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June 28th, 2019
“It can be challenging for instruction librarians to create sustained collaborations with instructors beyond the one-shot instruction session. The results from this study make a compelling case for why collaborating with disciplinary instructors on course design―such as working together to design meaningful assignments throughout the term―can provide benefits for students in gaining information literacy skills, as well as helping them engage more deeply with course content.” ― Melissa Harden, LIRT Top Twenty Articles 2019 Selection Committee
Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Assistant Professor Michael Flierl, Associate Professor Clarence Maybee, and Instructional Designer Rachel Fundator, as well as Purdue Center for Instructional Excellence Instructional Developer Emily Bonem, were recently recognized by the Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) for their research article “Information literacy supporting student motivation and performance: Course-level analyses.” Their research, published in the January 2018 issue of Library and Information Science Research, was listed as one of the “Top Twenty Articles of 2018” by LIRT in its June 2019 newsletter.
“This article describes the results of a large-scale study exploring the relationships between information literacy, student academic performance, and student motivation in the context of disciplinary courses,” notes the article abstract.
The abstract continues: “Data were gathered from over 3,000 students at a public research university through an end-of-semester survey that asked questions about learning climate, basic psychological needs, student motivation, and perceptions of relevance of course content to future careers. Instructors also completed a survey indicating how often students in their courses were expected to use information in various ways, including posing questions or problems, accessing information outside of assigned readings, evaluating sources, synthesizing information and communicating results, and applying the conventions of attribution. The responses to these surveys were analyzed in conjunction with student course grades to determine the relationships between information engagement and use, and student motivation and achievement.”
“The results suggest a positive relationship between students synthesizing and communicating information throughout the term and student perceptions of autonomy and motivation. Therefore, instruction librarians should encourage disciplinary instructors to design and create many opportunities for students to engage in higher-order skills, such as synthesizing and communicating information, throughout the term. These results suggest that the benefits for students gained from these types of learning opportunities include higher academic achievement and greater motivation to learn disciplinary content presented in their courses,” assert the authors.
LIRT is part of the American Library Association and was founded in 1977. According to its website, the organization empowers librarians, from all types of libraries, to become better teachers through sharing best practices, leadership and professional development, and networking.
For more information about LIRT, visit www.ala.org/rt/lirt.
Filed under: Faculty E-Newsletter, faculty_staff, generalJune 21st, 2019
The “Apollo in the Archives: Selections from the Neil Armstrong Papers” exhibit commemorates the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight that landed on the moon – where Purdue alumnus Neil Armstrong took those famed first steps – and coincides with Purdue University’s July celebration of the moon landing, as well as the University’s sesquicentennial celebration, 150 Years of Giant Leaps.
As part of the Apollo 11 commemoration on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus, Purdue Archives and Special Collections (ASC) is hosting an open house for the exhibit from 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Friday, July 19. The open house will feature:
The open house is free and open to the public and ideal for children of all ages.
On Saturday, July 20 — the golden anniversary of the July 20, 1969, manned moon landing — Purdue University will host several Apollo 11-related events, which are listed at www.purdue.edu/apollo11/events/index.php. From 9 a.m.-noon (July 20), Purdue ASC will host additional exhibit viewing hours, as well as scavenger hunts.
Purdue Archives and Special Collections is located on the fourth floor of the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education (HSSE) Library in Stewart Center. For more information about the exhibit, contact Associate Head of Archives and Special Collections and Barron Hilton Archivist for Flight and Space Exploration Tracy Grimm at grimm3@purdue.edu.
Filed under: general, SPEC
May 29th, 2019
On Thursday, May 23, a Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations was held at Purdue University. Ashlee Messersmith, manager, thesis/dissertation, The Graduate School at Purdue University, and Michael Witt, associate professor, Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies, organized the event, with support from the United States Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Association (USETDA).
By Michael Witt, Head, Distributed Data Curation Center (D2C2), and Associate Professor of Library Science
The presenters at the Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) highlighted a wide variety of creative works produced by graduate students in earning their degrees, such as:
Graduate students will typically prepare and defend a written thesis, even if their research can be communicated in a more meaningful or impactful format than a document. There are other examples, such as software source code and research data, videos and photos from exhibits and performances, mixed media, dynamic websites, and much more produced by students; but this type of content is often left out of a traditional thesis.
In some cases, these non-traditional works could be considered as the primary product of the students’ scholarship — without the need for a written thesis.
Recent changes to the policies of Purdue’s Graduate School reflect a progressive approach and support for non-traditional theses, embracing both the opportunities and challenges they present for the Purdue’s faculty, thesis office, and libraries.
“As emerging technologies continue to influence higher education, we needed to set a precedent through which students are permitted to express their creativity,” Messersmith explained. “Exploring these influences and their implications was the focus of the symposium, which was held in the Wilmeth Active Learning Center. We invited experts to share ideas and brainstorm with participants who supervise theses and manage the processes and platforms for producing and archiving them.”
The opening keynote presentation by Professor and Dean of Libraries at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Martin Halbert addressed the landscape and life cycle of electronic theses and dissertations, as well as the ETDPlus resource.
The closing keynote, delivered by Jean-Pierre Hérubel, professor, Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies, dove into the history and culture of the doctoral dissertation, as well as variations and transformations of its purpose and form.
Other presentations from Purdue faculty and staff explored issues related to student perspectives, digital humanities, graduate college policies, research data management, digital preservation, and scholarly publishing. Throughout the symposium, participants discussed important questions related to sharing current practices; interfacing with faculty to observe and respect local cultures related to credentialing students; identifying concerns and opportunities for graduate colleges, libraries, and technology providers; and increasing collaboration within the University and among universities. A lively round of lightning talks in the afternoon featured specific examples of theses that challenge conventions from other universities.
Presentation slides and collaborative notes from the symposium are available on Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies’ e-Pubs repository at https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/etdgiantleaps/.
Filed under: events, faculty_staff, general
May 27th, 2019
In the history of flight and space, there are two monumental events that stand out: one was the Wright Brothers’ achievement of the first power-controlled flight, and the other was when Neil Armstrong became the first human to step foot on the moon.
Located in the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections (ASC), the Barron Hilton Flight and Space Exploration Archives collection was created to document and preserve Purdue University’s relationship to flight and space exploration. Recently, Neil Armstrong’s widow, Carol Armstrong, donated two pieces of fabric from the wings of the original Wright Brothers flyer, built in 1903 and flown at Kitty Hawk. This donation, to the Barron Hilton Flight and Space Exploration Archives at Purdue, bridges these two pivotal flight and space events, connecting the Purdue family all the way back to the birth of aviation by powered flight.
Archivists in the Purdue ASC, a division of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, announced the gift of the fabric pieces, each measuring approximately 25 in. x 24 in., at a private reception last month. The pieces are particularly important because they were given to Neil Armstrong to take with him on the Apollo 11 mission aboard his historic landing of the Eagle lunar module on the moon. Along with the fabric, Carol Armstrong donated related correspondence from 1969 between the Air Force Museum and Neil Armstrong regarding the Wright Flyer fabric.
Barron Hilton Archivist for Flight and Space Exploration and Associate Head of Archives and Special Collections Tracy Grimm noted this gift bridges the history of flight and space and cements the Barron Hilton Flight and Space Exploration Archives as a resource that documents powered flight back to its very beginnings.
“To know that this one piece of fabric connects the first lunar landing with the first airplane flight is astonishing,” Grimm said. “To think that Orville and Wilbur Wright and Neil Armstrong all touched and held this fabric is incredible. It shows that Neil honored the pioneers who came before him, just as we honor his accomplishments. Objects like this fabric bring the past into the present and help us understand history in a tangible way. We know that people from history who do courageous things and realize near-impossible dreams are people who inspire future brave leaders and bold thinkers. Seeing the physical artifacts, documents, and photos that tell their stories makes history real to us in a way that is far more meaningful and vivid than a story in a textbook,” she added.
Purdue’s ownership of the Armstrong Papers—all 450+ boxes of his manuscripts, personal papers, and working files, alongside this recent addition of the Wright Brothers flyer fabric—are all due to the generosity of Neil and Carol Armstrong. Armstrong began giving his papers to Purdue, his alma mater, during his lifetime and his wife, Carol, continued to honor their wishes over time. This latest donation is one such example of how the collection has grown rapidly due to the Armstrong’s generosity.
Head of Archives and Special Collections, Professor Sammie L. Morris noted the special private unveiling ceremony held recently at Purdue as an exciting moment.
“With these exemplary collections of flight and space history, and as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission this year, we show how Purdue has helped the world advance in transportation and exploration,” Morris said. “It is so fitting that the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 coincides with Purdue’s 150th birthday this year, cementing forever the close relationship Purdue has had to flight and space history from its beginnings.”
Filed under: general, SPECMay 23rd, 2019
Recently, two members of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies faculty were selected to receive a Research Data Award from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NNLM). The $20,000 grant award for the project, “Understanding Rates of Attrition in Biomedical Data Challenges: A Study of Failure,” will enable Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies Assistant Professor Bethany McGowan and Associate Professor Ilana Stonebraker to provide research data management training to students.
The award will facilitate a variety of training workshops including: FAIR Data Principles; Research Data Management Basics: Finding and Organizing Data; Cleaning and Formatting Data with OpenRefine; General Tips for Visualizing Biomedical Data; Biomedical Data Visualization with Tableau; and Useful R Packages for Analyzing and Visualizing Biomedical Data. The grant period began May 1 and will conclude April 30, 2020.
The workshops are part of a larger research project through which McGowan and Stonebraker will conduct a study to understand rates of attrition in biomedical data challenges.
“Our study will examine student motivation for participation in extracurricular innovation challenges, such as hackathons and case competitions, which involve the use of biomedical data, in an attempt to understand failure and reduce rates of attrition in these events,” said McGowan, who is the project lead.
In addition to presenting results of their research at conferences throughout the year, McGowan and Stonebraker will develop a digital open-education resource toolkit to help guide librarians in recruiting for and retaining diverse student populations in data-hacking challenges.
According to the NNLM’s Greater Midwest Region (GMR) website, the project supports Goal 3 of the National Library of Medicine’s Strategic Plan, which is to build a workforce for data-driven research and health.
“It supports the aligning objectives to expand and enhance research training for biomedical informatics and data science, to assure data science and open science proficiency, to increase workforce diversity, and to engage the next generation and promote data literacy,” states the NNLM GMR website.
Filed under: Faculty E-Newsletter, faculty_staff, general, PSETMay 17th, 2019
Every story has untold pieces. Purdue University Archives and Special Collections contains millions of stories in the many papers, books, objects, items, and other memorabilia carefully preserved and stored there. Yet, it does not hold them all—particularly those that may have not been “judged to be…important,” as noted in the introduction of the new online exhibit, “Voices, Identities & Silences: Investigating 150 Years of Diversity in Purdue Archives.”
The exhibit is the result of a graduate course led by Purdue University Archivist and Professor Sammie Morris this past spring semester.
The exhibit’s introduction notes that Purdue’s past, present, and future are comprised of much more than stories about feats associated with its engineering programs, its tales about athletic teams, or its strides in agricultural research and practice. It also explains why the student curators took on this effort:
[N]ot all of this history is (or will be) preserved in the University’s archive. Inevitably, some people and events are judged to be more important and thus more worthy of preservation. Our exhibit, then, aims to focus attention on elements of Purdue’s history that have been otherwise overlooked, not in order to ‘correct’ that history but rather to expand it and (if our aim is true) change our understanding of what ‘counts’ as that history in the first place. — Voices, Identities & Silences: Investigating 150 Years of Diversity in Purdue Archives
According to Morris, the idea for the course coincided with Purdue University’s faculty and staff members’ preparation for Purdue’s Sesquicentennial.
“As Purdue’s 150th anniversary approached, I often found myself reflecting on how the history of Purdue is preserved in the Archives, but not completely. There are many hidden gaps or silences representing people in Purdue history whose stories have not been widely known,” Morris said. “I began thinking about ways to fill in gaps in Purdue history, while engaging students in learning archival research skills.”
The course, too, coincided with Purdue Libraries’ expansion of its teaching mission through the creation of the new “Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies.”
“With digital humanities being one area the new school focuses on, the course offered the right opportunity to teach digital scholarship methods while providing students the opportunity to delve into Purdue’s lesser-known history,” Morris explained. “The overarching goal for students was to learn how to conduct archival research, but the broader goal was to benefit from the results of their research projects by highlighting diversity in Purdue’s past. Students in the course were encouraged to consider the identity of Purdue and how their experiences as students today are preserved. Students learned how the records of their experiences (that are preserved in the Archives) become sources of study for scholars in the future.”
Students in Morris’ class each focused on an individual era and/or topic in Purdue’s history, and the contents covered in the online exhibit are the result of each student’s work. For instance, Lee Hibbard, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Purdue Department of English studying rhetoric and composition, focused on queer life in the 2000s at Purdue.
“The work on the exhibit was entirely collaborative, with every person taking on distinct roles both on the front and back end of the exhibit’s appearance and contents,” Hibbard explained. “To come up with the title, we took a portion of class time and brainstormed some ideas together. The title came about as we played with the theme of the course and our process of research, as well as what we wanted viewers to take away from the exhibit. The wording was especially important to us as Purdue students wanting to tell a coherent narrative that depicted our goals for the exhibit, as well as the things we took away from the course as a whole,” he added.
“The three core pieces of archival work we focused on—voices, identities, and silences—became the first part of the title. The second half emphasized our process, which was very much a journey of going through the archives with an eye towards investigating diversity, rather than discovering,” Hibbard continued. “Discovery has an end point while Investigation is a process, and even though we all uncovered many interesting and fascinating examples of diversity, all of us felt by the end of the course that we had just scratched the surface of our areas, and could easily return to them to try and learn more.”
Hibbard, who is also interested in archival practices, noted that he found this course essential to unpacking the complex ideas he had for his dissertation.
“At the beginning of the semester, I knew I wanted to look at some archival things, but didn’t have the tools to do so. After a spring of reading complex theory, getting hands-on archival experience, and learning the importance of selection and curation in an exhibit setting, I feel more comfortable with the prospect of working with archives for my dissertation and my future scholarship as a whole,” he said.
Like his fellow students in the course, Hibbard chose to home in on a specific area of Purdue’s history because of his personal stake and interest in the selected topic and era.
“As a queer person, specifically a transgender man, I am very interested in the way support and networks for queer students developed at Purdue during the time that I was an undergraduate (2006-2010) at a similar large Midwestern university (University of Nebraska in Lincoln),” he explained.
Shortly before the end of the Spring 2019 semester, students in Morris’ course shared their personal stories about their work on the exhibit at a small, private reception held in the Archives and Special Collections. Below are more photos from that reception.
May 2nd, 2019
Faculty in the Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies are helping to build the Collaborative Archive & Data Research Environment (CADRE) with Indiana University, the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Microsoft Research, Web of Science, and the National Science Foundation’s regional big data innovation hubs to provide sustainable and standardized data and text mining capabilities for open and licensed big data. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the two-year project with a National Leadership Grant in September 2018.
According to Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies Associate Professor Michael Witt—who is among the faculty working on the grant project—the first two datasets being provisioned on the CADRE platform are the bibliographic data from the Web of Science and Microsoft Academic Search. With more than 280 million combined citations, these resources provide a vast and rich dataset for informetric and scientometric research.
To better understand the needs of potential users and applications for research, CADRE is inviting fellowship applications from interested researchers. Once the fellows are selected, they will have early access to the platform. Witt noted that CADRE fellows will:
Six full scholarships are now available for the upcoming International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics at Sapienza University in Rome, to be held Sept. 2-5, 2019.
Interested faculty and graduate students from Purdue should apply via the CADRE website at http://iuni.iu.edu/resources/cadre/fellowship-program by June 25.
For information about CADRE, visit http://iuni.iu.edu/resources/cadre.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, UncategorizedMay 1st, 2019
Since 2013, Purdue University Libraries has sponsored the “Why I Love Purdue Libraries” video contest.
Each year, the contest — supported by the Purdue Federal Credit Union — is open to all current, enrolled Purdue University students on the West Lafayette campus.
In 2019, all entries were judged by Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies student employees and regular staff members.
Three videos – first, second, and third place – were selected as winners of the first $1,000 prize, second $750 prize, and third $500 prize; the winning entrants and videos are listed below.
Miteum Yoo (undergraduate)
Tae Hyung Kwon (undergraduate)
*$500 prize split equally among the three of them
Filed under: press_release, UncategorizedApril 29th, 2019
Courtesy of the American Library Association
The Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) of the American Library Association has selected Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Associate Professor Clarence Maybee as the 2019 recipient of the LIRT Librarian Recognition Award. The Librarian Recognition Award was created to recognize an individual’s contribution to the development, advancement, and support of information literacy and instruction.
Since becoming a librarian in 2005, Maybee (who serves as a information literacy specialist at Purdue University) has made rich contributions to the profession through his strong publication and service record, as well as his exemplary record of program creation and dissemination.
His participation in the Purdue University IMPACT (Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation) program — a course-development program through which classroom instructors collaborate with librarians and others to improve their courses through active learning, information literacy, and other research-based educational practices — was particularly noteworthy. The program was named by The Chronicle of Higher Education as a 2018 Innovator, one of “six programs to change classroom culture.”
Closely aligned is his scholarship on informed learning design, which is intended to guide the creation of assignments so that students intentionally learn to use information sources at the same time that they are learning course content. In 2018, he authored the book “IMPACT Learning: Librarians at the Forefront of Change in Higher Education.”
Maybee has also demonstrated his commitment to the library instruction community through his leadership efforts in both the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Instruction Section and the Immersion Program. His contributions to the development, advancement, and support of information literacy and instruction exemplify the values that LIRT embraces.
“It is a tremendous honor to have received the LIRT Librarian Recognition Award. Throughout my career, I have looked to LIRT to inform my information literacy work as a librarian in higher education,” Maybee noted.
The Library Instruction Round Table was started in 1977 with the intent to bring together librarians who provide library instruction across all types of libraries — academic, public, school, and special libraries. This year marks the sixth year that the Librarian Recognition Award has been awarded.
Visit LIRT’s webpage at www.ala.org/rt/lirt/mission to find out more about LIRT, its mission, and the awards.
The LIRT Librarian Recognition Awards Subcommittee included Beth Fuchs of the University of Kentucky (chair & LIRT awards committee chair), Lore Guilmartin of the Pratt Institute, Yolanda Hood of the University of Prince Edward Island, and Melissa Ann Fraser-Arnott of the Library of Parliament, Canada. The ALA Office for Member Relations (AOMR) serves as the liaison to the Library and Instruction Round Table (LIRT).
Filed under: faculty_staff, generalApril 24th, 2019
This week, users of Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies’ website may have noticed a new feature, Proactive Chat. The service is now available via the home page and Primo (the interface to search the Purdue Libraries’ collections). Proactive Chat will pop out once during a user’s visit to the Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies’ home page or Primo. Patrons can use the service to ask questions about Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies’ collections and resources.
The debut of the new feature coincides with the celebration of the “Sweet 16” birthday of Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies’ “Ask a Librarian” digital reference service.
Join Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies staff for the celebration from 9 a.m.-noon Thursday, April 25 to enjoy free cookies just outside of the Humanities, Social Science, and Education (HSSE) Library in Stewart Center (west entrance), where more information about the digital reference services will be available.
Filed under: general, Uncategorized