Group items tagged

"Looking back over the past 18 months, we have four observations. First, we have learned the critical importance of clearly defining the Sherman Centre's scope and purpose for the campus community. Understanding of digital scholarship's boundaries is still relatively low on all of our campuses. Work in the center falls outside traditional norms for how research is done - the norm being that research is a solitary activity, with no "bumping around" required. In terms of libraries, it is definitely outside the norm. Libraries are traditionally very transaction-based: we count the number of people who enter our doors, ask us research help questions, and attend instruction sessions. We have no mental model for tracking activity within a digital scholarship center, which is inherently more relationship-based. Second, we've learned that the relentless demand for physical space on campus creates pressure on our new center. Faculty members and graduate students are always looking for a place to run their experiments and relocate their staff. We often find ourselves having to turn people away when their work is not advancing the digital scholarship agenda. Saying no is not easy, but it must be done to protect the center's integrity. Third, we've learned of the vital need for patience - both individual and organizational. Digital scholarship centers are not created in a day or even in 18 months. Building a good center requires patience on the part of our senior university administrators, faculty, and staff. A digital scholarship program is built on relationships, as well as on the careers of its scholars. Centers evolve as junior faculty members incorporate digital scholarship into their research and then rise to become senior scholars. Finally, we've discovered the strong need for training and mentorship opportunities on our campus. Our graduate students (like any other graduate students) do not enter their programs with deep digital scholarship skills, but they are e

A report of findings from 2,318 respondents to a survey carried out among college students on six campuses distributed across the U.S. in the spring of 2009, as part of Project Information Literacy. Respondents, while curious in the beginning stages of research, employed a consistent and predictable research strategy for finding information, whether they were conducting course-related or everyday life research. Almost all of the respondents turned to the same set of tried and true information resources in the initial stages of research, regardless of their information goals. Almost all students used course readings and Google first for course-related research and Google and Wikipedia for everyday life research. Most students used library resources, especially scholarly databases for course-related research and far fewer, in comparison, used library services that required interacting with librarians. The findings suggest that students conceptualize research, especially tasks associated with seeking information, as a competency learned by rote, rather than as an opportunity to learn, develop, or expand upon an information-gathering strategy which leverages the wide range of resources available to them in the digital age.

concept map for thinking about the various pieces of the liaison librarian role, focusing on visibility, relevance, usefulness, and timeliness. used for conversation with team of librarians to take a higher altitude view of what we're trying to accomplish and then specifically how we go about doing that

Valuable study of senior researchers' practices

"The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship"

"National Science Foundation (NSF) officials announced a change in the implementation of the existing policy on sharing research data. In particular, on or around October, 2010, NSF is planning to require that all proposals include a data management plan in the form of a two-page supplementary document."

Lariat coverage of Baylor joining CRL

Special Issue on Liaison Librarian Roles

Interesting article. UNLV Libraries are engaged in similar curricular mapping work.