Yates, Elizabeth
- Degrees
- MLIS
- ORCID
- 0000-0002-0517-0936
- Position / Title
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Liaison and Scholarly Communication Librarian
Last updated September 22, 2021
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"It's a very straight space": gender-diverse students' narratives about the libraryYates, 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while using library bathrooms and study spaces and were distressed by encountering library materials expressing outdated, inaccurate information about gender identity/sexual diversity.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.
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"It's a very straight space": gender-diverse students' narratives about the libraryYates, 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.
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Subduing the “moral panic”: Sustaining a nuanced conversation about predatory publishingYates, 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.
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Are we walking the talk? Tensions between librarians' values, academic freedom and open scholarshipYates, Elizabeth (2019-06)Open access - the practice of freely sharing scholarly outputs online -- is steadily garnering support across the research community. At academic institutions, libraries are usually the standard-bearers for this trend, advancing open scholarship by providing services, infrastructure and funding - for example, employing scholarly communication experts, operating institutional repositories, and funding open access publication costs. This investment in personnel and resources reflects a shared priority of advancing more equitable systems for creating and sharing knowledge. Our professional organizations publicly espouse these values and engage in advocacy to advance open access projects and uptake. At an institutional level, library workers often lead the development of campus open access policies which encourage or commit researchers to publicly share their work. In Canada, nine academic institutions and ten libraries/librarian councils have adopted open access policies. Despite this wealth of activity and public professions of support for open scholarship, it is unclear whether academic librarians in Canada actually practice what we preach. Most of the open access statements/policies adopted by libraries merely encourage workers to make their scholarship freely available. Anecdotal evidence indicates a minority of us are actually archiving our work in institutional repositories or publishing in open access journals. This paper will provide preliminary results from a survey exploring how Canadian academic librarians’ professional, personal and collective values impact our publishing practices. In particular, results from this study will indicate how academic freedom provisions -- articulated in collective agreements, institutional policies and by professional organizations including CAPAL and CAUT -- may affect whether we choose to support open access with our words and actions. Academic freedom is usually appreciated as a protective measure, guarding librarians and faculty against repercussions for work or speech which may be viewed as controversial. Independently choosing how to disseminate research is often a key tenet of academic freedom policies. Accordingly, librarians may experience tension between our personal/professional support for the principle of open access and our will to exert academic freedom and publish where we please – including closed-access venues. This discordance not only affects our own scholarly practices but should also be acknowledged within librarians’ continuing efforts to encourage faculty to embrace open access.
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Engaging Faculty to Advance Campus Open Access Policies: Strategies and Lessons LearnedYates, Elizabeth; Kirchner, Joy; Robertson, Mark (2019-01-30)As champions of creating more equitable systems for sharing scholarly research, libraries are typically the leaders in developing open access policies at their institutions. This work aligns with evidence that effective policies can accelerate researchers’ adoption of open access and increase their rates of open access publishing/archiving. The benefits of Institutional open access policies include increasing public access to taxpayer-funded research, enhancing the visibility and impact of an institution’s research output and supporting author rights. While increasing numbers of institutions are adopting these policies, they are often a tough sell due to misconceptions about open access and concerns about infringing on faculty's academic freedom to publish where they please. Presenters and participants will discuss strategies for working with stakeholders to overcome barriers and create buy-in for openly sharing research. Participants will learn of models and tools for open access policy development and presenters will share insights and campus engagement strategies from their development of institutional open access policies at York University and Brock University.
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Publish, don’t perish: tips for evaluating journalsYates, Elizabeth (2018-06-12)So, you want make sure you publish your research in a “good” journal? Maybe your role includes advising others on how to select appropriate publication venues? It’s tricky navigating the complex and rapidly shifting terrain of scholarly publishing, where traditional hallmarks of quality such as Impact Factor no longer reign supreme. The rise of predatory journals makes the publishing environment even more challenging. This session explored strategies for evaluating the quality and relevance of academic journals, maximize the reach of one’s research and avoiding problematic publications.
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Personal Librarians: can we help with student retention?Yates, Elizabeth (2018-03)A strong body of research shows positive correlations between use of library resources and student success amd retention. Research on retention also shows the importance of students feeling connected to their university community. Personal librarian programs address both of those outcomes by promoting the use of library services and resources and by building positive relationships between students and their librarians. This lightning talk will describe a new personal librarian program aimed at improving student retention rates at Brock University in Ontario, Canada, where the university’s retention rates are below the provincial average and increasing retention is a campus priority.
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Walking the plank: how scholarly piracy affects publishers, libraries and their usersYates, Elizabeth (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2017-03)The arrival of technology supporting peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing in scholarly communication has, until recently, had minimal impact on libraries. However, threats posed by pirate sites including Library Genesis Project (LibGen) and Sci-Hub are now impacting both library users and library licensing agreements with publishers. Publishers are nervous as they witness their proprietary content leaking out of paywalled systems—not just hundreds of thousands of articles, but millions. Accordingly, publishers are monitoring activities in licensed products very closely for any behavior that they deem suspicious. When a user’s activities cause a publisher to question whether materials are being pirated, the outcomes can vary. Consequences can range from relatively minor inconvenience for blocked users, who must find workarounds to access scholarly content—to the potential for major disruption of a centuries-old proprietary publishing system. This article uses a case study involving a student at Brock University to highlight significant challenges facing libraries and the rights of their users in the current environment of piracy-wary academic publishers.
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“I think this is a great program”: using qualitative and quantitative data to assess a personal librarian programYates, Elizabeth (Ontario Library Association, 2017-02)
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"I would say, it is best to have a Personal Librarian": using qualitative and quantitative data to assess successYates, Elizabeth; Thiessen, Jennifer (2016-05)