Faculty Publications - Library
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Sage CampusThe SAGE Campus platform provides 18 different courses with roughly 220 hours of online learning modules. The author reviewed the service from the perspective of a college student to see if it was an appropriate learning environment. The primary audience for the courses are graduate students in the social sciences, but undergraduate and graduate students of all disciplines may find courses that are worthwhile to investigate. At the time of the review, the course topics covered content such as information literacy, data management and other data science skills, research design, and how to get published. Many librarians and teaching faculty may recommend students take these courses to supplement their education. Students can learn through these courses in a self-paced manner, and there are no scores or grades associated with completion of a course. Overall, the SAGE Campus platform provides a low-stress way for students to enhance their understanding of many topics relevant to research in the social sciences.
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Global Registry of Fossil FuelsThis resource provides a new way for people to investigate greenhouse gas emissions data from a wide variety of countries and from a global perspective. The creators of the database are aiming to inform corporate investors and policy makers, but it will be found by high school students and college students needing data for their papers concerning global warming. When researchers come across a new resource that provides global information on fossil fuel production and storage, the user should be cognizant of a bias to the presentation of the data. This resource is not immune to that issue. Overall, this resource is recommended, but the user should look carefully at the publishing source, the Carbon Tracker Initiative, to understand its motivations for creating this resource.
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Cooking up open access LIS journalsThis recipe is intended to help librarians start, build, grow, and maintain an open access journal in the field of library and information science (LIS). There are many recipe variations when it comes to the creation of open access journals. Most of this recipe will use the Journal of Creative Library Practice (JCLP) as a model because the author is more familiar with recent details of the technology and procedures. In the case of JCLP, several members of the Library Society of the World (LSW) are also involved in that project.
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Applied Science and Technology Source UltimateThis database provides access to a wide variety of journals, magazines, trade publications, and some books that are focused on scientific, engineering, and technological research. Over 5,000 sources are covered in the database, and about 1,750 of those provide some sort of full text. After some searching, it was found that about 25 to 30% of the articles indexed in the database are full text, and there are over 2.6 million full text articles. Thus, about 8+ million articles are indexed in the resource. Article records go back to the 1909. Many students and librarians are familiar with the EBSCO interface, and this database should be easy for many patrons to use.
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Collected papers of Albert EinsteinThis resource provides free access to the first 15 of 16 volumes and English translation supplements to much of the writings (letters, articles, and books) of Dr. Albert Einstein, and many of the letters written to Einstein in cases where permission could be obtained. This covers the years from his birth through May of 1927. Volume 16 (which covers June 1927 to May 1929) had been published in print in June of 2021, but that volume is not included in this online resource yet. Einstein was a prolific letter writer, and his archive of correspondence is substantial. Princeton University Press expects the whole collection to eventually encompass about 30 volumes, so this website covers roughly half of the material that they will eventually publish. This resource will help people understand Einstein’s thought processes and see what kind of life he lead before coming to the United States.
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Building the STEM librarian skill set: an exploratory study to identify skills for STEM librariansSubject specialist positions in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) often emphasize an understanding of the subject as well as knowledge of librarianship. Masters of Library Science (MLS) students and newly graduated librarians without formal STEM backgrounds can find it difficult to gain the skills or experience desired for these positions. The authors are designing a certification program curriculum to supplement the formal MLS curriculum. The goal of the program is to better equip MLS students and new professionals with the skills to be a good STEM librarian. Students will gain practical knowledge of a range of science and engineering disciplines to better understand their working environment. To inform the development of the program, the authors performed an investigatory analysis of the skills necessary for success as subject specialists, with a review of the literature, analysis of job ads, and a survey of current STEM librarians' responsibilities and backgrounds. This analysis supports the position that a subject background is an asset for STEM librarians, providing the knowledge to enhance their performance, communicate more effectively with users, and broaden their choices in the job market. A STEM certification program for librarians can provide a unique and valuable continuing education experience in this area.
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Partnering with teaching faculty on research projectsCollaborating with faculty in other departments on campus can be one of the most rewarding and challenging types of research partnerships for the practitioner-researcher librarian. The challenges to such a partnership can take the form of different departmental and professional needs and goals and may include accounting for different academic schedules and finding areas of mutual interest. However, when those challenges are addressed, you can develop a strong, rewarding research partnership. The most obvious benefit to cross-disciplinary research is the ability to learn about and engage with disciplines beyond your own. A partnership, such as ours at the Colorado School of Mines between and instruction librarian and a teaching faculty member, gets the librarian out of the library and more actively involved in the needs and curriculum of the departments they serve on campus. Throughout the course of the partnership, you learn more about your partner's home discipline and develop a shared vocabulary of terms and concepts. Aspects of the process for developing such a partnership can be daunting to novice practitioner-researchers. In this chapter, we provide advice on finding, growing, and maintaining a research partnership. We also provide techniques and suggestions for navigating the challenges of cross-disciplinary research that we have found useful.
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Cooking with authority: using a flipped lesson and librarian meeting to evaluate authorityThis recipe is designed for an introduction to design course and is most suited to courses with a team project. It can be used to support courses in disciplines across STEM, especially environmental science, mechanical engineering, sustainability studies, and civil engineering. It can also be effectively deployed in courses in which students engage with stakeholders or customers of some sort. Librarians can use the lesson to help students tease out the contextual nature of authority and the role of stakeholder input plays in good design.