Newsletter Issue 1 (2015)

Conversations is the new UC Merced Library e-newsletter. You have received this first edition because you are faculty, staff, or a graduate student at UC Merced. We hope you enjoy the newsletter and find it informative.

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think,” a seminal article published in the influential Atlantic Monthly at roughly the same time as a pair of atomic bombs were simultaneously ending the Second World War and frightfully signaling the start of a new era of human history. In “As We May Think,” Bush imagines a future in which researchers record and store data at the instant of creation. He also predicts a new form of encyclopedia that strikingly resembles today’s Wikipedia. While the technologies of the twenty-first century have, in many ways, met or exceeded Bush’s vision, the challenge of connecting scholars with the information they need for research, education, and service--as well as the challenge of capturing, preserving, and disseminating the vast amounts of information created by scholars as they go about their daily work--still confront us. Overcoming the technical, social and economic hurdles presented by these challenges is central to the mission of the UC Merced Library. It is typical for library newsletters to include a “From the Desk of ...” type article written by the leader of the library. In a break with tradition, this newsletter will instead point you to three videos that explore some of the challenges facing academic libraries and the academies they serve. We hope you find these videos engaging and that you will engage with us in conversations on how we might all work together to meet our collective information needs while furthering the academic goals of our campus. We look forward to hearing from you.

Donald Barclay shares about the future of academic libraries (3 video playlist).

TRAIL Project: Teaching Research and Information Literacy

ACRL Assessment in Action project integrates the research process and the writing process

In spring of 2014, as part of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Value of Academic Libraries Initiative, UC Merced was selected to participate in the second year cohort of the ACRL Assessment in Action (AiA) program. The goals of the AiA program are to: 1) develop professional competencies of librarians to assess, document and communicate the value of their academic libraries primarily in relation to their institution’s goals for student learning and success, 2) build and strengthen collaborative relationships with higher education stakeholders around the issue of library value, and 3) contribute to higher education assessment work by creating approaches, strategies and practices that document the contribution of academic libraries to the overall goals and missions of their institutions.

Upon acceptance, the UC Merced AiA Project established a local AiA team made up of Susan Mikkelsen, Sara Davidson Squibb, Anne Zanzucchi, Laura Martin, and Matt Moberly, with consulting services from Mike Roona. The Merced AiA Project provided an opportunity to evaluate an ongoing collaboration with five writing faculty from the Merritt Writing Program (MWP) in a project known as TRAIL -- Teaching Research and Information Literacy. In the TRAIL Project, librarians worked with the writing faculty to develop activities and resources that would help students in selected Writing 10 sections to think like researchers and better understand the research process. Writing assignments in TRAIL sections required the use of newly developed research skills, and activities were designed to improve student skill at identifying and reading scholarly articles, developing a successful research question, using relevant and credible sources, considering multiple viewpoints, and providing adequate evidence to support an argument. Throughout the fall 2014 semester, TRAIL students also engaged in reflective writing to understand how their research skills were changing.

Currently, student reflections and final papers from fall 2014 are being assessed for evidence of increased information literacy and improved research skills. The local AiA team will provide a report to ACRL later this spring and present at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, June 2015, in San Francisco. See also:Assessment in Action: Academic Libraries and Student Success andACRL Value of Academic Libraries.

We appreciate the participation of the TRAIL MWP faculty of Matt Moberly, Rex Krueger, Heather Devrick, Katherine Lee, and Grace Rocha, who worked closely with us and implemented these activities in their sections. Questions about the UC Merced ACRL Assessment in Action (AiA) TRAIL project may be addressed to Susan Mikkelsen, Instruction and Scholarly Communication Librarian, or to Sara Davidson Squibb, User Communication and Instruction Librarian.

Collaborative Work Room Redesign:

In the Hands of Student Library Assistants

UC Merced Library student assistants selected the new finishes and colors for the furniture, technology and walls in the recently upgraded library Collaborative Work Room, KL 262. The room now has media:scape, a popular collaborative technology by Steelcase. The new technology allows multiple students to connect to the large display, facilitating group planning, sharing and learning. The room has quickly become the most popular of the library’s 14 student collaborative work rooms. Media:scape is also installed in KL 359 and may be reserved online for faculty and staff meetings.

IT Express Now at Library Services Desk

Support for CatCourses, Adobe Acrobat Pro, Sophos, CrashPlan, and Box, is now available for faculty, staff, and students at IT Express, a new service point located at the 2nd floor Library Services Desk. IT Express is the result of a collaboration between the UC Merced Library and Campus IT and designed to better meet the research and technology demands of UC Merced faculty, staff and students.

Last summer, Chief Information Officer Ann Kovalchick approached Associate University Librarian of Operations Eric Scott about the possibility of building a new IT service point in the Library. The idea was to combine the knowledge and expertise of IT with the accessibility and strong customer service focus of the Library in order to create a convenient new IT service point for the UC Merced community. Library staff had already been supporting wireless, printer, and VPN needs at the Library Services Desk, but sharing the space with IT Express allows for greatly expanded IT expertise, assistance, and desktop support to the UCM Community.

Situating the new IT Express service point at the Library Services Desk made good sense. The Library Services Desk is centrally located in a visible and highly trafficked area. During peak hours, 600-700 users are in the library and IT Express is available to support individuals with technology at their point of need. The UC Merced Library and Campus IT are excited about the new IT Express service point and about working together to better meet the needs of the UC Merced community.

IT Express, M-F, 8:30am-5:00pm:

• Wireless Setup

• Printer Setup

• VPN Setup

• Email Configuration

• CatCourses (LMS) Support

• Web Browser Issues

• Computer Driver Updates

UC3 Dash Service

Interested in sharing your research data?

UC Merced now has a live instance of UC3 Dash, a service of the University of California Curation Center of the California Digital Library. UC3 Dash provides an easy-to-use solution for the effective curation of and access to research data. Dash allows researchers to upload, preserve, and share their data, as well as to access and download the data of other researchers.

DMPTool V.2

A well-designed data management plan will pay off in the long run.

The Data Management Planning Tool (DMPTool) guides scholars through the process of formulating a rich data management plan, based on best practice and data needs. A service of the University of California Curation Center of the California Digital Library, the DMPTool is recommended for those applying for federal funding in order to meet funding requirements and ensure long-term preservation of, and access to, scientific data in digital formats.

STRUCTURES OF UTILITY:

Celebrating the Central Valley architecture and landscape to amplify human experience

Photographs by David Stark Wilson have been added to the UC Merced Library’s permanent art collection. Wilson, a photographer of California’s beautiful natural landscapes, frequented the backroads and freeways of Central California and became enamored with the sights of man-made machines and structures. “After repeatedly traversing the Central Valley, I became captivated by the agricultural buildings that punctuate its landscape,” Wilson writes in his book, Structures of Utility. “The [buildings'] origins were in simple utility, in adaptation to functional requirements, yet they had attained an elusive and austere elegance.”

Looking at Wilson’s work is striking to all who live in the valley and have seen similar sights. From its gold-mining past to its agricultural present, Wilson captures structures made over the past one and a half centuries in California, including hydraulic mines, stamp mills, windmills, tank houses, grain elevators, and silos extending towards the sky. Of his own photography, Wilson writes, “Absence of activity is common to the places I photograph... Though at first disquieting, this sense of abandonment is part of what attracts me. I can walk amid huge buildings in silence as absolute as a predawn in the mountains.... Replete with elaborate machinery, the buildings are tranquil, meditative.”

His fascination with agricultural structures is marked by the demolishing conquests of our modern world, however: “The vernacular structures of the turn of the century are rapidly disappearing. Our agricultural land is being colonized by tilt-up warehouses, factories, and corporate headquarters,” Wilson writes. “These structures are economically driven and no doubt profitable, but this is a profit we need to question.”

“Vessels of human endeavor, these structures demonstrate the importance of buildings that relate to the land… It is the value of form generated by function and place that is embodied in these structures of utility,” Wilson summarizes at the end of his book. Wilson's thought-provoking photography can be found framed throughout the 2nd floor of the library.

Library Partnership:

JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA & GREAT BASIN ANTHROPOLOGY

One of the early digitization projects the library undertook was the scanning and digitization of the Journal of California & Great Basin Anthropology (JCGBA), the only anthropological journal of California, featuring articles in all four areas of Anthropology: Linguistic, Biological, Archaeological, and Cultural. The journal is published twice a year by Malki Museum, Inc., in cooperation with the Department of Anthropology, San Diego State University. The journal publishes original works on the ethnography, ethno-history, linguistics, art, archeology, and prehistory of the Native Peoples of Alta and Baja, California as well as the Great Basin.

Kathleen Hull, UC Merced Associate Professor of Anthropology, approached the library about the need for the journal to be digitized and, subsequently, introduced library staff to members of the Malki Museum and JCGBA editorial board. In February 2008, the library finalized an agreement with the Malki, allowing for the journal to be digitized and uploaded to eScholarship with a 5 year embargo on new content. The work to scan and digitize the journal began in the summer of 2008 and by June of 2009, volumes 1-24 were scanned and openly available to scholars in eScholarship.

eScholarship access reports show that JCGBA articles are being actively used by scholars. In January 2015 alone, the journal had 3,647 views and 581 download requests. Queries can be traced from around the world and the journal is of interest to faculty and students at UC Merced, as well as to archaeologists interested in the West, audiences studying hunting and gathering societies worldwide, and professionals and contractors working across California.

UC Open Access Policy

In 2013, the Academic Senate of the University of California adopted an Open Access Policy to ensure that research articles authored by faculty at all 10 campuses of the UC are made available to the public at no charge. The California Digital Library (CDL), in conjunction with all ten campus partners, has developed a suite of OA tools and resources intended to ease the deposit of scholarly research and to support faculty participation in the UC Open Access Policy.

The deposit of articles is managed through eScholarship, UC’s open access repository and publishing platform. eScholarship provides a suite of open access, scholarly publishing services and research tools that enable scholars to have direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship.

Open Access Publishing Support for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars

The UC Merced Library has launched a fund to support open access (OA) publishing costs for UC Merced graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. The primary goals of the program are to support emerging scholars interested in making their research open to the public, reshape current scholarly publishing models, and foster greater dissemination of the scholarly output of the university. Finally, we hope to educate and encourage early-career scholars about the importance of controlling their own copyright.

If you are currently enrolled as a UC Merced graduate student or employed as a UC Merced postdoctoral scholar, you may be eligible for up to $2,000 to cover OA publishing fees. Only articles submitted to fully open access journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals will be funded. Additional information is available online or by contacting Susan Mikkelsen, Scholarly Communication Librarian.

New University Librarian Appointed

We are pleased to announce that Haipeng Li has been appointed as the University of California, Merced, University Librarian and will begin his new position on June 22, 2015. Mr. Li is currently the university librarian at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) where he has led the library in developing its vision and strategic direction. Prior to his appointment at HKBU, Li served as associate director of the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers University. There, he was responsible for research support services for undergraduate and graduate students, personnel administration, library planning, assessment and innovation. He also directed initiatives to expand outreach, engagement, collaborations and fundraising, including the establishment of the Data Services Center and the library’s Diversity Research Center. Li has also worked in various positions at Oberlin College, Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in English from Northeast Normal University in China; a master’s degree in southern studies from the University of Mississippi and a master’s degree in library and information science from the University of Arizona.