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Item Subject Librarian Initiative at the University of Central Florida Libraries: Collaboration amongst Research & Information Services, Acquisitions & Collection Services, and the Office Scholarly Communication(Purdue University, 2013) Arthur, Michael A.; Tierney, Barbara G.At the University of Central Florida Libraries, the Research and Information Services Department, the Acquisitions and Collection Services Department, and the Office of Scholarly Communication are collaborating to create and support a new Subject Librarian Service Model that focuses on proactive outreach to faculty and students. Since January 2013, these three units have worked closely together to emphasize the importance of Subject Librarians becoming more fully integrated into the university infrastructure through increased subject liaison roles. This collaboration has involved realigning, refining, and emphasizing the importance of the Subject Librarians’ academic department and program assignments and training the librarians to perform informed outreach to advance collection development; scholarly communication; and faculty/student teaching, learning, and research.Item Developing a Statewide Print Repository in Florida: The UCF Experience with FLARE(Purdue University, 2013) Arthur, Michael A.; Zhang, Y.Many academic libraries are struggling with collections size reaching or exceeding building capacity. Meanwhile, the movement of twenty-first-century libraries calls for user-centered space. The combination of these two factors has challenged libraries to identify ways to eliminate physical collections without losing access to content. The academic libraries in the State of Florida, including the University of Central Florida (UCF), have discussed and developed plans for a shared print repository for several years. For the past few years a statewide Shared Storage Task Force was convened with representation from the state university libraries, and eventually formed the Florida Academic Repository (FLARE) under the leadership of the University of Florida. In 2012, FLARE received the first large shipment from a participating library, the University of Miami. After a few months of active planning, UCF implemented its project preparing materials to send to FLARE and is poised to be the next library contributing to FLARE. As presented, the UCF FLARE project requires tremendous coordination and collaboration within the multiple units in the Technical Services Division at UCF and with the external FLARE Team in Gainesville. Policies and procedures were developed with guidance from the FLARE Team, and internal workflow was designed to ensure accurate processing. This presentation focused on providing an overview of the FLARE project with a specific focus on the UCF experience in selecting and processing materials.Item Looking for Money in All the Right Places: How One Academic Library is Making Good Use of Grant Funds(Purdue University, 2011) Arthur, Michael A.In 2007, the Florida Legislature addressed the need for technology funding at the eleven state universities by amending the Florida Statutes. The change permitted each university to collect technology fees from students at the rate of 5% of tuition. The new fees went into effect with the fall term 2009-2010. The presentation at the Charleston Conference focused on the success the UCF Libraries has enjoyed in 2009 and 2010 in securing large awards for use in providing access to relevant content and outlining the key factors that have contributed to the overall results. Each university in Florida is able to determine the process for distribution of the funds. UCF administrators decided that the technology fee funds would be awarded through a competitive bid process. All UCF departments are invited to submit proposals and these are reviewed by a student panel. Winning proposals are ranked into one of three tiers based on the overall impact they will have on students at the University of Central Florida. The tier designation given to a proposal has an impact on when it will be funded. Located in Orlando, FL, and established in 1963, the University of Central Florida (UCF) has quickly grown in size and reputation. By fall 2010, the university had grown to 56,235 students making UCF the second largest public university in the United States. In 2010-2011, the UCF Libraries expended $6,040,023 on library resources. Over $400,000.00 of this total expenditure was a result of technology fee awards. Keys to developing winning proposals include matching the proposal to department and university priorities, outreach to faculty, librarians, publishers and vendors with an eye toward acquiring the most relevant content for the students and faculty. Analyzing usage and turn away data and working with publishers on pricing models that result in low cost per book or low cost per article is critical to developing a winning strategy.Item The Jewish Legacy of “Bombingham”: Exploring the Causes and Consequences of the Attempted Bombing of Temple Beth-El in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1958(Southern Jewish Historical Society, 2023) Norman, Margaret; Young, MelissaItem Try, Try, Try Again: Better Faculty Outreach Through Trial and Error(Purdue University, 2016) Arthur, Michael A.; McCall, Patti M.; Schulman, Sarah D.Reaching out to faculty about library resources and services is an ongoing and sometimes mysterious process for vendors and librarians alike—one that, when effective, can contribute a higher ROI and improved collaboration between libraries and publishers. However, it can be a challenge to reach that sweet spot between “effective” and “annoying,” especially in the face of seemingly nonresponsive faculty. A physical and life sciences librarian and former head of collection development and acquisitions from the University of Central Florida (UCF), and a Springer account development specialist, who works closely with academic librarians, weigh in on four different issues about improving outreach and identifying opportunities for outreach and collaboration.Item Return on Investment: New Strategies for Marketing Digital Resources to Academic Faculty and Students From Three Perspectives: Publisher, Collection Development, and Research Services(Purdue University, 2014) Arthur, Michael A.; Profera, Elyse L.; Tierney, Barbara G.Game changing strategies for marketing digital resources to end users are crucial for establishing return on investment in this period of reduced library collection budgets and challenging resource prices. When expensive digital resources are purchased by academic libraries, there needs to be a marketing plan in place for getting these resources into the hands of end users as quickly as possible. One strategy for success is a marketing collaboration between the publisher and the academic library. The Profera, Arthur, Tierney 2014 Charleston Conference presentation on this topic focused on the success achieved at the University of Central Florida Libraries where such a collaboration included experts from Taylor & Francis working closely with the Head of Acquisitions & Collection Services and the Head of Research Services. Together they sponsored a digital resources educational workshop that included presentations by faculty, librarians, and Taylor & Francis representatives and reached out to end users as well as librarians from several Florida institutions. The UCF Libraries has also partnered with publishers to promote resources through various events sponsored by publishers and aimed at librarians and faculty from UCF and surrounding institutions. The presenters covered innovative strategies for marketing digital resources including hosting vendor presentations and trainings in library classrooms or at academic faculty workshops and hosting webinars and presentations. With the focus on marketing to end users, the presenters concentrated on ways that academic faculty and librarians have been included in training and outreach related to new products or major enhancements to existing library resources.Item An Ally and an Intermediary: Bella Abzug, Gay Americans, and the Equality Act(Modern American History, 2022-07-01) David FerraraIn 1974, Congresswoman Bella Abzug introduced the Equality Act, the first federal gay rights legislation. A high-profile ally, Abzug occupied a unique space in the gay rights movement, and the Equality Act cemented her as the premier political intermediary for gay rights. Owing to her prominence, Abzug attracted a geographically and ideologically diverse constituency of gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans. Gay activists as well as isolated individuals reached out to Abzug as a conduit for their grievances and political hopes, and her support unified gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans around a national focal point at a time when the movement was fractured and regional. In the period after Stonewall, Abzug was gay liberation’s most meaningful national intermediary. Routinely undervalued in the history of the gay rights movement, Abzug’s legislative advocacy reveals the centrality of political allyship within the struggle for equality.Item A Retrospective Look at a DDA-Centered Collection Strategy: Planning for the Future of Monograph Acquisitions(Elsevier, 2024) Lowry, Lindsey; Arthur, Michael A.; Gilstrap, Donald L.The demand-driven acquisitions (DDA) model has been established as a standard component of collection development strategies for academic libraries. The University of Alabama’s collection development strategy revolves around the large DDA program for acquiring electronic monographs and is supplemented by other methods of monographic acquisitions such as firm ordering, bulk eBook purchases, and more. While previous studies have confirmed the advantages of The University of Alabama's DDA plan early in its implementation, this study explores the long-term effectiveness of the DDA-centered collection strategy, seven years after it was first put into place, and examines the validity of the strategy as one bringing efficiency and high return on investment. Finally, this longitudinal study hopes to substantiate the DDA-centered collection strategy as one that could be a foundational model for other academic libraries to follow.Item Tamora Pierce (1954-)(Gale, 2023) Sahn, Sarah F.This entry covers the works, career, and life of the young adult novelist, Tamora Pierce.Item Between Friends: Disability, Masculinity, and Rehabilitation in The Best Years of Our Lives(Liverpool University Press, 2017-01) Sahn, Sarah F.The Best Years of Our Lives, William Wyler’s 1946 film about three World War II veterans returning home to a small Midwestern town, has long been notable for its frank treatment of wartime trauma, disability, and the personal and cultural crises of masculinity precipitated by the end of the war. At a moment when disability studies has gained a firm foothold in the academy, the article returns to this touchstone text to reconsider the film’s staging of the disabled male body. The article complicates the equation of disability with castration implicit in readings of masculinity and heterosexuality in the film’s rehabilitation narratives by considering the role of friendship in the film’s depiction of masculinity and disability. The argument is that to focus on heterosexual romance in The Best Years of Our Lives is to tell only half the story; the narrative of homosocial friendship between Al, Fred, and Homer is equally important to their reintegration into the civilian world. Friendship provides an ameliorative space outside the narratives of heterosexual romance that structure the film’s logic of rehabilitation, and does not demand elision of the war’s traumas and the traces, visible and invisible, that it leaves behind.Item Decolonizing Childhood: Coming of Age in Tamora Pierce’s Fantastic Empire(John Hopkins University Press, 2016) Sahn, Sarah F.This article explores the feminist and postcolonial potential of Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness Quartet, arguing that even where it accedes to patriarchal and colonial power structures, the fantasy form and genre create an openness that invites the reader to continue to ask questions that subvert these structures.Item More Words about Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People ed. by Perry Nodelman, Naomi Hamer, and Mavis Reimer (re(John Hopkins University Press, 2019) Sahn, Sarah F.In his 1988 Words about Pictures, Perry Nodelman took a semiotic approach to studying picture books, exploring the complex dynamics of image and text in works that until then had primarily been assessed on their educational merit, when they were studied seriously at all. Thirty years later, More Words about Pictures takes account of the changes to the field—of scholarship and children's literature—since the publication of Nodelman's foundational study.Item Secrets, Lies, and Children’s Fiction by Kerry Mallan (review)(John Hopkins University Press, 2014) Sahn, Sarah F.Secrets, Lies and Children’s Fiction takes on the often paradoxical treatment in children’s literature of truth and lies, in which “truth” is often conflated with simple honesty, and—at least on the surface—is constructed as a behavior essential to being a moral person.Item The Bottom Line: DDA, E-Textbooks, and Student Savings at LSU Libraries(American Library Association, 2017) Daugherty, Alice L.; Frank, EmilyCollection development has passed through various trend cycles in academic libraries with the demand driven acquisition (DDA) model being one currently experiencing widespread acceptance and adoption. Also known as patron driven acquisition, this acquisition strategy moves the purchasing impetus from being "just-in-case”—a model attempting to anticipate user needs, to a "just-in-time”—a point-of-need model. Librarians face the challenge of developing a collection that supports learning, teaching, and research needs, now and in the future, all with limited funds. DDA plans are intended to help address this challenge by being more responsive to immediate needs than traditional acquisition models. Yet, librarians at Louisiana State University (LSU) Libraries recently ended all DDA plans in an attempt to more adequately meet user needs and support learning, teaching, and research. The focus of collection development shifted to large e-book collections. These met user preferences for titles without restrictions on printing and saving and provided simultaneous access for an unlimited number of users. Given these features, their potential for course use was examined. Through the subsequent process, course adopted titles were identified and promoted as a library-funded alternative to the traditional student-purchased textbooks. This chapter details how the decision to terminate DDA plans and invest in e-book packages resulted in large upfront costs but enabled advantages in key areas of usability and curricular integration. Collecting and promoting high quality course titles has allowed the Libraries to drive e-book usage and engage in impactful collection development.Item Technically Prepared: Librarians’ Perceptions on LIS Curricula and Technical Services Workforce Preparedness(Elsevier, Inc., 2024) Smith, Catherine; Daugherty, Alice L.; Lowry, LindseyAcademic libraries frequently require that professional librarians obtain a master's degree from a Library and Information Science (LIS) program accredited by the American Library Association (ALA) as a condition of employment. Within these programs, “academic libraries” are a common area of concentrated study available to LIS students interested in targeting a particular path for their future careers. As ALA identifies the master's degree as the terminal degree for all types of librarians, this coursework represents the majority of education and training librarians receive prior to entering the workforce. Though duties and responsibilities vary widely between individual institutions, librarians working in technical services roles are generally responsible for a broad range of activities related to the acquisition, discovery, and preservation of library materials. This study examines the results of a survey measuring the perceptions of current technical services librarians working in academic libraries on their LIS curricula in order to identify the coursework and skills most valuable to them in their work. The survey also identifies areas in which technical services librarians report having greater reliance on continuing education and professional development opportunities to supplement their knowledge in order to remain current in their areas of expertise.Item Reinforcing Critical Thinking and Information Literacy Skills through Assignment Design(Louisiana Libraries, 2010) Daugherty, Alice L.; Russo, Michael F.Being information literate hinges on, among other skills, the ability to locate, access, evaluate, and use information effectively and ethically.1 As the backbone of the research process, it improves the quality and efficacy of students’ research. To achieve information literacy, librarians and educators must develop lesson plans and assignments that develop the critical thinking skills necessary to guide learners through tortuous and daunting information seeking processes. According to Whitmire, “The combination of a new generation of computer–literate undergraduates and the vast amount of information available by way of computers and electronic resources has increased the necessity for the development of critical thinking skills.”2 Pascarella and Terenzini note the interrelatedness of the two, writing that such “cognitive competencies” as information literacy and critical thinking together permit individuals to, among many other things, “process and utilize new information” and “evaluate arguments and claims critically.”3 Generally, students often overestimate their own research abilities because they equate their knowledge of computers and technology with information literacy and critical thinking. In order to address this problem, the design of any assignment used as a teaching strategy and assessment tool must reinforce information literacy skills. And since students often perceive themselves as information literate and not merely technologically savvy (based on the simplest notions of access), this assignment also needs to challenge their critical thinking abilities, so that they themselves come to understand the vast difference between the two competencies. This article explains efforts to embed such critical thinking and information literacy skills into the design of a course assignment for college students. Critical thinking is defined as “the intellectual and mental process by which an individual successfully conceptualizes, analyzes, synthesizes, evaluates, and/or applies information in order to formulate judgments, 2 conclusions, or answers.”4 While information literacy focuses more on navigating oceans of information, critical thinking concentrates on developing independent reasoning about that information. But just as information literacy must be accompanied by critical thinking in order to be meaningful, critical thinking abilities are dependent on information literacy skills. Alluding to the 1945 Harvard report “General Education in a Free Society,” Albitz argues those authors may have been shortsighted, believing that “effective [critical] thinkers could do the following three activities: communicate, make relevant judgments, and discriminate among values.”5 Ward addresses this shortsightedness, observing that “critical thinking is not always sufficient in itself as a strategy for navigating through the information universe.”6 What the two argue is that only by meshing, in one operation, the gears of critical thinking with those of information literacy, can a modern researcher produce a satisfactory result. We therefore designed an assignment to measure and encourage both information literacy and critical thinking in our students.Item Access and Importance of Pell Awards at Public Regional Historically Black Colleges and Universities: What Do the Data Say?(University of Illinois Press, 2022) Daugherty, Alice L.; Katsinas, Stephen G.; Keeney, NoelThe Pell Grant is the foundational need-based student aid program in the United States, providing students of lower socio-economic status a pathway to afford college costs and educational expenses. Currently, over one-third of all U.S. undergraduate students receive Pell. This paper examines federal Pell assistance and institutional costs for students at the 38 publicly controlled regional Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which serve high average percentages of low-income students and students of color. By deploying the University of Alabama Education Policy Center's new Mission-Driven Classification System to enrollment, tuition and fees, and other costs metrics along with federal Pell and student loan data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a more direct apples-to-apples comparison of the 38 public regional HBCUs to the 182 public regional non-HBCU universities in the same 19 southern states, is revealed, as are comparisons to the universe of 461 public regional universities nationally. This paper finds that America's most financially disadvantaged students rely on Pell Grants to alleviate financial constraints at public regional HBCUs, where 55 percent of students are Pell recipients, a rate 24 percent higher than their non-HBCU counterparts. Moreover, the data underscore an opportunity for Congress to construct a meaningful federal role in higher education by providing stable and sustainable funding for the Pell Grant program.Item Migrating to Full Text Finder: A Case Study(Taylor & Francis Group, 2019-12-24) Daugherty, Alice L.University Libraries at The University of Alabama implemented EBSCO’s Discovery Service (EDS) in 2011. This integration added to the use of EBSCO as our serials vendor and provider for usage data. In August 2017, University Libraries migrated to EBSCO’s Full Text Finder from a competing system. Consolidation of these tools under one vendor improved integration and functionality for all of the electronic resources holdings and access management. Following the successful migration to Full Text Finder, the oversight of EBSCO’s Discovery System management was assigned to staff responsible for electronic resources allowing for the benefits of having administrative control of both Full Text Finder and EBSCO’s Discovery System under one manager. The following presents the experience of moving to Full Text Finder.Item Mapping Library Lending: Using GIS Technology to Explore ILL Lending Data(Elsevier, 2024) Decker, Emy Nelson; Waltemate, BrittanyGeographic Information System (GIS) technology can be employed by academic librarians to study interlibrary loan (ILL) lending patterns of circulating materials. The data collected and analyzed using GIS can apprise librarians about the efficacy of existing networks, assist them in making sound cost-saving choices, and inform collection development activities. In this article, the physical lending outputs at The University of Alabama are studied across five years to understand better and explore factors that impact lending activities within Alabama. The data retrieved elucidate stable patterns and highlight identifiable changes in usage that can inform subsequent lending network practices within the state. The totality of this data can aid toward the desired outcomes of enhanced resource sharing as it relates to ILL practices.Item Being Earnest With Collections-Known Unknown: A Humanities Collection Gap-Analysis Project(Charleston Hub, 2017) Arthur, Michael A.; Daugherty, Alice L.University of Alabama faculty member, Alice Daugherty, provides insight into a project she participated in while working at Louisiana State University.