Collins Unbound

Celebrating Libraries and Librarians

This week marks National Library Week and there are a number of ways you can show support not only for Collins Library and its staff, but also on a national level.

1.  I invite you to read my Letter to the Editor which appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education in response to an article titled:  The Librarians are not OK.  In the letter I urge faculty and administrators to value the contributions of academic librarians and to be sure to include them “at the table” when making critical decisions concerning student success.

2.  Visit this link to read a wonderful poem written by retired Professor Hans Ostrom.  The poem was shared with the American Library Association and is a moving tribute to the profession. 

Thank you Hans!

An excerpt:

Librarians know where wisdom’s stored.
They catalogue the countless forms
Of silence and tell people what they
Didn’t know they wanted to know.
They treat the mentally fractured
As if they’re whole, the dull as if they’re
Sharp, Winter as if it’s Summer.

3.  Stand up for librarians, libraries and the freedom to read.  The past few years have seen an unprecedented number of book challenges as well as threats to library staff who stand up for the freedom to read. Some public and school librarians have actually lost their jobs for refusing to remove books from their collections.  Write your member of Congress to let them know you support libraries.

4.  Finally, if you have benefited from a rush order of a book you had to have for class, have received a link to a streaming media program, have received an interlibrary loan in rush time, or engaged with a librarian in the classroom, the A&SC or the Makerspace, then share your appreciation.   A thank you goes a long way!

Jane Carlin / Library Director
University of Puget Sound, Collins Memorial Library
1500 N. Warner St. CMB 1021
Tacoma, WA 98416
phone: (253) 879-3118
Pronouns: she/hers/her
http://pugetsound.edu/library 

University of Puget Sound is on the traditional homelands of the Puyallup Tribe. The Puyallup people have lived on and stewarded these lands since the beginning of time, and continue to do so today.

Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library – Library Guides
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, library director
Remember – Your best search engine is a librarian!

Connect with us!

Celebration of Creative Inquiry!

Thanks to Peggy Burge for her meticulous work on this year’s bibliography. Browse
this list of impressive publications and congratulations to faculty and staff scholars:
https://library.pugetsound.edu/Faculty_Services

Open Educational Resources 

Last year the Library coordinated Puget Sound’s participation in a year-long Institute sponsored by the Association of Colleges and Universities that focused on raising awareness about Open Educational Resources. The LMIS Committee has had a chance to learn about the work of the OER Team comprised of Ben Tucker (Library – Team Leader), Jane Carlin (Library), Margot Casson (Educational Technology), Kevin Kirner (Educational Technology), Melvin Rouse (Psychology), and Heidi Morton (Education). This email offers a short review of many of the key points of that work.

As the curriculum evolves and new courses are developed, we would like to encourage you to consider incorporating OER content in ways that may enhance the student experience. Library staff would be glad to assist you with information about how that might be done. The Library maintains a guide to OER which provides a number of sources to open textbooks at the following link: https://library.pugetsound.edu/oer/findingoer

A few of those sources are listed below:

• OER Commons: This site is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum. OER Commons was developed to serve educators in discovering, creating, and collaborating around the use, evaluation, and improvement of open educational resources. Not only can OER Commons help during the hunt for OERs, but it can also serve as a place to create resources. The OER Commons open author tool allows users to combine text, images, audio, and video files into their own customized resource as well as create brand new resources from scratch.
• Open Textbook Library: The Open Textbook Library provides a growing catalog of free, peer-reviewed, and openly-licensed textbooks.
• Open Case Studies at UBC: These open case studies were created by faculty and students at the University of British Columbia. While many of these case studies focus on sustainability, they feature a broad range of topics across disciplines.
• Merlot: A web-based repository of educational material that is free, open, and peer reviewed.
• If you are interested in learning more about OER efforts, the OER final report goes into greater detail.
• Curious about open pedagogy, please see last year’s presentation by Robin DeRosa titled Pedagogy and the Purpose of Open.
• To find out more on how OER can support equitable student success see Lisa Young’s workshop Supporting an Institutional OER Strategy. 

For further information contact Library Director, Jane Carlin or Librarian Ben Tucker.

Thank you,
Jane Carlin, Library Director

Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library – Library Guides
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, library director
Remember – Your best search engine is a librarian!

Connect with us!

Love Data Week (yes, it’s a real thing!) 

• Curious about the crime rate in the United States?
• Want to access census data?
• Curious about data related to Puget Sound students, faculty and staff?
• Need help with managing your own data?

Look no further! 

International Love Data Week is observed around Valentine’s Day each year celebrating data, and raising awareness about the importance of data science and management.  Love Data Week provides us with an opportunity to share some important data resources available to the Puget Sound community. 

Institutional Research: 
Sound Reports, which provide access to commonly requested information about Puget Sound, is available via the Institutional Research webpage.  The webpage provides a direct link to a Google folder where the information is housed, and also lists the reports by overall topic; it is available here.  If you prefer to go directly to the Google folder, which lists all of the reports individually, it is available here.  If you encounter difficulty accessing the reports, please contact us at IR_Staff@pugetsound.edu.

The Sound Reports also include the most recent Common Data Set, which is the foundation for data that is submitted to most of the college guidebooks, and copies of The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Reports.  IPEDS are federally mandated and submitted to the National Center for Education Statistics annually.  They generally reflect official data reported for the institution on topics such as Finance, Human Resources, Admission, Enrollment, Graduation Rates, Library, and Student Financial Aid.  Comparable IPEDS data for other colleges is available from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Helpful links: 

• Webpage link: https://www.pugetsound.edu/institutional-research/sound-reports
• Google Folder link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yky1wHGD0LnQlzn8mBNqa6l_jtp_Nnms
• Contact IR Staff link: IR_Staff@pugetsound.edu 
• National Center for Education Statistics link: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

Data Management Plans:

Librarian Eli Gandour-Rood can offer workshops and consultation associated with developing a data management plan.  Many funding agencies now require data management plans and as our students become more engaged with research projects that require data collection it is important to manage data effectively.  Data Management Plans outline how researchers will store and document their data, and make them available for review and/or reuse.  Researchers are asked to provide information about tools and instruments that generate or capture data, file types, file sizes, description, storage, backup and access plans and policies.
Check out Eli’s useful guide: https://library.pugetsound.edu/dmp 

Statistics and Data Sources:

Need data?  A good starting place is Andrea Klyn’s guide: https://library.pugetsound.edu/findstats. 
Compiled in one easy to use location you will find links to domestic, international, state and local sources, as well as links to data repositories and archives.  

Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library – Library Guides
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, library director
Remember – Your best search engine is a librarian!

Connect with us!