Scholarly Works, University Libraries
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- Comparative Study and Expansion of Metadata Standards for Historic Fashion CollectionsNg, Wen Nie (2023-09-27)The goal of the paper is to enhance the metadata standard of fashion collections by expanding the controlled vocabulary and metadata elements for Costume Core, a metadata schema designed specifically for fashion artifacts. Various techniques are employed to achieve this goal, including identifying new descriptors using word embedding similarity measurements and adding new descriptive terms for precise artifact descriptions to use when re-cataloging a university fashion collection in Costume Core. The paper also provides a sneak peek of the Model Output Confirmative Helper Application, which simplifies the vocabulary review process. Additionally, a survey was conducted to collect insights into how other fashion professionals use metadata when describing dress artifacts. The survey results reveal 1) commonly used metadata standards in the historic fashion domain; 2) sample metadata respondents use; and 3) partial potential metadata that can be appended to Costume Core, which is relevant to Virginia Tech’s Oris Glisson Historic Costume and Textile Collection. The expanded Costume Core resulting from the project offers a more comprehensive way of describing fashion collection holdings/artifacts. It has the potential to be adopted by the fashion collections to produce metadata that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
- Conducting Research Intelligence for NSF’s Engineering Research Visioning AllianceStovall, Connie (2023-11-02)
- From OER to Open Press and Open Impact: Taking open education initiatives to the next levelBuck, Stefanie; Brown, Allison; Elder, Abbey; Walz, Anita R.; McGuire, Hugh (2023-11-08)When educational institutions invest in open education, their initiatives begin in “start-up” mode grappling with awareness-building, tools, and finding early adopters willing to jump in and get things moving. As projects gain momentum, they evolve as they work to operationalize, scale, and demonstrate the impacts of open education in ways that align with institutional strategic priorities. Join this session for a thoughtful discussion with campus champions who have directed open education initiatives through stages of maturity including the “Open Press” model, a central hub for creating, managing, and sharing open learning materials and scholarship. How has the Open Press model helped them move open education to the next level? How do they define and demonstrate impact in step with broader institutional priorities? What guidance can they offer colleagues seeking to build sustainable, impactful open education projects?
- Immersive Cross-platform X3D Training: Elevating Construction Safety EducationRoofigari-Esfahan, Nazila; Polys, Nicholas F.; Johnson, Ashley; Ogle, J. Todd; Sandbrook, Ben (ACM, 2023-10-09)A multi-platform Virtual Reality (VR) approach is proposed to complement the traditional approaches for construction safety training. Visual simulations of a highway construction project were developed and presented through the developed platforms, aiming at giving students immersive experience of actual construction environments. The simulated worksite scenarios included active traffic, multiple worker roles and heavy equipment, and was rendered at different times of day and weather conditions. We used this material in an undergraduate class activity with 50 students. During a session in our visualization lab, students experienced the scenarios presenting day shift, afternoon shift with adverse weather and night shift and were asked to develop daily report of their job site observation. The scenrios were presented via the following platforms: TV projection, Mobile Phone, Head-Mounted Display (HMD), and CAVE projection room. The results demonstrates that the multi-platform immersive experience has the potential to significantly improve hazard recognition skill of construction students.
- Discovering Poe as a Compositionist: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Philosophy of Composition” and Process TheoryMcNabb, Kayla B. (2013-03-01)Though Poe has commonly been remembered for his contributions to the detective, horror, and science-fiction genres, we should consider how his innovation extended into other areas. This includes his critical works, such as his essay “The Philosophy of Composition.” Despite Poe’s classical training and the trends in composition instruction before and during his educational career, the theory of composition argued for in his critical essays is more analogous to the Process Theory established by compositionsts over 100 years later than the teaching methods of his time, suggesting that Poe’s concept of composition was very progressive. To truly understand Poe’s environment, we must examine the tradition that informed early nineteenth-century educational systems as well as Poe’s own academic experience. In order to discover the connections between Poe’s critical methodologies and those of later composition theorists, we must compare the preexisting notions in the field to the developments seen in composition theory during the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries.
- Doing the Work: Developing a DEI Toolkit to Center Equity in Textbook CreationBlicher, Heather; Vold, Veronica (2023-10-16)Open Oregon Educational Resources received federal and Governor’s Emergency Education Relief funding to develop openly licensed, targeted pathway materials with an equity lens for Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS), Sociology, and Criminal Justice. This project redesigns high-enrollment courses in disciplines that lead to in-demand occupations where high-quality openly licensed course materials with an equity lens are not currently available. To support author teams, we push beyond the traditional concept of OER as an affordability tool to include a throughline that focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion. We developed a DEI toolkit in Pressbooks to engage participants in OER development strategies that center equity in the labor-intensive process of textbook creation and design. Recognizing the challenges of coordinating training sessions for a large project team and the need to accommodate learner variability, we created an interactive, accessible toolkit that provides participants with synchronous and asynchronous options for engagement. It is designed to be flexible, allowing team members to participate and learn at their own pace, with regular and sustained interaction with equity consultants, instructional designers, and other specialists for questions and feedback.
- From Potential to Possibility: Virginia Tech's Journey in Developing Inclusive OERGrey, Kindred; Blicher, Heather (2023-10-13)Accessibility is an essential component in developing open educational resources (OER). It amplifies the reach and impact of OER by extending usability to a broader audience. It ensures that everyone, regardless of their abilities, can fully participate in and benefit from course materials, to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the content effectively. This expanded audience enriches the learning experience for all and encourages collaboration, diversity, and innovation. Accompany us as we take you through Virginia Tech’s journey making open materials increasingly accessible over the years. Hear about our beginning accessibility efforts, how we are currently approaching accessibility, and features we would like to incorporate in the future. We’ll highlight standard features that make learning resources more accessible and also share a few new features that Virginia Tech’s program has incorporated, such as QR codes, podcasts, Aria tagging, and PDF remediation. We also invite diverse perspectives into the process, including individuals with disabilities and educators specializing in accessibility who provide insights on making resources more inclusive from the outset. Lastly, we’ll talk about some features that we have in the pipeline, such as offering multiple languages and audiobooks. We recognize that new user needs arise every day. Let’s use our time together to stay curious about accessibility features and build a community to support each other.
- Human Elements in OER Work: Developing an Ethic of Hospitality and CareWalz, Anita R. (2023-10-13)For project managers and subject matter experts alike, OER projects can be labor-intensive. It can be easy to view such projects as merely functional, driven by project-management methods and production techniques. In the same way that teaching combines disciplinary facts and perspectives with social engagement, motivation, and design -- and because OER work is also with and for people -- these human aspects are an integral part of creating course materials. This brief presentation highlights several perspectives, challenges, and examples related to hospitality and care within OER creation projects related to an OER. These touch on communication strategies, roles of project managers and subject matter experts, human limitations including boundaries, burnout, and conflict, and understanding and leveraging stakeholder motivations -- including student savings, but also learning, curiosity, creativity, and the value of worthwhile work.
- Using Altmetric Data Responsibly: A Guide to Interpretation and Good PracticeMiles, Rachel A.; Price, Robyn (2023-10-12)This guide focuses specifically on data from the data provider and company, Altmetric, but other types of altmetrics are mentioned and occasionally used as a comparison in this guide, such as the Open Syllabus database to find the educational engagement with scholarly outputs. This guide opens with an introduction followed by an overview of Altmetric and the Altmetric Attention Score, Altmetrics and Responsible Research Assessment, Output Types Tracked by Altmetric, and the Altmetric Sources of Attention, which include: News and Mainstream Media, Social Media (X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, and historical data from Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Sina Weibo); Patents, Peer Review, Syllabi (historical data only), Multimedia, Public Policy Documents, Wikipedia, Research Highlights, Reference Managers, and Blogs; finally, there is a conclusion, a list of related resources and readings, two appendices, and references. This guide is intended for use by librarians, practitioners, funders, and other users of Altmetric data or those who are interested in incorporating altmetrics into their bibliometric practice and/or research analytics. It can also help researchers who are going up for annual evaluations and promotion and tenure reviews, who can use the data in informed and practical applications. It can also be a useful reference guide for research managers and university administrators who want to understand the broader online engagement with research publications beyond traditional scholarly citations, also known as bibliometrics, but who also want to avoid misusing, misinterpreting, or abusing Altmetric data when making decisions, creating policies, and evaluating faculty members and researchers at their institutions.
- But what do you REALLY think? An OER collaborator perception surveyWalz, Anita R.; Blicher, Heather; Grey, Kindred (2023-10-17)Since 2013 the Open Education Initiative (OEI) at Virginia Tech https://guides.lib.vt.edu/oer has supported faculty in exploring, adopting, adapting, creating, and freely-distributing open educational resources of various formats. In an effort to identify how to document, strengthen, streamline, and advocate for program permanence, the OEI conducted a formal, anonymous survey. The survey population included faculty and staff open education collaborators who have or are partnering with the OEI since an initial series of grants in 2016. While we keep in close contact with collaborators throughout the entire development process, we believe that anonymous feedback will help us to gain additional insights after projects are completed. We seek to uncover additional aspects of faculty/staff motivations to participate in the OEI, areas for program improvement, and observations about the program from a faculty/staff viewpoint rather than our own perceptions. Our program, institutional context, core values, and earlier, informal findings informed the openly-licensed survey instrument. We will discuss expected findings vs. actual findings from the survey, and our plans for responding, including possible asynchronous online learning modules designed to streamline labor-intensive steps. We hope that these will expand the reach and impact of the OEI while keeping workloads within reason for members of the OEI.
- A Review and Assessment Matrix of the Features of Publicly Available Grazing Applications for SmartphonesHaugen, Inga; Jacobs, Chelsea (2023)
- Learning Together: Linked Data Experimentation at an Academic LibraryMunshower, Alan (2023-07-27)Wikidata is a global, collaboratively edited, multilingual knowledge base that any project, organization or person can freely use. Wikidata expands access and connections for archival materials while also raising questions for archivists. This session will offer a brief introduction to the Wikidata model of "linked open data", followed by archivists describing their organizations' Wikidata project goals and processes, with time for Q&A and open discussion of the platform's promise and pitfalls.
- Subjective Differences in Preparation Between TEEM and MDiv Pastors in the ELCAPorter, Nathaniel D. (2016-01-14)This report summarizes findings from a 2005 survey of 52 graduates of the Theological Education for Emerging Ministries (TEEM) program of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America regarding their ministry preparation and call experiences. It is part of a larger study of non-residential seminary outcomes including the published articles "Preparation in Context" (Porter 2016, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-016-0246-5).
- Collaborations Beyond the Library: Bibliometric Analyses to Support Engineering Research, Innovation and DiversityOver, Sarah; Stovall, Connie (2023-06-28)A new library department was formed to focus on growing university research impact and delivering data-driven research intelligence. The department collaborates with multiple units across campus, including with the College of Engineering via the department’s Engineering Collections and Research Analyst. All collaborations stem from the need for data-driven decisions for determining inter- and intra-institutional strengths and for discovering potential and existing research partnerships. This paper focuses on key collaborations with campus partners relevant to engineering research, innovation, and diversity efforts at Virginia Tech, providing processes and examples in each area. Examples include: an analysis of institutional degree data to determine competency related to the CHIPS and Science Act; prospective aerospace company collaborations; and research alignment analysis with HBCUs and other minority serving institutions. Each example covers tools, alternatives, and processes used to generate these analyses with end products presented to collaborators. Overall the collaborations have been successful and are growing, which prompted the need for a new department, with wide support within the library and across campus.
- University Libraries' Research Impact & Intel Team: Supporting Virginia Tech's Reputational GoalsStovall, Connie (2023-07-05)
- Where’s the Non-Fiction Section? Transitioning Freshmen from High School to Academic LibrariesStovall, Connie; Meier, Carolyn (2007-11-01)
- Native American Literature in Collection DevelopmentStovall, Connie; Shaffer, Christopher (2007-06-01)
- Statistical Analysis, Data Visualization, and Business Intelligence Tools for Electronic Resources in Academic LibrariesCheng, Cheng; Gilmore, Tracy; Lougen, Colleen; Stovall, Connie (2017-11-09)
- Mining EZProxy Data: User Demographics and Electronic ResourcesStovall, Connie; Kohler, Ellie (2018-12-06)
- Leveraging Research Intelligence and Analytics Tools to Support Strategic HBCU Research CollaborationsStovall, Connie; Becker, Heidi; Over, Sarah (2023-05-09)Are you equipped to enhance and improve the strength of your collaborations with HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions? Can your institution validate in a data-driven way why specific collaborations were chosen based on research strengths? We all recognize the importance of diversity in research, but what practical steps can organizations take to move these efforts from discussion towards concrete action? In this session we will show you how to leverage and consolidate available research data to inform strategic planning, and better position your research organization to take action toward a more equitable future.