Open Content Alliance Update

As part of the Boston Library Consortium, in the fall of 2007 the University of New Hampshire Library began participating in the Open Content Alliance (OCA), a mass digitization project intended to make scanned library materials freely accessible to the world. In this session, hear about the ambitious goals of the OCA project and one library’s experience with the massive collaborative effort required to make it successful. The presentation was delivered at the New Hampshire Library Association Spring Conference, Innovate in ‘08: Library Basics and Beyond, May 22, 2008

Extending the institutional repository to include undergraduate research

While a primary strategy of scholarly communication initiatives has been to encourage faculty participation in institutional repositories (IRs), with some process and workflow customization, IR participation can be successfully extended to undergraduate students, with benefits to both the student and institution. Drawing observations from the University of New Hampshire Library\u27s work collecting undergraduate honors theses and other student research, this article discusses customization strategies for creating an effective workflow for student self-deposit using an iterative, feedback-based approach, and the benefits, challenges,and potential concerns of encouraging undergraduate participation in institutional repositories

Good, bad, or biased? Using best practices to improve the quality of your survey questions

Surveys can be an effective tool for gathering information from library users and assessing library services, yet the quality of the survey questions can make all the difference between a survey that is completed and one that is abandoned in indifference or frustration. The increased emphasis on user informed library assessment and the availability of free online survey tools combine to make the use of surveys very popular in libraries, but inexperienced survey writers are not typically aware of best practices in the social sciences for the format and syntax of survey question and response options. These widely used best practices are meant to ensure that survey questions are clear and understandable, produce unbiased responses in appropriate formats, and are ethical with respect to the user. Flawed survey questions may confuse and frustrate users, resulting in survey fatigue and low survey response rates, inaccurate or difficult to interpret results, and wasted time and effort for both the surveyor and surveyed. Learning best practices for writing effective survey questions will help librarians improve their survey outcomes while maintaining the goodwill of users who provide needed survey data. Survey planning and pretesting are addressed as critical components of survey development, and example good and bad questions give presentation attendees the opportunity to immediately apply the concepts discussed. This poster was presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 2013 National Conference, Indianapolis, Indiana

Working Together: A Literature Review of Campus Information Technology Partnerships

This article reviews the recent literature about the essential but often uneasy alliances made between content experts (archivists and librarians) and technology experts. Differing professional cultures, misunderstandings of one another, limited abilities to envision change, and lack of support from top-level administrators are the most often cited reasons for the persistent difficulty in working together. Failure to collaborate may result in the marginalization or exclusion of content experts from projects where their professional skills are most needed. In spite of these problems, successful models for working together do exist. True collaborations are mutually beneficial, open opportunities for continuing relationships, and involve complex interpersonal connections. They are based on trust, mutual understanding, and respect for one another’s skill

Open Access publishing: obstacles and options

Everyone benefits from increased access to the latest research. Making your scholarship Open Access should be easy! Instead, it can be confusing and expensive, especially if you\u27re trying to decide on short notice. This presentation will help you sort out your options, find out how you can plan ahead, and put you on the pain free path to open. Access link: https://unh.zoom.us/j/91844432673?from=msf

Finding IR collaborators on your campus

While the success of an institutional repository depends in part on engaging faculty and encouraging their participation, it can be difficult to capture the attention and imagination of this audience directly because their primary focus is on teaching and research projects. At the University of New Hampshire we reach out to faculty directly, but also have tapped into an existing network of people who already work closely with faculty and support faculty scholarship – Communications Coordinators for institutional research centers and institutes. By working closely with this group, who are charged with collecting, publishing, and promoting faculty publications, we are able to both gain access to the work they are doing and offer our support. Librarians offer publishing services through the repository, optimize indexing of faculty research by internet search services, resolve copyright issues, and advise on the use of reference management tools. Communications Coordinators promote repository services to faculty within their research groups and assist in collecting and depositing faculty publications in the repository. Our mutually beneficial relationships are based on shared goals: increasing the exposure of university scholarship and supporting faculty in their research. This poster presentation will outline the connections between librarians and Communications Coordinators at UNH and offer suggestions for uncovering and developing similar relationship at other institutions. This poster was presented at Promoting Scholarly Communication through Open Access Journals, The College at Brockport (SUNY), Brockport, New York

The Scholars’ Repository: a central location for UNH scholarship

This presentation focused on the rationale for Open Access publishing, self-archiving, authors’ rights issues, and plans for a UNH institutional repository. It was delivered at the Faculty Instructional Technology Summer Institute, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire. June 18, 201