Scholarly Works, University Libraries
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Browsing Scholarly Works, University Libraries by Content Type "Article"
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- 7 Tips for Hosting Virtual OTN WorkshopsWalz, Anita R.; Hofer, Amy; Trunnell, Christina (Open Textbook Network, 2020-05-12)
- Addressing Malnutrition and Food Insecurity with Breadfruit in a Rural, Developing Country: A Case Study and Lessons Learned in Thomassique, HaitiKlyver, John; Haugen, Inga; Schulz, Logan; LaPais, Wiscard-Kardin; Saint-Fleur, Charles; Starke, S. J.; Piersaint, Jason; Rizzo, Anael; Sarazen, Kyra (2021-09)Haiti’s Central Plateau region suffers from significant malnutrition, economic hardship, and a crisis level of food insecurity. Already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere in terms of GDP per capita, Haiti has pervasively high malnutrition rates, but the Central Plateau region is one of its most severely affected areas. One in five children of the Central Plateau suffers from malnutrition, and the region exhibits a 30% rate of child stunting (the highest in the country). Our US-based team affiliated with Klinik Sen Jozèf, a well-known and community-respected medical clinic in the Central Plateau city of Thomassique, partnered with local Haitian leadership and Trees That Feed Foundation to introduce the agricultural tree product called breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) and an innovative development model to the area with the goal of combating local malnutrition. Breadfruit is highly valued in Thomassique and its surrounding villages, yet there are few local sources for it. A Haitian agronomist was hired to produce breadfruit saplings from trees donated to the clinic by Trees That Feed, and these saplings were then distributed among local farmers and community health committees. The agronomist provided appropriate crop training for breadfruit in conjunction with the sapling distribution. Four years into the program, the outcomes have been noteworthy enough to warrant sharing the process here. This article addresses the lessons learned during implementation of this program in an effort to assist others looking to introduce models or crops in a similar manner for similar purposes. While engaged in a literature review, we found very little written about how to plan and implement a program like ours, despite its potential for positively impacting the health and economic wellbeing of communities in developing nations. Our experience is particularly significant in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as the United Nations World Food Programme projected the number of people affected by food insecurity to nearly double to 265 million worldwide by the end of 2020 as a result of it.
- Archiving the Relaxed Consistency WebXie, Zhiwu; Van de Sompel, Herbert; Liu, Jinyang; van Reenen, Johann; Jordan, Ramiro (ACM, 2013)The historical, cultural, and intellectual importance of archiving the web has been widely recognized. Today, all countries with high Internet penetration rate have established high-profile archiving initiatives to crawl and archive the fast-disappearing web content for long-term use. As web technologies evolve, established web archiving techniques face challenges. This paper focuses on the potential impact of the relaxed consistency web design on crawler driven web archiving. Relaxed consistent websites may disseminate, albeit ephemerally, inaccurate and even contradictory information. If captured and preserved in the web archives as historical records, such information will degrade the overall archival quality. To assess the extent of such quality degradation, we build a simplified feed-following application and simulate its operation with synthetic workloads. The results indicate that a non-trivial portion of a relaxed consistency web archive may contain observable inconsistency, and the inconsistency window may extend significantly longer than that observed at the data store. We discuss the nature of such quality degradation and propose a few possible remedies.
- Assessing the One-Shot Instruction Session: Leveraging Technology for Optimum ResultsNardine, Jennifer T.; Meier, Carolyn (Virginia Libraries, 2010-07)A case study of Virginia Tech University Libraries' transition from paper-based assessment of information literacy session outcomes to online assessment.
- Book Review of Ruby Holler by Sharon CreechMoorefield-Lang, Heather (Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 2011-02-25)
- Button Gwinnett Signatures: A CensusSpeer, Ryan (Manuscript Society, 2008)
- Creating a Custom Queueing System for a Makerspace Using Web TechnologiesBradley, Jonathan (Code4Lib, 2023-01-20)This article details the changes made to the queueing system used by Virginia Tech University Libraries’ 3D Design Studio as the space was decommissioned and reabsorbed into the new Prototyping Studio makerspace. This new service, with its greatly expanded machine and tool offerings, required a revamp of the underlying data structure and was an opportunity to rethink the React and Electron app used previously in order to make the queue more maintainable and easier to deploy moving forward. The new Prototyping Queue application utilizes modular design and auto building forms and queues in order to improve the upgradeability of the app. We also moved away from using React and Electron and made a web app that loads from the local filesystem of the computer in the studio and runs on the Svelte framework with IBM’s Carbon Design components to build out functionality with the frontend. The deployment process was also streamlined, now relying on git and Windows Batch scripts to automate updating the app as changes are committed to the repository.
- Creating the ACRL research agenda for scholarly communication: A move towards more equitable, open systemsHall, Nathan; Shorish, Yasmeen (College & Research Libraries News, 2019-09-09)ACRL considers the transition to more open and equitable systems of scholarship to be a core part of its Plan for Excellence. To meet this ambitious goal, the association’s Research and Scholarly Environment Committee (ReSEC) designs projects and work to meet a series of objectives. In the past, ACRL has seen the development of a research agenda as one way to successfully engage the community in its strategic efforts. Research agendas review an area of engagement, highlight work currently underway, and identify areas that require additional research to move the field forward.
- Creating Transparent Search and Discovery AlgorithmsMiller, Chreston (2019-04-12)
- Creating Trust Relationships for Distributed Digital Preservation FederationsWalters, Tyler; McDonald, Robert H. (iPRES 2008: The Fifth International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects, 2008)The authors outline a model for digital preservation federation based upon several existing models including the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank regional governance model and its similarities to successful large-scale redundant internet networks. In addition other trust models will be examined including Maister, Green, and Galford (2000), Holland and Lockett (1998), and Ring and Van de Ven (1994). These models provide key frameworks for understanding how trust can be enabled among federated but independent institutions.
- Creation of a library tour application for mobile equipment using iBeacon technologyBradley, Jonathan; Henshaw, Neal; McVoy, Liz; French, Amanda; Gilbertson, Keith; Becksford, Lisa; Givens, Elisabeth (Code4lib Journal, 2016-04-25)We describe the design, development, and deployment of a library tour application utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy devices know as iBeacons. The tour application will serve as library orientation for incoming students. The students visit stations in the library with mobile equipment running a special tour app. When the app detects a beacon nearby, it automatically plays a video that describes the current location. After the tour, students are assessed according to the defined learning objectives. Special attention is given to issues encountered during development, deployment, content creation, and testing of this application that depend on functioning hardware, and the necessity of appointing a project manager to limit scope, define priorities, and create an actionable plan for the experiment.
- Deconstructing the collaborative impact: Article and author characteristics that influence citation countHurley, Lori; Ogier, Andrea; Torvik, Vetle I. (2013-08-16)It is well known that collaborative papers tend to receive more citations than solo-authored papers. Here we try to identify the subtle factors of this collaborative effect by analyzing metadata and citation counts for co-authored papers in the biomedical domain, after accounting for attributes known to be strong predictors of citation count. Article-level metadata were gathered from 98,000 PubMed article records categorized with the term breast neoplasm, a topic offering longevity and relevance across biomedical subdisciplines, and yielding a relatively large sample size. Open access citation data was obtained from PubMed Central (PMC). Author-level attributes were encoded from disambiguated author name data in PubMed and appended as article-level attributes of collaborations. A logistic regression model was built to assess the relative weights of these factors as influences on citation counts. As expected, the journal and language of the paper were the strongest predictors. The significance of the number of authors diminished after accounting for other attributes. Some of the more subtle predictors included the group’s highest h-index, which was positively correlated, while the diversity of author h-indices, minimum professional age, and author’s total unique collaborators were negatively correlated. These observations indicate that smaller collaborations composed of early superstars – young, rapidly successful researchers with relatively high and similar h-indices – may be at least as influential in biomedical research as larger collaborations with different demographics. While minimum h-index was important, the first author’s h-index was insignificant, underscoring the importance of the middle authors’ publishing history. The gender diversity outcomes suggest that mixed groups may be ideal, and further research in this area is indicated.
- Digital Libraries for Biodiversity and Natural History CollectionsRuiz, Miguel; Kramer-Duffield, Jacob; Greenberg, Jane; Hall, Nathan (American Society for Information Science and Technology, 2010-10)This panel aims to discuss the importance of creating digital libraries for biodiversity and natural history collections, the state of the art in terms of standards, best practices and the challenges that natural history museums and herbaria face when trying to digitize their collections, and the creation and management of personal digital libraries for botanical learning.
- Does your data deliver for decision making?Mak, Collette; Ellingson, Margaret W.; Lancaster (Gilbert), Charla (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013)Purpose - To describe how data was used to design and evaluate new services at the University of Notre Dame and how data was used to evaluate changes in user behavior at Emory University. Design/methodology/approach - Each author describes sources, methods, and applications of data, gathered through a variety of sources used to plan new services and evaluate user satisfaction. Findings - There is no one perfect approach to data-informed decision making; every approach has advantages, costs, and disadvantages. What is important is that resource sharing practitioners become comfortable with a variety of assessment tools. Originality/value - The user experience is increasingly recognized as a critical part of any service or library product but most resource sharing practitioners have little to no background in assessment and statistics. This article provides an introduction to methods, sources, and applications of data specifically applied to interlibrary loan.
- Embracing the Electronic Journal: One Library's PlanMcMillan, Gail (Haworth Press, 1991)The work of serialists is rarely static and now another exciting new challenge awaits us: the electronic journal. In this paper "electronic journals," also called e-journals, will mean any serials produced, published, and distributed nationally and internationally via electronic networks such as Bitnet and the Internet.' Electronic journals offer many potential benefits, including timely document delivery, direct links from online catalogs, less expensive subscription prices, and easy gathering of statistics on their use. They also pose new problems, such as: How does a library provide access? Does the library's computer have room for complete electronic journals without making sacrifices such as response time or implementation of new software? Who will archive these e-journals and how will this be accomplished? From the point of view of the medium-sized, academic research library at Virginia Tech, the electronic journal is seen as another technological advancement to be incorporated into the collection of information sources already available from the library. Considering its mission, resources, and users, University Libraries has decided on a "near-term" approach to electronic journal access for the community we serve.
- ETD Celebrates 20th AnniversaryDudek, Nancy (Virginia Tech, 2016-06-16)A summary of how and why Virginia Tech became the first university to mandate Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) for graduate students.
- ETD Preservation Survey Results: MetaArchive and NDLTD Collaborate to Provide a Distributed Preservation Network for ETDsMcMillan, Gail (11th International Symposium on ETDs, 2008-06-05)Because many universities now welcome or require ETDs from their graduate students, institutions must ensure that these works will be at least as available and enduring as they were when libraries and archives preserved the bound print volumes on their shelves. To this end, the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations sponsored an online survey to help gauge the digital library community's interest in a distributed digital preservation network (DDPN) specifically for ETDs. Over 90 institutions responded to the survey in early 2008. Based on the enthusiasm expressed in the survey, the MetaArchive Cooperative (www.metaarchive.org), which successfully deploys a DDPN among six diverse universities in the southeastern United States, is opening the Cooperative's services and resources to the NDLTD. This paper describes survey responses and aspects of the NDLTD Preservation Strategy.
- ETDs in the 21st CenturyMcMillan, Gail (Educause, 2018-05)Electronic theses/dissertations (ETDs) have been required at higher education institutions for twenty years. Although numerous goals have been realized, the majority of ETDs have not been transformed into new media.
- Ethics of Access in Displaced ArchivesWinn, Samantha R. (Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists, 2015)This paper presents an exploratory review of archival literature on access to displaced archives. In order to understand the ethical imperatives that govern access to displaced archives, archivists must navigate a complex web of competing moral claims, contradictory legal frameworks, shifting national security norms, and customary practices that reflect centuries of colonization, occupation, and conquest. In the absence of either rigorous professional engagement or a clear ethical framework, institutions managing displaced archives may establish policies that unnecessarily restrict access, violate the values of the creators, privilege certain groups of users over others, or inflict harm upon members of the originating community.
- FLIP THE MODEL: Strategies for Creating and Delivering ValueMathews, Brian (2013-10-28)Academic libraries are encountering a critical inflection point. In our case it isn’t a single technology that is disrupting our established system, but a barrage of advancements in publishing, pedagogy, and user preferences. The landscape is shifting around us, and the future of scholarship requires us to develop new skills, design new environments, and deliver new service capacities. In short, we need new operating models.
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