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

3D Tour Project: Modeling McKeldin's Map Collection
(2024-06) Garcia, Jose Anza; Shanker, Stella; Abban. John; Budhathoki, Milan
At McKeldin library, we are lucky to have one of the largest map collections of any college library in the world. With over 350,000 print maps, including government maps provided through the Federal Depository Library Program, the collection's size and complexity can make it a daunting task to explore and find materials. To tackle this problem, the 3D Tour Project seeks to create a 3D model of McKeldin's map collection, which is located in the west wing of the 4th floor. Using cutting edge GIS software such as ArcGIS Pro, we have created a sample model of a row of the library's cabinets (including individual drawers), each of which has detailed information about the maps contained within. The project will, in the future, be available online and thus accessible to any visitor who wishes to find materials within the collection. Eventually, this project will be expanded to model the entire map collection area and will have more advanced capabilities added through JavaScript programming, including an ability to search through categories of materials.
A Content Analysis to Inform Engineering LibGuide Overhaul
(2024-06-05) DiCiesare, Leah; Weiss, Sarah
LibGuides are a commonly used tool for aggregating library resources by topic, but they can vary widely. Before making a concerted effort to update and improve the LibGuides at our institution, we are conducting a content analysis to discover current trends in the composition of engineering LibGuides at other R1 institutions. In this lightning talk, we will detail the beginnings of this project: the reasoning for this study, a review of the literature, decisions about what LibGuides we are choosing to look at, and our proposed methodology.
Advocacy by Design: Moving Between Theory & Practice
(2017-06-08) Lindblad, Purdom
How can librarians, archivists, and digital practitioners practice an Ethic of Care, in explicitly anti-racist and anti-violent ways? How can libraries contribute to the infrastructures needed to define, scope, and practice care? This talk focuses on research practices to do the speculative work of imagining what the infrastructures of an Ethic of Care could and should be. Advocacy by Design (AbD) is a design framework for critical engagement centered on advocacy. AbD articulates a series of principles—transparency, openness, polyvocalism (resisting one narrative, opening possibility of many points of view, many narratives around a single event), stewardship, etc.—and a series of applied techniques to realize these principles throughout the project’s cycle. This talk will first describe the broad focus of Advocacy by Design, with a particular attention to how it is a framework to help prompt reflection and articulation of the purposes of the project (any project from system design to creating a working group to helping at the reference desk), then to outline what the principles are for Advocacy by Design, highlight several ‘elements’ for each principle for a few example projects—within the Library and liaison-collaboration with researchers; and finally point towards why the library might care about centering design, particularly AbD, in our work, from the ways we think about and invite users to the library, to discovery interfaces, and to collaborations in digital projects.
Analyzing and Identifying Patterns of Temperature and Crime in Chicago
(2024-06) Budhathoki, Milan; Murlidhar, Ashish; Hans, Abhimanyu; Benjamin, Alice; Harp, Ryan; Sharma, Ashish
This study investigates the relationship between temperature and crime rates in Chicago over a 20-year period, both at the city level and at the granular census tract level to examine spatial and temporal correlations across different neighborhoods. Crime and temperature data were analyzed at the census tract level to examine spatial and temporal correlations. The study tested the hypothesis that certain crimes increase with warmer temperatures while others rise with colder temperatures, and that higher temperatures predict higher crime overall. Urban climate data from the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) and public crime data were compared to identify census tracts sensitive to seasonal temperature changes. Different crime types were found to correlate with a heat vulnerability index based on socioeconomic and health metrics. The findings aim to help law enforcement, urban planners, and stakeholders locate areas of heat stress and develop interventions to reduce violence and structured racism in the highly crime-prone neighborhood, with a focus on understanding trends at the census tract level. This novel investigation of the overlooked links between climate, geography, and crime can inform strategies to mitigate urban heat impacts on public safety across different communities.
Archiving Punk at Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA)
(2017-06-08) Davis, John
Since 2014, Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) has stewarded several collections of archival material related to the punk rock subculture in Washington, D.C. My poster presents a description of the work SCPA is doing related to archiving D.C. punk, as well as offer highlights from relevant collections like the D.C. Punk and Indie Fanzine collection, the Sharon Cheslow Punk Flyers collection, the Jason Farrell Posters and Flyers collection, and the John Davis collection on punk.
Are we there yet? Electronic Resources Discovery in WorldCat
(2020-06-26) Bradley, Benjamin; Guay, Beth; Hemsley, Erica; Wilson, Aaron; Reiss, Robin
In 2012 the UMD Libraries began implementing WorldShare Collection Manager to manage the Libraries’ electronic collections and to make them accessible in the Libraries’ discovery system, WorldCat UMD. The panel will discuss how our understanding of WorldCat Discovery (WCD) informs our work to make the Libraries' resources available to students, faculty, staff, and others who rely on OCLC catalog records for library resource discovery. Our discussion will: provide background information on WCD; discuss its advantages and disadvantages; highlight cross-departmental collaboration and workflows; and finally, discuss new work in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic, in particular, work to implement the HathiTrust Emergency Temporary Access Service, and to make undiscoverable and important electronic resources, such as the Adam Matthew Digital American Indian Histories and Cultures collection discoverable and accessible.
Assessing effectiveness of communication and collaboration platforms at USMAI partner campuses
(2017-06-08) Dahl, David; Hanson, Heidi; Koivisto, Joseph
The USMAI library consortium — originally formed to capitalize on cooperative resource sharing — provides partner institutions with a knowledge-sharing network and a pool of talented, insightful collaborators. By combining a range of perspectives, practices, and localized expertise, consortial partners have become better equipped to address the individual needs of their campus community while also gaining increased library domain knowledge through collaborative engagement and collegial correspondence. While acknowledging this noble mission, the authors of this proposal posed a question to the USMAI consortium: do the communication and collaboration platforms used among consortial partners help enhance this aim, or do they rather serve as a stumbling block to an otherwise motivated community of peers? During the summer and fall of 2016, the project team conducted a series of surveys, meetings, and focus groups to determine the effectiveness of the variety of tools available to the consortium for communication and collaboration purposes, such as the USMAI web sites, web conferencing platforms (e.g., GoToMeeting), and the USMAICollaborates Google site. In this presentation, the project team will describe the motivating factors for this assessment, an overview of the planning and execution of our data collection activities, and a report of our findings on the user assessment of tool effectiveness and usability. The authors will also lay out a series of recommendations for enhanced platform development that have been submitted to the USMAI executive leadership and the Council of Library Directors.
Assessment @ UMD Libraries
(2015-06-04) Barnachea, Lutgarda; Edwards, Jamie; Ginoza, Aaron; Sorrell, Cynthia
The benefits of library involvement in the implementation of a faculty activity reporting system
(2019-06) Corlett-Rivera, Kelsey; Goodall, Sharon; MacOmber, Kendra; Huntenburg, Antonya
Many universities have implemented software programs, such as Digital Measures and Faculty180, to manage faculty productivity and research information. This implementation process involves a number of different stakeholders, including IT, institutional reporting, research administration, faculty, etc. In many cases, an implementation team is assembled to bring together the right expertise. We advocate for the inclusion of the Libraries on that implementation team based primarily on our experience with Digital Measures at the University of Maryland, but also on communication with other institutions who have been through a similar process and a review of the literature. This poster will enumerate the benefits of library involvement, recommend points in the process at which to get involved (e.g. procurement, technical implementation, training), and identify the best people in a library organization to include at those moments, such as metadata experts or graduate assistants for training. We will also provide suggestions for librarians who need to make the case for inclusion, and address a few challenges to full participation. The poster format will allow us to present the information based on a visual timeline, which will make it easy for interested attendees to take our experience and apply it at their own institutions. We will also be able to spend time discussing our experience one-on-one with attendees to answer questions and learn from their experiences.
Bento Box Discovery
(2016-06-08) Wallberg, Ben; Tai, Xiaoyu
Users find the the list of resources and terms for finding information bewildering: book, journal, article, database, resource, catalog, worldcat, guide, website, google scholar, institutional repository, digital collections, archives, etc. What they really want is a single search box which will return a single, relevance-ranked result set across all Libraries' resources and more. In the absence of a single data source to support such a search, Libraries for many years have tried to dynamically aggregate and de-duplicate federated searches across multiple data sources, called metasearch, which has not worked very well. In recent years a new model, often called Bento Box, has become popular which attempts to come closer to the ideal search. In this model the user enters their search into a single box, then multiple sources are searched and presented back on a single result screen, boxed into separate areas without de-duplication, with only a few results from each source. Then the user can clearly see that results have come from multiple sources and either select a specific hit or see more results from any of the sources.
Bento Box Discovery: Alpha Release
(2019-06-11) Bradley, Ben; Brite, Jay; Parker, Bria; Smith, Austin; Wallberg, Ben; Zdravkovska, Nevenka; Zhao, Cindy
For the past year, the Discovery Committee has been working on creating a new search interface for the libraries using NCSU Libraries' QuickSearch, an open-source application. This poster will provide an update on the progress the group has made and will include a live demo and usability testing of the in-development application.
Blind spots, gaps, and unexpected traffic: A (brief) history of the transition to Google Tag Manager and new approaches to improved MD-SOAR analytics
(2017-06-08) Koivisto, Joseph
The transition to Google Tag Manager (GTM) seemed like an obvious choice for the MD-SOAR shared institutional repository: easier management of custom analytics tags, immediate integration with existing DSpace and Google Analytics infrastructure, and easy customization translating to better item-level statistics for participating campuses. However, now - more than a year post implementation - numerous issues with the GTM approach have been observed. In addition to breaking existing custom development that was implemented for recent DSpace releases, GTM was revealed to miscount metrics related to bitstream downloads and inbound web traffic from indexed search engines. This poster will provide an overview of problems observed with the Google Tag Manager implementation for the MD-SOAR DSpace instance and the custom tag development necessary to adequately address these problems. Furthermore, this poster will provide an overview of a newly formed partnership with the RAMP initiative headquartered at the University of Montana, a collaboration that hopes to support the development of a novel analytics approach that more accurately reflects platform and bitstream use. A comparatively assessment of gathered metrics will be provided.
Breaking the Rules Carefully: Implementation of Inclusive Terminology in the Catalog
(2020-06-09) Seguin, Linda
In January 2020, a group of employees at Towson University's Cook Library petitioned the Metadata Subgroup of the University System of Maryland & Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) to change the OPAC display of authorized Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) containing the pejorative term "illegal alien" to the more inclusive term "undocumented immigrant," and other LCSH containing "alien" to "noncitizen." As the technical liaison to the subgroup, I implemented a proof of concept in the Aleph Test OPAC to facilitate evaluation of the proposal. This presentation outlines the technical considerations of such a change and its implementation using tools available in the Aleph integrated library system. If you are interested in more inclusive library systems, then this poster will give you insight into the technical work that goes on behind the scenes.
Building a Successful (and Flexible) Partnership with UMD's Gymkana Troupe
(2016-06-08) Hawk, Amanda
Presented at the 2016 Library Research and Innovative Practice Forum, this poster provides an overview of a successful partnership between the University of Maryland Archives and UMD's Gymkana Troupe to publicize Gymkana's 70th anniversary and to digitize the troupe's holdings in the Archives. Gymkana is an exhibition gymnastics troupe founded on campus in 1946 which runs a variety of educational and healthy-living outreach programs. Various stages of the project are highlighted, including an exhibit in McKeldin Library, a LaunchUMD fundraising campaign, and the troupe's participation in metadata creation for digital objects. By maintaining an open and flexible dialogue throughout the project planning and execution, both the library and the troupe members ultimately benefited from this collaboration.
Can Google Scholar Give Us Everything We Need? Evaluation of Research Literature Databases for Subject Scope and Search Retrieval in the Sciences
(2017-06-08) Ritchie, Stephanie
Prompted by changes to the creation and indexing of scientific literature and those databases that compile this literature, an evaluation and comparison of eight databases (AGRICOLA, AGRIS, BIOSIS, CABI, FSTA, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science) for their breadth of subject scope and effectiveness in search result retrieval for the agricultural sciences was conducted over the past year. In one study, we evaluated the databases for subject scope in agricultural literature. Thirty citations from three large literature reviews in different domains of agricultural science (agronomy, animal and meat science, and human nutrition) were randomly selected and searched in each database. In a second study, we evaluated the quality of the search of these eight databases by conducting a series of searches for the three domains of agricultural research to test the retrieval of content and examine the first 100 results for relevance. A reexamination of the subject scope and search quality of the major agricultural sciences databases will help determine which of these database tools are most useful for agricultural research.
Can I Say?: The Punk Oral History Project at SCPA
(2020-06-26) Davis, John
This presentation discusses an oral history project undertaken by archivist John Davis at Special Collections in Performing Arts (SCPA) at the University of Maryland. Since 2017, Davis has interviewed more than thirty fanzine creators from the Washington, D.C. punk subculture and has gathered the interviews in a series of the D.C. Punk and Indie Fanzine collection. The presentation includes examples of the interviews and also describes how the interviews were conducted using the Oral History Association's best practices.
ChatGPT and its Impact on Libraries
(2023-06-07) DiCiesare, Leah; Shaw, Benjamin; Kovisto, Joseph; Inge Carpenter, Lindsay; Asadi, Nima
Artificial Intelligence and its impact on education has been a prevalent topic, especially these last six months with the release of ChatGPT. Most of the conversation regarding ChatGPT has revolved around how it affects teaching and learning, but libraries are often left out of the conversation. This panel-workshop combination will explain what ChatGPT is and help us to know the correct terminology to use when discussing artificial intelligence and machine learning. We will also discuss how ChatGPT is affecting libraries and the work that we do on campus. If you have not gotten a chance to use ChatGPT yet, this is a great opportunity to do so, as we will workshop using ChatGPT and analyze its responses. After dabbling with ChatGPT, we will discuss how we, as librarians, can respond to this new technology. Artificial intelligence is only going to become more ubiquitous and it is our responsibility to understand it and have a plan for how to handle it in our work.
The Closed-Loop: Academic Publication Data Conundrum
(2022-06-08) Koivisto, Joseph; Sly, Jordan
In this talk we will discuss the problems inherent in the publications-as-data model of large publishing and educational technology platforms. The datafication of scholarly communications establishes a closed-loop pipeline endangering library values and university goals through the narrowing of impact-ratio focused research and the development of a surveillance publishing model. These new methods of extracting value from scholarly content producers and consumers could dramatically impact the future of academic freedom for students, faculty, and libraries. Universities are in a unique position as we have become both the data source and the consumer for publications and data regarding the use of the publications. We will look at distinct aspects of these content models and the ways in which they present problems to the diversity of university research, library acquisitions, and data security for library users.
Consciously Editing SCUA’s Finding Aids
(2021-06-03) Caringola, Liz; Frisch, Hannah; Stranieri, Marcella
The phrase “conscious editing” was first used by archivists at UNC-Chapel Hill to describe their work “to re-envision our descriptive practice so that whiteness is no longer the presumed default, language in our description products is inclusive and accessible, and our description does not obscure collection material that documents the lives of enslaved people.” Students in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) have been working from home over the past year to evaluate and improve archivist-created description in SCUA’s finding aids to be more inclusive. In the first part of the project, students read all of SCUA’s finding aids published on the Archival Collections website and applied a rating scale to indicate how the archival description could be improved and the nature of the needed edits. In April, students began to update the finding aids using guidelines such as the “Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia: Anti-Racist Description Resources,” the Conscious Style Guide, and many more. This presentation will summarize the results of the finding aid audit and propose new conscious editing guidelines that will be written into SCUA’s archival processing manual.
COVID19 Vaccine Mapper
(2024-06) Shanker, Stella; Phuyal, Sakar; Budhathoki, Milan
The COVID-19 Vaccine Mapper, developed by UMD Libraries' GIS and Data Service Center, maps out and highlights various aspects of COVID-19 vaccine development. Such aspects include the location of vaccine developers, the number of approved vaccines by country, and different vaccine delivery routes. Data is sourced from the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Dashboard and UNICEF’s COVID-19 Market Dashboard. The mapper, created with ArcGIS Experience Builder to join two ArcGIS dashboards, is divided into two pages: Vaccine Candidates and Vaccine Design. Vaccine Candidates provides a general outlook on the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, while Vaccine Design details the specifications of the vaccines (intramuscular vs. oral delivery, DNA vs. mRNA, etc.). By analyzing changes in COVID-19 vaccine development across space and time, we can define patterns and quantify trends in the COVID-19 vaccine industry. Above: