Library News

Sarah Sheets Reaches 20 Year Anniversary with the UC Merced Library

Published December 4, 2023

Sarah Sheets has been with the UC Merced Library for 20 years! She started in technical services at Rollins College's Olin Library in Winter Park, Florida, and discovered that she really loved this work.

After moving cross-country to Merced for her spouse's work, her mother-in-law mentioned a new university opening; she suggested that Sarah send in her resume. Sarah's first call was with Donald Barclay, who offered her a part-time position soon after. Her first couple of years were spent working at UC Merced's Castle Air Force location since the campus was not yet open.

Initially, Sarah's portfolio as Technical Services Coordinator involved working with both print and electronic materials. She ensured that the Library's resources were cataloged in OCLC and discoverable. When the Library was able to add another position to the Collection Services team, Sarah became our Electronic Resources Coordinator, focusing solely on digital resources.

Sarah's position requires systemwide involvement, and her participation at this level has only increased with the implementation of a systemwide integrated library system (SILS). She was deeply involved in the SILS launch which required an enormous amount of work as data was extracted for the migration. She currently serves on a systemwide group to examine what statistics are most needed from the Library's software system and how they can be exported for reporting purposes and collection decisions.

On a typical day, she is connecting with her co-workers, trouble-shooting any e-resource access issues, contributing to systemwide projects, cataloging UC Merced theses and dissertations, and making sure that the rich electronic information resources available to our UC Merced students, faculty, and staff are findable in UC Library Search.

When recognized at our All-Staff meeting, Sarah's supervisor Jim Dooley spoke highly of her and with much appreciation. "Sarah is an important contributor to the Library's success in providing access to information resources. She is also a joy to work with."

Congrats Sarah!

Because of decreased campus financial support, the UC Merced Library needs to cancel access to several electronic information resources as of January 1, 2024.  Due to low usage, access to the following resources will be cancelled:

• Cambridge Structural Database
• American Society of Civil Engineering (ASCE) 2024 e-books and proceedings
• American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME) 2024 e-books and conference papers
• Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) 2024 e-books
• Mary Ann Liebert medical journal package

These cancellations have been discussed with the Academic Senate Committee on Library & Scholarly Communications (LASC).  Questions or concerns may be directed to Jim Dooley, Head of Collection Services, University Library jdooley@ucmerced.edu or to the members of LASC.

Though requests for new information resources may not be filled this fiscal year due to budget constraints, faculty are encouraged to notify the Library of any information resource needs through its Recommend a Purchase form.

Faculty Author Series: Dr. Nicosia Shakes

*Co-sponsored by the UC Merced Center for Africana Studies

Please join the UC Merced Library and the Center for Africana Studies for a faculty author talk featuring Assistant Professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Nicosia Shakes. Dr. Shakes' new book, Women's Activist Theatre in Jamaica and South Africa explores the relationship between activism and theater production. Shakes examines how theater intersects with histories and geographies of oppression and resistance, the connections created by movements of people in colonial and settler colonial histories, and the ideas of womanism and feminism.

When: December 6, 2023

Where: UC Merced Library, KL 232

Time: 11am - 12pm with time for Q&A

Light refreshments will be provided.

Registration is encouraged to attend. The first 15 to register and attend will receive a free copy of the book.

For more details about the book visit the Library's event page.

REGISTER NOW

The University of California will end open access publishing support through its agreement with IEEE effective January 1, 2024. The UC libraries’ funding support for page charges will also end at that time. Reading access to IEEE publications will continue without interruption — essentially reverting to the type of agreement UC had with IEEE prior to the open access publishing pilot.

Since the pilot agreement began in July 2022, only 20 percent of UC authors publishing with IEEE have chosen to publish open access — far fewer than with UC’s other open access agreements — and of those who chose to publish open access, fewer contributed grant funds toward the open access fee than projected.

With the low number of UC authors choosing open access with IEEE, and the resulting financial costs under the structure of this particular pilot agreement, the data do not support its continuation. Cost containment has always been a top priority, and a metric against which all the University’s open access pilot agreements are evaluated. The decision to end funding support for publishing with IEEE was made by the UC Libraries in consultation with Faculty representatives from the Academic Senate, and supports that commitment to fiscal responsibility.

Even after UC’s funding support for publishing in IEEE journals ends, reading access to IEEE  publications will continue.

UC authors who publish in IEEE journals will also still be able to make their articles open access, but starting January 1, 2024, authors will once again be responsible for covering the open access fee — as they were before the pilot agreement — since funding support will no longer be available through the UC libraries. As always, authors have the option to deposit their pre-publication, peer-reviewed author accepted manuscript in an open access repository like arXiv or UC’s eScholarship for free.

UC’s open access agreements with other publishers are also unaffected. While this specific approach, for these particular disciplines, did not work out as we hoped, author participation rates for UC’s other open access agreements are generally much stronger than they were with IEEE. Open access funding support remains available to UC-affiliated researchers who publish in journals covered under these other agreements, and authors are encouraged to take advantage of it.

UC researchers with questions about this change to the IEEE agreement should contact Jerrold Shiroma, jshiroma@ucmerced.edu.