Exploring care for children with autism in Wales using creative writing as a research method in a collaborative pilot study

This article comes out of a recent project conducted by the Autism Collaborative Research Group (ACRe), using writing workshops to capture the experiences of clinicians, educators and parents of children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) of the ASD care pathways in South Wales. ACRe is an interdisciplinary group comprised of six researchers across a range of subject areas (creative writing, healthcare, psychology, logistics, education and mathematics) who are interested in the use of interdisciplinary research methods to explore autism care

Understanding and improving the care pathway for children with autism

Purpose: To describe current care pathways for children with autism including enablers and barriers, as experienced by health professionals, education professionals, and families in South Wales, UK. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-methods approach using focus group discussions, creative writing workshops and visualisation using rich pictures. Findings: The experiences of the care pathways differed significantly across the three groups. Health professionals described the most rigidly-structured pathways, with clear entry points and outcomes. Education professionals and parents described more complex and confusing pathways, with parents assuming the responsibility of coordinating the health and education activity in a bid to link the two independent pathways. All three groups identified enablers, although these differed across the groups. The barriers were more consistent across the groups (e.g. poor communication, missing information, lack of transparency, limited post diagnosis services and access to services based on diagnosis rather than need). Practical implications: This research could inform the design of new services which are premised on multi-agency and multi-disciplinary working to ensure children with ASD receive joined up services and support. Originality/value: Although this study did not represent all professional groups or all experiences of autism, we examined three different perspectives of the ASD pathway. In addition, we triangulated high-level process maps with rich pictures and creative writing exercises, which allowed us to identify specific recommendations to improve integration and reduce duplication and gaps in provision

Some of my Favorite Things: OpenRefine and BrowZine [slides]

Slides from a presentation on OpenRefine and BrowZine use in libraries. Delivered at the 2015 North Carolina Library Association Biennial Conference in Greensboro, NC

Marketing Electronic Resources at University of North Carolina at Greensboro [slides]

Slides from a presentation on how to improve marketing strategies for library electronic resources. Delivered October 18, 2017 at the North Carolina Library Association Biennial Conference in Winston-Salem, NC

GOKb collaborations: Enhancing knowledge base data through crowdsourcing [slides]

Slides from a presentation on using Global Open Knowledge Base (GOKb) as a compliment to OCLC’s service for managing e-resources for libraries. Delivered April 5, 2016 at the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference in Austin, TX

In Search of Useful Collection Metadata: Using OpenRefine to Create Accurate, Complete, and Clean Title-level Collection Information

University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG), like many libraries, recently migrated to a new knowledgebase and integrated library system (ILS) and found they had to clean up a great deal of messy serial title list data. In their search for solutions, they discovered the free, open source tool OpenRefine, a software program specifically designed for data normalization, transformation, and cleaning. This article describes the steps that UNCG used to take a publisher's title list file and transform it into a file format usable by their ILS. In doing so, this article will discuss major types of functionality in OpenRefine: downloading the software, importing data correctly, using the interface, transforming data on a column and cell level, exploring and normalizing data, and exporting files out of OpenRefine. At the end of this article, the readers should understand how to use OpenRefine on a basic level and be able to begin to use it on their own data

Print Collections: How are we Responding to Usage Trends [slides]

Slides from a presentation on trends in print library materials and electronic resources usage. Delivered May 16, 2017 at the Carolina Consortium Annual Meeting in Greensboro, NC

Lets Market eBooks with Vendors! [slides]

Slides from a presentation on promoting and marketing e-books in academic libraries. Delivered April 7, 2017 at the Charleston Conference in Charleston, SC

Principles of Negotiation

This article summarizes a presentation given at the 2015 North Carolina Serials Conference by Derrik Hiatt and Lesley Jackson. The talk focused on principles useful when conducting license negotiations that Hiatt and Jackson discovered through their own experiences as electronic resource management librarians and, in Jackson's case, as an EBSCO representative. These principles cover a variety of concepts, but all seek to frame negotiation as an interpersonal relationship based on mutual need instead of the antagonistic, intimidating process that it can become

From Stage to Library: Conquering Public Speaking Through the Power of Theater and Improv [slides]

Slides from a presentation on incorporating theater and improvisational skills into public speaking. Delivered October 20, 2017 at the North Carolina Library Association Biennial Conference in Winston-Salem, NC