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May 17th, 2018
For faculty in academic libraries around the globe, understanding how students use information for school—as well as on into their post-college professional working and personal lives—is gold standard stuff. Over the past decade, Dr. Alison Head and her team of researchers at the non-profit Project Information Literacy (PIL) organization have been diligently contributing to this important standard of information literacy data through ongoing research. Since 2008, Head—the founder and executive director of PIL—and her fellow PIL researchers have interviewed and surveyed more than 16,000 undergraduates at over 88 U.S. four-year public and private universities and colleges and two-year community colleges. PIL has published nine open-access research reports as part of the ongoing project, and the researchers plan to publish a 10th study about college students’ news consumption this fall.
Over the 2017-18 academic year, faculty in Purdue University Libraries have had the benefit of working with Head one on one (virtually) through the PIL’s inaugural Visiting Research Scholar program, a unique professional-development opportunity for faculty and staff in the academic library community. Last summer, Head selected Purdue Libraries as the initial site for the program, after a completing a successful pilot phase at University of Nebraska Library. As part of the wrap-up of the yearlong program at Purdue Libraries, Thursday, she was on campus to present, “How Today’s Students Conduct Research.”
“Purdue Libraries has been the perfect setting for a program like this,” Head explained. “In addition to being known as an innovative and award-winning academic library organization, the opportunity to work individually and collaboratively with the mix of young, excited, and engaged faculty members has been very gratifying for me.”
According to Dr. Clarence Maybee, associate professor and information literacy specialist at Purdue Libraries, bringing in and working with experts such as Head will have long-term results, well beyond the Visiting Scholar program.
“In our educational efforts to teach Purdue learners to use information, Purdue Libraries faculty and staff engage in ‘praxis,’ meaning we apply theory to practice. As a community, we are continually exploring new scholarly ideas. Visits from information literacy scholars, such as Dr. Head, engage Purdue Libraries faculty and staff in the latest research findings and theories, prompting deep discussions of the most effective approaches to information literacy education that we may draw into our efforts at Purdue,” he noted.
Faculty members like Heather Howard, an assistant professor and librarian in the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and Economics, and David Zwicky, an assistant professor and librarian in the Library of Engineering and Science, described working with Head as “very helpful.”
“Dave and I had several phone calls with her while designing some assessment research for the work we do with the Soybean Innovation Competition. We went in with an idea to set up pre- and post-tests for next year, and she talked us through what information we were trying to get and what we wanted to accomplish,” Howard said. “With her guidance, we decided to run mini focus groups this semester with the students who had just completed the competition. We are going to be able to use the information from these focus groups to inform our assessment and instruction next year. She also helped us develop our questions for the focus group to make sure they were on track with our research questions,” she noted.
“She was generous with her time, meeting with us over the phone pretty early in the morning, as PIL is based in California,” Zwicky added.
“Alison helped me think through the projects, and her extensive research experience allowed me to clarify some details of a couple of my projects. I appreciated her insight, practical advice, and ability to think broadly about the subject of the research,” noted Dr. Erla Heyns, associate professor and Head, Humanities, Social Sciences, Education and Business (HSSE-B) Division of Purdue Libraries.
Although Head and her research team at PIL have plenty on their research “plates”—currently, among the many research projects she is involved in, she’s leading a multidisciplinary team looking into the complex issue of how young adults gather news in today’s world, a study supported by the Knight Foundation and the American Library Association’s largest division, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)—she established the Visiting Research Scholar Program to be able to help individual academic librarian researchers in their own information literacy research projects.
“I think it is imperative for library and information science research to increase and for the overall quality to become more rigorous, so I started the program to begin working with individual researchers, to help them work toward these goals,” Head explained. “For me, most importantly, it keeps me current and provides me with a much wider view of the kind of research being conducted, as well as what kind of research is coming up and the different kinds of methods being used,” Head explained.
Since the program began last summer, Head has met virtually (over the phone and online) with several Purdue Libraries faculty members, both individually and in groups.
“I think one of my favorite things, which was new for us at PIL, was ‘an early researcher’ brown bag discussion via a Google Hangout. In that discussion, we had about 15 young faculty on tenure track, and we talked about how to put together a first research study for publication. I enjoy playing that mentor role for people who are starting out,” Head noted. “In addition, I had conversations with faculty members who have quite good research publication methods and wanted to know, based on conference presentations and what they’re hearing, where they could take their research for their upcoming publication goals.”
Head and her team at PIL will be taking applications in June from academic libraries for second installment of the Visiting Research Scholar Program. She can be contacted at Alison@projectinfolit.org.
Learn more about Project Information Literacy at www.projectinfolit.org.
Filed under: faculty_staff, generalMay 14th, 2018
Purdue University Press is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Clarence Maybee as series editor for Purdue Information Literacy Handbooks.
The series, founded by Dr. Sharon Weiner, promotes evidence-based practice in teaching information literacy competencies through the lens of the different academic disciplines. The content of each volume includes the perspectives of disciplinary experts as well as library and information science professionals. The handbooks apply library and information science theories, pedagogies, and models to information literacy in the context of academic disciplines. Each handbook includes sections that explain the relationship of information literacy to different disciplines; identify relevant theories, pedagogies, and/or models; and relate those to effective practice in information literacy teaching and learning. The handbooks are designed both for librarians engaged in instruction and faculty in the disciplines who are including information literacy in undergraduate and graduate learning.
Dr. Clarence Maybee is an associate professor and information literacy specialist at Purdue University Libraries. His work focuses on integrating information literacy into curricula using an informed learning approach in which students engage with information as they learn disciplinary content. Dr. Maybee leads the Libraries’ involvement in a campus-wide course development program called Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT). He is on the faculty of the Association of Research & College Libraries’ (ACRL) Information Literacy Immersion, a professional development program for academic librarians. Dr. Maybee graduated with his PhD from Queensland University of Technology in 2015. His dissertation, titled Informed learning in the undergraduate classroom: The role of information experiences in shaping outcomes, received the university’s Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award. He publishes in highly ranked journals, such as Library and Information Science Research and Studies in Higher Education. He presents nationally and internationally on information literacy in higher education. He is the author of the book IMPACT Learning: Librarians at the Forefront of Change in Higher Education, published by Chandos Publishing in 2018.
“I am delighted to serve as the series editor for the Purdue Information Literacy Handbook series published by Purdue University Press. The series strongly contributes to our knowledge of information literacy by exploring how it is understood in disciplinary contexts and offering practical tools for teaching and learning within those contexts,” said Dr. Maybee.
For more information about the Purdue Information Literacy Handbooks series, visit http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/purdue-information-literacy-handbooks. To submit a book proposal to the series, e-mail pupacq@purdue.edu with “Information Literacy submission” in the subject line.
Purdue University Press is the scholarly publishing arm of the University and is a unit within the Purdue University Libraries. Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, the Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including aeronautics and astronautics, business, technology, engineering education, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences.The Press is also a partner for university faculty and staff, centers and departments, wishing to disseminate the results of their research.
Filed under: general, press_releaseMay 10th, 2018
In order to celebrate National Pet Week we reached out to the editors of our book series, New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond, to ask them a few short questions about the series and their own pets. Both series editors are at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University. Alan Beck, ScD is director of the Center of the Human-Animal Bond and the Dorothy N. McAllister Professor of Animal Ecology; and Marguerite (Maggie) E. O’Haire, PhD is an assistant professor of human-animal interaction in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology.
O’Haire: I have 2 dogs – Milo and Chloe. My dogs are both rescues. We recently did the dog DNA testing and Milo is a Beagle/Jack Russel Terrier mix and Chloe is an American Foxhound. Milo is almost 4 years old and Chloe is almost 14 years old.
Beck: I now have two dogs, Lili (brown & white) and Luci (black & white); both rescue mutts. Two photos of Lili at two different ages.
O’Haire: I have always been fascinated by how and why people interact with animals. I am motivated to bring strong science to an area that has often been underappreciated by the scientific community.
Beck: Growing up in crowded Brooklyn, we had no pets, indeed very few people did. I would walk to the dumps to watch birds and rats. As a graduate student I studied the stray dogs of Baltimore and became fascinated with how people interacted with pets; the interactions changed the behavior and even the health of both the people and pets. I changed my focus of study and soon after moving to Indiana, I joined the ranks of dog owner.
O’Haire: The New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond series is a great venue to translate human-animal bond science into everyday language to reach a broader audience. We love receiving new submissions and look forward to continuing to help bright and innovative scholars share their work through the Purdue University Press.
Beck: The New Directions series begins to capture the many aspects of our relationship with animals, not always what you would like, but all part of the mutual world shared by people and their animals. Of great value, the series allows insights to major facets not always studied but still very important.
The New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond series is published by Purdue University Press in collaboration with Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. It expands our knowledge of the interrelationships between people, animals, and their environment. Manuscripts are welcomed on all aspects of human-animal interaction and welfare, including therapy applications, public policy, and the application of humane ethics in managing our living resources.
The staff at the Purdue University Press loves our pets, too! Check out some pictures that we featured last month on National Pet Day!
Filed under: general
May 9th, 2018
Welcome to Database of the Month, a feature from the Parrish Library. Each of these monthly snapshots will give you a very brief introduction to the basic features of one of our specialized subscription databases. This month’s database is Passport brought to you by Euromonitor International.
Link: http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/businessdatabases is the alphabetical list of the databases specially selected for those in a business program of study. Access the databases off-campus with your Purdue login and password.
Focus: Passport is an online business information system providing business intelligence on countries, consumers and industries. It offers integrated access to statistics, market reports, company profiles and information sources.
Tutorial: Click here see the basics of searching Passport.
Start with this hint: Use the keyword search in the top right corner of the screen; relevant content will appear as you type.
Why you should know this database: Passport provides access to timely data and analysis on consumer lifestyles, population trends and socioeconomic analysis for every country and consumer type down to the city level. With interactive dashboards users can explore category, company and channel data for an industry or diver deeper into consumer trends using economic, socioeconomic and demographic data.
Interested in Consumer & Market Research?
Some other databases you might want to check out, are:
Database of the Month comes to you from the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management & Economics. If you would like more information about this database, or if you would like a demonstration of it for a class, contact parrlib@purdue.edu. Also let us know if you know of a colleague who would benefit from this monthly feature.
Since usage statistics are an important barometer when databases are up for renewal, tell us your favorite database, and we will gladly promote it. Send an email to parrlib@purdue.edu.
Filed under: database, general, MGMTApril 30th, 2018
You can find him at the Alamosa, Colorado library during story time; people always feel comfortable around him; he loves helping children become better readers…can you guess who he is? Moose, the reading therapy dog! Moose is a registered therapy dog who has been providing animal assisted interventions in his community since 2011. One of his success stories is Nicole Martinez’s daughter, Emma, who overcame her aversion to reading since working with Moose.
Nicole’s eleven-year-old daughter, Emma, hated reading. Nicole knew she had to do something to change this kind of behavior. Reading is required to understand most other topics in school and she didn’t want her daughter to get behind. When Nicole heard about Moose from a flyer at the local library, she jumped on the opportunity to help her daughter. Moose was well-known for his “reading reputation” due to his success in the largest therapy animal program in the country, Pet Partners. This led Nicole to sign up for a session at the library for Emma to read with Moose.
“We had no challenges with Moose,” Nicole stated. “Emma hated to read…it was like pulling teeth with this girl to make her sit and read for even 30 minutes, until she started reading with Moose.”
Knowing how much Emma loves animals, Nicole was optimistic that her daughter would find success reading to Moose. Nicole noticed a change in her daughter’s attitude toward reading after spending time with Moose. Moose’s calming presence helped Emma feel comfortable and confident through every book she read.
Nicole took Emma to the library twice a month to read with Moose. Each session lasted about 30 minutes. Nicole noted how Emma could spend all day with Moose, but there were other children in time slots. After witnessing Emma’s confidence levels soar, Nicole began bringing her youngest daughter, Kiera, to read with Moose too.
Post working with Moose, Emma’s reading level has greatly improved. Emma gained confidence to read out loud to anyone and reads without being asked. Emma is currently in the sixth grade and reading at a ninth grade level. Nicole praised, “This experience has been one of our best. It made my youngest daughter start wanting to read, and Emma has excelled tremendously all because of Moose!”
Taking your child to read to a therapy dog might seem intimidating at first, but Nicole’s experience with her daughters proves that there is nothing to worry about…especially when there is an adorable dog waiting to listen. With the help of a therapy dog, the challenge to get your child or student to read will no longer be a hassle.
To learn more about Moose’s real-life story and journey as a therapy dog, visit Purdue University Press’ website to read the summary and other book information about Moose! The Reading Dog by Laura Bruneau and Beverly Timmons.
Note: This guest post written by Macey Warren, account associate with Boiler Communication the student-run public relations firm in the Brian Lamb School of Communication in Purdue University’s College of Liberal Arts. To see a media kit produced by the entire Boiler Communication team as part of their spring 2018 semester projects click here.
Filed under: generalApril 30th, 2018
Last July, Purdue University Libraries was selected as the site for Project Information Literacy’s inaugural Visiting Research Scholar program. The program—implemented over the 2017-18 academic year—enabled Purdue Libraries faculty researchers to consult with expert information-literacy researcher Dr. Alison Head, the founder and executive director of Project Information Literacy, a non-profit organization based in California.
Throughout 2017-18, Head—who is also a senior researcher at the metaLAB at Harvard—has mentored Purdue Libraries researchers on their scholarly research projects, both large and small, through the program. She will be on Purdue’s West Lafayette campus in mid-May to complete the program with Purdue Libraries faculty, as well as deliver a talk that is open, free to the Purdue campus.
Head will present, “How Today’s Students Conduct Research” from 10-11 a.m. Thursday, May 17, in the Wilmeth Active Learning Center, room 1132. According Head, the talk will cover what she and her fellow PIL researchers have learned from students about students’ research practices. Registration is available at https://purdue.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_exERowtW6fjZBWt.
“We are now working on our 10th research study at Project Information Literacy,” Head noted. “My talk will cover what students have taught us about their research practices and information seeking and how they go about fulfilling course-related research, e.g., what their strategies, techniques, and workarounds are. I will also touch on our current news consumption study (which comes out in October) and what we are finding out about students’ personal uses of news—where they are getting news, what their consumption habits are, and how confident they feel about fake news. This study looks at students through the lens of their experiences, and my presentation will help shed light on something that very few educators and librarians know much about,” she added.
According to Head, the PIL Visiting Research Scholar program began with a pilot phase in 2016-17 at the University of Nebraska Library.
“The program’s sole purpose has been for PIL to provide a year of research consultations, so that librarians may be become more qualified and improved information literacy researchers,” Head explained.
Since 2008, Head and her team of PIL researchers have interviewed and surveyed over 16,000 undergraduates at more than 88 U.S. four-year public and private universities and colleges and two-year community colleges. PIL has published nine open-access research reports as part of the ongoing study.
In a 2016 Inside Higher Education column, Barbara Fister called PIL: “hands-down the most important long-term, multi-institutional research project ever launched on how students use information for school and beyond.”
Articles about PIL’s work have also appeared in The Atlantic Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Education Week, Inside Higher Education, Library Journal, and The Seattle Times.
Head also led the 2007 exploratory information literacy study, a forerunner to PIL, at Saint Mary’s College of California, where she taught as the Disney Visiting Professor in New Media for 10 years.
Head earned her Ph.D. in information science, as well as her MLS and BA degrees, from U.C. Berkeley. She was awarded the inaugural S. T. Lee Lectureship in Library Leadership and Innovation at Harvard Library for 2017-19. In addition, she has been a Research Fellow and a Faculty Associate and at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, as well as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, where she studied human-computer interaction.
Learn more about PIL at www.projectinfolit.org.
Filed under: faculty_staff, general, press_releaseApril 27th, 2018
A new exhibit, “The Sixties: A Decade of Triumph, Struggle, and Change” from Purdue University Archives and Special Collections, a division of Purdue Libraries, features a rich variety of artifacts, photographs, and documents, all from the Archives’ collections. According to Archivist for University History Adriana Harmeyer, the artifacts and displays spotlight the student experience at Purdue throughout the eventful decade.
The exhibit is free and open to the public from 1-4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday in the Archives and Special Collections, located on the fourth floor of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education (HSSE) Library, Stewart Center. An exhibit open house is set from 5-7 p.m. Wednesday, May 23 in the Archives and Special Collections, and the event will include light refreshments, activities for children, and a chance to meet the exhibit curators.
“Student scrapbooks, senior cords, and underground student newspapers appear alongside aeronautics textbooks, Rose Bowl tickets, and Grand Prix programs,” noted Harmeyer and Digital Preservation and Electronic Records Archivist Carly Dearborn, who both curated the exhibit. “Topics range from Purdue’s astronaut alumni to the 1969 centennial celebrations to student protests that marked the final years of the decade.”
“The Sixties: A Decade of Triumph, Struggle, and Change” is on display through Friday, Aug. 10 in Purdue University Archives and Special Collections.
For more information, contact Harmeyer at aharmey@purdue.edu or Dearborn at cdearbor@purdue.edu.
Filed under: collections, general, SPEC, UncategorizedApril 27th, 2018
Purdue Libraries Assistant Professor Ilana Stonebraker was elected vice chair/chair elect of the Business Reference and Services Section (BRASS) of the American Library Association RUSA (Reference and User Services) Division in mid-April.
Stonebraker, who works in the Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and Economics and teaches courses in the Purdue Krannert School of Management, will begin her vice chair post July 1 (2018). As vice chair, she will coordinate appointments to BRASS’s 16 committees.
On July 1, 2019, Stonebraker will move into the BRASS chair position, in which she will coordinate division reviews, serve as the head executive for the section, and help create new initiatives. (For more information, visit www.rusaupdate.org/2018/04/rusas-2018-election-results-are-in/.)
In early April, Stonebraker was promoted to associate professor with tenure (beginning July 1, 2018). In 2017, she was recognized by the Library Instruction Round Table (LIRT) for her article “Toward informed leadership: Teaching students to make better decisions using information.” The piece, published in November in the Journal of Business & Finance Librarianship, is recognized as one of the “Top Twenty Articles of 2016” by LIRT in its June 2017 newsletter. Also in 2017, Stonebraker was also recognized as a Library Journal 2017 “Mover and Shaker.”
Filed under: faculty_staff, generalApril 22nd, 2018
For our final From the Archives photo this semester, we look way, way back to the Archives’ oldest photo of campus. Where is this? Can you identify any of the buildings? When would this have been taken? Share your ideas in the comments and check back on Friday to learn the details about this photo.
UPDATE:
This early view of Purdue was captured in 1876, only two years after Purdue first offered classes.
The buildings are, from left to right:
Just visible in the middle of the picture is the construction site that would become University Hall, which opened the following year. University Hall became the oldest building still standing on campus when Purdue Hall was demolished in 1960.
Many photos of campus were taken from this exact angle over the years, but this is the only one that does not yet have University Hall in the center.
Purdue in 1891
Purdue in 2005
Thank you to everyone who has joined us for this series of mystery photos. We will have many more exciting highlights from the Archives to share during Purdue’s sesquicentennial celebrations beginning this fall!
Filed under: general, SPECApril 19th, 2018
ProQuest Ebook Central will be unavailable this Saturday, April 21st, 10:00pm through Sunday, April 22nd, 3:00am (EDT) due to scheduled maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Filed under: Alerts: Expired