Book Review: Copyright Conversations: Rights Literacy in a Digital World

The topic of copyright is rarely far from a librarian\u27s mind. Practitioners must navigate creator and user rights within the constraints of complex license and contract agreements in digital environments. Librarians have to understand, explain, educate, and apply copyright law on a regular basis, often without formal training. Copyright Conversations: Rights Literacy in a Digital World is a notable work that endeavors to summarize, explain, and comment on many of the complicated copyright-related topics that librarians encounter in the digital realm

SCoer! in the Library

In 2015, University of South Carolina Libraries partnered with Student Government to create a program designed to promote Open Educational Resources on campus. SCoer! has saved USC students over $38,000 since its inception. Learn about program design, implementation, and our successes and failures as we’ve navigated an OER grant program

Baby Steps to Big Impacts: The Evolution of Library Involvement in the Textbook System

This article will discuss how textbook support and open educational resources (OER) have become critical considerations in the evolving library landscape. For years, textbooks have been the purview of the teaching staff at our colleges and universities, but libraries can no longer ignore the high costs, both societal and financial, of the current textbook environment. Library involvement in the textbook dilemma has come in three phases: chosen ignorance, meeting the immediate need, and striving for sustainable solutions. We will discuss each of these phases and will detail the University of South Carolina Libraries’ involvement in the textbook system. We will provide suggestions for other libraries interested in growing an OER program, focusing on development, implementation, and assessment for schools operating with limited resources. Finally, we will share our predictions for the future of library involvement in responding to the demand for affordable course materials

I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me: Student Perceptions of Library Data Privacy

Data privacy has emerged as a controversial topic in higher education. As librarians, we recognize the importance of privacy and confidentiality for allowing patrons to learn and explore without unnecessary barriers or fear of repercussions. However, there is a growing trend of data collection and analysis in libraries that impacts a patron’s right to privacy. In a presentation given at the 2019 South Carolina Library Association Annual Conference, we explored issues of click-through-consent, data invasion, and awareness of the types of data tracked. We asked for audience engagement as we discussed future directions including a survey on student perceptions of data privacy in libraries

From the Ground Up: Building a Digital Scholarship Program at the University of South Carolina

In 2019, the University of South Carolina Libraries launched a new department called Digital Research Services to support new and evolving forms of scholarship in the digital age. Departmental librarians will discuss the experience of planning and implementing a digital scholarship program and will provide suggestions for other libraries planning a digital research initiative

SHARPGrads: Development and Assessment of a Research Skills Workshop Program for Graduate Students at the University of South Carolina

INTRODUCTION Academic libraries are placing increasing emphasis on the provision of instruction for graduate students in non-traditional research skills and competencies such as scholarly communication concepts, data management and visualization, and text mining. Since proficiency in these concepts is often expected of graduate students but training may not be offered in the classroom, the library is a natural home for such instruction. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM Librarians at the University of South Carolina created a two-day workshop series for graduate students called SHARPGrads. This paper describes the planning process, survey method used to develop and assess the program, and findings obtained from attendance and survey responses. A successful collaboration with the university’s Graduate School led to higher than expected registration. Post-assessment feedback demonstrates that targeting training to graduate students early in their program of study is advantageous. Furthermore, students in social sciences and humanities disciplines reported that SHARPGrads met their expectations to a higher degree than students in the sciences and health sciences. Although a number of survey respondents reported that the training program was too short, participant retention during day two of the program dropped significantly. NEXT STEPS An evaluation of the range of second day training opportunities is considered for the next iteration of the program. Results taken from this study and recommendations for future programs will be useful for librarians involved in the development and implementation of workshops for graduate students

Passing the Torch: Continuation of the South Carolina Libraries Journal

In this article, The South Carolina Libraries Editorial Board discusses the history and rebuilding of the South Carolina Libraries journal, the official publication of the South Carolina Library Association (SCLA). As the journal adjusted in response to community needs, changes in the Editorial Board, the publication cycle, and peer review process were made to expand and enhance the functionality, appearance, and content of the journal. The Editorial Board reviews strategies for library community members – including practitioners, research faculty, and LIS students – to become involved as a part of the publication through authoring, book reviewing, peer reviewing, or artwork for future issues

The FANCM:p.Arg658* truncating variant is associated with risk of triple-negative breast cancer.

Breast cancer is a common disease partially caused by genetic risk factors. Germline pathogenic variants in DNA repair genes BRCA1, BRCA2, PALB2, ATM, and CHEK2 are associated with breast cancer risk. FANCM, which encodes for a DNA translocase, has been proposed as a breast cancer predisposition gene, with greater effects for the ER-negative and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtypes. We tested the three recurrent protein-truncating variants FANCM:p.Arg658*, p.Gln1701*, and p.Arg1931* for association with breast cancer risk in 67,112 cases, 53,766 controls, and 26,662 carriers of pathogenic variants of BRCA1 or BRCA2. These three variants were also studied functionally by measuring survival and chromosome fragility in FANCM -/- patient-derived immortalized fibroblasts treated with diepoxybutane or olaparib. We observed that FANCM:p.Arg658* was associated with increased risk of ER-negative disease and TNBC (OR = 2.44, P = 0.034 and OR = 3.79; P = 0.009, respectively). In a country-restricted analysis, we confirmed the associations detected for FANCM:p.Arg658* and found that also FANCM:p.Arg1931* was associated with ER-negative breast cancer risk (OR = 1.96; P = 0.006). The functional results indicated that all three variants were deleterious affecting cell survival and chromosome stability with FANCM:p.Arg658* causing more severe phenotypes. In conclusion, we confirmed that the two rare FANCM deleterious variants p.Arg658* and p.Arg1931* are risk factors for ER-negative and TNBC subtypes. Overall our data suggest that the effect of truncating variants on breast cancer risk may depend on their position in the gene. Cell sensitivity to olaparib exposure, identifies a possible therapeutic option to treat FANCM-associated tumors

Genetic risk and a primary role for cell-mediated immune mechanisms in multiple sclerosis.

Multiple sclerosis is a common disease of the central nervous system in which the interplay between inflammatory and neurodegenerative processes typically results in intermittent neurological disturbance followed by progressive accumulation of disability. Epidemiological studies have shown that genetic factors are primarily responsible for the substantially increased frequency of the disease seen in the relatives of affected individuals, and systematic attempts to identify linkage in multiplex families have confirmed that variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) exerts the greatest individual effect on risk. Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility. Most of the genetic architecture underlying susceptibility to the disease remains to be defined and is anticipated to require the analysis of sample sizes that are beyond the numbers currently available to individual research groups. In a collaborative GWAS involving 9,772 cases of European descent collected by 23 research groups working in 15 different countries, we have replicated almost all of the previously suggested associations and identified at least a further 29 novel susceptibility loci. Within the MHC we have refined the identity of the HLA-DRB1 risk alleles and confirmed that variation in the HLA-A gene underlies the independent protective effect attributable to the class I region. Immunologically relevant genes are significantly overrepresented among those mapping close to the identified loci and particularly implicate T-helper-cell differentiation in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis