Library Conferences and Publications

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    Test 1 20240902
    (2024) Lecat, Véronique
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    Insight into Faculty Open Access Perceptions: A Quantitative Analysis among UAE Faculty
    (Routledge, 2022-09-21) Lusk, Jeniece; Jones, Kara; Ross, Alanna; Lecat, Veronique
    Open access (OA) publishing presents university librarians, administrators, and faculty researchers with a paradox of both opportunities and challenges. For faculty researchers in particular, the decision of whether to pursue OA publication of their scholarship is driven by their perceptions of the credibility and quality of OA publishing. While there is a variety of extant literature broaching these perceptions, there are few quantitative analyses with an n greater than 100 respondents, and a notable lack of research in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study mitigates this gap in scholarship regarding OA publishing, offering a quantitative analysis of a survey sample of 134 UAE faculty researchers. We find statistically significant findings regarding the relationship between one’s position on OA and length of publishing career and professorial rank. Similarly, we find that those with favourable views of OA publishing are more likely to believe that OA journals are peer reviewed, increase likelihood of being cited, allow authors to repost content, and are a more principled alternative to traditional publishers. Those who believe that their research should be freely available to all readers or that OA publishing broadens their research impact were also highly likely to hold favourable views of OA publishing. Finally, our findings suggest that support for OA publishing at the departmental and institutional level remains ambiguous, with findings yielding contradicting results on the matter. The study contributes to content regarding scholarship, library science, and university administration.
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    Insights into Faculty-Librarian Collaborations around the Framework Findings from the 2018 Co-design Survey
    (Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), 2020) Stöpel, Michael; Piotto, Livia; Furno, Christine; Spasov, Krasimir; Zargaryan, Tatev
    Since the 1980s, assessment has been one of the most frequently investigated topics in library and information science literature, seen by librarians as a valid tool for analyzing the effectiveness and impact of teaching. With this in mind, after the Paris workshop and the rollout of the co-designed pilot courses, the AMICAL Information Literacy Committee (ILC) wanted to assess whether the courses had been successful with regard to both learning and teaching and to determine new fruits the co-designing had produced. A second, but equally important, motivation was to report back to the AMICAL Consortium, which funded and supported our project from the beginning. The main goal was to collect qualitative feedback to give insight into the projects and to build a "thick description" of the teaching experience. In order to effectively assess the course design project, as well as provide essential feedback to our stakeholders, the ILC developed and administered a survey about the co-design experience. This survey was conducted among twenty-six participants from eleven different liberal arts institutions outside the United States that are all members of the AMICAL Consortium (appendix 2A). The survey participants came from diverse countries: Lebanon, Armenia, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Kuwait, Italy, Switzerland, Kyrgyzstan, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and France. It is interesting to see how the teaching experience and the idea of liberal arts education unfolds within the local contexts of these different cultures as well as different disciplines. For instance, for a better understanding of classroom dynamics, aspects such as attitudes toward female teachers or methods used to teach history in different countries must be taken into account when analyzing responses.
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    Connecting social technologies with information literacy
    (Taylor & Francis, 2007) Jones, Kara
    Social technologies such as weblogs, wikis, and social bookmarking are emerging both as information resources and as tools for research. This paper reflects on these technologies and suggests they may be well placed to build fluency in the higher-order thinking skills outlined in various information literacy frameworks, particularly in an educational context. A high proportion of today’s learners are very comfortable with technology and Web 2.0 resources. The characteristics of the information they are accessing are also changing, bringing a stronger need for sophisticated evaluation and analysis skills. Where do social technologies fit within information literacy frameworks, and where can they be used in the day to day instruction of information skills? This paper suggests social technologies perform a dual role: they are not only useful sources of information but also resources to be used to develop ideas and research, using collaboration and community platforms with which learners today are familiar with. Librarians who provide information literacy instruction would benefit from an awareness of these tools and where they sit within today’s information environment.
  • Publication
    WMS, APIs and LibGuides: Building a Better Database A-Z List
    (2018) Ramshaw, Veronica; Lecat, Veronique; Hodge, Thomas
    At the American University of Sharjah, our Databases by title and by subject pages are the 3rd and 4th most visited pages on our website. When we changed our ILS from Millennium to OCLC’s WorldShare Management Services (WMS), our previous automations which kept our Databases A-Z pages up-to-date were no longer usable and needed to be replaced. Using APIs, a Perl script, and LibGuides’ database management interface, we developed a workflow that pulls database metadata from WMS Collection Manager into a clean public-facing A-Z list. This article will discuss the details of how this process works, the advantages it provides, and the continuing issues we are facing.
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    WMS, APIs and LibGuides: Building a Better A-Z List
    (2018-02-22) Ramshaw, Veronica
  • Publication
    First Library in the Middle East to Adopt WMS
    (2017-02) Lecat, Veronique
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    Tracking Research Impact
    (2015-11) Ross, Alanna
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    The Liaison Librarian Program - Meeting Faculty Needs?
    (2015-11-12) Flanagan, Daphne; Ross, Alanna
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    Threshold Concepts & Assessment
    (2015-01-22) Alwan, Ahmed
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    Staff Development at the American University of Sharjah Library
    (2014-11-23) Deakin, Paula; Furno, Christine
    To fulfill the AUS Library mission, librarians help staff develop the skills necessary to provide exemplary customer service to the AUS academic community.
  • Publication
    Using Assessment to Understand Students
    (2014-11-23) Flanagan, Daphne; Ross, Alanna
    AUS Library users were surveys about the quality of the library and its services. Major findings: Overall satisfaction is excellent, Noise is an issue, Website needs improvement, Faculty want more resources.
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    Issues and challenges surrounding library management
    (2013-11-07) Burke, Jane; McDonald, John
    This keynote address deals with the changing role of the academic library and how library administrators and suppliers are responding. John McDonald was appointed Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer for the Claremont University Consortium on October 1, 2011. The Claremont University Consortium is an unusual organization with a mission to serve the needs of seven independent colleges known as "The Claremont Colleges" located in Southern California. CUC is a nationally recognized educational model for academic support, student support and institutional support services to meet the needs of 6,300 students and 2,300 faculty and staff, providing 28 different services, including central library services. Mr. McDonald is responsible for providing leadership in managing the daily operations of Information Technology Services (including library services), Telecommunications Services, and Records Management. CUC was a pioneer in providing centralized services across multiple institutions, and that model is of increasing interest. Mr. McDonald will speak about how the Library of the Claremont Colleges has responded to its evolving mission. Researchers are increasingly turning to the library for assistance and support in preserving and providing access to research data and datasets, dissemination and discovery of their research output and metrics to assess the impact of their research. In the era of predominately electronic collections, academic institutions are also requiring that libraries demonstrate their value. While some of these needs naturally fall in traditional areas of expertise and operations for librarians, others require the development of new skills and leveraging new technologies. Mr. McDonald will discuss how Claremont is responding to these changing needs, both from a technology and staff development point of view. Jane Burke is the vice president for Strategic Initiatives at ProQuest. She joined ProQuest in 2005. She has provided strategic oversight for such projects as Summon, ProQuest’s preeminent discovery service. Currently, she is involved in the development of Intota, ProQuest’s new collection management solution and of Video Preservation and Discovery Service, which is launching in November. Jane Burke is the vice president for Strategic Initiatives at ProQuest. She joined ProQuest in 2005. She has provided strategic oversight for such projects as Summon, ProQuest’s preeminent discovery service. Currently, she is involved in the development of Intota, ProQuest’s new collection management solution and of Video Preservation and Discovery Service, which is launching in November.
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    The long and winding road: the world economy, the Arab Spring, and what it means for you
    (2013-11-07) Bew, Robin
    The Middle East region is being rocked by political turmoil and violence. But dig beneath the headlines and it is clear that, while some countries are suffering greatly and their economic and political outlook is dark, others remain vibrant sources of growth. How vulnerable are these more uplifting stories to contagion from the Syria and Egypt? Will tensions over Iran's nuclear programme ease or increase, and what does this mean for the rest of the region? Can smaller Middle East countries carve out a role for themselves in the global economy which moves beyond hydrocarbons to broader based sources of income and growth? What role can education and research play in that economic development process, and what opportunities does the advent of the knowledge and digital economy provide for Middle Eastern states? Robin Bew, Managing Director of The Economist Intelligence Unit, will share his views on these issues and take questions from the floor.
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    eBook strategies for building collections and framework models
    (2013-11-07) Paulson, Kari; Estelle, Lorraine
    As adoption of ebooks continues to grow, libraries are being presented with a growing range of access and pricing models, including (but not limited to) single-user purchase, multi-user purchase, subscription, collections and bundles, demand-driven acquisition, rental and consortia programs. Choice is naturally a good thing but with many options, it can often be confusing and difficult for libraries to know which models will offer the return on investment. It’s truly not a case of ‘either/or’ with ebook access models. Models perform differently depending on the types of content and library. With a substantial and growing body of usage and expenditure data, we are now in a prime position to exploit the interplay between usage and expenditure and provide better analytics and recommendations tools to aid libraries in making informed decisions about which content will work best under which access models. These tools should include better automation around access models so that we avoid the dreaded turn-away and ensure true value for budget dollar – benefiting both libraries and publishers alike.