Accessible Customer Service Practices

Grand Valley State University and University Libraries (UL) are committed to inclusion and diversity. Additionally, University Libraries has a shared service philosophy—Steps to Giving Great Service—to guide how we deliver customer service across the Libraries. The following practices are meant to provide employees with practical tips on how to provide accessible customer service. These practices align with our larger service philosophy and support the university’s values of inclusion and equity. Accessibility is defined by the University Libraries IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) committee as: “Ensuring our tools, devices, services, and environments are available to and usable by as many people as possible.” These leading practices seek to help us provide accessible service that promotes the principles of dignity, independence, integration, and equal opportunity

Through an Inequitable Collective Trauma Lens: Elevating narratives on Mental Health and COVID-19

This panel session sought to elevate the voices of library professionals who had been impacted both personally and professionally by COVID-19. Speaking from their perspectives at different career points, the panelists shared their experiences, as well as how the pandemic has compounded for some, several pre-existing collective traumas. Panelists addressed the crisis narrative inherent in librarianship, and discussed how the profession can reframe its approach to inequitable trauma, unsustainable workloads, and other structural inequities. The handout provided lists the questions that panelists addressed, a resources list for further reading, and an accountability agreement for participants to engage with the space

Fostering Data Literacy Teaching with Quantitative Data in the Social Sciences

Quantitative literacy is an essential twenty-first century skill that universities are heavily invested in teaching to students. The social sciences play an important role in these efforts because they attract students who might otherwise avoid data and mathematically oriented courses and because they ground quantitative reasoning in political and social contexts that resonate with undergraduates. However, pedagogical best practices for social science instructors have been slow to emerge and the support needs of instructors and students remain difficult to discern. Ithaka S+R’s Teaching Support Services program explores the teaching practices and support needs of collegiate instructors. Our most recent project in this program, “Teaching with Data in the Social Sciences,” focused on identifying the instructional goals and practices of instructors in introductory and advanced social science courses and exploring strengths and weaknesses of existing institutional support services. As part of this study, we partnered with librarians from 20 colleges and universities in the United States, who conducted 219 interviews with social science faculty. These interviews form the basis of this report. “Fostering Data Literacy: Teaching with Quantitative Data in the Social Sciences” explores why and how instructors teach with data, identifies the most important challenges they face, and describes how faculty and students utilize relevant campus and external resources. Full details and actionable recommendations for stakeholders are offered in the body of the report, which offers guidance to university libraries and other campus units, faculty, vendors, and others interested in improving institutional capacities to support data-intensive instruction in the social sciences

UL Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility Framework

This framework is meant to provide a shared understanding of the University Libraries’ commitment and approaches toward Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA). The framework is intended to ground us in theory as we move toward action, to guide us as we make decisions about IDEA-related initiatives, and to prioritize our IDEA commitment in all that we do. The framework allows us to leverage systems thinking as well as to connect library efforts to the University’s goals, values, and frameworks for IDEA. While the framework does not provide action steps, it is meant to provide ways for all library colleagues to connect themselves and their work with the Libraries’ IDEA efforts. The framework includes working definitions, design principles for IDEA efforts, an equity lens, and a selected organizational assessment tool

Grand Valley State University Libraries Journey to IDEA 2.0: Moving from Education to Action Toolkit

An annotated bibliography of resources to explore and advance inclusion, equity, diversity, accessibility work (IDEA). Includes background documents related to IDEA work at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) and Grand Valley State University Libraries, as well as toolkits and frameworks external to GVSU

University Libraries Equity & Inclusion Committee White Paper

By Fall 2017, ULEIC, and the task force before it, had been successful in bringing training opportunities to the attention of Libraries faculty and staff. However, the committee was struggling with defining its scope in relation to the work of Faculty Development and Support Committee (FDSC) and Department Heads. Collaborating with the Dean, it was decided to move forward with a co-creation facilitation, which would engage all members of ULEIC, to define: The vision/purpose for the committee It\u27s relationships and partnerships with other library and campus groups The desired outcomes A new charge A workplan This report summarizes the findings of the group\u27s inquiry, which included reviews of the group’s history, campus resources, definitions, values, future and scope; a review of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility work at peer and aspirational peer institutions; and a review of internal library partners. It includes the recommendations for moving forward, near future next steps, and opportunities and challenges to consider as we progress

Instructional Programmatic Assessment Rubric

This rubric was developed between April, 2020 and August, 2021. The purpose of this rubric is to internally assess student learning of information literacy to better inform the GVSU Libraries’ instruction program

Finding needles in haystacks:Linking scientific names, reference specimens and molecular data for Fungi

DNA phylogenetic comparisons have shown that morphology-based species recognition often underestimates fungal diversity. Therefore, the need for accurate DNA sequence data, tied to both correct taxonomic names and clearly annotated specimen data, has never been greater. Furthermore, the growing number of molecular ecology and microbiome projects using high-throughput sequencing require fast and effective methods for en masse species assignments. In this article, we focus on selecting and re-annotating a set of marker reference sequences that represent each currently accepted order of Fungi. The particular focus is on sequences from the internal transcribed spacer region in the nuclear ribosomal cistron, derived from type specimens and/or ex-type cultures. Reannotated and verified sequences were deposited in a curated public database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), namely the RefSeq Targeted Loci (RTL) database, and will be visible during routine sequence similarity searches with NR_prefixed accession numbers. A set of standards and protocols is proposed to improve the data quality of new sequences, and we suggest how type and other reference sequences can be used to improve identification of Fungi.The Intramural Research Programs of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine and the National Human Genome Research Institute, both at the National Institutes of Health.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA177353am201