Promoting Discovery: Creating an In-depth Library Marketing Campaign

This case study aims to describe how librarians at Indiana University Kokomo designed a marketing campaign to promote its discovery tool to undergraduate students during the Fall 2012 semester. The authors illustrate how, through the use of a coordinated marketing plan, librarians applied marketing principles to select a target audience, create promotional designs, organize events, and assess campaign effectiveness. The authors express how libraries can construct cost-effective yet comprehensive marketing campaigns, as well as learn from both unexpected successes and shortcomings of such projects. Ultimately, these takeaways can inform a library’s future marketing endeavors

Library Homepage Design at Medium-Sized Institutions

This study sought to describe and analyze the homepages of academic library Web sites at 313 medium-sized bachelor's and master's general institutions. The authors evaluated an unprecedented number of library homepages for the presence of 118 design elements and reported common and uncommon design practices at these libraries. They found 21 elements present on at least half the homepages studied. Seven of these occurred on at least 80 percent of the pages studied: links to the university homepage, library hours, images, portals by subject or links to subject guides, links to interlibrary loan services, “about” sections, and catalog searches. This study serves as a baseline for the current practices of homepage design for a large population of libraries. The results of this survey indicate trends and common design elements for library Web site design and show which elements Web designers and librarians at medium-sized libraries should consider including on their Web pages. Findings are compared with a similar study conducted in 2010, and this study in turn may provide a comparison point for future research. The study also reports characteristics of the implementation of discovery services for this population of libraries in unprecedented detail and provides descriptive information about homepage links to social media sites and mobile applications

An Ecological Conceptualisation of Extreme Sports

Currently, there are various definitions for extreme sports and researchers in the field have been unable to advance a consensus on what exactly constitutes an ‘extreme’ sport. Traditional theory-led explanations, such as edgeworks, sensation seeking and psychoanalysis, have led to inadequate conceptions. These frameworks have failed to capture the depth and nuances of experiences of individuals who refute the notions of risk-taking, adrenaline- and thrill-seeking or death-defiance. Instead, participants are reported to describe experiences as positive, deeply meaningful and life-enhancing. The constant evolution of emerging participation styles and philosophies, expressed within and across distinguishable extreme sport niches, or forms of life, and confusingly dissimilar definitions and explanations point out that, to better understand cognitions, perceptions and actions of extreme sport participants, a different level of analysis to traditional approaches needs to be emphasized. This paper develops the claim that a more effective definition, reflecting the phenomenology, and directed by the ecological dynamics framework, can significantly advance the development of a more comprehensive and nuanced future direction for research and practice. Practical implications include study designs, representative experimental tasks or coaching practices and pedagogical approaches in extreme sports. Our analysis of the literature suggests that extreme sports are more effectively defined as activities consisting of an inimitable person-environment relationship with exquisite affordances for ultimate perception and movement experiences, leading to existential reflection and self-actualization as framed by the human form of life

Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in COVID-19.

Host-mediated lung inflammation is present1, and drives mortality2, in the critical illness caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Host genetic variants associated with critical illness may identify mechanistic targets for therapeutic development3. Here we report the results of the GenOMICC (Genetics Of Mortality In Critical Care) genome-wide association study in 2,244 critically ill patients with COVID-19 from 208 UK intensive care units. We have identified and replicated the following new genome-wide significant associations: on chromosome 12q24.13 (rs10735079, P = 1.65 × 10-8) in a gene cluster that encodes antiviral restriction enzyme activators (OAS1, OAS2 and OAS3); on chromosome 19p13.2 (rs74956615, P = 2.3 × 10-8) near the gene that encodes tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2); on chromosome 19p13.3 (rs2109069, P = 3.98 ×  10-12) within the gene that encodes dipeptidyl peptidase 9 (DPP9); and on chromosome 21q22.1 (rs2236757, P = 4.99 × 10-8) in the interferon receptor gene IFNAR2. We identified potential targets for repurposing of licensed medications: using Mendelian randomization, we found evidence that low expression of IFNAR2, or high expression of TYK2, are associated with life-threatening disease; and transcriptome-wide association in lung tissue revealed that high expression of the monocyte-macrophage chemotactic receptor CCR2 is associated with severe COVID-19. Our results identify robust genetic signals relating to key host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage in COVID-19. Both mechanisms may be amenable to targeted treatment with existing drugs. However, large-scale randomized clinical trials will be essential before any change to clinical practice

Interpreting Student Searches: Enriching Library Outreach through Search Query Analysis

At one point Google could predict a flu outbreak up to two weeks sooner than the CDC by evaluating users’ search queries. Analyzed in the aggregate, search queries hold the potential to reveal not only users’ information needs but also broader trends in searching behaviors. During the fall 2015 semester, librarians from two Indiana University campuses initiated a research project to examine user search terms from a semester\u27s worth of data from each of their web-scale discovery tools (EBSCO Discovery Service). Queries were assigned both a class and subclass using the Library of Congress Classification schedule and then parsed using text analysis tools in order to identify common terms and search issues. This session will describe our method for text analysis, present the prevalent search queries and concerns at our institutions, and share the unexpected challenges and benefits we experienced during this project. We will illustrate how search query scrutiny may facilitate fortuitous conversations with instruction librarians and teaching faculty about student information needs

Measuring Query Complexity in Web-scale Discovery: A Comparison between Two Academic Libraries

This study reports on the examination of search transaction logs from web-scale discovery tools at two Indiana University campuses. The authors discuss how they gathered search queries from transaction logs, categorized queries according to the Library of Congress Classification schedule, and then examined queries using text analysis tools in order to identify which subjects were being searched and whether users were using advanced search options. The results of this investigation demonstrate how transaction logs may be used to communicate user interactions within discovery services. The findings offer detailed insight into the subjects and skills that teaching faculty and librarians should communicate to improve information literacy instruction. The search queries also uncover information needs that provide direction for collection managers