Library Research & Innovative Practice Forum

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/16362

The Library Research & Innovative Practice Forum is an annual event in June featuring lightning talks, presentations, and poster sessions by UMD Libraries’ librarians and staff.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 123

Assessment @ UMD Libraries
(2015-06-04) Barnachea, Lutgarda; Edwards, Jamie; Ginoza, Aaron; Sorrell, Cynthia
E-Book Use and Opinions at UMD
(2015-06-04) Carroll, Alexander; Corlett-Rivera, Kelsey; Hackman, Timothy
Initial report on e-book survey conducted at University of Maryland, fall 2014
Find It Fail: What ILL can tell us about Challenges related to Known Item Discovery
(2015-06-04) Thompson, Hilary
When discovery of known items fail, library users often turn to interlibrary loan for assistance obtaining these materials. ILL staff members then “fill” the requests by directing the user to subscription e-resources or items that are freely available on the web. The resulting transactions (approximately 2,500 per year) provide insight into the difficulties encountered by library users in finding and accessing known items online. Using data gathered from ILLiad, I hope to shed light on which user groups have trouble finding material readily available online, which types of resources pose particular difficulty, and generate discussion about how the Libraries can help users learn to locate these materials themselves.
Getting to Know FRED: Introducing Workflows for Born-Digital Content
(2015-06-04) Prael, Alice; Wickner, Amy
Managing Audiovisual Digitization
(2015-06-04) Pike, Robin C.
A synopsis and preparation presentation of a Society of American Archivists pre-conference workshop (workshop held on August 17, 2015.
DVDs: Still in Demand, or Going the Way of the Dodo?
(2015-06-04) Horbal, Andrew
This presentation contains preliminary results from a research study conducted by Andy Horbal from the University of Maryland and Scott Spicer from the University Minnesota which seeks to capture current practice and future perspectives on support for classroom video playback equipment from the classroom technology professionals responsible for this support.
CSV Validation for Metadata Wrangling
(2015-06-04) Westgard, Joshua A.
This lightning talk describes a Python script for the validation of CSV files against arbitrary sets of rules specified in a schema file. The motivation for creating the tool was that CSV (comma-separated values) files have become a de facto standard for moving data between systems, and for any sort of batch ingest process. But CSV data can be messy, and often there are problems that appear only when the data is being loaded, after it is out of the hands of the librarians who have created the data and into the hands of systems staff. The tool is intended to empower data creators to validate CSV files against the requirements of the systems for which the data are being prepared, so that they can correct any problems themselves before sending the data along the pipeline.
Plant Patents Digitization Pilot Project
(2015-06-04) Zdravkovska, Nevenka
We hope to show cost effective color scanning of images, and encourage other PTRCs (Patent and Trademark Resource Centers) to join NYPL and UMD in making all 25,000+ plant patents easily available. USPTO still requires paper color prints for legal proceedings, so our PDFs are for easy preliminary searching and browsing. We will discuss the process, workflow, and scope for digitizing the color plates in collaboration with DCMR (Digital Conversion and Media Reformatting), SSDR (Software Systems Development and Research), Metadata and EPSL (Engineering and Physical Sciences Library).
Student Success through Libraries: A Mixed-Methods Model for Assessing and Demonstrating Library Value
(2015-06-04) Edwards, Jamie
WorldCat Local Usability at UMD
(2015-06-04) Carroll, Alexander; Goldfinger, Rebecca; Mears, Jaime; Quintilian, Steven; Singh, Madhu
Describes the first iteration of the WorldCat Local Usability Study conducted by University Libraries during spring of 2015, including study design and preliminary results.
Our Stories, In Numbers: Best Practices
(2015-06-04) Barnachea, Lutgarda
Does Content plus Access equal Use? Revealing la Révolution at the UMD Libraries
(2015-06-05) Archer, Joanne; Corlett-Rivera, Kelsey
This poster traces two years of the University of Maryland (UMD) Libraries’ efforts to Reveal la Révolution by cataloging and digitizing their 18th-century French Pamphlet collection. Follow their steps as a cross-departmental team waded through some 12,000 pamphlets with the support of French graduate students, fine tuning workflows and communication channels along the way. While an internally-funded pilot got the project off the ground, national and international collaboration allowed them to leverage funding support from the UMD Libraries to exceed original targets for both scanning and cataloging. The result was a significant increase in digitally-available content and improved access through Worldcat and the Internet Archive. When that content and access did not turn into documented use, however, the UMD Pamphlets team pressed on, delving further into digital scholarship. Their outreach efforts culminated in a stand-alone digital history site with a crowdsourcing component that has seen some 5,500 visits since going live in September 2014 (http://colonyincrisis.lib.umd.edu). Challenges, such as a perpetual lack of dedicated staff time, and lessons learned (digital history sites require Twitter hashtags) are featured on the poster, along with a vision for a sustainable way forward.
Establishing the In-House Internet Archive Digitization Workflow
(2015-06-05) Cartier, Eric
The Internet Archive hosts many digitized assets from the University of Maryland Libraries, and its staff performs the large scale scanning. There are some archival materials, however, that due to their size, quantity, and/or fragility, student digitization assistants scan on site in the Hornbake Digitization Center in College Park, Maryland. In the spring of 2014, the Digital Librarian helped to establish a workflow and documentation to track the materials as they progressed through description, digitization, and batch upload publication. The previously undocumented activities are now identified and assigned to the appropriate Libraries staff. This poster demonstrates how people in many departments—Special Collections and University Archives, Metadata Services Department, Digital Conversion and Media Reformatting, and Digital Programs and Initiatives—make this work happen as efficiently and effectively as possible.
UMD Libraries: Social Media Outreach
(2015-06-14) Ginoza, Aaron
Tim Burton: Character Network Analysis
(2015-06-20) Falk, Nickolas
Social network theory can contribute to the understanding of the structural properties of a movie and the data contained within it. The meaning or importance of the individual characters and the community in a movie is conditional on their position in a complex scheme of social relationships reported by the data. Based on the idea that we can extrapolate key properties of a movie by collecting, compiling and analyzing its associated data character network analysis and comparison of two Tim Burton movies: this project entailed Corpse Bride and Big Fish. Based on the criteria of who spoke with whom, who appears with whom and the overall number of appearances throughout the films, I collected and compiled the data with the hopes of discovering trends within the network relationships that generate enthusiasm among Tim Burton’s fan base.
Identifying User Demographics in Digital Collections with Google Analytics
(2016-06-08) Durden, David
Usage statistics of digitized materials, when collected, can inform future project prioritization for increased access to materials. Demographic information collected through Google Analytics may provide insight into the behavior of users as they engage with digital collections. This presentation outlines some of the tactics used to analyze data collected by Google Analytics for the years 2013 through 2015 by answering questions such as, 'how are users getting to digital collections,' what searches are driving traffic,' and 'how do users navigate through digital collections'? Answers to these questions revealed additional demographic information including language barriers that prevent access to content, the popularity of particular subjects, changes in social media traffic both to and from digital collections, and popularity of device type and operating system among users.
Metrics that compare academic libraries, and how we stack up within CIC
(2016-06-08) Barnachea, Lutgarda
This presentation identifies the metrics used in the 2015 annual statistical surveys of ARL, ACRL, and IPEDS. Selected data compiled from fy2010 to 2015 are included to show comparisons among the CIC member libraries. The purpose of this presentation is to create awareness of metrics used by national organization to compare academic libraries.
Custom Analytics with Google Tag Manager: Assessing Usage Statistics on the MD-SOAR Platform
(2016-06-08) Koivisto, Joseph
As usage metrics continue to attain an increasingly central role in library system assessment and analysis, librarians tasked with system selection, implementation, and support are driven to identify metric approaches that simultaneously require less technical complexity and greater levels of data granularity. Such approaches allow systems librarians to present evidence-based claims of platform usage behaviors while reducing the resources necessary to collect such information, thereby representing a novel approach to real-time user analysis as well as dual benefit in active and preventative cost reduction. As part of the DSpace implementation for the MD SOAR initiative, the Consortial Library Application Support (CLAS) division has begun test implementation of the Google Tag Manager analytic system in an attempt to collect custom analytical dimensions to track author- and university-specific download behaviors. Building on the work of Conrad , CLAS seeks to demonstrate that the GTM approach to custom analytics provides both granular metadata-based usage statistics in an approach that will prove extensible for additional statistical gathering in the future. This poster will discuss the methodology used to develop these custom tag approaches, the benefits of using the GTM model, and the risks and benefits associated with further implementation.
Untangling Knots: Determining E-book Suitability for Course Reserves
(2016-06-08) DePope, Leigh Ann; Leffler, Scott; Thompson, Hilary
E-books on their own are complex; they become even more so in the context of course reserves. In FY2016 the Resource Sharing & Reserves and Acquisitions units developed a new workflow for vetting requested e-books to ensure that they were suitable for course reserves (i.e. they permit unlimited simultaneous users) before posting links to them within the university’s online learning management system. In the Spring 2016 semester 46 e-books were vetted through this process, resulting in 18 purchases. Preliminary data analysis sheds light on the suitability of the Libraries’ current e-book collections for course reserves as well as faculty preferences, with potential implications for the Libraries’ ordering process. We hope this lightening talk will generate discussion about these issues among selectors, collection managers, and reserves staff alike.
Out with the old, in with the new: A reliable workflow in writing a report on diversity and inclusion
(2016-06-08) Edwards, Jamie; Epps, Sharon; Horbal, Andrew; Sorrell, Cynthia; Tchangalova, Nedelina; Wheeler, Lisa
The Diversity Advisory Committee (DAC) will discuss the dynamics of the process of assessing the diversity health at the University of Maryland Libraries. From designing the survey instrument through analyzing the results to the final writing of the report of diversity and inclusion, the committee members will unveil their challenges and achievements in presenting unbiased conclusions from this assessment project. In completing this project, the committee consulted the university’s wisdom, including (1) the College of Information Studies for creating the survey; (2) the Office of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment (IRPA), and Division of Information Technology (DIT) for analyzing the results; and (3) the Campus Assessment Working Group (CAWG) model for organizing the content of the final report.