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    The Never-Ending Evolutionary Saga of Assessing and Demonstrating the Value of Information Services in a Biomedical Library
    (Medical reference services quarterly, 2021-10) Walker, Phillip; Laferriere, Heather; Walden, Rachel Lane; Ivey, Camille
    Demonstrating added value can be very challenging, yet it is becoming important in academic libraries. The current literature primarily discusses citation analysis and usage reports to demonstrate return on investment for collections or impact on scholarly activity. However, value is not only in our collections but also in the library staff who support the institutional mission. Vanderbilt University's Annette and Irwin Eskind Family Biomedical Library and Learning Center has been experimenting with several methods to supplement the collections data with services performed by the staff. This article discusses the project's four phases as part of the goal to strategically demonstrate the biomedical library's added value to the university and medical center.
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    SpringerLink Platform Review
    (Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries, 2021-11-24) Walden, Rachel Lane
    SpringerLink is a subscription-based web platform for searching and accessing Springer’s collection of electronic materials. It is designed for students, researchers, educators, clinicians, and other professionals. It covers scientific, technological, and medical topics. This review will assess its content, navigation, search functions, and describe any special features.
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    Database Scavenger Hunt and Analysis for Accounting Students
    (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2022) DePeri, Robbi
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    Digital Humanities and the Future of Theology
    (Cursur_: Zeitschrift für explorative Theologie, 2018-07-20) Anderson, Clifford
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    Introduction: "Information Literacy and Theological Librarianship: Theory & Praxis"
    (American Theological Library Association, 2019-10-07) Smiley, Bobby
    Synopsis For librarians working in research, reference, and instruction, information literacy (IL) is foundational to their work. Since the advent of the Association of College and Research Libraries' Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education, IL has been substantially reimagined both theoretically and in professional practice. While much attention and scholarship has focused on broad-based, undergraduate education, there has been less work on information literacy for specific disciplines, such as theological and religious studies, or in library settings with unique curricular and professional needs. Information Literacy and Theological Librarianship: Theory & Praxis gathers together reflective practices and theoretical explorations from librarians across a range of theological libraries, including research universities with divinity schools, seminaries, religious universities, and small liberal arts colleges. This volume engages key concepts and concerns in information literacy pedagogy for theological libraries, and furnishes applied examples drawn from instructional experience. Placing the Framework in conversation with the study of religion and theological education, Information Literacy and Theological Librarianship provides theological and religious studies librarians working in different academic environments with concrete and practical ways to extend their own work on information literacy that is grounded in pedagogy and applicable to the unique features of theological librarianship.
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    Exposing the Null Curriculum in Graduate Religious Studies Education
    (American Theological Library Association, 2019) Osinski, Keegan
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    CHOOSING THE RIGHT CITATION MANAGEMENT TOOL: ENDNOTE, MENDELEY, REFWORKS, OR ZOTERO
    (Journal of the Medical Library Association, 2018-07) Ivey, Camille
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    There is Nothing New Under the Sun?: “New Librarianship” and the Theological Library
    (Theological Librarianship, 2015-01-16) Osinski, Keegan
    The entirety of R. David Lankes’s model of “New Librarianship” rests on his expression of its mission: “The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities.” The present essay defines and expand upon the facets of “facilitating,” “knowledge creation,” and “communities,” and explores the shapes these may take in theological libraries in particular. Regarding “community”, the essay considers the challenge of serving both academics and ministers and how it might be possible to foster a less disjointed community. The question of what “knowledge creation” looks like in the fields of religious studies and pastoral training, and what this uniqueness means for the library are also considered. Finally, the author offers some preliminary ideas of what facilitating this knowledge creation might look like in the context of a theological library. Current shifts within academe and its libraries require a shift in the way librarians (particularly theological librarians) think about service, resources, and their role in the education process as a whole.
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    A"I Never Knew I Could Be a Teacher": A Student-Centered MLIS Fellowship for Future Teacher-Librarians
    (portal: Libraries and the Academy, 2018-04) Gammons, Rachel W.; Carroll, Alexander J.; Inge Carpenter, Lindsay
    The Research and Teaching Fellowship (RTF) of the University of Maryland Libraries in College Park is a three-semester teacher training program for students seeking a master's of library and information science (MLIS) degree. This article provides details of the program's content, organization, administration, and assessment. It also includes results from a mixed methods and longitudinal study identifying the successful components of RTF and charting the development of teacher efficacy and identity among participants. Findings indicate that a strong sense of community, sustained engagement with teaching, and the integration of evidenced-based practice prepare MLIS students to succeed in a competitive job market. The authors provide a list of best practices in the development of mentorship and training programs, including considerations for librarians and administrators.
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    Flipping one-shot library instruction: using Canvas and Pecha Kucha for peer teaching
    (Journal of the Medical Library Association (JMLA), 2016-04) Carroll, Alexander J.; Tchangalova, Nedelina; Harrington, Eileen G.
    Objective: This study sought to determine whether a flipped classroom that facilitated peer learning would improve undergraduate health sciences students’ abilities to find, evaluate, and use appropriate evidence for research assignments. Methods: Students completed online modules in a learning management system, with librarians facilitating subsequent student-directed, in-person sessions. Mixed methods assessment was used to evaluate program outcomes. Results: Students learned information literacy concepts but did not consistently apply them in research assignments. Faculty interviews revealed strengthened partnerships between librarians and teaching faculty. Conclusion: This pedagogy shows promise for implementing and evaluating a successful flipped information literacy program.
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    Using information literacy to teach medical entrepreneurship and health care economics
    (Journal of the Medical Librarian Association, 2019-04) Carroll, Alexander J.; Hallman, Shelby J.; Umstead, Kelly A.; McCall, James; DiMeo, Andrew J.
    Objective: Entrepreneurship and innovative product design in health care requires expertise in finding and evaluating diverse types of information from a multitude of sources to accomplish a number of tasks, such as securing regulatory approval, developing a reimbursement strategy, and navigating intellectual property. The authors sought to determine whether an intensive, specialized information literacy training program that introduced undergraduate biomedical engineering students to these concepts would improve the quality of the students’ design projects. We also sought to test whether information literacy training that included active learning exercises would offer increased benefits over training delivered via lectures and if this specialized information literacy training would increase the extent of students’ information use. Methods: A three-arm cohort study was conducted with a control group and two experimental groups. Mixed methods assessment, including a rubric and citation analysis, was used to evaluate program outcomes by examining authentic artifacts of student learning. Results: Student design teams that received information literacy training on topics related to medical entrepreneurship and health care economics showed significantly improved performance on aspects of project performance relevant to health care economics over student design teams that did not receive this training. There were no significant differences between teams that engaged in active learning exercises and those that only received training via lectures. Also, there were no significant differences in citation patterns between student teams that did or did not receive specialized information literacy training. Conclusions: Information literacy training can be used as a method for introducing undergraduate health sciences students to the health care economics aspects of the medical entrepreneurship life cycle, including the US Food and Drug Administration regulatory environment, intellectual property, and medical billing and reimbursement structures.
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    Supporting the Changing Research Practices of Religious Studies Scholars
    (Ithaka S+R, 2017-02-08) Benda, Chris; Hook, Bill; Kohut, Michael; Romero, Ramona
    Ithaka S+R’s Research Support Services Program is a series of projects that investigate the research support needs of scholars by their discipline. In 2016 Ithaka S+R examined the changing research methods and practices of academic religious studies scholars in the United States, with the goal of identifying services to better support them. The project was undertaken collaboratively with research teams at 18 academic libraries and the American Theological Library Association with guidance from an advisory committee. The goal of this report is to provide actionable findings for the organizations, institutions and professionals who support the research process of religious studies. One hundred and ninety eight scholars were interviewed during the project and Ithaka S+R sampled 102 of the resulting transcripts towards the analysis for this report. Ithaka S+R identified three major thematic areas in which religious studies would benefit from improved or new services: Discovering and accessing information. When available, digital discovery and access have greatly improved these scholars’ research experiences with relatively few challenges. Scholars located in some seminaries and those conducting research on religions and religious cultures beyond the West experience greater challenges when conducting primary and secondary source research. Information management. Scholars contend with the challenge of managing vast arrays of information that they produce and collect in the process of conducting their research and engage in idiosyncratic practices for organizing and storing their information. They struggle with digital approaches to citation management and information storage and experience uncertainty around destroying and preserving information following their personal use. Audience, output and credit. Scholars’ primary focus remains on traditional scholarly outputs due to the expectations associated with tenure and promotion. Overall awareness and engagement with open access is low but the perceived importance of more freely sharing work as enabled by social media platforms is high. The report concludes by highlighting key issues and providing recommendations from across the findings that have wider implications for how religious studies research support is conceptualized and prioritized. Religious studies scholars’ ongoing lack of awareness of and engagement with digital research methods, including those associated with the digital humanities, reflects major structural barriers to methodological innovation within the discipline necessitating intervention at various levels. While religious studies scholars continue to rely on their institutional libraries, particularly for access to secondary materials, their use of the library is placed among many other strategies for finding and accessing information. Supporting religious studies scholars in their capacities as collectors is one entryway for re-thinking how research support can be cohesively defined and delineated.
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    Data-first manifesto: Shifting priorities in scholarly communications
    (Information Services and Use, 2017-02) Anderson, Cliffod B.
    This paper introduces and exegetes the Data-First Manifesto, which calls for prioritizing data curation over interface design in digital scholarship projects as well as for rethinking how to foster scholarly communication in the performance of digital scholarship. The origins of the manifesto are discussed and its four sets of ordered preferences are detailed together with a discussion of how the implementation of these shifts in priorities might transform scholarly communications in the field of digital scholarship.
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    Developing Data Curation Protocols for Digital Projects at Vanderbilt: Une Micro-Histoire
    (International Journal of Digital Curation, 2018-05-08) Ikeshoji-Orlati, Veronica A.; Anderson, Clifford B.
    This paper examines the intersection of legacy digital humanities projects and the ongoing development of research data management services at Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Library. Future directions for data management and curation protocols are explored through the lens of a case study: the (re)curation of data from an early 2000s e-edition of Raymond Poggenburg’s Charles Baudelaire: Une Micro-histoire. The vagaries of applying the Library of Congress Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) to the data and metadata of theMicro-histoirewill be addressed. In addition, the balance between curating data and metadata for preservation vs. curating it for (re)use by future researchers is considered in order to suggest future avenues for holistic research data management services at Vanderbilt.
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    Lab-Integrated Librarians: A Model for Research Engagement
    (College & Research Libraries, 2020-01) Carroll, Alexander J.; Eskridge, Honora N.; Chang, Bertha P.
    To gain firsthand insights into the daily workflows of researchers and to create opportunities to engage in the full research life cycle, engineering librarians at North Carolina State (NC State) University launched a pilot project to embed themselves into campus research groups by attending weekly lab meetings. This article provides details on the program's implementation, the ethnographic assessment methods used to capture the activities of researchers during weekly lab meetings, and an analysis of the data collected. Based on these findings, the authors provide potential implications for professional practice, offering suggestions for how this pilot program could be expanded into an enterprise-level service as well as areas for further research.
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    Implementing an Open News and Information System in the Vanderbilt University Libraries
    (2020-01) Byrd, Sara; Stringer-Hye, Richard; Gambill, Jodie
    The change process described in this chapter consisted of a complete re-engineering of the internal communication system and an innovation in the platform and tools that were chosen to implement the new system. The result of the change was a new resource, called Heard Alert, a substantial revitalization of internal communication in the library, and the implementation of a clean, secure, and flexible intranet platform.
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    TDWG Standards Documentation Specification
    (Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), 2017-04-25) Baskauf, Steve; Hyam, Roger; Blum, Stanley; Morris, Robert A.; Rees, Jonathan; Sachs, Joel; Whitbread, Greg; Wieczorek, John
    This document defines how TDWG standards are to be presented. It provides details about the hierarchical structure of standards and versioning of standards components. It specifies how the properties of standards and their components are to be described in human-readable and machine-readable terms.
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    TDWG Vocabulary Maintenance Specification
    (Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), 2017-04-25) Baskauf, Steve; Wieczorek, John; Blum, Stan; Morris, Robert A.; Rees, Jonathan; Sachs, Joel; Whitbread, Greg
    This document describes the processes used to modify TDWG vocabularies and their associated documents.
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    Cleaning out the Roach Motel: Transforming the Neglected IR into a Five-Star Scholarship Resort
    (2018-06-05) Shook, Elisabeth
    In 2008, Dorothea Salo published the memorable article, Innkeeper at the Roach Motel, in which she writes that libraries have consistently understaffed and undervalued repositories, hoping faculty will deposit their work without any incentive. When faculty refuse, libraries have thrown “open the repository to any sort of content in order to justify its existence” (Salo, 2008). Nearly ten years later, and this article still rings painfully true. How does an established repository correct the course, especially when the topic of deleting items and creating tombstones is so taboo? Elisabeth Shook, Scholarly Communications Librarian at Vanderbilt University, will discuss measures she’s taken to transform the roach motel IR into a clean resort for quality scholarship produced at VU, thus enabling the Vanderbilt Libraries to continue to advocate for sustainable open access.
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    Data Management: Streamlining Your Research and Publication Pipeline
    (Edge for Scholars, 2017-09-09) Ikeshoji-Orlati, Veronica; Shook, Elisabeth
    In February 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released a memorandum stating that United States’ taxpayers deserved to have access to all publicly funded research, including the underlying data. How can you respond to federal mandates - and increasing calls for research reproducibility - in your research and data management practices?