First Aid for Student Cost: Helping Nursing Faculty Move Away From Textbook Purchase Requirements

There is growing interest in the use of open educational resources to reduce student cost. Many repositories provide e-resources that can be modified and adopted by instructors, yet there are a number of barriers to adoption. In 2017 several nursing instructors at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro received mini-grants to redesign a course to reduce textbook purchase requirements. This paper describes liaison librarian support for the course redesigns

How representative are referendums? Evidence from 20 years of Swiss referendums

Direct democracy allows citizens to reverse decisions made by legislatures and even initiate new laws which parliaments are unwilling to pass, thereby, as its proponents argue, leading to more representative policies than would have obtained under a purely representative democracy. Yet, turnout in referendums is usually lower than in parliamentary elections and tends to be skewed towards citizens of high socio-economic status. Consequently, critics of direct democracy argue that referendum outcomes may not be representative of the preferences of the population at large. We test this assertion using a compilation of post-referendum surveys encompassing 148 national referendums held in Switzerland between 1981 and 1999. Uniquely, these surveys also asked non-voters about their opinion on the referendum's subject. Comparing opinion majorities in the surveys against actual referendum outcomes we show that representativeness increases slightly in turnout as well as over time. However, we find only few cases where the outcome would have been more representative even under full turnout vis-a-vis a counterfactual representative outcome. Thus, our results are in line with research on the turnout effect in elections: Higher turnout would not radically change the outcome of votes. On balance we find more cases where referendums provided more representative outcomes than cases where the outcome was unrepresentative vis-a-vis representative democracy. Hence, we conclude that, overall, direct democracy seems to improve representation in Switzerland

First Aid for Student Cost: Helping Nursing Faculty Move Away From Textbook Purchase Requirements

In 2017, UNCG awarded mini-grants for course redesign to reduce textbook purchase requirements. This poster describes liaison librarian support for nursing course redesign. Poster presented at the Charleston Conference on November 8, 2017 in Charleston, SC

Supporting Online Kinesiology Graduate Students in a Doctorate Program

Article in NAHRS Newsletter. Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section, Medical Library Association, (36) 2, 11-1

Promoting Open Educational Resources and Other Alternatives to Traditional Textbooks [Slides]

Slides from a presentation on promoting Open Educational Resources (OER) and other alternatives to traditional textbooks for the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting and Exhibition, May 19, 2015, in Austin, Texas

Finding and Evaluating Online Information for Well Being [Slides]

Slides from a presentation given March 8, 2019 at the 2019 Hot Topics in Higher Education Conference held at UNC Greensboro

Liaison Librarian Roles in Promoting Affordable Textbook Alternatives [Slides]

Slides from "Liaison Librarian Roles in Promoting Affordable Textbook Alternatives." This online talk was part of the UNCG - East Carolina University symposium titled "Discussions of Textbook Affordability" held on an April 20, 2018

PubMed, PubMed Central, and Medlineplus - What's the difference? [Slides]

Slides from a presentation on medical and health science databases for the North Carolina Library Association webinar series “Help! I’m an Accidental Government Information Librarian” (http://www.nclaonline.org/government-resources/help-im-accidental-government-information-librarian-webinars

Creating a Nursing Mother’s Room at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro [Poster]

Poster presented at the 4th Annual Breastfeeding and Feminism Symposium, held at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, March 26-27, 2009

Librarians as Teaching Partners in the Health Sciences [Slides]

Slides from a presentation on library instruction and nursing education given at the 2008 Metrolina Library Association Information Literacy Conference in Charlotte, North Carolin