Papers and Publications, University Libraries

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    Training STEM Students in LaTeX
    (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2018) Stitz, Tammy
    A workshop series was created as a non-credit course to meet the university wide need for LaTeX training. Two hundred respondents of an electronic survey that was posted for three weeks on the university portal desired some level of LaTeX training. Pilot workshop modules were offered from spring 2011 - fall 2012 and the original series was offered each semester starting spring 2012. The series evolved from user feedback and empirical evidence including the addition of an online workshop. LaTeX training is grounded in Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education threshold concept, Information Creation as a Process, so it is a natural service to be offered in academic libraries. However, most academic libraries do not offer enough LaTeX training. It is concluded that LaTeX training should be a library service in academic libraries where students are in need of the service.
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    Best of Both Worlds: Training for New and Experienced Library Instructors
    (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2024) Lemmons, David X.; Blinstrub, Ashley; Gourlay, Kayla M.; Kirker, Maoria J.; Mattson, Janna; Murphy-Lang, Anna K.
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    Beyond a Land Acknowledgement: Taking a First Step Towards Reparative Action
    (Journal of Radical Librarianship, 2024-06-27) Lemmons, David X.; Anantachai, Tarida; Bell, Kat; Byrd, Jason; James, Heather; Quintana, Erika; Ventura, Gerie; Warren, Mea
    The Logistics Committee of the Conference on Academic Library Management (CALM)’s 2023 conference posed a question early on in conference planning: what if we rejected the traditional model of land acknowledgements? In answering that question, the committee embarked on a year-long process to radically revise the statement to one focused on reparative action. This article covers the revision process, including what inspired it and how the committee structured their work.
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    Fall 2022 Microassessments Dataset & Report
    (2022-12-01) Spitler, Jasmine; Bell, Kathleen
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    Engaging through Conversation: Community Building for Inclusive Library Instruction
    (ACRL, 2023) Lowder, Christopher; Lemmons, David X.; Blinstrub, Ashley
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    It Takes a Team!
    (Ticker: The Academic Business Librarianship Review, 2021) Henson, Jo Ann J.; King, Karen Marsh; Bennett, Kelly
    In spring 2020, the pandemic caused many universities to move abruptly to online instruction mid-semester. This article is about the partnership of a core team of two librarians and a business professor and their efforts to provide seamless library instruction at that time.
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    Flexible, Not Flawless: Teaching Critical Reading Skills through a Bridge Program
    (ACRL Press, 2022) Gourlay, Kayla M.; Kirker, Maoria J.; Stafford, Richard Todd
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    GeoData@Mason: Discover and Access to Geospatial Data
    (2020-06) Suh, Joy; Ding, Elaine
    The University Libraries at Mason has developed a new portal that provides discovery and access to geospatial data and digitized historical maps. It allows researchers and students to search and retrieve not only Mason’s own collection but also other institutions’ geospatial data collection. This new portal was built with Open Geospatial Portal (OGP) Application, a multi-institutional open source collaboration for finding and sharing geospatial data. This poster session illustrates the steps taken to develop this portal including infrastructure and skills. It will also address issues related to updating metadata and maintaining the tool for those who consider building this portal in the future.
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    Meeting the Textbook Needs of Engineering Students
    (American Association for Engineering Education (ASEE), 2012-06) Calcagno, Theresa M; Bowdoin, Jessica
    In early 2009, the Head of Interlibrary Loan (ILL) at George Mason University analyzed ILL borrowing statistics from the previous academic year and found that 90% of the fifty most borrowed titles had been requested by students enrolled in the Volgenau School of Engineering. Further research revealed that: • 100% of the titles requested by engineering students were identified as IT/Engineering textbooks according to the Departmental Textbook lists kept by the University Bookstore; • the Mason Libraries already owned 76% of these titles; and • 83% of the courses using these textbooks were either in the Computer Science or Electrical and Computer Engineering departments. As a result of this analysis, the Engineering Textbook Reserves Program was conceived by the IT/Engineering Liaison Librarian and Access Services staff, including Reserves and ILL. The primary goals of this program, which was implemented during Fall Semester 2009, are: • to help alleviate engineering student demand for textbooks borrowed through ILL by placing these titles on reserve; and • to increase access to high demand engineering textbooks by more effectively utilizing existing library resources and services. Over the subsequent four semesters, seventy-one different titles have been placed on reserve for seventy different courses (86% of which were at graduate level). These books have been checked out over 1,500 times. Through careful monitoring, sixteen titles that were never borrowed were identified and removed from Reserve status. The program’s goal of increasing access to high demand engineering textbooks was met and since Fall 2009, Mason Libraries realized a savings of approximately $16,800 in ILL borrowing costs for engineering textbooks. The purchase costs for new or updated editions of textbooks have been minimal. The total spent, $3,130.68, is approximately 3.0% of the total discretionary funds allocated for Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering purchases for FY2010 and FY2011.
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    13 Things in Blackboard: A Course Facilitator's Guide
    (2020-06) Mattson, Janna
    13 Things in Blackboard​ is a self-paced extended learning opportunity designed to encourage library staff to experiment with unfamiliar learning technologies and foster understanding of best practices in online pedagogy in a collaborative space before implementing them in real time.This guide takes the course facilitator, or better yet, a facilitating group through the process of pitching this professional development program to administration, recruiting a cohort, building and facilitating the course, and post-course assessment. While this guide is specific to Blackboard and the learning activities that support typical IL teaching at George Mason University, activities can be modified to meet institution-specific learning needs and/or its learning management system (LMS).
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    Incorporating a Musical Iconography Component into a Music Research Course
    (2020-01-10) Gerber, Steven K.
    Most master's programs in music include a required seminar in music research that must broadly introduce a variety of investigatory areas. One such area is the scholarly study of musical iconography, visual works which depict or reference music-making. Students are not generally aware of this interdisciplinary field (which requires dual expertise in music history and art history) and its range of topical approaches; the standard handbooks on music research usually give it only two or three pages. My music research seminar includes a 30-minute illustrated presentation on the aims, tools and resources of musical iconography, with additional class discussion of one or two sample articles by scholars in this field and inspection of selected antiquarian prints in the Special Collections department.
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    Open-Access Digital Dissemination of Rare Sheet Music from a Special Collection
    (2019-10-24) Gerber, Steven K.
    The International Music Score Library Project (“IMSLP;” imslp.org) is an open-access digital repository of downloadable public-domain music. Its holdings, uploaded primarily by volunteer librarians, include high-quality scans of manuscripts and early imprints held in special collections around the world, which can be of interest to musicologists and performers alike. Among other musical rarities, George Mason University Libraries own a set of six owner-bound volumes of sheet music collected and played by American writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe between approximately 1835 and 1855. Some of the imprints represent musical compositions that are undiscoverable in any other WorldCat library. In collaboration with Special Collections staff, I have begun the process of digitizing selected compositions and uploading as PDFs to IMSLP under Mason’s siglum. This project illustrates open, digital dissemination of primary resources for scholarship in history and biography without the need for populating and maintaining a server for these images at the university.
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    Cultivating Teacher-Librarians through a Community of Practice
    (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2019) Kirker, Maoria J.
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    Library Partnerships to Support Data Analytics Engineering Programs
    (126th Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education, 2019-06) Mann, Wendy; Calcagno, Theresa; Kermer, Deborah Ann
    In the last decade, the number of graduate programs in Data Analytics has grown exponentially. Academic libraries have had to, or will need to, determine how to support the growing student population in this new area of academia, as well as acquire new resources and develop new services and tools for analytics students. Data Analytics and Data Science programs are particularly challenging to support because they are trans-disciplinary—incorporating areas such as statistics, computer science and business. At George Mason University (Mason) the Data Analytics Engineering (DAEN) program is a master’s degree program in the Volgenau School of Engineering. This program started in 2014 and enrolls students in 10 different concentrations including business analytics, cyber security analytics, financial engineering, predictive analytics and more. This paper discusses how the Engineering Librarian collaborated with the Mason Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Center (DiSC) to identify and develop ways to help meet the needs of this unique group of students.
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    Architects, Renovators, Builders, and Fragmenters: A Model for First Year Students' Self-perceptions and Perceptions of Information Literacy
    (The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 2019-01) Kirker, Maoria J.; Stonebraker, Ilana
    The transition from high school to college is fraught with academic, social, and emotional changes for first-year students. This year long qualitative study uses cognitive dissonance theory to examine first-year students' changing perceptions of their information literacy competencies throughout their freshman year. Through the examination of students' self-reflections and semi-structured interviews, the study produced cognitive dissonance in students, revealed four information literacy journeys, demonstrated the shifting of students' definitions of research, and shed light on the emotional labor involved in college-level research. Implications for information literacy instruction and future research are discussed.
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    Beyond Bibliometrics: Understanding Library Services in Multidisciplinary Research
    (Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference, 2019-04-06) Mahapasuthanon, Pattiya; Hoffman, Kimberly
    Bibliometric methods, using citations as data, are an alternate way to learn from the literature of science and technology. These statistical methods are used, with visualization tools, to determine the relationship between authors and papers, scientific subjects reflected in publishing, and word or frequency occurrence. Bibliometrics are used by libraries to get a broad view of the growth, structure, connections and productivity of a discipline reflected in literature. This research studies trends and multidisciplinary connections across university researchers and campuses. With a strategic initiative from George Mason University (GMU) to become excellent in multidisciplinary research, Mason Libraries support multidisciplinary research activities. This study completes an analysis on bibliometric and funding across five centers at the GMU Science and Technology campus (SciTech) to understand research activities and interactions. Bibliometric network graphs were created from Web of Science (WoS) citation datasets and VOSViewer, a visualization tool. Federal RePORTER [documentation and analysis of inputs, outputs, and outcomes resulting from federal investments in science available: https://www.starmetrics.nih.gov/Star/About] and WoS were used to generate funding charts. For research activities not captured by scientific literature, and involving ongoing library resources, the creation of a pilot version of an interactive visualization for experience mapping was tested to successfully identify and seek new service opportunities. The results obtained from the bibliometric analysis indicate that libraries must plan to reach researchers in those relatively young multidisciplinary research institutes. The research trends at SciTech have shifted towards applied health and biological medicine according to the keyword analysis. From the funding analysis, the SciTech campus accounted for 30 percent of the total funded projects to GMU from National Institutes of Health (NIH). With these preliminary results, understanding resources and services the SciTech researchers and multidisciplinary researchers need will increase research connections and productivity. Future research will seek to incorporate more sophisticated tools to further understand impactful resources and plan for future library collaborations.
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    Name Authority Records – A Primer for Scholars and Researchers
    (Bridging the Spectrum Symposium, 2019-02-08) Fairclough, Ian
    Name authority work is integral to documenting and properly identifying scholarly activity. Often thought about as merely an aspect of cataloging, name authority records are increasingly of value to researchers. Scholars might consider ORCID, a rival project, to address all research requirements. But ORCID and other projects cannot substitute for proper identification of "who did what" with respect to authorship in a manner that only name authority work can achieve. In recent years the scope of coverage of information documented in name authority records has become increasingly diverse, and details of such data have been parsed out in numerous ways, readying them for use with linked data. Drawing from extensive personal experience, the presenter will demonstrate how communication with scholars via email and consultation of pertinent Internet resources has resulted in improvements for all.
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    “They All Quote Each Other!”: Discovering a Scholarly Conversation Through Guided Inquiry
    (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2018) McManus, Helen
    This chapter offers a lesson plan for teaching the "Scholarship as Conversation" frame in ACRL's Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education.
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    Scholarly Connections: Leveraging Citation Data to Highlight Faculty Research Trends
    (2018-08-20) Hoffman, Kimberly; Leak, Carl; Kunaparaju, Vamsi; Kan, Teresa; Cocks, Sarah
    During the 2016-2017 academic year, George Mason University Libraries' Science and Technology Team began a project with an end goal of capturing trends in faculty research by creating visual representations of faculty citation data within the many institutes at the university. The project continued in 2017-2018 by expanding to include the work of faculty at the Krasnow Institute, which is the focus of this presentation. Vamsi Kunaparaju, a graduate student in the Data Analytics Program in the Volgeneau School of Engineering, has worked with the library staff to provide a chronological view of faculty work and how research topics have evolved over time among these researchers. In addition, this presentation will compare the challenges faced during the process of analyzing citation data from the Krasnow Institute as opposed to the data from the first institute evaluated which was the Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine. Finally, as the library partners with graduate assistants in the future who have data analysis skills, the objective is to provide both faculty and library staff with a firmer grasp on faculty interactions through the lens of publishing habits. This initiative can serve as a strategy to strengthen existing interdisciplinary partnerships as well as an impetus for new partnerships that faculty were unaware of previously.
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    E-Resources Usage Data-What We Have and How To Use It.
    (2014-03-18)
    Collection Development for academic libraries face many challenges in assessing use of electronic resources. Establishing a national measuring standard COUNTER, evolves as budgets are impacted by ever increasing costs. Learn how the standard has changed through the newly released version 4. Additionally, the usage project combined the application of the Hierarchical Interface to LC Classification (HILCC) to drill down into subject specific usage data analysis.