Library databases as writing-course anthologies: Implications of a new kind of online textbook

At the University of Colorado Libraries, thousands of students are using a collection of readings drawn from our full text online databases. These readings were prepared in close collaboration with a large campus writing program. They are used in place of, or in addition to, a course textbook. Other libraries may want to consider similar projects, which will allow them to make use of the rich resources available from the library, familiarize students with library resources, and foster collaboration with campus programs. Projects like this encourage outreach from libraries to the university community, and help build strong ties with potential campus allies. This project may also have implications for course packs, e-reserves, and student textbook sales

Instruction to Faculty and Graduate Students: A Tutorial to Teach Publication Strategies

Although online information literacy tutorials have proven to be a popular method of delivering instruction to undergraduates, there seem to be relatively few that are targeted toward junior faculty or graduate students. Librarians at the University of Colorado have created an online tutorial for junior faculty and graduate students. “Publish Not Perish: The Art and Craft of Publishing in Scholarly Journals” is an online tutorial that addresses the information literacy needs of junior faculty regarding the subject of publication strategies. It also presents an opportunity to further familiarize junior faculty with the concept of open access publication

Alignment of Citation Behaviors of Philosophy Graduate Students and Faculty

Objective – This study analyzes sources cited by graduate students in philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) in 55 PhD dissertations and master’s theses submitted between 2005 and 2010, to discover their language, age, format, discipline, whether or not they were held by the library, and how they were acquired. Results were compared to data previously collected about sources cited by philosophy faculty at UCB, in books published between 2004 and 2009, to identify how closely citation behaviors aligned between the two groups. Methods – Citations were counted in the PhD dissertations and master’s theses. Citations to monographs were searched against the local catalog to determine ownership and call number. Comparison numbers for faculty research were collected from a previous study. Results were grouped according to academic rank and analyzed by format, language, age, call number, ownership, and method of purchase. Results – Graduate students cited mostly books, though fewer than commonly found in other studies. Citations were almost entirely of English language sources. Master’s students cited slightly newer materials than doctoral students, who in turn cited newer materials than faculty. The library owned most cited books, and most of those were purchased on an approval plan. Doctoral students most frequently cited resources outside the discipline of philosophy, in contrast to master’s students and faculty. Conclusions – The citation behavior of graduate students in philosophy largely, but not entirely, mirrors that of the faculty. Further study of citation behavior in humanities disciplines would be useful. Understanding the behavior of philosophers can help philosophy librarians make informed choices about how to spend library funds

Infectious Intimacy: Men Who Have Sex With Men (msm)\u27s Narratives of Risk Analysis During Covid-19

This thesis contemplates how men who have sex with men (MSM) have navigated risks associated with having casual sex during COVID-19 by using skills learned from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I rely on a series of qualitative interviews I conducted with self-reported MSM, as well as qualitative, archival materials from throughout the HIV/AIDS crisis, to better understand how some MSM have performed risk evaluation and management throughout a(nother) pandemic. In my first chapter, I pull from Diana Taylor\u27s theories on the archive, the repertoire, and scenario to argue that some MSM have revived and revised skills used to protect themselves from HIV infection to also protect themselves from COVID-19 infection. In the second chapter, I follow the intellectual lead of Michael Warner and Jenell Johnson to postulate how groups of MSM have organized around discourse related to the boundaries of the body during the twin crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Moreover, I contend that scholarship on barebacking, which is unprotected anal sex between men, may help scholars better understand the motivations of some MSM who have continued hooking up during COVID-19

Kinematics and thermodynamics of a midlatitude, continental mesoscale convective system and its mesoscale vortex

Also issued as author's dissertation (Ph.D.) -- Colorado State University, 2001.Includes bibliographical references.The author examines a mesoscale convective system (MCS) and the mesoscale convective vortex (MCV) it generated. The MCS, which comprised a leading convective line and trailing stratiform region, traversed Kansas and Oklahoma on 1 August 1996, passing through the NOAA Wind Profiler Network, as well as four sites from which soundings were being taken every three hours during a field project. The unusually rich data set permitted study of the MCS and MCV over nine hours on scales between those of operational rawinsondes and Doppler radars. The author used a spatial bandpass filter to divide observed wind into synoptic and mesoscale components. The environment-relative, mesoscale wind contained an up- and downdraft and divergent outflows in the lower and upper troposphere. The mesoscale wind was asymmetric about the MCS, consistent with studies of gravity waves generated by heating typical of that in many MCSs. According to a scale-discriminating vorticity budget, both the synoptic and mesoscale winds contributed to the prominent resolved sources of vorticity in the MCV: tilting and convergence. Unresolved sources were also large. The author speculates that an abrupt change in the main source of vorticity in an MCV may appear as an abrupt change in its altitude of maximum vorticity. Distributions of temperature and humidity in the MCS were consistent with its mesoscale circulations. In the terminus of the mesoscale downdraft, advection of drier, potentially warmer air exceeded humidifying and cooling from rain, so profiles of temperature and dewpoint exhibit onion and double-onion patterns. The mesoscale updraft was approximately saturated with a moist adiabatic lapse rate. Mesoscale drafts. and convective drafts vertically mixed the troposphere, partially homogenizing equivalent potential temperature. The MCV contained a column of high potential vorticity in the middle troposphere, with a cold core below the freezing level and a warm core above-a pattern characteristic of profiles of heating by stratiform regions. The cold core was 2 km too shall w to be in pure gradient balance with wind in the MCV. Ongoing forcing during the observed lifetime of the MCV may have prevented it from achieving balance, even if that was its tendency.Sponsored by the National Science Foundation under grants ATM-0071371 and ATM-9618684; and NASA grant NCCS-288

Surface pressure transients in mesoscale convective systems

Spring 1996.Also issued as author's thesis (M.S.) -- Colorado State University, 1996.Includes bibliographical references.For decades meteorologists have observed that mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) increase surface pressure beneath and immediately behind their leading cumulonimbi ( the mesohigh) and reduce surface pressure at the rear edge of their anvils (the wake low). By enhancing coarse surface pressure observations of 12 PRE-STORM MCSs, I exposed transitory highs and lows living within mesohighs and wake lows. I propose that these transients are the more elemental MCS surface pressure perturbations; mesohighs and wake lows are merely temporal and spatial envelopes of transients. Moreover, existing theories of mesohigh and wake low origins readily apply to the ephemeral transients. A quasi-Lagrangian analysis of 92 transients produced five primary results. First, as the MCSs matured, the difference between each complex's transitory highs' mean pressure and transitory lows' mean pressure increased in 78% of the conclusive cases. Second, there is no clear evidence that transitory highs consistently strengthened before their partner transitory lows. Third, transient paths reflect MCSs' occasional. symmetric-to-asymmetric metamorphoses. Fourth, composites of the time-evolution of the numbers and apparent sizes of transients partially support theories of MCS upscale evolution. Fifth, composite transient numbers and apparent sizes vary almost identically with time in a pattern that closely resembles the fluctuation of stratiform and convective volumetric rain rates of MCSs studied by McAnelly and Cotton (1992).Sponsored by the National Science Foundation ATM-9313716

Overlap Between Humanities Faculty Citations and Library Monograph Collections 2005-2009

The authors wished to evaluate whether their collection housed the resources that their humanities faculty needed (and actually used) for their research, with the hope of providing additional illumination about general resource use by humanities scholars. This study asks not whether anyone used what was already owned, but instead whether the library owned what was needed. The answer to this question might have implications for storage or weeding decisions, approval plans for collections, and interlibrary loan. A citation analysis of 28 monographs published by their institution’s humanities faculty between 2004 and 2009 was used to assess how many of their cited sources were owned, how they were acquired (approval or firm order), their average age, and interdisciplinary usage as evidenced by LC classification. Subject areas assessed were History, Philosophy, Classics, and English. Findings include that one quarter of sources cited were over 25 years old, and that over the last fifteen years, the approval plan has provided more than three quarters of the sources cited that were owned

DO METEOROLOGISTS SUPPRESS THUNDERSTORMS? Radar-Derived Statics and the Behavior of Moist Convection

Most meteorologists are acquainted with the no- tion of a weather hole—that is, a place that receives less exciting weather than does its surroundings. Exciting weather takes many forms, but when people use the term weather hole, they tend to mean a place that thunderstorms often barely miss, or near which approaching storms often dissipate. For this paper, that is the meaning we adopt. In our experience, many meteorologists and lay weather enthusiasts genuinely believe that they live in weather holes, and this belief, almost without fail, seems to stem from countless hours spent gazing at displays of radar reflectivity. We have generally presumed that such people simply relish thunderstorms, are memorably disappointed whenever storms miss them, and erroneously conclude that their locations are subject to some kind of meteorologic disfavor. The recent availability of multiple years\u27 worth of national radar composites from the Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) network makes it possible to address objectively, if not definitively, whether meteorologists appear to live in weather holes and whether such an appearance is physical or artificial

Use of circulation statistics and interlibrary loan data in collection management

The authors analyzed the holdings, circulations, and interlibrary loan (ILL) borrowing requests of the English-language monograph collection at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Data for each area were mapped to conspectus subject areas, using Library of Congress Classifications, and then compared. The resulting data and subject distributions were analyzed by overall holdings, transactions per item, percentage of collection circulated, and a ratio of ILL holdings to requests. The method of analysis used in this study could be fruitfully applied to other research collections to assist with remote storage, preservation, and collection development decisions