Taking a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Accessibility Lens to Engineering Librarian Job Postings: Recommendations from an Analysis of Postings from 2018 and 2019

Objective: While diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) principles and practices have been incorporated into much of academic librarianship, there has been less focus on the job postings. Methods: In order to quantify ways in which DEIA is being integrated into job postings, we analyzed 48 job positions for engineering librarians posted in 2018 and 2019 via deductive thematic analysis, looking for trends in salary and qualifications related to education and academic or professional experience. Results: Of postings that listed a quantitative salary value, salary ranged from $45,000 to$81,606; the median was $60,750. However, only 33% (n = 16) of positions listed a quantitative salary value. For educational qualifications, we found that 98% of job postings (n = 47) listed a Master’s in Library and Information Science (MLIS) as a required qualification; however, 34% of these postings (n = 16) would accept an equivalent degree in lieu of the MLIS. Additionally, 73% (n = 35) of positions sought candidates with an MLIS and another degree; 91% of these positions (n = 32) wanted the additional degree to be in a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics discipline. For academic or professional experience, 56% of positions (n = 27) sought candidates with previous academic library experience. Conclusions: Using this data, we provide actionable recommendations on how to incorporate DEIA principles into any academic librarian job posting. Our study provides quantitative data and evidence-based recommendations that can be used to make DEIA an integral part of the job postings in academic librarianship

One Change at a Time: Pop up Usability Testing

Library staff know the bizarre tricks and jargon we use to navigate our system and websites while our users continue to struggle and never get as adjusted. The University of Minnesota Libraries have committed to running monthly web usability tests in-house that illustrate the user\u27s perspective. These tests guide us in implementing changes to our system and websites. With little more than a spare computer, Skype, and a group of diligent and willing staff, we\u27ve been able to learn incredibly useful things about our web sites and applications. In this session, we\u27ll describe our process, some examples of evaluations we\u27ve run, what we\u27ve done with the information, lessons we\u27ve learned along the way, and we\u27ll show you how you too can run usability tests at your library

Two Years in the Making: Library Resources for Transgender Topics

Inspired by Reid Boehm’s presentation “Beyond Pronouns: Caring for Transgender Medical Research Data to Benefit All People,” at the Research Data Access and Preservation Summit (RDAP) in March 2018, four librarians from the University of Minnesota (UMN) set out to create a LibGuide to support research on transgender topics as a response to Boehm’s identification of insufficient traditional mechanisms for describing, securing, and accessing data on transgender people and topics. This commentary describes the process used to craft the LibGuide, Library Resources for Transgender Topics, including assembling a team of interested library staff, defining the scope of the project, interacting with stakeholders and community partners, establishing a workflow, and designing an ongoing process to incorporate user feedback

Facilitating Connections Through the Data Curation Network

March 2020 poster presented at the Research Data Access and Preservation Summit in Santa Fe, New Mexico.Alfred P Sloan Foundatio

Oral History Interviews Data Curation Primer

This work was created as part of the “Specialized Data Curation” Workshop #3 held at Washington University in St. Louis, MO on November 5-6, 2019.Institute of Museum and Library Services RE-85-18-0040-1

Examining Grey Literature Use, Citation, and Creation Practices of Faculty at a Large Institution

Poster presented at Twentieth International Conference on Grey Literature: Research Data Fuels and Sustains Grey Literature (GL20) discussing survey results and preliminary interview results of groups grey literature research projec

Two Years in the Making: Library Resources for Transgender Topics

Inspired by Reid Boehm’s presentation “Beyond Pronouns: Caring for Transgender Medical Research Data to Benefit All People,” at the Research Data Access and Preservation Summit (RDAP) in March 2018, four librarians from the University of Minnesota (UMN) set out to create a LibGuide to support research on transgender topics as a response to Boehm’s identification of insufficient traditional mechanisms for describing, securing, and accessing data on transgender people and topics. This commentary describes the process used to craft the LibGuide, "Library Resources for Transgender Topics," including assembling a team of interested library staff, defining the scope of the project, interacting with stakeholders and community partners, establishing a workflow, and designing an ongoing process to incorporate user feedback