Recent Submissions
Item The works of James D. Dana, then and now: An enduring legacy for mineralogy and for libraries
Adams, KristenJames D. Dana is a historical figure in geology and mineralogy who lived from 1813-1895. Early in his life he was a student of Asa Gray, who would later become a well-known botanist, and was also a student under Benjamin Silliman, the founder of the American Journal of Science. When Dana was in his 20’s he sailed on a U.S. Navy expedition as the official mineralogist, and later became a professor at Yale. Over his lifetime he corresponded with other major figures in the history of science including Berzelius, Lyell, Agassiz, and Darwin. He was very prolific, authoring hundreds of scientific articles, and of interest to librarians, a number of book series on mineralogy, which continued to be updated after his death. One such series is ‘The System of Mineralogy’, that contains a mineral classification scheme he devised, in which each mineral is assigned a number, as a sort of unique ID. As new minerals were discovered and known minerals were reclassified, the scheme necessarily needed to be updated. He himself wrote, and rewrote ‘The System of Mineralogy’ up to the 5th edition, his son Edward S. Dana wrote the 6th edition; and the most recent edition, the 8th is from 1997. The classification system has parallels to the more familiar CAS registry numbers for chemicals. The works of this historical figure continues to endure as valuable resources for researchers and library collections in the modern day.Item Where did all the books go? Consolidating, relocating and reorganizing the church library after space renovations
Adams, KristenThe space the church library had long resided in, the Molyneux Lounge, underwent renovations in summer to fall of 2023. The book collection therefore needed to be relocated and dramatically downsized to fit in the new space. All the remaining books were digitally cataloged, physically reorganized by topic on the shelves and the library is now much more browsable and user friendly. During this presentation, the details of this process will be shared, and the question of ‘where did all the books go’, will be answered.Item Dramatically Downsizing a Map Collection: A story from one library’s experience with practical advice for others
Adams, KristenOnce upon a time our campus, like many others, had a science library with a map room. Not that long ago, the science library was closed permanently and needed to integrate its collections into the main library building on campus. This was not a small undertaking. The map collection was a lower priority and waited till librarians had finished weeding and migrating the book collection. The aim was to keep only 5-10% of the map collection, due to the available space to relocate to and the minimal use. The dilemma therefore was deciding what to keep, not what to withdraw. This was discussed and settled by a few librarians, the actual sorting and weeding commenced by only a single librarian, and the project eventually wrapped up two years later. The extended project length was due to a variety of factors. One of the main reasons was that more than half of the maps were not cataloged, which was a surprise to all involved; this meant that it was not possible to use the catalog as a weeding tool, every drawer needed to be physically sorted through. An additional obstacle was that for weeding purposes and procedures the maps fell into two categories, U.S. government documents, and non-government documents; the process of deaccessioning government documents is very particular and is laid out by federal policies whereas it is much simpler for non-government documents. Unfortunately, these two types were often physically interfiled and needed to be separated. This presentation will share additional details and hurdles to the project’s completion. While every situation is unique, libraries are constantly looking to consolidate spaces for other purposes, and map collections aren’t used as frequently as in the past, with the rise and convenience of digitally available maps, thereby making themselves natural targets. The presenter will share advice on weeding map collection, at any scale, including what to be aware of, and how to tackle the challenges that come with it.Item Oxford Presbyterian Church Geology Guidebook
Adams, Kristen; Adams, GordonThe purpose of this guide is to enlighten the curious about the stones, the paleoenvironments and geologic processes in which they formed and the fossils of creatures that lived long ago which are preserved within. Intended as a self guided tour in and around the Memorial Building, an identification guide and details on where to find certain fossil specimens is included.Item Bringing geology and early science literacy to preschool classrooms with storytime and show & tell: A collaboration between a librarian and a geologist
Adams, Kristen; Adams, GordonA two-person team, a STEM librarian with a background in geology, and a freelance geologist, share a long history of doing geology outreach events for the public, including at a natural history museum and the public library. With time comes experience in discovering what works and what doesn’t for drop-in events or table sessions with the public, including very young audiences. However, visiting a school classroom was new; recently the team visited two preschools, one in the local school district and in a church, with students aged 3-6. All sessions had a story about rocks followed by a show and tell of rock, mineral and fossil specimens. The kids and teachers absolutely loved it, and have either already made a repeat visit, or have plans to. This is success in many ways. First, it fosters lifelong learning and curiosity, as it introduces rocks and fossils they might see in a museum, and not all kids have the opportunity to go to museums. In these visits, they get hands-on experiences and much of the show and tell is driven by their questions or observations. Second, it builds good will in the community to have the university library visit a very young audience, and is valuable especially to smaller preschools who don’t have the opportunity to bring in special guests. For the outreach team, it’s beneficial to stretch communication skills, and to talk about concepts and things to a general audience, and to kids.Item Cultivating a holistic view on identities of STEM librarians, as researchers, scholars, and librarians
Adams, KristenWhile academic STEM librarians help users with their research, they also often conduct research of their own. Cultivating one’s research identity is important in guiding a research journey, communicating one’s research and improving one’s understanding of self. Researcher identities can be particularly complicated for STEM librarians, as it’s not uncommon for them to hold degrees, have career experience, or research experience in STEM fields – all of which interplay with their identity as a librarian and as a researcher. This focus on the individual is set against the backdrop of a broader identity crisis in the field of academic librarianship, that’s been stewing since at least the 1980’s. We’ll discuss the literature chronicling this on-going crisis, including how others view the profession, how we see ourselves as a profession, and how we see ourselves as individuals. This talk will encourage listeners to look holistically at their different identities, as professionals, librarians, researchers (in STEM and or librarianship) and their non-professional identities. Reflection is an important component to this process, and it takes time. Further advice on establishing or discovering one’s research identity will be shared, including storytelling, journaling, and talking to others. The talk aims to celebrate everyone’s story as unique and valuable.Item ‘I need to make a map - can you help me?’: Starting geospatial literacy at the beginning, and reaching learners across diverse subject areas with online and open instructional videos
Adams, KristenFairly frequently researchers from the sciences, social sciences and humanities, ask the library for help to make a map for an assignment or a piece of scholarship they are working on; other times they want to go a little further and explore some geospatial analysis possibilities for their project. Regardless, both kinds of researchers, be they students or faculty, have little to no experience with either Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software or the principles behind it. The library is glad to help on a case-by-case basis, and can refer more complex projects to the Geospatial Analysis Center on campus. However, to bolster campus wide geospatial literacy skills and address the need we’ve experienced through the requests for help, we’ve offered in-person workshops (which have been poorly attended), and added post-workshop materials to our GIS LibGuide as asynchronous tutorials. These asynchronous tutorials have proven useful in getting people started with the software, however what they are lacking is fundamental geospatial literacy skills, and a familiarity with maps. This is much like writing; the more you read the better a writer you become and the more maps you examine, the better map maker you become. To help build these experiences, the library created a new video series to provide a sort of map show-and-tell. The goals of the series are to point out common features, share map reading skills, showcase the diversity of maps, and most of all, explain that maps are communication pieces, just like a piece of written work. Both should be tailored to a specific audience, presented in a way that the audience will understand and find useful. While the librarian who created these had considerable experience making videos for instructional purposes, a new approach was taken to make these more engaging. Rather than relying on screen capture, the visual elements were created in the video editing software so as to move dynamically with the audio, and bringing in other context such as satellite imagery or photos of the place to make it more real. These were shared on YouTube, bringing these materials and experiences to any learner, connected to the campus or not; they are also embedded on the Maps and GIS LibGuide for people who look for advice there. The materials are therefore discoverable, and quick to share as supplemental instruction with anyone who asks for advice on map making or GIS projects.Item Mineral identification numbers for librarians, explained through a short history of Dana's classification scheme
Adams, KristenMany chemistry librarians are likely familiar with chemical identifiers, such as CAS Registry Numbers or InChI strings, that serve as unique IDs for chemicals, which attempts to overcome the challenges in searching the literature, as often a single chemical has many different names. However, less well known and less utilized in literature databases, are unique IDs for minerals, which have similar naming obstacles to chemicals. While there are several classification schemes for minerals, the particular focus of this talk will be on the classification scheme devised by James D. Dana, first published in his book, The System of Mineralogy in 1837. In his lifetime he published 5 editions of this book, and it continued after his death into an 8th edition published in 1997. The system evolved over the decades from a flat scheme, in which each mineral was grouped into families and assigned an integer ID number, into the newer schemes which are hierarchical and the IDs are a series of integers separated with a period. With this arrangement, newly discovered minerals can be more easily slotted in, and established numbers don’t need to be reassigned. It’s also beneficial as the ID can provide information about its mineral families or groups. This presentation will show some example minerals tracked over the course of the classification scheme. Some interesting aspects to examine while looking at how the scheme evolved over time, include tracing mineral discovery, re-classification, and re-naming. On a practical level, knowledge of the schemes can aid in mineral collection maintenance or rescue. Dana numbers are used by collectors, and have been for a long time, therefore older mineral collections could be cataloged, or even arranged by Dana numbers; being aware of what they are, an essential metadata element, is beneficial to that kind of work. Overall the aim of this presentation is to introduce the topic of mineral identifiers to librarians, using chemical identifiers as a launch pad, as they are simply more familiar. Specific focus will be on Dana’s classification scheme, and both modern and historic values of it will be discussed.Item How finding your question and following your curiosity can naturally craft your research identity
Adams, KristenThis talk will emphasize how developing a research identity can begin with a single question. The speaker will share the backstory to a current research project, they didn’t set out to do, that started this way. It involves reconstructing a historic bibliography, and then conducting an analysis of the works. While it was not a direct answer to the original question, it’s forming a basis for other papers, and a better knowledge base for the researcher. Over the course of this research, other scholarly projects have been conducted, as opportunities arose. Research is a journey that need not be mapped out, or go the direction you anticipate. The talk will discuss how the methodology can unify scholarly works and build skills in doing certain types of research, both of which play a role in crafting a researcher identity. For example, a bibliographic analysis and collection use analysis, are both data analysis projects. Therefore, reframing how you see different research projects can help bring cohesion to a researcher's identity. Learning Outcomes: Participants will learn that little ideas or questions that are interesting to them, can grow in unexpected, but still satisfying ways. Participants will understand that even different projects can be unified by the research method, this can give opportunity for growth over time, in order to formulate a research identity.Item Revival of a historic bibliography for a modern bibliographic analysis
Adams, KristenConducting a bibliographic analysis on the complete works of an individual has the potential to reveal patterns and themes that are otherwise obscured. Assembling a bibliography for contemporary authors is somewhat straightforward. Searches in relatively few databases, such as Web of Science or Scopus, for STEM fields, can produce a comprehensive list, which might simply need some deduplication. However, the challenge grows as one goes further into the past.Item Analyzing unexpected success of a data visualization video series
Adams, Kristen; Justus, RogerAbstract: About a year ago, the library created a series of 17 YouTube videos on data visualization. These presented practical skills on making graphs and diagrams in Google’s Sheets and Slides, and Microsoft’s Excel and PowerPoint. They were made to support a Canvas module on data literacy, aimed at STEM students, but open to any student as a virtual workshop, and for faculty to incorporate in their courses. The Canvas module and the YouTube videos were advertised to faculty through email newsletters. Oftentimes asynchronous content like this is created and marketed, but still underutilized. The module has received little use; however, the YouTube video views were very high. The gap between the views and module use, made it clear that the YouTube views were coming from elsewhere, and were indeed more accessible than the Canvas module. This analysis explores which videos in the series were most popular, and delves into YouTube analytics to help determine who was using them and how they discovered them. The results will be used to formulate ideas for other asynchronous data literacy content that could hopefully be just as successful. The session will include not just the findings of this analysis, but also tips for conducting your own analysis using YouTube’s analytic tools. Outcomes: Early career professionals will come away with an understanding of some philosophical principles to guide instructional material design and platform choices. Advanced professionals will come away with advice on getting started with YouTube analytics in order to assess the users and access points of their own instructional materials on YouTube.Item Revising and rethinking asynchronous data literacy modules: Addition of practical data visualization skills for students of all abilities
Adams, KristenPreviously a group of librarians created a set of data literacy modules. These were designed to be online asynchronous, taken either in unison or separately, mostly for STEM disciplines with hopes of being useful outside these areas too. This flexibility was intentional from initial planning, so they could be plug-and-play for faculty to incorporate into their courses or helpful to students looking for a self-paced workshop. There was interest in incorporating the modules into a graduate program consisting of predominantly non-traditional students. However they desired some practical skills, particularly in the data analysis and visualization modules, to complement the mostly theoretical concepts already presented. After some rethinking, a set of over 15 videos were created explaining the graph type and anatomy, then showing how to make the visualization, using data that was not STEM based, mostly in GoogleSheets and Microsoft Excel. The videos were incorporated into the module, making them more inclusive for learners at all levels; they are also freely available on the Libraries' YouTube channel so they are not locked away within the module. In sharing these with other librarians, they've been linked to from STEM and non-STEM LibGuides - furthering their reach. The videos have gotten decent use, despite not yet being fully incorporated into the program that requested them. Moving forward, future data literacy materials the librarians create will be more mindful of students of all abilities and not miss out opportunities to help learners from wherever they are starting from. The format of future learning materials may also be reconsidered - incorporating a mix of larger modules and videos on specific skills.Item Promoting Transparency and collaboration with a new database A-Z audit and new ER acquisitions workflow
Calabrese, Cara; Sellers, Senta; Adams, KristenA collaborative project with electronic resources (ER) and subject librarians focused on our A-Z resource list, which needed attention as descriptions and links were outdated and/or inaccurate. This was a two-phase project. First, the subject librarians reviewed and updated the current A-Z listing descriptions, working with ER to resolve issues; secondly, ER reworked the resource request process with input from the subject librarians. From initial request and getting ER all required information to the creation of new entries in the A-Z list that are accurate and helpful to users, our workflow utilizes tools available to increase transparency during ER acquisitions. This session will go over our development process and discuss the first few months of use, noting both positive and negative outcomes. Attendees will leave with an understanding of why involving subject librarians in an ER activation process is beneficial to both librarians and users. The session will demonstrate how increased organization can ease internal burdens and increase transparency with stakeholders. Attendees will also leave the session with an understanding of how to create a new request workflow at their institution with proprietary or open-source software.Item Flexible, Scalable, and Sustainable Data Literacy Instruction: Remote Learning and Collaboration for the Future
Boehme, Ginny; Adams, KristenData literacy (DL) is an important topic that is not typically covered in-depth as part of undergraduate curricula, yet is often a skillset that faculty expect new graduate students to have. In spring 2020, librarians partnered with a STEM department to transform its in-person DL workshops. Online modules were created to cover four main DL subjects: data management, data curation, data analysis, and data visualization. The modules were designed to either be standalone or taken together as a microcredential, and to be applicable to a wide range of disciplines. Over the summer, several graduate students, faculty, and librarians were recruited to test and provide feedback on the modules, with the goal of a full rollout in fall 2020. Many faculty have already expressed interest in incorporating one or more of these modules into their online courses. Future developments will strengthen the library’s remote instruction offerings to face challenges posed by uncertain times and ensure students are able to cultivate these skills. This presentation will cover the development of these modules, including outreach and marketing efforts, and will provide a platform for attendees to identify, discuss, and plan how they might incorporate data literacy instruction at their institutions.Item Job sculpting in the midst of organizational change
Adams, Kristen; Messner, Kevin“Job sculpting” – matching employees to job duties consistent with their professional interests and strengths — in librarian positions can be a helpful practice for enhancing employee satisfaction and ultimately retention. Critically, it can also aid in meeting changing organizational needs by building new capabilities in employees. This presentation will document our recent experiences in sculpting our STEM librarians’ positions in the midst of broader organizational changes. Our library underwent a re-organization in 2017; STEM librarians who were previously organized under a facilities-oriented branch library model, moved into a department including all subject specialist, research, and instruction librarians across all subject areas. At the same time we brought together responsibilities for previously discrete subject areas (e.g. geology, chemistry, sociology, history, music) towards increased shared responsibilities under three broad banners of STEM, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities. This milieu presented new opportunities for subject librarians both to collaborate across disciplines and also to share and divide responsibilities in new ways. More recently, in 2019, there was mutual interest amongst STEM librarians in specialization of one librarian’s role towards teaching, and another towards collections; this provided an opportunity for job sculpting and sharing responsibilities across disciplines. Additionally, each of our STEM librarians have devoted a portion of their time to learning data management skills and taking on teaching and research support roles related to data, as a reasonable extension of duties. For job sculpting to be successful, it requires flexibility and interest in learning new skills on behalf of the librarians, and careful construction of duties from management to foster overlap of competencies and avoid single points of failure. The presentation brings perspectives of both a librarian and a supervisor to these issues.Item Analysis and Assessment of the 'Get it Now' Service, Five Years after Implementation - is it Fulfilling its Purpose Sustainably?
Adams, Kristen; Messner, KevinThe 'Get it Now' service, from the Copyright Clearance Center, is a rapid document delivery program for journal articles which we implemented in 2014. With five years of data, our analysis addressed questions including: patterns and changes in usage, cost, and cost per use over time; average delivery period; frequency of repeat users – including any with an excessive number of requests; how usage is divided by publisher and by discipline based on classifying journal titles. Our analysis of the service’s use is informing our overall assessment of the service, addressing in particular growth of the service and sustainability over time. The assessment also explores whether the service’s original mission of providing expedient access to particular articles for faculty and graduate students is being fulfilled, or if actual use indicates movement away from this purpose. Is 'Get It Now' fulfilling a role as critical service for campus researchers? Finally, a special look at the service during the recent public health crisis and remote instruction and research period -- when other methods of access to material not held locally, such as interlibrary loan, were unavailable -- will be discussed.Item RDM Throughout a Rock’s Life (with humans)
Adams, KristenCovers the data life cycle as it applies to geology, including the multiple formats of data involved, both analog (field notes books, rock specimens, and thin sections), as well as electronic formats, and the preservation thereof. Presented as a live lighting talk at the virtual Great Lakes Science Bootcamp 2021.