and enhance horizontal circulation between skyscrapers. Therefore, by adding multiple layers to skyscraper not only enhance communication within the city, but also provide buildings sufficient sunlight, through my research, I am looking to redesign skyscrapers to create a better living experience in the future
Impact of a Library Instruction Session on Bibliographies of Organic Chemistry Students
Full text linkStudents in Chemistry 254: Organic Chemistry for Majors were required to write a paper about an organic name reaction (a reaction named after the chemist who discovered it). Before turning in this assignment, students had the option of attending a one-hour library instruction session covering SciFinder, sources for spectra, ACS Style, and print resources about organic name reactions. 25 students attended library sessions while 30 did not. Bibliographies were collected and graded for all students. Comparisons were made between those students who attended the session and those who did not, on such criteria as use of scholarly sources, properly citing articles and spectra, and correct use of ACS Style. Students achieved 14% higher bibliography scores (82% vs. 68%) by attending a library session, used more scholarly sources (96% of sources scholarly vs. 81% for non-attendees), and used spectra from appropriate sources better (86% of attendees vs. 32% for non-attendees). ACS Style proved difficult for session attendees and non-attendees alike
Psuedo-dyadic "interaction" on Amazon's Mechanical Turk
No full textPsychological researchers have begun to utilize
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) marketplace as a participant
pool. Although past work has established that
MTurk is well suited to examining individual behavior,
pseudo-dyadic interactions, in which participants falsely
believe they are interacting with a partner, are a key element
of social and cognitive psychology. The ability to conduct
such interdependent research on MTurk would increase the
utility of this online population for a broad range of psychologists.
The present research therefore attempts to qualitatively
replicate well-established pseudo-dyadic tasks on
MTurk in order to establish the utility of this platform as a
tool for researchers.We find that participants do behave as if
a partner is real, even when doing so incurs a financial cost,
and that they are sensitive to subtle information about the
partner in a minimal-groups paradigm, supporting the use of
MTurk for pseudo-dyadic research