Spatial information literacy for digital humanities: The case study of leveraging geospatial information for African American history education

ABSTRACT

The rise of “digital humanities” and the “spatial turn” in the humanities has generated many new insights in the study of culture, history, literature, and arts. Within this research trend, the library's geospatial service can play an active role by introducing spatial information literacy and technology. In this article, we use the information literacy framework to explore the library's role in supporting digital humanities by introducing a successful collaboration involving a librarian and history and education researchers in hosting a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)-funded summer institute for school teachers. Our results suggest that the framework has opened a new way to facilitate collaborations between librarians and multidisciplinary researchers.     

Evaluating the landscape of digital humanities librarianship

ABSTRACT

As academic librarians strive to meet the needs of their users, it is important to understand the current and constantly changing landscape of digital humanities librarianship. The author of this article investigated areas in which current LIS professionals working in digital humanities came into their various roles, how they have been trained, how they feel about their opportunities for training, and where improvements can be made. The purpose of this study was to provide an overview of the digital humanities librarian skill set and to explore what training and infrastructure are needed in the field. Rather than looking to define digital humanities as a discipline, this study provides a current profile of digital humanities librarians, allowing for the profession to align with this evolving field's scholars and practitioners.     

They think all of this is new: Leveraging librarians' project management skills for the digital humanities

ABSTRACT

This article will explore how to develop the holistic project management planning (PMP) mindset in different parts of the library when undertaking digital humanities (DH) projects. PMP skills do exist within libraries and librarians, but organizational alignment typically does not allow for the most effective applications of librarians' PMP skills to DH projects. This article will explore how the skills of public services librarians, technical services librarians and administrative librarians align with the PMP phases and the challenges that each kind of librarian has to overcome in completing successful DH projects.     

Why I Chose to Work in a College Library

Abstract

The myth of the liberal arts college, ivy-covered, cloistered, is increasingly less valid. Yet, at its heart, is an enduring ideal: a small, supportive community of scholars and learners who value the individual's importance. Today's college librarians have an important role in their schools. As agents of change and by offering new ways to achieve old ideals, they subvert the myth, but not the ideals of liberal arts education.     

Mapping Uncharted Territory: Launching an Online Embedded Librarian Program

ABSTRACT

Developing a strategy for embedding librarians in online courses can be challenging, but it is essential to demonstrate to accrediting agencies how libraries serve online students. A well-thought-out plan can be scalable and sustainable for rapidly growing online programs and can satisfy accreditation standards. This article examines how one small, liberal arts college developed a plan of action for an online embedded librarian program, including both the conceptual and practical aspects of launching the program: aligning library instruction with course and program learning outcomes, brainstorming strategies for embedded library instruction, and communicating the value of such a program to online teaching faculty.     

A subject librarian's pedagogical path in the digital humanities

ABSTRACT

As academic libraries evolve with digital humanities scholarship, subject librarians may find themselves teaching in this new pedagogical landscape before colleagues with digital humanities expertise arrive on their campus. The author provides a practical pedagogical path specifically for the subject librarian for planning, providing instruction, and evaluating a course with a significant digital humanities component. An examination of an English course is offered in addition to a detailed background of the challenges and opportunities encountered in revisiting information literacy pedagogy through student-led projects in digital humanities.     

Conversation as a model to build the relationship among libraries,digital humanities,and campus leadership

ABSTRACT

By committing to two conversation-based concepts, David Lankes's Mission for New Librarians and the “Scholarship as Conversation” Information Literacy Frame, Bethel University's Library has established a leadership role in advocating and implementing digital humanities at a midsized liberal arts institution. Aligning the services and strategy of the Bethel University Digital Library (BUDL), Bethel's institutional repository, with the lessons learned and relationships built through these conversations with administration, faculty, and staff has resulted in successful outcomes for the communication and implementation of innovative digital library and digital humanities initiatives.     

Visualizing oral histories: A lab model using multimedia DH to incorporate ACRL framework standards into liberal arts education

ABSTRACT

Visualizing Oral Histories: Comics and Graphic Novels/Digital Humanities Lab, is a new model for digital humanities scholarship that other librarians can follow to create and teach similar DH labs attached to humanities courses at other institutions. The model includes a preliminary syllabus and preliminary assignment rubrics designed to integrate the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) “Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education” (ACRL Framework) into course assignments. Incorporation of a DH lab into a humanities course curriculum reimagines librarian roles and creates a pedagogical strategy that explicitly incorporates information literacy standards into the undergraduate course curriculum.     

Integrating Information Literacy into the Graduate Liberal Arts Curriculum: A Faculty-Librarian Collaborative Course Model

SUMMARY

The article presents a faculty-librarian collaborative course model for information literacy instruction for liberal arts students. Information literacy was integrated seamlessly into a master's thesis seminar, and the faculty member and librarian worked together to teach students effective research skills while helping them make personal connections to their theses. The learning experience was transformational. As students engaged themselves with problems of the real world and shared their learning, their voices articulated insights about themselves and the world. The authors conclude that integrating information literacy into the curriculum and teaching students holistically is the key to successful student learning.     

Teaching TEI to undergraduates: A case study in a digital humanities curriculum

ABSTRACT

This case study describes two iterations of a Digital Humanities (DH) “Studio” course on scholarly text encoding as a model for a DH curriculum at a small liberal arts college. Designed to accompany a three-credit humanities course, the one-credit DH Studios are taught by library faculty. The paired courses share a final project—a digital edition of a short work of literature encoded in the Text Encoding Initiative. The DH Studio creates a methodology-focused environment for students to practice information and digital literacies.     

Assessing the roles and challenges of librarians in dental systematic and scoping reviews

Objective:The objective of this study was to determine the scope of experience, roles, and challenges that librarians face in participating in dental and oral health systematic and scoping reviews to inform outreach efforts to researchers and identify areas for librarian professional development.Methods:The authors developed a twenty-three-item survey based on the findings of two recent articles about health sciences librarians'' roles and challenges in conducting systematic and scoping reviews. The survey was distributed via electronic mailing lists to librarians who were likely to have participated in conducting dental systematic and scoping reviews.Results:While survey respondents reported participating in many dental reviews, they participated more commonly in systematic reviews than in scoping reviews. Also, they worked less commonly on dental and oral health reviews than on non-dental reviews. Librarian roles in dental reviews tended to follow traditional librarian roles: all respondents had participated in planning and information retrieval stages, whereas fewer respondents had participated in screening and assessing articles. The most frequently reported challenges involved the lead reviewer or review team rather than the librarians themselves, with time- and methodology-related challenges being most common.Conclusions:Although librarians might not be highly involved in dental and oral health systematic and scoping reviews, more librarian participation in these reviews, either as methodologists or information experts, may improve their reviews'' overall quality.     

The Rosarium Project: A case of merging traditional reference librarian skills with digital humanities technology

ABSTRACT

The role of the reference librarian has changed considerably over the past thirty years. Today reference librarians spend as much time on public relations as on answering reference questions and more time solving log-in issues than on helping with research. Despite this, there is still a role for reference librarians to play using their research and curation skills. That role involves the digital humanities, particularly text encoding projects following the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative Consortium (TEI). One such TEI project is the Rosarium Project, which curates online popular materials about roses.     

Integration of arts and humanities in medicine to develop well-rounded physicians: the roles of health sciences librarians

Over the past ten years, there has been a growing interest in integrating arts and humanities in medicine to increase learners'' empathy and resilience; improve personal well-being, communication, and observational skills; enhance self-reflection; and promote professionalism. These desired skills and qualities are becoming increasingly important for the physicians of tomorrow. Parallel to curricular interventions of integrating arts and humanities to medical education, there has been an increasing research interest in investigating the impact of such interventions on medical students with respect to improving and sustaining students'' empathy as they progress in their medical education and develop their professional identity. Research has yielded interesting findings on the types and effect of the interventions in the medical curriculum. The Association of the American Medical Colleges (AAMC), recognizing the unique and unrealized role of arts and humanities in preparing and equipping physicians for twenty-first-century challenges, proposed seven recommendations for advancing arts and humanities integration into medical education to improve the education, practice, and well-being of physicians and physician learners across the spectrum of medical education. Institutional initiatives of arts and humanities integration in the medical curriculum in response to the AAMC''s recommendations afford health sciences librarians expansive opportunities and a new landscape of playing an important role in these initiatives. With their diverse educational background in arts, humanities, social sciences, and many other disciplines and fields, health sciences librarians are poised for meaningful contributions to their institutional goals in developing a humanistic, compassionate workforce of future physicians.     

Change and the News Library

Abstract

As a special library, the news library has undergone dramatic changes in the last decade. Technological advances have almost totally transformed the news library's environment, collections, and operations. The major changes include the use of commercial and in-house electronic database systems to store full-text news story and other necessary information, and the retrieval of them by librarians or journalists. In other words, computerized database has been exchanged for file drawer filing and retrieving. This paper will address the evolution of the traditional news library and its impact on news librarians.     

Beyond the one-shot: Intensive workshops as a platform for engaging the library in digital humanities

ABSTRACT

This article explores how librarian participation as instructors in week-long intensive classes—a common workshop format in digital humanities (DH)—can advance a variety of library objectives, while also uniquely supporting the DH community. Intensive workshops fall between the one-shot session and credit course formats more commonly found in library instruction. Drawing on case studies from Geographic Information Systems (GIS) instruction at DH institutes at the University of California Berkeley and Purdue University, the authors explore the origins of librarian involvement, course topics, pedagogy, and library services. Based on their instruction experiences in the DH summer institutes and student surveys, the authors argue that intensive instruction workshops provide a good potential platform for library involvement in DH.     

Wired New Jersey: Q and A NJ

SUMMARY

Q and A NJ is New Jersey's virtual reference service. Available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and free to all New Jersey residents, the service provides online reference assistance in real time from librarians across the state. New Jersey was the first state in the country to offer such service. This article looks at the history of the service, what it's like to be a virtual librarian, and presents a brief survey of the librarians participating in Q and A NJ.     

Looking at the Male Librarian Stereotype

Summary

The library profession is haunted by stereotypes. Perpetually raising its infamous head is the portrayal of librarians as drab spinsters peering over the rim of their glasses and ready to “shush” a library patron for the offense of talking too loudly. It is an image that was born at the beginning of the twentieth century, and persists, albeit considerably diluted, to this day. On the other hand, positive and negative images of male librarians are to a large extent either ignored or treated very lightly in popular culture, especially in motion pictures and television. Once the exclusive domain of men, American librarianship evolved over the centuries to not just incorporate women, but to embrace and become almost completely associated with them. Stereotypes of male librarians have existed since colonial times; yet, the stereotypes have undergone considerable transformation as a result of professional and societal changes. This article attempts to understand some of the older stereotypes surrounding male librarianship in the United States by examining the position of the early librarian and the environment in which he worked. Current portrayals of male librarians in motion pictures and television are then discussed. The focus of this article is on academic male librarians; however, general male librarian stereotypes and issues are also discussed.     

Subject librarian as coauthor: A case study with recommendations

ABSTRACT

It can be challenging for subject librarians to participate in or lead Digital Humanities projects. This article presents a case study of a cataloging and digitization project that led to the creation of a Digital History website, both led by a subject librarian. Recommendations, such as leveraging your librarian skills and targeting graduate students, will be useful for other subject librarians who are looking for ways to become involved in the Digital Humanities.     

Project management for digital projects with collaborators beyond the library

ABSTRACT

Librarians are increasingly embracing project management to guide their work outside of routine library operations. Some humanities scholars, too, especially within the digital humanities community, are bringing project management techniques to bear on scholarly digital projects. We argue that librarians and their diverse collaborators can apply project management practices to a broad range of research, teaching, and learning projects with collaborators beyond the library. Two case studies illustrate this argument, one from each author's experience: creating a community biodiversity wiki for West-Central Florida and redesigning an interdisciplinary first-year seminar around creating 3-D models of historic Venetian buildings.     

Medical librarians' knowledge and practices in locating clinical trials for systematic reviews

Objective:In regard to locating clinical trials for a systematic review, limited information is available about how librarians locate clinical trials in biomedical databases, including (1) how much information researchers provide librarians to assist with the development of a comprehensive search strategy, (2) which tools librarians turn to for information about study design methodology, and (3) librarians'' confidence levels in their knowledge of study design methodology. A survey was developed to explore these aspects of how a medical librarian locates clinical trials when facilitating systematic reviews for researchers.Methods:In this cross-sectional study, a 21-question survey was sent to medical librarians via several email listservs during April 2020. Respondents were limited to librarians who make the decisions on search terms for systematic reviews.Results:Responses (n=120) indicated that librarians were often asked to search for various types of clinical trials. However, there was not a consistent method for creating search strategies that locate diverse types of clinical trials. Multiple methods were used for search strategy development, with hedges being the most popular method. In general, these librarians considered themselves to be confident in locating trials. Different resources were used to inform study types, including textbooks, articles, library guides and websites.Discussion:Medical librarians indicated that while they felt confident in their searching skills, they did not have a definitive source of information about the various types of clinical trials, and their responses demonstrated a clear need and desire for more information on study design methodology.