Library Hacks » Librarians

Faculty: how can the library help you?

libraryhacks — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:35:40 +0000

We’ve started a new category on Library Hacks where we’ll highlight the innovative and creative ways Duke faculty are using library resources and librarian expertise in the classroom. We will continue to add new case studies to this section on a regular basis to highlight each project.

Case Study:

Assignment #1: Obesity and Health. Dr. Jen’nan Read, Spring 2009, SOC 161

View Mapping Grocery Stores and Bus Routes -example in a larger map

The goal of this assignment was to demonstrate how individuals’ everyday social environment influences important health outcomes, such as obesity. Students broke into teams and conducted comparative research at local grocery stores in the area, focusing on cost, content, and placement of food at the different locales. Students were given a fixed budget to feed a family of four and compared the quantity and quality of foods within that budget. Students evaluated the accessibility of the various grocery stores (and exercise facilities) in relation to different socio-economic and ethnic neighborhoods in the Durham area using mapping tools that were demonstrated in class by Librarians and CIT staff.

Library Session:

Two librarians, Linda Daniel and Joel Herndon, and Shawn Miller, a consultant with CIT, prepared a highly interactive introduction to library resources and online mapping tools. The class enabled the students to make compelling visual connections about the complex relationship between diet, socioeconomic status and access to grocery stores.

The result:

Thank you all so very much for your efforts and preparation. The students were duly impressed, as was I (many commented on how happy they were to get the training and hand-outs, etc). Sorry if it seemed rushed; it’s a learning process for us all. At the end of the day, it was superb.

Thank you again.

Jen’nan
Jen’nan G. Read
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology

Written by Nathaniel King

Change Blog Readers Can Believe In

Karen Jean Hunt — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:51:27 +0000

We’re librarians: we like information. For the next month, Library Hacks will be gathering information from you, our reader, in our first-ever feedback poll!

This is your chance to tell us a little bit about your blog-reading habits and what you’d like to see when you visit Library Hacks.

In the sidebar you’ll see an orange button that links to our short survey – we hope you’ll take a few minutes to help us learn how to create a better, more informative blog. Of course, your responses and comments will be submitted anonymously, so click away!

We’ll be gathering responses through Friday, April 15th, and we’ll be sure to let you know what we’ve learned once the results are tabulated.

All of the other Duke University Libraries blogs will be running the exact same poll, so head over to the other blogs that you read and leave some feedback for them, too.

Thanks!

Peer review: "The coin of the realm"

Emily Daly — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 19:27:55 +0000

On Monday of this week, librarians from Duke, North Carolina Central, NC State and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill gathered for the Triangle Research Libraries Network’s (TRLN) annual meeting.

We librarians always look forward to the opportunity to catch up with colleagues from area libraries and learn more about the innovative things going on at their institutions, but the highlight for me this year was hearing from keynote speaker Diane Harley of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, lead author of “Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication: An Exploration of Faculty Values and Needs in Seven Disciplines.”

The study conducted by Harley and four others was comprehensive: It involved over 160 scholars from 45 elite research universities and includes 12 case studies representing as many disciplines (anthropology, English language literature, law economics and biostats, to name a few), in addition to an extensive literature review and daily environmental scans of issues in higher education.

As you might imagine, Harley and her colleagues gleaned an amazing amount of extremely rich data from their interviews of faculty, administrators, publishers and librarians. One surprise to Harley was the amount of time she and her colleagues spent discussing tenure and promotion (T&P) with their interviewees. Let’s consider just a few of Harley’s findings related to T&P and the role that scholarly publication plays in it:

- The most important aspect of T&P is a stellar publication record — service, teaching and public engagement are important but secondary to publication

- New journals and genres are acceptable — so long as they’re peer reviewed

- Peer review is the “coin of the realm” — it is the sole value system in academia, but…

- Peer review has problems: lack of speed, conservatism, bias, low quality reviews, non-scholar editors, cost to the institution to subsidize peer review via faculty salaries, lack of fraud and plagiarism detection

- T&P should be supportive of non-traditional forms of publication (e.g. Open Access journals)

- Publishers may say that they “do” peer review, but that’s not the case — faculty “do” peer review, at a cost to their institutions, NOT at a cost to the publisher

Do these ring true for you? Are these issues that you face in your work as a librarian, faculty member or aspiring scholar? How does the culture at Duke fit into this picture of T&P and scholarly communication? What can or should Duke Libraries do to support non-traditional forms of publication?

Interested in what's "Beyond the Stacks"?

Emily Daly — Tue, 11 May 2010 19:17:34 +0000

Now that the semester is over and you’re ready to begin your summer research or plan your courses for the fall, consider learning more about ways that the librarians at Duke Libraries can help.

Librarians Heidi Madden, Andy Armacost, Jill Katte, Lee Sorensen and Emily Daly will be offering sessions on topics ranging from using digitized primary sources in the classroom to building and storing online image collections at Duke, from Western European studies resources to EndNote citation management software.

These “Beyond the Stacks” sessions are part of the Center for Instructional Technology’s 21st Century Teaching & Learning Workshop Series and are designed for faculty and graduate students interested in integrating library resources and services into their teaching. Participants will also, however, leave with valuable tips for using library resources in their research.

Have an idea for a “Beyond the Stacks” session? Contact Emily Daly. Interested in learning more about the Teaching & Learning Workshops Series? Check out the full schedule of events.

Of champions & libraries

Catherine Shreve — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:12:17 +0000

What else can we say this week except: DUKE RULES!

How does the library relate to (or compete with) that? Well, ummm…here are some facts to peruse as you transition from celebration to research focus:

The University Archives has a collection of coaches’ films–men’s basketball films date from 1947 to 1996.
And here’s a pictorial history of our own Blue Devil.
Duke Libraries hold 112,186 unique titles that no other library in the world reports having.
We are 5th in the nation for our Film & Video holdings with 81,517 Film and Video titles collected.

Now that you’ve calmed down, don’t forget that the subject librarians have created research guides for you, and will meet with you to help you find sources for your papers. Here are some recent reviews of our services:

Thank you so much! This is extremely helpful!

Bravo!

my awesome Duke librarian

Librarians Want to Know

libraryhacks — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:26:22 +0000

We hope you know that librarians are here for you – we are in the business of supporting research at all levels, assisting students, faculty, and everyone in the Duke community. In an effort to improve the services we provide, we are trying to better understand the research habits and needs of different groups at Duke. This is where the User Studies Initiative comes in. We are trying to get past our own preconceived notions about what our users need and base decisions about library services on empirical evidence. The User Studies Initiative is a staff development effort, providing librarians at Duke with the tools and know-how to conduct effective user studies.

On Monday, March 8th, a group of Duke librarians presented this work-in-progress to colleagues from across North Carolina at the annual LAUNC-CH Conference. Their talk, Know Thy User: Duke Libraries User Studies Initiative, demonstrated to other librarians the feasibility of conducting effective, targeted studies to better understand users’ needs and wants. Diane Harvey and Yvonne Belanger provided the big picture view of the initiative, and Emily Daly, Linda Daniel, and Shawn Miller discussed studies they are currently working on. To read more about the presentation, see Diane Harvey’s post on the new Instruction & Outreach blog.

What do you wish the library did that it doesn’t? The User Studies Initiative is an ongoing project intended to generate a culture of continual assessment and improvement of library services. Let us know what you think!

Written by Alice Whiteside

What really matters when citing sources?

Emily Daly — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:12:44 +0000

You may know that two major style manuals — APA and MLA — have released new editions in the last six or so months. And if you’re aware of that fact, you undoubtedly know that both editions contain inconsistencies in their examples and enough errors to require APA to post an 8-page list of corrections and then replace its first run copies with a second printing.

The new rules have driven confused and frustrated researchers to sources such as APA’s blog, which provides examples and attempts to explain the more complicated rules (check out the DOI/URL flowchart — yes, this rule requires a flowchart), or Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL), which hosts APA and MLA resources that received 3.5 million and 2.5 million hits, respectively, during September and October alone, according to the coordinator of OWL.

It is evident from these stats alone that librarians and faculty have spent countless hours supporting the researchers and students who have spent even more time formatting manuscripts to meet the unbending rules of CSE, APA, MLA and enumerable others.

As Barbara Fister posits in her ACRLog post, is this time well spent? Is research somehow made more valid when its footnotes are perfectly formatted, its works cited page spaced just so? Have we spent so much time agonizing over comma placement and tracking down database names that we’ve lost sight of the whole point of citing sources in the first place? Do our budding scholars realize that citing sources is not merely an academic hazing ritual of sorts, causing them hours of extra labor after their papers are written?

It would seem that the newest editions of APA and MLA are only muddying the waters, making it harder for researchers — especially novice ones — to achieve the true goal of citing sources: to give credit to the scholars their research builds upon and to make it as easy as possible for their readers to learn more about that work.

And if we can agree on that primary goal, how do we get back to emphasizing it rather than the arcane rules?

Term papers by the numbers…

Linda Martinez — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:32:20 +0000

Ready to start that term paper? Not sure how to start? The University of Minnesota Libraries have created an assignment calculator to help students organize their time to meet their research needs. Start with today’s date, enter the date assignment is due, a timeline is provided, with research milestones. Use Duke Library links for local, on-site research assistance. For example, How do I begin my research? or Find a Librarian in my subject area? or ask for help are just a few of the services available to you through the Duke Libraries.

Do you love your librarian?

Jean Ferguson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:35:26 +0000

Help them win $5k and notoriety through the Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award!.

The award invites library users to recognize the accomplishments of librarians for their efforts to improve the lives of people in their community. Nominations will run through October 9 and are being accepted online at www.ilovelibraries.org/ilovemylibrarian.

Up to 10 librarians will be selected. Each will receive a $5,000 cash award, a plaque and a $500 travel stipend to attend an awards ceremony and reception in New York, hosted by The New York Times in December. In addition, a plaque will be given to each award winner’s library.

Nominees will be judged by a selection committee based on quality of service to library users, demonstrated knowledge of the library and its resources and commitment shown in helping library users.

As they say in Chicago, vote early, vote often!

Enhanced Homepage goes Live Monday

Debra Kurtz — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 19:51:01 +0000

The Digital Projects Department is pleased to announce that the enhanced homepage will go live before classes begin on Monday. Thanks to all the Libraries’ staff who helped collect and interpret user input. The focus of the Libraries’ homepage is first to facilitate research, teaching and learning and second to promote our services and resources.

Here is a brief summary of enhancements based on that focus statement:

Digital Collections are now searchable from the homepage via a new tab in the ‘Search Our Resources’ section.
Links were reviewed and edited down to only those most used as was identified by statistics and a circle maps exercise.
- Links to services and resources are given priority and located in the top portion of the site.
- Help links (How Do I?…) are located under links to resources and services.
News headlines are now each aligned with a corresponding image. Clicking an image will bring you to the related story. Two news items display at a time; more can be accessed without leaving the homepage by clicking the left & right arrows.
Recent posts from the Libraries’ various blogs (including the professional school libraries) are displayed; use the left & right arrows to browse through posts without leaving the homepage.
In an effort to give greater prominence to the Libraries’ exhibits, an image and link for a current Library Exhibit is visible in the lower right portion of the screen.

You can preview these changes at the following URL while the DPD works to put them in production:

We will review these changes this fall and make adjustments as necessary. Please watch for invitations to participate in assessment activities for the Libraries’ web resources.

Have a great semester!