Identifying, Developing, and Marketing Library Services to Cooperative Extension Personnel

Cooperative Extension personnel are responsible for disseminating information of university-based research to the people of their state. At Utah State University, there were no library services in place to assist this population in meeting the demands for information. Extension personnel were surveyed to identify useful library services, and the results were used to develop and market library services. The land-grant university system was initiated by the Morrill Acts of 1862/1890 and expanded by the Smith-Lever Act of 1914. As a result of these acts of Congress, land-grant universities and colleges, including Utah State University (USU), have as their mission three goals: research, education, and service. The Smith-Lever Act also established the Cooperative Extension System to exist in conjunction with land-grant universities. The purpose of this national system, which consists of three partners--the United States Department of Agriculture, state land-grant institutions, and local agencies at the city and county levels--is to bring practical and useful applications of university research to the people throughout each state.(FN1) This is accomplished at the local level through the work of Cooperative Extension agents stationed in nearly every county within the state. Utah State University is somewhat unique among land-grant universities in its organization of Utah\u27s Cooperative Extension Service. In 1970, the university combined its traditional Cooperative Extension program with the academic programs and services of its eight colleges and departments, preparing university extension to provide a broader range of informational services beyond those in agriculture, natural resources, and family life. A 1995 survey of 1,678 Utah residents and 70 Utah legislators conducted by Extension Services indicated the need for extension\u27s primary responsibility to shift. Traditionally, extension\u27s role was the dissemination of information in areas such as agriculture and family life but should now include the dissemination of information in new areas such as urban growth and development, education, taxes, gangs, and crime as well. As communities experience changing needs for information, extension agents are required to serve different audiences and provide services in new ways. Providing the public with access to information is a function shared by both Cooperative Extension Service and the land-grant-based academic library. The library\u27s role, despite the changing nature of information storage, retrieval, and delivery, remains to collect, preserve, and provide access to information on a wide range of subjects. Similarly, the role of Extension Service, which has been experiencing changes comparable to libraries, calls for it to provide access to information through making the practical application of university-based research and knowledge accessible to the citizens of every state. Extension is exploring new channels of delivery as Rasmussen discusses in Taking the University to the People: Seventy-five Years of Cooperative Extension: Extension should adopt program delivery systems that will enable it to act as the resource base for disseminating applied research, reaching a wide range of new and present audiences, and extending its educational programs beyond traditional spheres. Extension must act decisively to maintain its role as the arm of the land-grant university providing research-based knowledge and educational programs having a positive impact on issues affecting agriculture, communities, families, and youth. It must move beyond service to the traditional agricultural producers, homemakers clubs, and 4-H clubs to become a recognized program developer and valued educational resource for organizations, agencies, and localities as well as for its traditional clientele.(FN2) Meeting these demands for new types of information and new systems of delivery is a challenge currently facing extension personnel and is an opportunity for the university land-grant library to identify and develop types of services and programs that would benefit extension personnel in meeting their challenges

Research Data Management at USU

A presentation given as part of a panel at the UALC Professional Development Retreat focusing on research data management. In addition to USU’s presentation, Emily Durowski at Brigham Young University and Shirley Zhao and Daureen Nesdill from University of Utah all presented similar content with respect to their institutions

Campus Copyright Education: Creating a culture of compliance and empowerment

Copyright is a complex issue that many raises questions for many people on university campuses. This presentation describes the approach Utah State University took to forming a committee comprised of people from across campus and efforts to educate members of the faculty about copyright issues

Journals Under Attack: Faculty and Researchers\u27 Creative Solutions to Access Problems (or, Theft is the answer. What was the question?)

Escalating journal subscription costs and concurrent library and institutional budget cuts have precipitated the cancellation of journal subscriptions by many research and academic libraries. How does the faculty and research community obtain the information no longer provided for them by their university libraries? Resource sharing among libraries has been a traditional solution to this dilemma, but is not the only solution employed by researchers and faculty. Part of a study conducted at Utah State University (USU) examines the methods faculty and researchers use to obtain access to materials not held by the University Libraries, focusing on identifying unique or unconventional methods of access already in place that might be developed for broader, more efficient use of institutional resources

Mitigating the Risk: Identifying Strategic University Partnerships for Compliance Tracking of Research Data and Publications

As international efforts to develop guidelines for data management emerge, the need for monitoring data deposit compliance increases. Utah State University has a team of university administrators, IT specialists, and librarians that addresses research data management issues. They developed a process to receive reports from faculty with successful grants that ultimately allows creation of records for data. Research grants are tracked though all stages and information about data and publications shared publicly on platforms capable of contributing scholarly work to research outputs aggregators (such as Share) and also to public facing bibliographic aggregators like Worldcat

Where\u27s the Data?

At Utah State University, a pilot project is under development to evaluate the benefits of tracking data sets and faculty publications using the online catalog and the Library’s institutional repository. With federal mandates to make publications and data open, universities look for solutions to track compliance. At Utah State University, the Sponsored Programs Office follows up with researchers to determine where data has been or will be deposited, per the terms of their grant. Interested in making this publicly discoverable, the Library, Sponsored Programs, and Research Office are working together to pilot a project that enables the creation of publicly accessible MARC and Dublin Core records for data deposited by USU faculty. This project aims to make data sets, as well as publications, visible in research portals such as WorldCat, as well through Google searches. This presentation will describe the project and anticipated benefits, as well as outline the roles of the cataloging staff and data librarian, and the involvement of the Research Office

The Scholarly Communication Crisis: Setting an Agenda for Utah Libraries

A panel of three librarians present an overview of the scholarly communication crisis in Utah and lead the audience in a discussion of options for helping faculty and administrators understand the climate and find solutions the the economic pressures facing academic libraries