Creating Academic Web Space for Academic Staff: Research and Teaching Initiatives at the University of Iowa Libraries

Paper presented at conference "Strategies for the Next Millennium." Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian Information Online and On Disc Conference and Exhibition, Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sydney Australia, 19-21 January 1999.The University of Iowa has several projects that are reshaping options for teaching staff and librarians as they work to build new types of academic resources. Two of these are Bailiwick and TWIST. Bailiwick is a Web space where academic passions are realised in HTML and creative home pages. Bailiwick is home to Web sites that are experimental in form, like ‘Border Crossings’, which provides comprehensive and in-depth resources, or that take on a narrow, highly specialised topic like ‘French Feminists’. In the Teaching with Innovative Style and Technology Project (TWIST), teaching staff are paired with librarian partners to create Web-based learning environments. These partners are called ‘TWISTed Pairs’. This semester, 27 academic staff members from 13 departments are paired with 11 librarians from various departments, creating 35 course-related Web sites

Panel: Collaboration and Digital Projects

In 2011 the University of Iowa Libraries began crowdsourcing the digital transcription of its manuscript archives. Four years and over 50,000 transcribed pages later, that project, known as DIY History, has garnered considerable internet attention via Buzzfeed, Twitter, Tumblr, and the NBC News blog. At the same time, it has been threaded into undergraduate classrooms at Iowa as a means of introducing students to primary source research, information literacy, and multimodal design. Matt Gilchrist and Tom Keegan will discuss how faculty members and librarians collaborated on an assignment that emphasizes course objectives while strengthening student connections to the UI Libraries. That assignment, Archives Alive!, resulted from a partnership between DIY History and Iowa Digital Engagement and Learning (IDEAL). Students are asked to transcribe a document, compose a brief rhetorical analysis and historical contextualization of it, and create screencasts of their work. By making use of narrative primary source material like letters and diary entries, Archives Alive! helps students see themselves in research material. Building an assignment around the crowdsourcing model provides students with two attitudes important to project success: a sense of ownership (through crowdsourced participation) and a sense of purpose (through a dynamic assignment with a real audience). The success of the project rests upon a flexible, design-centered approach to program structure that fosters an audience for library collections while asking students to create work with the public in mind. Paul Soderdahl will discuss the administrative considerations and costs in moving digital library operations from project to program. The UI Libraries have made deliberate efforts over the past several years to achieve this transition – in particular a reorganization of Digital Library Services into Digital Research and Publishing. He will also discuss the relative leap of faith and return on investment associated with large-scale digitization projects and audience engagement. The James Merrill Digital Archive (JMDA) is comprised of digitized Ouija board session transcripts, poem drafts, and other materials toward Merrill’s epic narrative poem, “The Book of Ephraim,” part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Divine Comedies. The JMDA is the result of expertise and input of many collaborators across the Washington University campus. Shannon Davis and Joel Minor will speak on various aspects of the ongoing project, including successful cross-campus collaboration, employing student workers to perform high-level encoding and exhibit curation, and how Omeka was used to develop the digital archive

Panel: Collaboration and Digital Projects

In 2011 the University of Iowa Libraries began crowdsourcing the digital transcription of its manuscript archives. Four years and over 50,000 transcribed pages later, that project, known as DIY History, has garnered considerable internet attention via Buzzfeed, Twitter, Tumblr, and the NBC News blog. At the same time, it has been threaded into undergraduate classrooms at Iowa as a means of introducing students to primary source research, information literacy, and multimodal design. Matt Gilchrist and Tom Keegan will discuss how faculty members and librarians collaborated on an assignment that emphasizes course objectives while strengthening student connections to the UI Libraries. That assignment, Archives Alive!, resulted from a partnership between DIY History and Iowa Digital Engagement and Learning (IDEAL). Students are asked to transcribe a document, compose a brief rhetorical analysis and historical contextualization of it, and create screencasts of their work. By making use of narrative primary source material like letters and diary entries, Archives Alive! helps students see themselves in research material. Building an assignment around the crowdsourcing model provides students with two attitudes important to project success: a sense of ownership (through crowdsourced participation) and a sense of purpose (through a dynamic assignment with a real audience). The success of the project rests upon a flexible, design-centered approach to program structure that fosters an audience for library collections while asking students to create work with the public in mind. Paul Soderdahl will discuss the administrative considerations and costs in moving digital library operations from project to program. The UI Libraries have made deliberate efforts over the past several years to achieve this transition – in particular a reorganization of Digital Library Services into Digital Research and Publishing. He will also discuss the relative leap of faith and return on investment associated with large-scale digitization projects and audience engagement. The James Merrill Digital Archive (JMDA) is comprised of digitized Ouija board session transcripts, poem drafts, and other materials toward Merrill’s epic narrative poem, “The Book of Ephraim,” part of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Divine Comedies. The JMDA is the result of expertise and input of many collaborators across the Washington University campus. Shannon Davis and Joel Minor will speak on various aspects of the ongoing project, including successful cross-campus collaboration, employing student workers to perform high-level encoding and exhibit curation, and how Omeka was used to develop the digital archive

That's My Bailiwick: A Library-Sponsored Faculty Research Web Server

The University of Iowa Libraries provide a unique, new, scholarly publishing outlet for their faculty and graduate students

That's My Bailiwick: A Library-Sponsored Faculty Research Web Server

The University of Iowa Libraries provide a unique, new, scholarly publishing outlet for their faculty and graduate students

Benign Prostate Glandular Tissue at Radical Prostatectomy Surgical Margins

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether presence of benign glandular tissue at the radical prostatectomy surgical margin is associated with technique (open (ORP) or robotic assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy (RALRP)) and if benign glandular tissue increases the risk of biochemical recurrence. METHODS: Surgical specimens from men with clinical T1–T2 disease who underwent RP between 2004–2010 were re-reviewed by a single uropathologist, examining all sections from the prostate apex and base for the presence of benign glandular tissue and tumor at the margin. Regression analysis was utilized to examine associations of benign glandular tissue with surgical approach and biochemical recurrence. RESULTS: Of 934 cases reviewed, 431 were managed by ORP and 503 by RALRP with a median follow up of 48 and 25 months, respectively. Overall, benign glandular tissue was found in 274 (29%) cases: 98 (36%) at the apex, 138 (50%) at the base and 38 (14%) at both. Compared with those who underwent ORP, patients who underwent RALRP had 3-fold greater odds of benign glandular tissue at the margin (P<0.01), including significantly greater number of cases with benign glandular tissue at the base (P<0.01). However, recurrence-free survival rates were similar between patients with and without BGM regardless of surgical approach and across all clinical risk groups (log-rank P=0.20). CONCLUSIONS: Patients undergoing RALRP were more likely to have benign glandular tissue at the surgical margin. However, the presence of benign glandular tissue was not an independent risk factor for biochemical recurrence