Diagnostic Validation for Participants in the Washington State Parkinson Disease Registry

The Washington State Parkinson Disease Registry (WPDR) was created to facilitate recruitment for Parkinson’s disease (PD) research studies conducted in the Pacific Northwest. The success of registries that rely on self-report is dependent on the accuracy of the information provided by participants, particularly diagnosis. Objective and Methods. Our goal was to assess diagnostic accuracy within the WPDR cohort. We randomly selected and attempted to contact 168 of the 1,278 actively enrolled WPDR participants. Those who responded were invited to undergo an interview and neurological examination performed by a PD specialist. If an in-person assessment was not possible, we sought information collected during participation in prior research studies or from review of medical records. A diagnosis was considered “validated” if the individual met UK Parkinson’s Disease Society Brain Bank (UKBB) clinical diagnostic criteria for PD. Results. Data were ascertained for 106 participants; 77 underwent an in-person assessment, 21 had data available from a prior research study, and 8 provided access to medical records. Diagnostic accuracy within the overall sample was 93.4% (95% confidence interval (86.4%, 97.1%)). Seven patients did not fulfill UKBB criteria for the following reasons: early severe autonomic involvement (n 3), history of neuroleptic treatment (n 1), presence of the Babinski sign (n 1), or insufficient supportive criteria (n 2). Conclusions. Our results indicate that studies which use the WPDR for recruitment will rarely encounter patients who are misdiagnosed. This further supports the utility of the WPDR as an effective recruitment tool for PD research in the Pacific Northwest

Supporting Students: OER and Textbook Affordability Initiatives at a Mid-Sized University

In 2018 the Alabama Commission on Higher Education kicked off a statewide program to increase awareness and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) at colleges and universities. Spurred by the efforts of ACHE, the University of North Alabama committed to OER and textbook affordability programs and included OER adoption as a key aspiration in their 2019-2024 strategic plan Roaring with Excellence . With support from the president and provost of the university, Collier Library adopted strategic purchasing initiatives, including database purchases to support specific courses as well as purchasing reserve copies of textbooks for high-enrollment, required classes. In addition, the scholarly communications librarian became a founding member of the OER workgroup on campus. This group’s mission is to direct efforts for increasing faculty awareness and adoption of OER. This presentation will discuss the structure of the each of these programs from initial idea to implementation. Included will be discussions of assessment of faculty and student awareness, development of an OER grant program, starting a textbook purchasing program, promotion of efforts, funding, and future goals.https://ir.una.edu/libfacpresentation/1044/thumbnail.jp

Mid-Sized University, Global Reach: The Impact of Using NASIG Core Competencies to Build and Grow Our Scholarly Repository

https://ir.una.edu/libfacpresentation/1043/thumbnail.jp

Beyond the Numbers: Data Use for Continuous Improvement of Programs Serving Disconnected Youth

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) conducted a series of in-depth case studies to examine how three programs which serve a disconnected youth population are utilizing data as a tool for continuous program improvement and ongoing accountability. The resulting publication, Beyond the Numbers: Data Use for Continuous Improvement of Programs Serving Disconnected Youth, describes data collection and use at three successful programs, and distills the key lessons learned and issues to consider both for practitioners and policymakers aiming to improve outcomes for the disconnected youth population

The Scholarly Repository at UNA: Using the NASIG Core Competencies for Scholarly Communication Librarians as a Framework to Develop Campus Support

How do you get started when your campus first adopts an Institutional Repository? What content and collections should you focus on first? How do you prioritize your campus partnerships? Who do you build rapport with first, faculty or students or administration? These questions, along with questions of copyright management, data management, metrics, and technical support, can overwhelm a new Scholarly Communication librarian. The combination of the relative newness and the lack of formal mentoring in our field can sometimes make it seem like you are fighting an uphill battle alone.In August 2017, NASIG approved and adopted a set of core competencies that can serve as a roadmap for a new Scholarly Communications Librarian working to promote and build collections for a campus IR. This talk will address how to utilize the specific competencies to help target what items you should work on and when – how to get up-to-speed on what you need to know quickly so that you can effectively communicate your IR goals to your campus community as well as how to set short- and long-term competency goals. Using examples from her own ScholCom learning curve and campus IR set-up, this presenter will share her successes, lessons learned, and expectations for future IR growth on her campus.https://ir.una.edu/libfacpresentation/1030/thumbnail.jp

Markets: Gift Cards

The Mobil Oil Company introduced the first retail gift card that recorded value on a magnetic strip in 1995. In under a decade, such gift cards replaced apparel as the number one item sold during the Christmas season. This study will discuss the reasons for the strong surge in the gift card market. It will then consider the value of gift cards as an intermediate option between two alternatives: purchasing a physical gift, which could possibly be returned or exchanged, versus giving cash. Empirical data on the resale price of gift cards from an Internet auction website provide information on the value that recipients place on gift cards suggesting that the difference between the cost of a gift card to the giver and its value to the recipient is substantial, although perhaps not quite as large as the parallel gap involved in physical gifts

Inclusion and Representation Matter: Homogeneity in Youth Literature with Dis(Abled) Characters

Abstract: Picture books, juvenile books, and young adult books that portray persons with disabilities have made great strides in the last thirty years. Many negative stereotypes in youth literature have been replaced by accurate, honest portrayals of individuals with intellectual and/or physical disabilities. Unfortunately the majority of the characters, both in the protagonist role and in supporting roles, in the books with positive representations of disability are not depicted as racially or ethnically diverse. This study is a content analysis of both the descriptions of characters in the texts of books and the illustrations (if applicable) in all three categories - picture, juvenile, and young adult - to find the intersections between characters with a disability and his/her race or ethnicity. The gender of the characters with a disability will also be noted. Many of the books in this study have been awarded the Schneider Family Book Award, an award given annually by the American Library Association to authors or illustrators of books with artistic expression of disability, and/or the Dolly Gray Children’s Literature Award, awarded every even year to an author and/or illustrator to recognize positive portrayals of people with developmental disabilities. This poster was orginally presented at the Discerning Diverse Voices: Symposium on Diversity at the University of Alabama, March 2016.https://ir.una.edu/libfacpresentation/1001/thumbnail.jp

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Faculty buy-in of an institutional repository can be an uphill battle. Even as IRs become more common and more popular, some faculty may still not understand what it is or how it can benefit them. Other faculty may understand the concept of an IR but might be frustrated by the thought of it being just another administrative task added to their ever-increasing to-do list. The need to educate faculty on why the repository is important and how it can support their pursuit of tenure and promotion goals remains a challenge for most IR administrators. Do you start with the faculty or the administration? Do you try to talk to faculty one-on-one or do you go to department meetings? Can you hold open sessions in the library or other central locations on campus? This poster will address these questions and will provide a framework that you can take back to your campus and use to build rapport with faculty.https://ir.una.edu/libfacpresentation/1033/thumbnail.jp

Roaring Toward a New Future with our Repository of Open Access Research (RoOAR)

We decided at the University of North Alabama to investigate the transition of our repository to a different platform. We were interested in a few things: an open platform, access internally to make changes, cost-effectiveness, and something that was aesthetically pleasant. We think we found all of those and more in our partnership with Ubiquity Press. This presentation will cover our decision making process in choosing the new platform, the transition, and our next steps moving forward