Kelly Brumbelow is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University in the Department of Multidisciplinary Engineering and the Zachry Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He is the Associate Department Head of Multidisciplinary Engineering and a member of its founding leadership team. His professional specialties include water resources engineering, planning, and management; high-impact learning practices in higher education; and formulation and assessment of interdisciplinary programs. Dr. Brumbelow’s past projects have spanned a wide range of locales and types including atmospheric water, energy, and carbon profiling using UAVs in a Costa Rican rainforest, assessing ice road water needs on Alaska’s North Slope, irrigation planning for 10 nations in the Nile River Basin, and urban water demand management in the Middle Eastern nation of Jordan, among others. He has published over 100 professional papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. Dr. Brumbelow earned his Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) as well as undergraduate degrees in civil engineering and international affairs from the same institution. His teaching career includes 21 years at Texas A&M, seven years at Georgia Tech, and multiple workshops and seminars throughout the world. In addition to his academic experience, he worked as an engineering intern for the Indian Health Service (U.S. Public Health Service) for a total of 6 months in Bangor, Maine, and Spokane, Washington. He currently serves as an ABET program evaluator for civil engineering.
According to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, “The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. It is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. It is a very prestigious program that provides participants-chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential - with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.” This paper reviews the participation of LIS professionals in the Fulbright program over the years, sheds light on my personal journey into the preparations for the grant and contacts made both internal and external, acceptance into the program, preparations for departure and my activities during my Fulbright sabbatical and the challenges. It encourages and enjoins more LIS professionals to participate in the program as it not only advances the LIS profession but also advocates for our colleagues in the LIS Profession in other parts of the world while uplifting and enriching us individually as we carry our banners far and wide.
Innocent Awasom is a Bioinformation Scientists and product of the African Regional Center for Information Science (ARCIS) the University of Ibadan. He has worked and taught in LIS schools in Africa and enjoys serving as subject Liaison to STEM fields especially Biological Sciences and College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources Management.
This presentation will cover a recent grant for anatomical models at Texas Tech University. Three librarians collaborated to develop this grant and followed up with an analysis of the impacts of grant outcomes. During this process the Covid lock downs impacted access and acquisition of the deliverables, however, despite this, the research indicated that the need was actually increased due to outreach and the collection has seen new use through the additional models added and the expansion of services to new universities in the region. Through this process data from circulation on usage and a survey sent to various stakeholders, both within and outside of Texas Tech University was analyzed. The survey asked both professors and students to assess what was currently in circulation and suggest what the collection needed in the future. It was through this survey that connections with Lubbock Christian University and other outside stakeholders were involved. After receiving the models, they were given their own dedicated space where patrons are free to use those models already out and are provided a list of the models in storage. The biggest takeaways from this experience is do not give up on your proposals if rejected and find other avenues to actuate your vision; physical items are still necessary in libraries; and look outside of your immediate sphere to build connections.
Jennifer Jacobs received her BS and MS in English Literature from Radford University in 2012 and 2015. She then received her MLIS from Valdosta State University in 2018. After graduating Jennifer worked at Kennesaw State University as a Marketing and Outreach Librarian before moving to Texas Tech in 2021 to work as a STEM librarian. Her research interests include memes and marketing, social media outreach and marketing, and gamification in the library.
Jessica Simpson is an Engineering Research Librarian at Texas A&M University. She has been working in STEM librarianship in Texas for over a decade and has taught both library courses as well as serving a myriad of science and engineering departments. Her research focuses on Real World Objects and active learning in libraries.
Cynthia Henry has been a librarian at Texas Tech University since 2005, and she enjoys working on an academic campus. Meeting research needs from her subject area of the College of Human Sciences is a rewarding experience in addition to being an instructor for the Essentials of Scholarly Research.
Students, faculty, and staff do not always associate leisure reading with their campus libraries and are often unaware that they have popular (non-academic) books. To build upon my library’s Café Collection of popular fiction, I created a virtual popular science collection to highlight general interest non-fiction titles in STEM disciplines to support recreational reading and mental well-being. This lightning talk will cover development of a LibGuide to curate and digitally display the print and electronic popular science books scattered throughout the collection as well as promotion and marketing strategies to increase awareness and usage of this growing collection.
Jennifer Long is the Science Librarian at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She serves as the liaison for the biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, physics, and psychology departments. She earned a BS in Computer Science from Bowling Green State University and an MLS from Kent State University.
Research data management and sharing are critical areas of knowledge for researchers at the grant writing and administration levels. Since 2011, libraries have been developing research data services largely in response to sharing mandates targeting primarily higher-level researchers. This presentation will discuss one librarian’s involvement with an early undergraduate course focusing on bioinformatics projects to integrate research data management best practices into the curriculum. Aiming to instill good RDM practices in early researchers' careers has the potential to embed data sharing in the research culture. Instead of being viewed as an additional chore, RDM could be part of one's standard operating procedure, like keeping a lab notebook or writing up the research results. This presentation will contribute a curricular development case study for an undergraduate research-focused audience in a STEM field.
Hannah Chapman Tripp is the Biosciences Librarian at UT Libraries. She supports biosciences related departments in instruction, collections, and research needs; including systematic reviews and data support. She is an advocate for open educational resources and open science.
In 2021, Tulane University Library signed their first transformative agreement with American Chemical Society (ACS). Since then, our read and publish/publish and read agreements have expanded to include agreements with Cambridge University Press, Elsevier, Wiley, and Public Library of Science (PLoS). In our brief talk we will describe our various transformative agreements, how these agreements came to be, our marketing and promotional strategies, challenges, and the success of these transformative agreements.
Raquel Horlick has been a Sciences and Engineering Librarian at Tulane since 2013. In addition to sciences and engineering her areas of specialties include sustainable scholarship, impact metrics, and finding grants and funding opportunities. Before working at Tulane she taught at Concordia University in Montreal.
Courtney Kearney is currently the Director of Scholarly Engagement at Tulane University Libraries- a team of librarians and staff that provides expertise and support in the discovery, use, and evaluation of information resources. Prior to joining Tulane, Courtney received a MS and PhD in Geology and was a Research Oceanographer.
As the Florida State University (FSU) Libraries GIS and Earth Sciences Librarian, I have been working on building up Geographic Information Systems (GIS) services the library offers to our patrons. Starting in 2019 I created a small workshop series of basic spatial data themed workshops. These workshops drew small groups of participants but did not seem to generate great interest in GIS or spatial data across campus. So what is a librarian looking for ideas to do? Send out a survey of course! Sending out this survey I had hoped to gain a better understanding of what other academic libraries are doing with GIS and spatial data. Are they just providing workshops, do they have special GIS labs, or something I have never imagined? This presentation will share the results of a survey focusing on Associated Research Libraries (ARL) and their GIS services. This survey asked participants to describe how GIS services are situated within their library, list services and softwares that are supported, characterize who staffs the services, and detail which disciplines on campus are using library GIS services most. Using the information from this survey as a starting point this presentation will then discuss current activities and future ideas for FSU GIS services. At the end of the session I would like to open up a dialogue to hear first hand about other GIS library services and seek recommendations and advice for the future.
Kelly Grove is the GIS and Earth Sciences at Florida State University, where she provides support in GIS and Spatial Data related research among other duties. Her research interests include science and data information literacy, GIS research in the library, and STEM first year experience.
Scholarly communication issues such as open access and predatory publishing are often rife with misconceptions, confusion, and frustration among faculty. In the wake of the OSTP mandate for federally-funded research to be made immediately, publicly accessible, a solid understanding of open access and publishing is more important than ever. With the rise of mega-journals and mega-publishers, the line between open access reputable and predatory publishers has become increasingly blurry. As mega-journals have increased journal impact factors through self-citation practices, so has scrutiny surrounding their practices. Informal conversations about hasty peer review practices and aggressive solicitation of manuscripts leaves them in a gray zone on internal journal ranking used by many departments in promotion and tenure decisions. Using an R1 land grant institution as a case study, this poster will track publication and funding patterns alongside the exponential growth of two mega-publishers and identify areas for researcher education. The information presented in this talk will both increase librarians’ understanding of the gaps in faculty knowledge about mega-journals and mega-publishers and increase confidence in engaging in productive conversations with faculty on this topic. It will include tips and recommended resources for librarians about open access and journal evaluation.
Patricia Hartman is the Biological Sciences, Forestry & Wildlife, and Mathematics Librarian at Auburn University Libraries, where she has worked for ten years. In concert with her work as a subject librarian, she works with faculty across the university on scholarly communications issues, particularly open access and research impact.
This presentation discusses the transition from being a research-intensive special librarian at a government agency to a STEM librarian at a university library.
My first position out of library school was a research librarian for a federal agency, providing research support for climate and human health scientists to aid in policymaking. The bulk of my work in this position involved performing highly technical and specialized literature searches in major citation databases alongside grey literature searching. This position was relatively one-directional: a scientist would reach out with a topic or research question, and I would develop a search strategy, perform the search, and send them the results.
Now, in my current position as a science librarian at a large, research university, I have begun to transition from this one-directional model of librarianship to a bidirectional and more holistic model. Rather than performing searches for library users (being a doer), I am providing guidance on how the users themselves can conduct their own searches (being a demonstrator), ultimately setting up users for success in their future research endeavors. In addition to this shift, I am now providing services to a larger range of library users — from first-year undergraduates to tenured faculty. This transition from being a doer to a demonstrator has allowed me to expand my skillset as an early career librarian and prioritize instruction, one-on-one reference consultations, and assisting library users in becoming better researchers.
Jenna Strawbridge is the Science Librarian for Chemistry & Statistical Sciences at Duke University, having previously worked at the U.S. EPA. She has a keen interest in instruction, especially in alleviating library anxiety among undergraduate and graduate students, as well as research support, including systematic reviews and other evidence syntheses.
Our lighting talk will share data from an analysis of 10 years of Gold open access publications at our university, a rising R2 public University in New Jersey. Our talk will show the increase in Gold Open Access publishing in the sciences of 176% over the ten years and the impact the library Open Access Publishing Fund has had in STEM. In addition, we will share STEM disciplinary differences in publication rates in Gold Open Access. Our talk will conclude by sharing the publishers with the highest rate of publishing Gold Open Access for our Science and Engineering Faculty. Our data can help inform which science disciplines need help with publishing open access and can inform open access education efforts at a University looking to expand open access possibilities to their community.
Facing tightened budgets, librarians strive to ensure that library collections remain relevant to the evolving needs of users. For STEM librarians, the task of selecting and deselecting journal subscriptions presents unique challenges due to the rapid launches of new journals and fast advancements at research frontiers. Thus, it is crucial to identify the journal titles that are most valuable for the researchers the library supports. This presentation aims to introduce a co-citation journal assessment method that can help librarians identify indispensable journal titles for their collections. The method utilizes VOSviewer, a freely available bibliometric visualization application, to construct a journal co-citation network based on the bibliographic data of the publications from the researchers under investigation. The resulting network provides a clear picture of research interactions, with journal sizes reflecting their citation counts and colors representing research domains. By analyzing co-citation patterns, librarians can determine the journal titles that are most frequently cited by the researchers. Furthermore, the publication data required for this analysis can be gathered from a research database to which the library already has a subscription, eliminating the need for any additional costs. During the session, we will cover the scientific roots of co-citation analysis and provide a step-by-step guide to conducting a co-citation journal analysis, from gathering data to generating a meaningful visualization network. We will also address major issues that may impact the analysis. By the end of the presentation, participants will be able to conduct their own co-citation journal analysis using VOSviewer.
Jennifer Zhao is the Liaison Librarian for Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Geography at the McGill University Libraries. Her research interests include information literacy, collection development, bibliometric visualization, science and engineering librarianship, and library services for international students.
Before2 2002 - the advanced United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Patents End-to-End (PE2E) search tool USPTO examiners use to identify prior art included 4 search tools. Available to the public online were the Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT), and Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT). Available only at the Patent and Trademark Resource Centers (PTRCs) were the Public-Examiner’s Automated Search Tool (PubEAST) and the Public-Web-based Examiner’s Search Tool (PubWEST).
In late 2022, these 4 search tools were combined into the new PE2E search tool which is available 24/7 online to everyone.
This tool increases the ability to do deep dives into this information. Patent literature is invaluable for researching both the most current scientific advances and historical advances. Since patents can’t be granted with prior art (publications of any sort on the idea)--patents can give an idea of new scientific advances as well as being useful for corporate business research.
In addition, full text search capability goes farther back than ever before. The USPTO also created the new Patent Public Search webpage that includes FAQs, training resources, and other information. The USPTO will be posting recorded public training sessions when they are scheduled.
This presentation will give a brief history of patent searching capability and discuss the new expanded search capabilities and how they provide value to STEM researchers.
Tom Rohrig received his MA in librarianship from the University of Denver and his MA in Mass communications from Texas Tech University. He is a Political Science/ROTC Research Librarian. He also works with patents/trademarks and government information. His research interests include government, patent, and community information.
One of the best ways for librarians to meet STEM students is to join them in the laboratory. Teaching information literacy in a lab class helps students to better understand the connections between the literature and their experimental process. However, teaching in this context may be challenging because labs often have multiple sections and it may be difficult for a solo STEM librarian to reach them all. In this presentation, attendees will hear about a creative solution to this dilemma. When the university’s sole STEM librarian was approached for assistance developing an evaluating sources lab for an introductory biology lab course with a dozen sections, she knew it was a great opportunity but that she would not be able to do it on her own. Instead, in consultation with the instruction coordinator she developed a detailed lesson plan and trained other research and instruction librarians at her institution to teach one or more sections. These sessions were a success from all perspectives: the librarians, the teaching faculty, and, most importantly, the students – and have provided a roadmap for rethinking information literacy at scale for their academic library. This presentation will describe the planning process for these lessons and offer suggestions for how librarians may implement similar models for reaching multi-section courses at their own institutions.
Elisabeth B. White, MLIS is the Science, Technology, and Mathematics Librarian at Towson University in Maryland. At Towson, she is the subject liaison to the majority of departments and programs in the science college. Elisabeth’s scholarly interests include digital accessibility, inclusive teaching practices, and strategies for promoting science identity in undergraduate students.
Allison Jennings-Roche, MA, MLIS is the Lead Teaching & Learning Librarian for Towson University and PhD candidate in Information Studies at the University of Maryland. She has experience in public libraries, archives, undergraduate teaching, and student affairs. Her research has been published in outlets including The Political Librarian and Library Quarterly.
In Summer 2022, members from the University of Arkansas Libraries visited several major R1 universities in the Southeastern United States to gain knowledge and insight about supporting interactive student research and learning spaces for upcoming renovations. While these visits were inspiring and impactful, several important lessons were learned. The group decided to make some future considerations for ensuring future trips are not only successful but meet the expectations of library administrators. This presentation focuses on sharing the group’s reflections with the hope of providing tips and guidance for those who wish to plan their own visits to peer libraries.
Jay McAllister is the engineering and honors college at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His recent publications have focused on creating STEM rubrics for conferences and mapping engineering faculty publications using data visualization software. His research interests include 21st century libraries, data visualization, and immersive technologies in libraries.
Stephanie Pierce is the Director of User Services & Physics Library at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She oversees the Physics Library as well as the largest public services unit at the Mullins Library. Her research interests include leadership and management, mental health in libraries, library spaces, and whole person-centered librarianship.
Cole Hudson is the Director of Information Systems and Technology, where he oversees the University of Arkansas Libraries’ technology portfolio. His research areas are, unsurprisingly, in library technology efforts. Cole previously worked in software development and digital publishing at North Carolina State University and Wayne State University.
Stephanie Guenther is the multimedia supervisor of the Mullins Library at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She is currently working towards her MLIS degree from the University of Oklahoma. Stephanie's research areas include innovative spaces, multimedia collections, and digital projects.
Scholars credit Ada Lovelace as the first person to write a computer program. There are conferences dedicated to her, but debate continues about her actual contributions to the computer science field. There are many titles dedicated to telling the story of how young Ada pioneered the programming technology that would set forth the course for computer science. But who came after Ada? What about the stories of those women? Hundreds of women in computer science have been rapidly progressing technology forward for decades and yet it is Ada who inevitably ends up the star of book displays and reading lists. Ada is only part of a continuing story of women in computing. Libraries need to bolster their collections with hidden stories and more contemporary role models to reflect the rich, diverse community of women pioneers.
This short presentation will cover the topic of Ada Lovelace and modern women in technology careers from a collection development viewpoint. It will be split into two parts; a brief background on Ada Lovelace (especially why librarians have continuously collected works focusing on her) and a bibliography of books which librarians can implement at once to support inclusion. The bibliography will serve as a planning aid to STEM librarians developing or strengthening collections with diverse books on women in computer science and technology. Attendees are encouraged to share their own experiences with collection development in this area and other titles they may be aware of for the group's benefit.
Dr. Heidi Blackburn is the Computing Librarian at George Mason University for computer science, game design, and statistics. Her research explores the status of women in STEM, particularly in higher education. She holds a Masters (2008) and a Ph.D. (2015) in Library and Information Science from Emporia State University.
With greater awareness and increasing availability of information and resources, more and more people are identifying as neurodivergent. But what does it mean to be neurodivergent, and what does the increasing prevalence of neurodivergent-identifying people mean for those in higher education and particularly for those in STEM fields? Within my first year of librarianship, I discovered that I too could claim identity as neurodivergent. However, my experiences and perceptions are unique to me, thus adaptation and management in whatever ways I choose are also unique to me. I realized that neurodivergence manifests across many layers and spectrums. Therefore, the diversity of its manifestations should be met with a diversity of support options. In this talk, I will discuss gender/sex bias related to autism and ADHD, as well as how these forms of neurodivergence may differ across genders. I will share what libraries can do to support people with neurodivergence both in the classroom and at the workplace. I will also make a case for the practice of slow librarianship—defined by Meredith Farkas as “an antiracist, responsive, and values-driven practice that stands in opposition to neoliberal values”—and its implications for supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in relation to neurodivergence.
Keeza Hameed is the Science Librarian for Biology and Neuroscience at Emory University. She holds a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Georgia and a M.S. in Physiology-Complementary and Alternative Medicine from Georgetown University. She looks forward to celebrating 1 year of librarianship in August.
Geological sciences rely on the collection, preservation, and curation of physical specimens. There is not, however, a firm set of universal rules used for university collections for the preservation of these specimens and their accompanying research data. As such, existing best practices are often poorly understood and are executed by untrained individuals. Louisiana State University’s Department of Geology & Geophysics faces this common problem and the faculty wishes to address it. The collections consist of varied materials that can both stand alone as singular objects as well as be linked to other objects to have informational value. As the department’s subject librarian, I am creating an online, interoperable catalog to capture the knowledge we have of these materials, identify the gaps in our knowledge, and make search and retrieval of the information a simpler process. My tasks are first to consolidate the existing scatter of data; second to manipulate it into a consistent format that meets the department’s needs and borrowing behaviors; and third to help design and launch a digital repository that stores both private data—such as information about the samples used in teaching—and public data—such as field sample locations and descriptions, theses, and geochemical analysis results. The final product should serve as a “permanent” data repository, help attract prospective students and research partners, and provide a set of metadata requirements for future specimens introduced into the collections. This paper discusses my first and second tasks, the challenges that come with each, how I have addressed—as well as failed to address—these problems and the work that remains to be done.
You know the stereotype of a librarian being a woman with her hair in a severe bun and thick glasses who lives with at least one cat and in a house full of books? Well, that's Cambria. In her free time, she collects degrees and dragons.
Choosing techniques for real, messy data is often outside the scope of what researchers learn in introductory statistics courses, even at the graduate level. University of Oklahoma Libraries’ internal listening sessions (2021) found faculty see a need for statistical help at OU. Existing statistical help resources include self-directed or guided search using books and papers, direct human interaction through collaborators, mentors, consultants, and online forums, and instructive sources such as university courses. The existing solutions cost researchers social capital (i.e., access to collaborators, mentors, or librarians), which is not equitably distributed, or financial costs to the individual, grant, or institution that are not available to all researchers (such as statistical consulting). Most sources also vary in usefulness. Statistics Helper is a proposed interactive website to guide users to suitable statistical resources. This tool will ask users questions about their goals and dataset to narrow down a curated list of resources and short glossary definitions, which will be presented to the user throughout the process – imagine TurboTax for datasets. Statistics Helper will empower researchers in the data analysis process by asking non-technical questions to focus their reading on carefully curated choices so they can make informed decisions about their analyses.
Claire Curry, PhD, joined OU Libraries in 2018. She provides subject expertise for the sciences and helps faculty and students with research consultations such as on statistical programming, literature searching, and experimental better practices.
Clemson University Science Librarians serve a variety of researchers at a large R1 land-grant institution that aims to significantly increase research output. Systematic and other complex reviews are an increasingly common project that librarians are asked to consult or collaborate on. The Clemson Science Librarian team has noticed an increase in systematic review requests across disciplines. In order to address education of the research team and liaison librarians on systematic review methodology, the team decided to create an asynchronous self-paced online tutorial. This presentation will discuss challenges to implementing this project including: Organizing a tutorial for researchers in diverse areas of study, scope of material to include, integrating library services, and creation of new services and guidelines. A compounding factor to these challenges is the varying levels of systematic review knowledge and experience shared by the Science Librarian team. We will also discuss next steps and future areas of research after implementation of the final tutorial.
Sally Smith began working at Clemson in July 2022 and is the liaison to the Nursing and Public Health departments. Her duties include providing research support to faculty and students with an emphasis on systematic review instruction.
Karen Burton began working as a Science Librarian at Clemson University in November 2022 and is the liaison for the College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Life Science. She also supports Clemson’s Cooperative Extension Service.
Shelby Carroll began working at Clemson in April 2022 and is the liaison for the College of Science.
As part of a large-scale, federally funded grant project, a multi-institutional team of authors from Cal Poly and library staff from UT Arlington have been working together to produce a heavily interactive OER for transportation students. The workbook, created in Pressbooks, contains nine chapters of multimedia content and H5P interactive content, almost entirely rendered using LaTeX. Going into the project, none of the team members had experience with these publishing tools, and the ambitious goals for the OER have pushed the limits of what the platforms can support. After months of trial and error and a lot of creative problem-solving, the OER will be ready to publish later in 2023. In this presentation, the team will reflect on the OER development process as it approaches its conclusion. We will discuss the challenges we experienced in trying to produce high quality interactive content using the tools available to us and lessons learned about how we might develop better OER supplemental materials for STEM subjects in the future.
Jessica McClean is the Director of Open Educational Resources (OER) at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, where she supports faculty in adopting and creating open educational resources and helps advance university initiatives related to affordability and open education.
Peyton Ratto completed a dual master’s degree in Civil Engineering and City and Regional Planning at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (SLO). Peyton has co-authored the textbook that will support individuals to learn the fundamentals of engineering for those from a non-engineering background.
Morgan White has been a lecturer in the English department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo for ten years. She teaches writing in the technical communications field and has taught classes such as Writing Arguments in STEM, Technical Writing for Engineers, and Technical Editing. She has co-edited/written four textbooks using OER materials.
At Baylor University, biology is one of the most popular concentrations with approximately 1200 majors or 8% of the undergraduate population. In addition to their majors, the department also teaches students who are fulfilling their general education requirements, pre-med students, and students who take biology for their majors such as anthropology, biochemistry, bioinformatics, chemistry, environmental science, geology, health science studies, and nursing. Biology majors are also not required to take ENG 1310 Writing and Academic Inquiry Seminars (i.e. freshman composition). In addition, there are three different tracks for biology majors so no upper level class is required for all majors. All of these factors make it difficult to determine when is the best time to introduce subject specific information literacy to biology majors.
We use the Syllabi Information Literacy Miner https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1N778ot87GI- wJSQHpjRJWkplL4NL5HWb?usp=sharing to help us determine which instructors to approach to offer information literacy guidance. Approximately 500 syllabi from Spring 2018 to Fall 2022 were analyzed. There were approximately 100 courses and 200 distinct course-instructor pairs. These courses ranged from 1000 level service courses to 5000 level graduate seminars. Some of these courses have multiple sections with multiple instructors in a single semester; others alternate instructors in different semesters; a few were only offered once in the 14 terms. Out of these approximately 65 courses and 140 course-instructor pairs were flagged as including information literacy terms of these approximately 40 courses and less than 50 course-instructor pairs were for undergraduate classes.
Is your library in the path of the 2023 & 2024 North American eclipses?
Libraries are a place of community, education, and science. Join this presentation to learn how to get ahead of the upcoming eclipses and plan an outreach event that brings all of this to your library. Texas A&M University librarians are in the midst of preparing for the October 14, 2023 and April 8, 2024 eclipses, and will share our progress and logistics under consideration with you. Get an update on the science behind these events. Hear lessons learned from a librarian who hosted a library outreach event during the 2017 total solar eclipse. We will share suggestions to help you create a LibGuide and information about other resources to help you get started on an Eclipse outreach event at your library.
Jessica is an Engineering Research Librarian at Texas A&M University. She has been working in STEM librarianship in Texas for over a decade and has taught both library courses as well as serving a myriad of science and engineering departments. Her research focuses on Real World Objects and active learning in libraries.
Jillian is the Student Engagement and Outreach Coordinator for the University Libraries. She has a passion for outreach, student success, and is a loud and proud advocate for libraries. While all outreach fills her with joy, she has carved out her niche in overall student success, with and emphasis on the first year experience.
Janina has a decade of experience serving the campus community as a full-time library staff member. In addition to her role in support of instruction and outreach programming, she is also pursuing her MLS from Texas Woman’s University. Janina is devoted to family and all things “Space the final frontier.”
In 2021, the Engineering & Computer Science Library at the University of Toronto purchased a MiRo-E robot (from Consequential Robotics) as part of a grant. The robot was the centerpiece of a hybrid online and in-person programming contest we held as part of our student outreach. Students of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Department of Computer Science developed code to create interactive behaviour for the robot using the online simulation software MiRoCLOUD, and their code was judged by a panel of librarians, staff, and faculty. Given the cute, zoomorphic, interactive nature of the MiRo-E robot, we also engaged students and staff with a Name that Robot Contest and held meet and greets that students described as being like therapy dog sessions run by other libraries.
In this presentation, we will discuss our library’s experience with using MiRo-E as a tool for outreach to STEM students. This will include an overview of how the MiRo-E robot works, the software and hardware involved in its operation, and some possible applications of the robot in an academic library setting. We will also discuss our experience with running the programming contest as a hybrid event, as well as how we approached facilitation and judging of this event with a team who has varying degrees of coding knowledge. Finally, we will discuss the challenges we faced with using MiRo-E as an outreach tool.
Tracy Zahradnik is an Engineering Librarian at the University of Toronto. She holds a BSc in Zoology, MSc in Zoology, Master of Information and a PhD in Biology.
Michelle Spence is an Engineering & Computer Science Librarian at the University of Toronto, where she has worked since 2009. She holds a HBSc and a MISt, both from the University of Toronto. She has held positions in academic and public libraries, as well as a corporate setting.
Lauren Lacey recently completed a Master of Information in Library and Information Science, as well as a Master of Museum Studies. Their background is in theatre design and education, and playwrighting.
Marcellin is a librarian at the Engineering & Computer Science Library at the University of Toronto. Their liaison areas are Chemical Engineering, Civil & Mineral Engineering, and Materials Science Engineering.
Ginny is a recent graduate from the Master of Information program at the University of Toronto, where they have worked at the Engineering and Computer Science Library throughout their degree. They hold a Bachelor of Science with a specialization in geophysics from the University of Alberta.
The Engineering & Computer Science Library at the University of Toronto has been engaged in curriculum mapping for a few years. This process allowed us to identify instruction gaps in terms of content and scaffolding. This year, we have added an additional element to our curriculum mapping by coding course specific reference questions answered at the reference desk and through email using the same coding key as our curriculum mapping. Combing these two sets of data allows us to determine pain points that some students experience when finding information after they have received information literacy instruction. This information can be used by liaison librarians to improve upon instruction in future years.
Tracy Zahradnik holds a BSc in Zoology, MSc in Zoology, Masters of Information and PhD in Biology. She currently works at the University of Toronto as an Engineering Librarian.