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| 2012 - 2013 | Volume, n. 1. A unit of written material assembled together and cataloged in a library. 2. A large amount; quantity. 3. Loudness. | VOLUMe
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Message From the Dean

Welcome to the second issue of VOLUMe, the publication we launched last year to share our strategic plan initiatives with our friends, supporters, alumni and colleagues, along with Purdue students and faculty. It has been gratifying to hear from readers that VOLUMe — told in the voices of our faculty members and thought leaders — was a novel and informative way to convey what a 21st century library is all about.

In that first issue, Provost Tim Sands stated: “VOLUMe provides the stories of people whose goals and actions demonstrate the central, critical role Libraries has in advancing learning and scholarship at Purdue.”

This issue of VOLUMe continues to highlight the progress on the Libraries’ strategic plan that will guide us through 2016. In the following pages we will illustrate how our work transcends what traditionally has been conceived of as the role of a university research library. And we hope to express the passion Libraries’ faculty and staff feel for their work in advancing our initiatives in concert with the University’s learning and discovery missions.

VOLUMe’s voices will share information about:

This academic year promises to be exciting in many ways, but especially in the planning and design of the new Active Learning Center unofficially dubbed “Boiler STEAM Commons.” Libraries, along with many campus constituencies, will plan this leading-edge facility, which will integrate teaching and study spaces to address new modes of instruction and learning at Purdue. As always, I welcome your thoughts or comments about VOLUMe and our next steps to advance learning, discovery and engagement at Purdue.

James L. Mullins, PhD
Dean of Libraries and Esther Ellis Norton Professor
New Roles for NEW GOALS

I am proud to be among the Purdue librarians who are assuming new roles in teaching and partnering with disciplinary faculty to strengthen students’ information literacy and cross-disciplinary understanding.

Currently, I am serving as one of the Libraries faculty on the primary support team for Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation (IMPACT) to help with course redesigns that emphasize active learning techniques and information literacy education.

Increasingly, I am asked to guest lecture or be embedded within a course to enhance the information literacy skills of students. That is how I collaborated with Larry Nies, who teaches Engineering Environmental Sustainability in the Libraries renovated B848, one of the first IMPACT classrooms.

As a 2011 Libraries Teaching Award recipient and a 2012-13 Purdue Teaching for Tomorrow Fellow, my teaching is important to me because I am helping students make sense of the information deluge in a way that will help them understand its importance, and ultimately, apply knowledge to their professional and everyday lives.

Jeremy R. Garritano
Chemical Information Specialist and Associate Professor of Library Science
Garritano, the Libraries liaison for chemistry, developed a LibGuide to assist more than 6,000 undergraduate students enrolled in general chemistry. By being online, it is one of the most successful and used LibGuides at Purdue.
First Class COLLABORATIONS

In the spring of 2011, I wanted a higher level of learning from my Engineering Environmental Sustainability class. I have the expectation that my classes always get better. In 2011, they didn’t. I was not willing to accept that.

I began looking for a different style of classroom and was referred to Tomalee Doan, Libraries, who helped me get involved in the IMPACT program. As a result, I was selected for the IMPACT program’s second cohort in 2012. I also had a head start on course redesign and was able to use the Libraries’ Hicks B848, a 117-seat active-learning IMPACT classroom.

As an IMPACT mentor and guest lecturer, Libraries’ Jeremy Garritano took genuine interest in the class and even set up a Website for us in advance of a class assignment. I didn’t know Libraries would do that. Jeremy’s opinions about evaluating information and its sources are highly valued. Now I am introducing his fuller explanation of information literacy and its value as a core competency very early in the semester. We developed an information literacy assignment that will go out the second day of class. In the second week Jeremy came to class and helped facilitate the discussion. Thanks to this experience, I am excited about going to class each day.

Larry Nies
Professor of Civil Engineering
Nies teaches Engineering Environmental Sustainability (CE 355) in the Libraries’ renovated B848, one of the first IMPACT classrooms.
Learning Spaces WITH IMPACT

This is a very exciting time for us at Purdue Libraries! Not only are our roles as faculty and librarians changing, Purdue Libraries is already a national leader in information literacy and now we are recognized as a leader in supporting collaborative learning.

We were early, active partners in the provost’s University-wide collaborative IMPACT (Instruction Matters: Purdue Academic Course Transformation) initiative, which aims to increase student success and retention.

Libraries participate in the Steering Committee, the Management Team, and the Support Team for the IMPACT program. As a member of the Steering Committee, I specialize in planning future learning spaces across the University, which are central to new ways of teaching and learning.

Libraries’ spaces, designed in collaboration with campus partners, are serving as incubators to pilot new active learning experiences and environments. Through experience, research and feedback, we’ve found that more active learning spaces are needed to support the IMPACT initiative and that students prefer blended spaces that allow for a variety of study habits and work patterns.

The new library environments, created in response to these findings, offer students destinations for intentional learning and purposeful engagement with resources and peers. Students benefit from specialized services within the library, such as digital media work or consultation on research and data services and other types of assistance at the same place.

Last year, B848 in the lower level of Hicks Undergraduate Library became the first space renovated into an IMPACT classroom. This summer we created two new active learning environments and a learning commons.

I was fortunate to be very involved in creating one of the University’s leading active learning spaces, the newly renovated Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and Economics, located in the Krannert Building.

Parrish Library offers a vibrant collaborative commons with an integrated teaching space, the Learn Lab. Blended spaces, such as the Parrish Library, which offer visualization tools for collaboration, flexible study areas, and areas that support differing study preferences attract students. It is gratifying to hear that Parrish Library is often considered an archetype for desired formal and informal blended spaces.

The success of the Parrish Library project will inform our plans for creating a learning commons for the 21st century — the proposed Active Learning Center, a combined science and engineering library with teaching spaces, library services, formal study spaces and informal learning spaces.

All these transformations have been exciting and energizing for me professionally, and in the process they have transformed my role as a librarian, a researcher and an educator. And I do love what I do!

Tomalee Doan
Associate Professor of Library Science
Doan is the head of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education and Business (HSSEB) Division. She is writing about her research in educational space design.
Designing a better USER EXPERIENCE

Thanks to the Purdue Libraries’ vision and innovative initiatives and the willingness to hire nonlibrarians as Libraries faculty, I came to this position after completing degrees at Tsinghua University and a PhD at North Carolina State University in industrial engineering. I began working as the digital user experience specialist in October 2011. My work is focused on designing and improving the user experience of the Libraries’ Web presence, including building information architecture for the Libraries’ website and designing new interfaces for our digital products and services.

My work is informed by conducting usability evaluations, in the lab created for me after my arrival, for the discovery tool and digital repositories being implemented in the Libraries. If we can build a better interactive experience around the discovery and use of information available on and through our Web presence, we will have an effective platform to help students and teachers in learning and help researchers find information they need and communicate their work in new ways.

A new Libraries website is ready for testing, and I will continue to improve it and our content management based on research findings and usability test feedback. After all, providing up-to-date and accurate content is what users really need, so it’s critical to a satisfactory user experience.

Tao Zhang
Assistant Professor of Library Science
Zhang is digital user experience specialist and an assistant professor of library science.
Diverse and Fresh PERSPECTIVES

I first visited Purdue as an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Diversity Scholar in 2010 after being inspired by my mother, a librarian of more than three decades, to apply for the program.

Thanks to a professional development opportunity hosted by Dean Mullins, I was given the opportunity to look behind the curtain and learn how Libraries’ intricate system works.

Little did I suspect that I’d be working here in 2011, first as the interim Black Cultural Center (BCC) Librarian and now splitting time between BCC and Purdue Libraries.

At Purdue Libraries, all positions and programs focus on better service to the user. I believe the very nature of librarianship allows new and experienced librarians to maintain fresh perspectives for a perpetually evolving audience. Diligent analysis also informs my work for Libraries’ first-year experience program planning — from conducting information literacy sessions to working with Libraries faculty to design basic research instructional videos.

As chair of the Orientation Committee, I also communicate the value of our Libraries to new students who may be unaware of our many resources, including special resources for international students. I also work with the Science Bound program, which provides mentoring and tutoring to help science students from low-income families succeed. My presentations include proper research methods and tips and we discuss library resources.

In all these instances, we are central to the University’s academic mission — and student success.

Langston Bates
Black Cultural Center Librarian
Bates is the Black Cultural Center librarian and an information literacy specialist for Purdue Libraries. He serves on the Libraries’ ARL Scholars Planning Committee and will participate in the Libraries’ first-year experience program planning.
Information Literacy BY DESIGN

As faculty members and researchers, Purdue librarians are active participants in the entire scholarly communication process, from discovery to delivery, through providing information resources, services, partnerships and national and international leadership. We also improve and increase access to scholarly resources through our own contributions to scholarship.

Much of my published scholarship focuses on the role of information in active-learning pedagogies and the integration of information literacy in science and technology curricula. I’ve also created online, animated tutorials to help students navigate and understand the structure of the different kinds of technical information.

Currently, I am involved in increasing information literacy in engineering education with my colleague David Radcliffe, the Kamyar Haghighi Head of the School of Engineering Education and the Epistemology Professor of Engineering Education.

We are editing a handbook that identifies and addresses the information needs of engineers and engineering students and their information gathering habits. Our handbook contextualizes information literacy principles in the engineering design process.

‘Design’ is the core problem-solving process of technological development. Our goal was to create an information-rich engineering design model and help students and educators develop a knowledge management strategy.

We are studying and articulating the overall strengths and weaknesses of information gathering behaviors and assessing the special needs of particular disciplines in order to provide guidance for both engineering faculty and librarians so they can better work together to integrate information skills into their curricular offerings.

Our model is descriptive rather than prescriptive. The essence of our approach is to motivate engineers and students to determine at each stage what information they need to move the project forward and how they can acquire and use that information, as well as to document the knowledge they’ve gained to promote their lifelong learning.

We are taking a process-driven approach to the book. To focus on specific resources or interfaces will rapidly become obsolete, so we intend our book to have a timeless quality that transcends changing information technologies. Our goal is to make the book accessible to both engineering educators and librarians, with authors from both disciplines contributing chapters.

Purdue University Press will publish Integrating Information into the Engineering Design Process in spring 2014. In a promising start, our paper on the information-rich design model received the PIC-IV Best Paper award at the 2012 American Society for Engineering Education conference (one of the top five papers of the entire conference).

Ultimately, as librarians and educators, we create knowledge and in doing so take a leadership role in the changing scholarly communication environment.

Michael Fosmire
Fosmire is the head of the Physical Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PSET) Division and a professor of library science.
Reining in the DATA DELUGE

As associate dean for research in the Purdue Libraries, I feel a big part of what we do going forward in academia involves meeting faculty colleagues in their environment, understanding their needs and using our library and archival science background to help solve problems related to organizing, managing and disseminating research outputs. And we are finding there are many ways to collaborate or partner with faculty, especially co-teaching courses and co-investigating on grants.

Purdue took a lead role in developing a digital data repository through collaboration with Libraries, ITaP and the Office of the Vice President for Research. The question of how or whether to develop a data curation services started in 2007, when research demonstrated through interactions with colleagues that there was a demand to address growing research outputs in new ways much earlier in the research process.

The launch of the Purdue University Research Repository (PURR) research.hub.purdue.edu in 2012 marks the beginning of the next big phase for us. We are honing our experience, expanding our services and initiating new approaches to data curation and management.

At Purdue, the Libraries faculty along with our college/school faculty colleagues will continue to forge new relationships and develop new approaches, tools and resources to work with them.

D. Scott Brandt
Associate Dean for Research, Prof. of Library Science
Brandt works on a data management and curation project via laptop with Sandra Sydor-Bousso, assistant professor In the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
DIGITAL HUMANITIES: Art of Collaboration

In spring 2010, I received a Libraries Scholar Grant, which allowed me to spend two weeks in Belgium to conduct archival research on the international networks of the pre- and post-war art world.

This research was connected to a project I am creating on the reception of American art in Europe as part of ARTL@S. ARTL@S is an international research team, that aims at promoting a geo-social and transnational history of the arts that meets the challenge of spatial and digital humanities. It brings together scholars eager to embrace digital technology to share, process and visualize historical data.

For this project, I collaborated with Chris Miller, [Libraries’ former GIS specialist and assistant professor of library science] who helped me transfer my data into a relational database that is connected to an open source, Web-based application programming interface (API), so that I can automatically create maps and graphs. When I met Chris I was looking into GIS software. When I realized that Purdue Libraries had a GIS specialist who could help me, I was extremely relieved!

Together with Sorin Matei [associate professor of communication], Chris and I received a Global Synergy Grant to create an interactive Web application titled The Triumph of American Art, which will visualize my research and allow users to view maps, zoom in on them, select artists, artworks, and dates and even create their own maps.

I feel that Purdue Libraries is a great resource — of tools, specialists and copyright experts — for Purdue faculty and students beyond all the books and journals it contains.

Catherine Dossin
Assistant Professor of Art History
All in  ANAME

This summer I had the honor of being named the first France A. Córdova Archivist for the Libraries’ Susan Bulkeley Butler Women’s Archives. President Córdova committed $3 million in unrestricted gift funds to establish a new full-time, permanently endowed women’s archivist position, which also provides support for continuing to build upon our rich collections pertaining to women’s history at Purdue and in Indiana.

Up until now, I spent just half my time working with our women’s collections. Now I can focus my time building the women’s archives, working with graduate assistants and staff, to make it better and more usable for students and researchers.

I am particularly excited about working with my division head, Sammie Morris, to identify donors and seek out and acquire additional collections of prominent and successful Indiana and Purdue alumnae who have achieved notable careers and accomplishments. Reading from our collections of personal papers pertaining to women alumnae who went on to become successful in largely male-dominated professions such as engineering, technology, science and management weaves together an amazing depiction of how things have evolved and changed over time for women at Purdue.

I welcome this great professional opportunity — and something I care about deeply — to think creatively about how to build a timeless, unique collection that will be used and valued by students and scholars — today and in the future.

Stephanie Schmitz
Archivist
Schmitz is the France A. Córdova Archivist for the Libraries’ Susan Bulkeley Butler Women’s Archives.
How our Collections  BECOME SPECIAL

As the processing and public services archivist for Libraries Archives and Special Collections, I oversee reference services and I help make our collections available for use by all patrons/scholars on site or online.

The J.C. Allen Collection of glass and film negatives and photographs illustrates all that goes on behind the scenes to build collections unique to Purdue. My responsibilities cover the spectrum of what archivists do: collection development, processing, arrangement, description, preservation and promotion.

Sammie Morris, the University archivist and head of Archives and Special Collections, and others worked with the College of Agriculture to acquire and transfer over Allen’s photographs capturing Purdue buildings, people and major campus events from the 1910s to the 1970s.

A leadership team also worked with John Allen, J. C. Allen’s grandson, to acquire hundreds of thousands of images documenting rural life in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Texas.

After processing a collection, we may write grants and seek funds to digitize our collections and exhibit them online. Through the Archon database, anyone from around the globe can find and access them. Currently we have such a proposal with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) for support with the Allens’ collection.

Elizabeth Wilkinson
Processing and Public Services Archivist
Her work also entails making more people aware of Purdue Libraries’ unique collections and research opportunities that are available through LibGuides, instruction sessions and exhibits.
Information  HIGHWAY

Purdue Libraries e-Pubs is on the fast lane of the information highway for delivering our discoveries. Each year, more than 2,200 transportation professionals converge on the Purdue campus to mastermind ways to improve pavement, traffic flow and other topics key to the state’s transportation infrastructure. The Road School — 124 sessions hosted by the Joint Transportation Research Project (JTRP) — results in reams of valuable information that is relevant not only to Indiana but to global transportation.

With the mission of improving the planning, design, construction, operation, management and economic efficiency of Indiana’s transportation infrastructure, I believe the center has a core responsibility of sharing its discoveries with the world.

For years, proceedings from the Road School were stacked in boxes, moved by U-Haul to the library and scanned or distributed by email. In 2011, though, presenters were for the first time given the option of archiving their presentations in the Purdue e-Pubs, the Libraries’ Digital Repository. This was the result of an initiative begun in 2010 with Purdue Libraries to digitize the center’s documents and extend the reach of a vast body of publications that includes more than 1,500 technical reports a year. The Libraries’ Dave Scherer oversees systems management for us and Kelley Kimm works with authors to get content into the right form for digitizing.

We are also working closely with Purdue University Press to more widely distribute publications, such as a report containing information on traffic density on the state’s major roads that holds value not only for technical staff but a broader group of stakeholders. The effect of making documents available online has been noticeable. A 1972 report that may have sat in the stacks ignored for decades has been downloaded 463 times. Overall, we’ve seen a rise in downloads from 60,724 in 2010 to more than 100,000 in 2011.

JTRP’s work with Libraries is a national model of the way in which academic centers can and should catalog and archive proceedings, reports, papers and other publications. Research that sits on the shelf has no impact. If we don’t do a good job of communicating, then it’s discovery without delivery. Libraries has been helping us fulfill that key mission.

Darcy Bullock
Director of JTRP and Professor of Civil Engineering
JTRP is a collaborative effort between the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) and the state’s higher education institutions and industry.
PET PROJECT

In the ever-changing world of librarians embracing new roles, I have the exciting opportunity to be involved in a unique collaborative partnership to develop a new open access online resource to further the study of the human-animal bond.

Launched in spring 2012, HABRI Central (habricentral.org) is a joint effort between Purdue University Press and the School of Veterinary Medicine. The site builds on the innovative work of Alan Beck, director of the school’s Center for the Human-Animal Bond. Professor Beck (above right) and Charles Watkinson, director of Purdue University Press, oversee the project.

The Press received a $800,000 grant from the Human Animal Bond Research Initiative (HABRI) Foundation to support us for three years of site implementation and development. That’s where I come in. I am building the bibliography, a dynamic component of HABRI that, so far, has more than 12,000 citations. My Libraries’ colleagues Jane Yatcilla is developing the taxonomy, and Debbie Maron is working on the repository, which is expected to contain thousands of pages of full text — including more than 30 Purdue University Press books.

It is a joy to work with everybody on this project. It also demonstrates how Purdue Libraries is helping advance new modes of scholarly communication, collaboration and open access to information resources for users outside the University.

Gretchen Stephens
Veterinary Medical Librarian, Associate Professor of Library Science
GROWING  in her Field

Earlier in 2012, I became the first librarian to receive a Fellowship for Study in a Second Discipline. This program, sponsored by the Office of the Provost, offers faculty an opportunity to study in a different field for one or two semesters in order to extend their scholarship.

This fall, I began working with Neil Knobloch in the Department of Youth Development and Agricultural Education to gain an understanding of ag education teaching pedagogy to improve students’ higher- order thinking skills for working with information — a skill set critical in the information-abundant world in which our graduates work.

Thanks to this fellowship in a second discipline, my passion for undergraduate teaching is better directed and it is helping me become a better teacher in AGR 101 — a large class — and AGR 294, a smaller seminar class.

When I attended graduate school in library and information sciences nearly 15 years ago, I could not begin to imagine how my profession would evolve. In order to excel in our work, it is imperative that librarians and instructors seek opportunities to learn new ways to provide a broad and ever-growing range of information services to students, faculty and researchers.

Information literacy instruction has become the focus of librarian-student interactions, and through our efforts Purdue students will have an advantage in the job marketplace by being truly information literate.

Marianne Stowell Bracke
Ag. Sciences Information Specialist, Associate Professor of Library Science
She serves as the liaison librarian with nine of the 11 departments in the College of Agriculture and worked on the first data set on alfalfa placed in Purdue University Research Repository (PURR).
AFTERWORD

It has been my distinct honor to serve on the Purdue Libraries Dean’s Advisory Council (DAC) as a recent graduate. This edition of VOLUMe reinforces my pride and enthusiasm for Libraries and the important role it plays in student success and research at Purdue.

Under Dean Mullins’ visionary leadership, our libraries have become living laboratories encompassing all of the University’s learning, discovery and global engagement enterprises.

Libraries’ thought leaders are building interdisciplinary partnerships as experts in data and knowledge management, scholarly communication and information literacy. Some are pioneers in creating formal and informal environments employing new active learning principles and practices. These spaces allow for scheduled classes, media services, technological access, collaborative informal group work, quiet study spaces and even social functions.

As a student, I had the privilege to sit on the architectural committee for the Krannert Building’s second floor redesign and I also served as president of the School of Management Council. These roles allowed me to learn more about space utilization and, as a voice of the student body, I was able to integrate these new ideas into the phased redesign plan.

The wonderful Roland G. Parrish Library of Management and Economics emerged as the culmination of efforts from the Libraries organization in coordination with students, faculty and staff. Now, I marvel that it has evolved into a space prized by students as well as a venue for various campus events. It is a prototype for new and renovated facilities that blend functions and create greater efficiencies. Parrish Library will be used as a model to plan and design the exciting Active Learning Center, the combined classroom and science/engineering library facility.

I can attest that the Libraries’ spaces, tools, technology and people give students a head start in ways of learning and working that will greet them when they join the corporate and industry workforce.

I must admit, when Dean Mullins invited me to serve on the DAC, I didn’t fully appreciate how many ways Libraries underpin the mission-critical functions of Purdue as a top-tier learning and research institution. I do now.

This publication really does speak volumes about why I have a passion for Libraries. I can’t think of a more worthy investment and involvement for my alma mater, tomorrow’s graduates and Purdue’s stature.

Derek Mauk
Senior Financial Analyst, Procter & Gamble
James Mullins
Jeremy Garritano
Larry Nies
Tomalee Doan
Tao Zhang
Langston Bates
Michael Fosmire
D. Scott Brandt
Catherine Dossin
Stephanie Schmitz
Elizabeth Wilkinson
Darcy Bullock
Gretchen Stephens
Marianne Stowell Bracke
Derek Mauk
Foreword Learning Pillar Scholarly Communication Pillar Global Challenges Pillar Afterword