Assessing Digital Humanities Tools: Use of Scalar at a Research University

As librarians increasingly support digital publication platforms, they must also understand the user experience of these tools. This case study assesses use of Scalar, a digital humanities publishing platform for media-rich projects, at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Based on a survey, interviews, and content analysis, the study highlights the platform’s usability, its functionality, and its successes and failures in meeting user expectations. The media upload process, image annotation, and aesthetics factored into user issues. Writing pedagogy also emerged as an important consideration. Results suggest lessons for digital literacy instruction, as well as how and when Scalar might serve patrons’ publishing needs.Ope

E-book Use over Time and across Vendors in an Interdisciplinary Field

This paper presents an analysis of e-book usage in one interdisciplinary research collection, for library and information science (LIS), at a large research institution. Drawing from the social sciences, humanities, and computer science, LIS exemplifies the challenge of analyzing use of interdisciplinary collections that cut across Library of Congress (LC) class ranges normally used to analyze disciplinary differences in the existing literature. The analysis also explores use factors beyond LC class that usage studies rarely examine, including genre and audience level, and changes in use over time across categories. This study contributes both to understanding the usage of LIS e-books as an exemplary interdisciplinary collection and to developing options for analyses of e-book collections that maximize the utility of usage reports despite their challenges. As e-book collections mature and the utility of comparing used versus unused titles wanes, such strategies will become necessary to make more nuanced decisions for e-book collections.Ope

Topics and Trends in Library Publishing Missions Statements

While previous surveys of the library publishing landscape identify broad trends in the field, the appearance of the Library Publishing Directory in 2014 (and its subsequent 2015 update) gave the first near-comprehensive look at existing services in academic and research libraries. The directory presents several types of baseline data, but some of the most interesting information can be found in the mission statements for the various libraries. These statements offer the opportunity to compare the public face of these services to some of the specific arguments about the value of library publishing. To what extent do these statements present a coherent vision? To what extent do they publicize traditional library strengths such as preservation as core to services? This poster builds on research presented in a forthcoming article looking at how library users are framed in discussions of library publishing. It examines the mission statements as presented in the 2014 and 2015 directories for a broader range of topics including preservation, open access, sustainability, and more. Topics are identified both from prior literature and initial reading and visualization of the statements. It also draws from both editions to examine the extent (if any) to which these mission statements have converged: for example, of 86 institutions in both editions of the directory, 50 made significant revisions to their mission statement, including several institutions that added a mission. By presenting this analysis, I hope to provoke discussion about these statements as strategic communications about the role of libraries in the publishing economy.Ope

The Primate Wrist

This book demonstrates how the primate hand combines both primitive and novel morphology, both general function with specialization, and both a remarkable degree of diversity within some clades and yet general similarity across many others. Across the chapters, different authors have addressed a variety of specific questions and provided their perspectives, but all explore the main themes described above to provide an overarching “primitive primate hand” thread to the book. Each chapter provides an in-depth review and critical account of the available literature, a balanced interpretation of the evidence from a variety of perspectives, and prospects for future research questions. In order to make this a useful resource for researchers at all levels, the basic structure of each chapter is the same, so that information can be easily consulted from chapter to chapter. An extensive reference list is provided at the end of each chapter so the reader has additional resources to address more specific questions or to find specific data

Building a Bridge to Next Generation DH Services in Libraries with a Campus Needs Assessment

This poster reports on a needs assessment for digital humanities library services undertaken at large research university in order to provide a basis for transition to a next phase of Digital Humanities (DH) support at a library supporting a growing amount of DH work on campus. It reports key findings and how the library services will evolve to meet needs identified on campus. The full report on which this presentation is based is available at http://hdl.handle.net/2142/100081Ope

Public Access to Articles and Data for Funding Agencies

This presentation was prepared in Fall 2015 to cover upcoming public access requirements as they apply to grant funded researchers.Ope

Teaching Digital Humanities Tools at a Distance: A Librarian-Instructor Partnership Integrating Scalar into a Graduate Distance Course

This paper presents the process and outcomes of a digital humanities (DH) teaching collaboration. The authors, a subject librarian and an instructor for a distance graduate course on the history of children’s literature, will discuss features of the collaboration and course design: the digital literacy learning outcomes, the authors’ choice of the multi-media publishing platform Scalar as the best fit for those outcomes, and their design of the assignment sequence to achieve learning outcomes and assess student learning.Ope

Non-invasive optical measurement of cerebral critical closing pressure in pediatric hydrocephalus

Hydrocephalus is a common disorder of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) physiology that results in elevated intracranial pressure (ICP) and progressive expansion of cerebral ventricles.1 It affects 1-2 of every 1000 live births, making it the most common disease treated by pediatric neurosurgeons in the US.1 In roughly half of infants with hydrocephalus, ventricular expansion requires surgical intervention whereby a shunt is placed in the ventricles to divert CSF and relieve elevated ICP. Although timely treatment of elevated ICP is important for brain tissue viability, its implementation is hindered by the lack of tools for non-invasive ICP measurement. This study aims to validate non-invasive intracranial pressure (ICP) assessment with the near-infrared diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS) technique in infants with hydrocephalus. DCS employs near-infrared light to measure local, microvascular cerebral blood flow (CBF) continuously at the bedside. In addition to CBF, a novel approach for measurement of cerebral critical closing pressure (CrCP) based on DCS measurements of pulsatile CBF in arterioles was recently demonstrated.2-4 CrCP, which depends on ICP, defines the arterial blood pressure at which CBF approaches zero. Intraoperative non-invasive CrCP measurements with DCS on the prefrontal cortex were performed concurrently with invasive ICP measurements in 9 infants with hydrocephalus at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Invasive ICP was measured during surgical shunt placement. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract