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  • Leveraging Wikipedia in undergraduate health sciences education: a key tool for information literacy and knowledge translation

    Smith, Denise (University of Alberta, 2023-12-01)
    Background: Academic institutions and libraries are familiar with Wikipedia. There is growing momentum in higher education for using Wikipedia as a learning tool in various contexts. These include, but are not limited to, the use of Wikipedia-based assignments to teach information literacy, science communication, evidence-based practice, and more. Although there is growing acceptance of Wikipedia’s value in the classroom, there are limited exemplars available for how it is applied in undergraduate health sciences education. Description: This program description describes a librarian instructed course in the Bachelor of Health Sciences Program at McMaster University in which students dedicate one academic term to learning about Wikipedia content production and making contributions to a health-related Wikipedia article of their choice. Outcomes: In the five iterations of this course that have been offered, undergraduate health sciences students have made significant contributions to 25 health-related articles in Wikipedia. They have added more than 120,000 words and over 2,000 references to high-quality literature. In class, conversations emerged about the meaningfulness of the editing Wikipedia, information literacy, and knowledge translation.
  • “I’m comfortable with it”: User stories of health information on Wikipedia

    Smith, Denise A. (First Monday, 2023-08-12)
    Applying a critical-constructivist approach, 21 semi-structured interviews conducted from June to October 2021 were analyzed thematically. Qualitative analysis suggests that users reported that Wikipedia’s health content can facilitate personal agency, is familiar and convenient to access, and that individuals’ trust in Wikipedia is contextual, conditional, and framed by their personal experiences.
  • Scaffolded, embedded required: information literacy education in undergraduate health sciences

    Smith, Denise A.; Sanger, Stephanie (University of Alberta, 2023-08-01)
    Background: The Health Sciences Library and the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) Program (BHSc) at McMaster University worked together to build a multi-year information literacy (IL) curriculum embedded within the program under a suite of courses called Praxis Pathways. Description: Praxis Pathways consists of four Threads. Thread 4: Information Literacy is the focus of this case report. The authors will describe the multi-year embedded IL curriculum, which is scaffolded to build both IL skills, such as database searching, and introduce students to key conceptual conversations in IL, production and dissemination. Outcomes: BHSc program graduates in 2023 will be the first to have completed all four years of the Praxis Pathways courses, including the IL program developed and delivered by the library. The authors will describe how the impact of the program will be evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively going forward. Conclusion: Embedded librarianship for multi-year, scaffolded IL education in undergraduate programs continues to be a rarity, despite the acknowledgement that one-shot instruction has several limitations. The authors present this case report to share how they embedded a for-cred IL curriculum in an undergraduate program that looks beyond the one-shot, skill-based tutorial and focuses on developing adaptive, information-literate lifelong learners.
  • "It's a very straight space": gender-diverse students' narratives about the library

    Yates, Elizabeth (2023-08-01)
    How do students with diverse gender identities experience and perceive the academic library? What can we learn from our students to help develop services, spaces and collections that support their safety and well-being? This presentation will highlight results from a qualitative case study at an academic library by exploring themes related to the students’ experiences with library workers, the library’s physical environment and its collections. The study results position the library as both a source of positive, transformational potential and site of harm and oppression. Students reported experiencing great discomfort while using library bathrooms and study spaces and were distressed by encountering library materials containing outdated, inaccurate information about gender identity/sexual diversity. Gender diverse students described affirming experiences with library workers while being confronted with library technology – e.g. computers – which deadnamed them. And they questioned why libraries provide platforms to transphobic speakers in the name of intellectual freedom and highlighted the dangers of espousing neutrality. While themes surfaced by this study reflect the participants’ individual lived experiences, they are broadly reflected in survey results, scholarly literature and other research documenting these concerns. Finally, this presentation will describe students’ suggestions for how academic libraries can bridge the gaps to become safer and more inclusive. Attendees will be invited to reflect on changes they could incorporate in their home libraries.
  • "It's a very straight space": gender-diverse students' narratives about the library

    Yates, Elizabeth (2023-08-01)
    How do students with diverse gender identities experience and perceive the academic library? What can we learn from our students to help develop services, spaces and collections that support their safety and well-being? This presentation will highlight results from a qualitative case study at an academic library by exploring themes related to the students’ experiences with library workers, the library’s physical environment and its collections. The study results position the library as both a source of positive, transformational potential and site of harm and oppression. Students reported experiencing great discomfort while using library bathrooms and study spaces and were distressed by encountering library materials expressing outdated, inaccurate information about gender identity/sexual diversity. They described affirming experiences with library workers while being confronted with library technology – e.g. computers – which deadnamed them. And they questioned why libraries provide platforms to transphobic speakers in the name of intellectual freedom and highlighted the dangers of espousing neutrality. While themes surfaced by this study reflect the participants’ individual lived experiences, they are broadly reflected in survey results, scholarly literature and other works documenting these topics. Finally, this presentation will describe students’ suggestions for how academic libraries can become safer and more inclusive.
  • Subduing the “moral panic”: Sustaining a nuanced conversation about predatory publishing

    Yates, Elizabeth (2023-06-27)
    Introduction: Predatory publishing has long raised alarm bells among faculty, librarians and research administrators. Often falsely conflated with open access publishing as a whole, predatory publishing is painted as a grievous threat to the sanctity of scholarly research and a waste of research funding. However, the 'moral panic'* over predatory publishing may be unjustified. Equipping researchers to make informed decisions about publishing is a more sustainable approach. Building partnerships and sharing evidence about faculty publishing patterns can support this type of advocacy. Description: Librarians at institutions without subscriptions to costly citation analysis tools such as Scopus may find it difficult to analyze open access publishing patterns. However, freely available academic search tools such as The Lens can provide useful snapshots to guide education and support for researchers. Data from Brock University indicates that our faculty are overwhelmingly publishing in OA journals which would not typically be deemed predatory. Partnering with institutional research services via outreach and workshops has allowed the Library to share this data and other information about open access with key audiences of research administrators and faculty. Outcomes: This outreach helps the Library to guide researchers towards a more robust understanding of open access and scholarly publishing and away from reliance on problematic tools such as blacklists. In addition to helping authors make informed decisions about where to publish, such programming has boosted uptake for research consultations around publishing and open access. Discussion: The presenter will share tools and strategies for implementing this collaborative approach at other libraries.
  • It’s Time to Recognize Wikipedia as a Health Information Resource

    Smith, Denise A (Taylor & Francis, 2023-05-26)
    With more than 300 language editions, Wikipedia offers accessible health information written in plain language to a wide audience. Having survived more than twenty years, it is broadly considered the “grown-up” of the internet due to its sheer longevity and maturity. Along with evidence that Wikipedia is more reliable than widely believed, it has emerged as the most frequently accessed web site for health information despite a lingering stigma. Grounded in real-life examples of health events, the author reinforces Wikipedia as a tool for public health education. With wider acceptance of Wikipedia as a health information resource, existing opportunities for education, investment, and improvement of the world’s largest encyclopedia can be cultivated.
  • No Justice, Only Struggle

    Zvyagintseva, Lydia; Ribaric, Tim (University of Toronto Libraries - UOTL, 2023-01-09)
    2022 has been a year of overlapping crises. The so-called “Freedom Convoys” paralyzing Canadian communities, the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to cause excess death and disability, the war in Ukraine, the intensifying effects of climate change, and increasing inflation have all signaled that we find ourselves in a new era, one that can be described as authoritarian capitalism. In this article, we view the restructuring of Canadian universities as yet another facet of authoritarian capitalism, which uses overlapping crises to further proletarianize library labour and fully subsume it into the “learning factory.” Using Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson’s theorization of the politics of capital’s operations, we examine the library restructuring processes taking place at four Canadian universities: Alberta, Brock, Laurentian, and OCAD. We view the reorganizations taking place there as efforts on behalf of university administrators to use the intensification of global forces of capitalism to exploit academic librarian labour. Ultimately, we argue that Canadian librarians are witnessing both formal and real subsumption in Canadian universities, precipitated by the overlapping crises outlined earlier. As a result, we insist that librarians need to develop a politics of struggle to build collective consciousness and action in the face of authoritarian capitalism.
  • “Put the fucking salary in the job ad!”

    Ribaric, Tim (Routledge, 2022-10-11)
    In February 2016, I activated the @lis_grievances Twitter bot. The dynamics of the bot are straightforward and can be described in three steps: First, a person sends a direct message to the account; second, the message is stripped of all identifying information; and third, upon passing a minimal list of posting criteria, the message is tweeted. More than five years on, the bot has collected a corpus of thousands of tweets, some safe to publish on Twitter and some not, ranging from benign takes on the library establishment to profanity-laden tirades. Quite often, the tweets invoke feelings that range from pathos to disgust, and sometimes even situational irony and humor as evidenced, for example, in this tweet from June 1, 2018: “How can we innovate when we don’t have permissions to install software?” This chapter examines tweeted content through the online disinhibition effect (ODE), a theory explaining how anonymity pushes sentiment into extreme directions. According to ODE, users of @lis_grievances experience a lack of restraint due to their anonymity and, thus, feel comfortable venting and otherwise offering observations of and comments on perceived flaws in their individual workplaces and in the LIS profession at large. Using text analysis and a new custom metric called the grief index, a qualitative and quantitative examination of the corpus of tweets is presented and explored as evidence of systemic dysfunctional library states.
  • Data Analysis as the Next Step

    Ribaric, Tim (2600 Enterprises, Inc., 2022)
    Article outlines the importance of community action for providing infrastructure to support analysis and use of whistle-blower data. Datashare from ICIJ (https://datashare.icij.org/) is described.
  • Information Seeking Behaviors, Attitudes, and Choices of Academic Mathematicians

    Gordon, Ian D.; Cameron, Brian D.; Chaves, Debbie.; Hutchinson, Rebecca (Taylor & Francis, 2020-06-05)
    Mathematicians in academic institutions utilize a variety of resources and strategies to seek, find, and use scholarly information and news. Using a sample of mathematicians, researchers surveyed 112 students and faculty at four Canadian university institutions to explore self-perceived success rates, resources consulted, databases used, use of social media, and citation management systems. Further, 12 follow-up interviews were completed with mathematicians to better interpret survey results, resulting information-seeking behaviors, choices, strategies, and feelings on keeping up to date with information needs. According to survey results, a minority of mathematicians (12.5 percent) acknowledged that they were successfully keeping up to date. However, a significant number of mathematicians (28.6 percent) indicated that they were unsuccessful and could do better in remaining current with information needs. Co-investigators, using qualitative analyses, identified four emergent themes related to remaining current: (1) The “slower pace of math” pervades all aspects of this discipline;” (2) There are “too many papers – and not enough time” to effectively search, evaluate, and read scholarly papers of interest; (3) Mathematicians collectively acknowledge that they are open to strategies and technologies where they “could do better” keeping up to date; and (4) Mathematicians have divided loyalties using databases when searching for information by means of “MathSciNet in a Google world.” Additional insights document how mathematicians are guided by mathematical peculiarities and discipline-specific practices. This study helps to shed light on opportunities for academic librarians to identify and meet mathematicians’ evolving information needs.
  • Information Seeking Behaviors, Attitudes, and Choices of Academic Physicists

    Gordon, Ian D.; Chaves, Debbie; Dearborn, Dylanne; Hendrikx, Shawn; Hutchinson, Rebecca; Popovich, Christoper; White, Michael (Taylor & Francis, 2022-01-10)
    Physicists in academic institutions utilize a variety of resources and strategies to seek, find, and use scholarly information and news. Using a sample of physicists, researchers surveyed 182 students and faculty at seven Canadian university institutions to explore self-perceived success rates, resources consulted, databases used, and use of social media and citation management systems. To complement the survey, 11 follow up interviews/focus groups were completed with participants to further uncover information-seeking behaviors, choices, strategies, and feelings around keeping up to date with information needs. According to survey results, a minority of physicists (15.4%) acknowledged that they were successfully keeping up to date. However, a significant number of physicists (28.6%) indicated that they were unsuccessful and could do better in remaining current with information needs. Co-investigators, using qualitative analyses, identified four emergent themes: (1) There are “too many papers – and not enough time” to effectively search, evaluate and read scholarly papers of interest; (2) Staying up to date is important especially in competitive research areas; (3) Graduate students seek information differently than faculty and experienced researchers; and (4) The arXiv database is important to many physicists. Additional minor themes included physics-related publishing is constantly evolving; physicists use a variety of information-seeking behaviors; and, information-seeking methods can differ between physics subdisciplines. This study aims to shed light on opportunities for academic librarians to identify and meet physicists’ evolving information behaviors, attitudes, choices, and needs.
  • InfoSkills PLUS: Your Key to Research Success

    Lowry, Linda Darlene (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2005-04-07)
    Discover the advantages of collaborating with other campus partners to develop, promote, and deliver a unique non-credit interactive information skills workshop series. Learn the importance of flexibility interactivity and modularity to the success of a non-credit information skills program. Learn how to incorporate the knowledge management practices of Learning Before, Learning During, and Learning After into team project activities.
  • I still haven't found what I'm looking for: Reflections on 10+ years of providing library orientation and instruction to a Business English bridging program

    Lowry, Linda Darlene (2017-05-11)
    A librarian's personal reflection on 10 plus years of providing orientation and information literacy instruction to graduate students in a Business English bridging program at Brock University.
  • Benchmarking business database holdings in Canada: Results of a gap analysis

    Lowry, Linda Darlene (2015-04-14)
    This lightning talk presents the results of an exploratory study of the database holdings of an aspirant group of ten AACSB/Equis accredited Canadian business schools with doctoral programs. Who had the most databases? What were the most widely held titles? What does a gap analysis reveal about how Brock University fares against this aspirant group?
  • Book Review: Rabbits

    Ribaric, Tim (2600 Enterprises, Inc., 2021)
    Book Review of 'Rabbits' written by Terry Miles.
  • DESIGN SPRINTS AND DIRECT EXPERIMENTATION: DIGITAL HUMANITIES MUSIC PEDAGOGY AT A SMALL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE

    Murgu, Cal (Music Library Association, 2021-06)
    In this essay, we detail the pedagogical collaboration between a digital humanities librarian, a professor of music and digital media, and a second-year music student that took the form of a design sprint. The product of the design sprint was the Mapping Sentiments through Music (MStM) application. Using this project as a case study, we argue that both digital humanities and music education share a commonality: both disciplines can incorporate elements of design thinking to be successful. As a result, our efforts center direct experimentation with a team, and foster design thinking by promoting descriptive exchange, creative problem solving, and the creation of emergent rather than explicitly delimited meanings. We conclude with several remarks on overlaps between music and design pedagogy, and on librarian-faculty collaborations. This article was published in the Music Library Association’s journal, Notes 77, 4, June 2021, and 561-585. The version of record is available at https://proxy.library.brocku.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=150204301&site=ehost-live&scope=site. This material may not be copied or reposted without written permission of MLA

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