Leading a Horse to Water: Writing Workshops for Engineering Graduate Students

A workshop series sponsored by the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) seeks to dispel the myth that engineers cannot be good writers

Technological Advancements in the Quilting Arts

As it has in every area of life, technology has improved all parts of the quilting process. Throughout history, inventions and discoveries have continued to make the quilting process quicker than before. Quilts are not just for utilitarian purposes as they were thought of for centuries, but are also a form of art. The recognition of quilts as such has not always been acknowledged. Through historical and current facts and additional supporting information, the quilt as an art form will be demonstrated. Documentation is presented partly in written form and partly in the form of a lap quilt. The quilt project submitted has six panels. Each pair of panels represents a specific needlework skill – applique, embroidery, and crazy quilting. Each of these skills is represented in two ways – machine-made and hand-made. This comparison will show that quilts are now made faster than before and, in some instances, even more aesthetic. Other parts of the quilt were also constructed with the help of technology. Three different modern-day machines were used in the creation of the lap quilt, demonstrating that the making of a quilt is indeed improved by technology

Training Graduate Engineering Students in Ethics

The Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas embarked on providing ethics instruction to incoming graduate students in the form of a mandatory workshop. The College has a diverse graduate student population, including a sizable international component, who are enrolled in several M.S. and Ph.D. degree programs within four departments. Faculty felt that training in ethics was needed to better prepare incoming students for successful graduate studies and working professionally after graduation. Therefore, a standalone workshop was developed that covered four major topics: Research Ethics, Computer Coding Ethics, Publishing Ethics, and Intellectual Property. The last topic covered copyright law, patent law, and trade secrets. To develop this ethics workshop, some ethics instruction programs at U.S. engineering colleges were investigated

A Virtuous Circle of Student Engagement: The Tech Corner

How can a culture of student innovation and interdisciplinary creativity be fostered when library facilities and / or budget do not accommodate a maker space? We allowed students to help develop a new collection of devices and equipment, the Tech Corner, launched in early 2016. We seek to provide ready access to unique, easy-to-use devices that support creativity, curricular work and recreation but may be too expensive for our average student to purchase. Student focus groups helped design the branding, marketing, and a starter collection of items that include virtual reality headsets, digital art brushes, tablet-compatible MIDI keyboards, digital microscopes, cameras, and pocket projectors. Liberal loan periods encourage off-campus, longer-term use, and circulation is limited to student account types. We plan to refresh the collection annually with new, student-recommended devices. We are building a virtuous circle of student engagement in a variety of ways. Students who complete a survey about each device receive promotional items and are registered in a prize raffle. Users are encouraged to share what they create for displays on our website and in library buildings. A website allows students to learn about the items, see how other students have used them, complete the survey, and sign up for email news. Polls circulated throughout the academic year via the website and social media will allow students to suggest and vote for new collection items. Assessment will include circulation statistics for this and other media items, survey feedback, and use-case submissions. Assessment data is in the attached supplemental file

Ethnography in Action: Active Learning in Academic Library Outreach to Middle School Students

This article describes an outreach activity developed and coordinated by academic librarians as part of a state program for low-income middle school students. Rather than offering a traditional library tour, the library organizers wanted to provide the middle school students with a meaningful experience that would encourage active participation, critical thinking, and alleviate library anxiety. As a spin on the traditional tour, students applied an ethnographic approach to learning about the library. The authors describe the development and implementation of the activity and provide recommendations for other librarians involved in outreach to K-12 students

Improving Access to Standards

Engineers, as well as other professionals, researchers and students in many disciplines, will occasionally need to use standards documents from a wide variety of standards developing organizations. As our university aims to simultaneously increase research productivity and graduation rates, the need for rapid access to full text standards documents will only increase. In the past, most standards were provided by the library in bound, print format, with the exception of digital IEEE standards, just-in-case they were needed. It was, and remains, cost-prohibitive to acquire all of the standards that a public, doctoral-degree-granting university community might need. Several actions were taken to improve access for faculty, staff, and students. We anticipate that the number of standards documents requested by faculty and students will increase as outreach about standards documents was implemented. We expect an increase in fulfillment rates for standards documents requested through interlibrary loan after the university licensed a standards aggregator service and after outreach in the form of staff training was provided to interlibrary loan staff. Further, we expect an increase in the use of standards already in the collection as well as those acquired via the aggregator after each outreach intervention was implemented. Several outreach interventions, including staff training, were implemented over the course of the study period. A workflow for on-demand acquisition of standards documents was developed, with three potential starting points for requests and several decision points about acquisition method and funds used. De-identified interlibrary loan request data and collection use data were analyzed for request and fulfillment trends and correlation with outreach interventions. Recent updates to the on-demand workflow are described. The data show an increase in requests for standards documents. Increased fulfillment rates for standards document request suggests that outreach for interlibrary loan staff was successful. Success of outreach to patrons was shown in an increased number of interlibrary loan requests for standards documents and in increasing use of subscribed standards sets such as IEEE and ASTM. The data support continuing some outreach methods, streamlining workflows to exclusively use interlibrary loan as a request and fulfillment system, and the need to periodically train interlibrary loan staff. We also recommend that discoverability of standards in our collection should be improved through cataloging improvements and creation of finding aids for different audiences