Library Staff-Presentations & Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11274/10186

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 46

Lending Longterm Technology: An Unexpected Journey
(2023) Garza, Ginger; Shapiro, Adrian; Spear, Sean
In the fall of 2020, the TWU Libraries were awarded a Texas State Libraries and Archives Commission (TSLAC) and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant to purchase laptops and hotspots for students in need of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students are now able to check these devices out for an entire semester.
Suffrage in Texas expanded: A history uncovered project
(Texas Library Association, 2022) Popp, Veronica; Whitmer, Susan; Zerangue, Amanda
Suffrage in Texas Expanded (SITE) is a digital humanities project that was initiated by members of the Digital Scholarship Work Group at Texas Woman’s University. Inspired by the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, Women’s Right to Vote, the group researched an alternative history of Suffrage in Texas, a history that includes traditionally marginalized peoples. This article will discuss details of the SITE beginning, the grant process, the research process, and the research products shedding light on unheard voices within Texas history and forecasting opportunities for future research by students, faculty, and community members.
Desk Stretches with Digital Strategies
(2022-09-16) Whitmer, Susan
The 2022-2023 TWU Libraries book-in-common is Dr. Zoe Shaw's A Year of Self-Care: Daily Practices and Inspiration for Caring for Yourself. Librarian and chair yoga teacher, Susan Whitmer, is inspired by the book and offers a short stretch routine called Three Movements of the Spine.
Hitchhiker's Guide to Digital Preservation
(2022) Clark, Kristin; Shapiro, Adrian
Digital preservation is important, but how to get started? This poster will provide a roadmap for how the Texas Woman’s University Libraries built, and continues to build, a cross-departmental digital preservation program with the help of the Texas Digital Library's Digital Preservation Service. The poster provides tips and resources for beginners looking to begin a digital preservation program at their institution.
Review of On Trans-humanism
(Science Open, 2022) Evans, Woody
A review of Sorgner's "On Trans-humanism." What to do with transhumanism? And – before we figure out how to categorize it, think about it and make actionable policy decisions with it – how should we define transhumanism? Stefan Lorenz Sorgner asks these questions in "On Trans-humanism" when he examines the idea’s provenance and the pedigree of related ideas. This approach turns out to be, on balance, a productive and useful way into a field that does not yet examine its own roots and relationships often enough. I go on to critique some aspects of his approach, pointing out his lack of attention to posthuman and ecosystemic sensibilities, etc. [This line at the bottom of page 272 was misprinted: "Imagine, instead, that we designate the after-transhuman posthuman as something like ‘post-transhuman’ or ‘posthuman’." It should read: "...as something like ‘post-transhuman’ or ‘posthuman-T’" with a superscript "T" after the second posthuman.]
Foundations of Effective Digital Collaboration Skills
(2022-07-28) DeForest, Lea
Collaborating with colleagues online can be just as easy, fun, and productive as in-person, and you can learn to improve your digital collaboration skills through this hands-on virtual workshop. Together, we will shore up the foundations of our digital collaboration skills such as practicing using cloud-based file-sharing systems (like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Suite); take a leap into collaborative spaces like JamBoard and Google Docs and Sheets, and up your Zoom game with hands-on guides for smooth meetings and other web-based events.
Data 101
(2022) Ossom-Williamson, Peace
Data can be found everywhere and in everything! In this workshop, learn about the role of data and how to make use of it. Our presenter will teach basic steps for getting started and ways of being accurate and inclusive in the use of data.
Storytelling with Data: A Hands-on Workshop for Beginners
(2022-04-12) Mirza, Rafia
Your research data tells a story! Interactive data visualization is about communicating your insights and research effectively, giving your data a voice. Please join the TWU Libraries and Rafia Mirza, MSI (Southern Methodist University), for a virtual hands-on workshop about data visualization using no-cost Tableau software.
Get the GISt: GIS Basics for Academic Researchers
(2022-03-08) Dede-Bamfo, Nathaniel
Want to boost your research and take it to the next level? Join the TWU Libraries and Dr. Nathaniel Dede-Bamfo of Texas State University for a virtual hands-on workshop on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) fundamentals.
Google Books: Shamed by snobs, a resource for the rest of us
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2015) Whitmer, Susan
On my first day at the university library reference desk, four students requested The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities by Lawrence C. Ross Jr. The Divine Nine is suggested reading for pledges to African American fraternities and sororities at the University of North Texas (UNT). The UNT Libraries’ three copies were checked out and each copy had holds on their catalog records. During my first week at the reference desk, requests for The Divine Nine were at the top of the frequently asked questions list. This book chapter describes my experience helping students locate the title using Google Books.
An Interview with Slaven Zivkovic on the 10th Anniversary of LibGuides
(Taylor & Francis, 2017-10) Whitmer, Susan
Slaven Zivkovic, an entrepreneur with a history of library innovations, headed the team that created LibGuides in 2007. LibGuides are websites that librarians and library staff design to help library users locate sources of information for a subject or a class. Zivkovic was a library assistant during his undergraduate years at Santa Clara University, the Jesuit University in Silicon Valley (Springshare, 2017). Zivkovic is also a co-founder of Docutek Information Systems, which created the industry's first electronic reserve system, ERes. He also led the development of one of the first virtual reference systems, VRLplus ("New & noteworthy” 2007).
Five years of first years: Success, challenges, and some solutions for teaching information literacy
(Texas Library Association, 2020) Whitmer, Susan
This article is based on five years of data collected from information literacy sessions given to English 1023 Composition II classes. The one-hour information literacy sessions were taught by the author, Susan Whitmer. Each session included information on how to use the TWU Libraries catalog and databases, how to evaluate information, how to ethically use information to avoid plagiarism, and citation theory.
Action items for new librarians
(Texas Library Association, 2015) Whitmer, Susan; Cool, Christina; Mims, Amanda; Townsdin, Suzanne
A librarian’s first year of professional work is full of expectations – both from the new librarian and the employer. Job responsibilities can range from serving as the LibGuides administrator to library instructor for first-year English composition classes. Library and information science schools prepare new librarians with theory. However, it is on-the-job training and the ability to adapt to an institution’s culture that determines success
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) Open Education Resource (OER) Development and Implementation Grants
(2020) TWU Office of Research & Sponsored Programs; TWU Teaching & Learning with Technology; TWU Center for Faculty Excellence; TWU Libraries
Interested in applying for a grant to offer no-cost textbook options in your classroom or department but not sure where to begin?
Transhumanism (dot) mil: A bibliometric analysis of technoprogressive terms in military publications
(University Libraries of the University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 2019-09) Evans, Woody
Has transhumanism influenced military thinking? Previous work found that transhumanist terms did not appear widely in military publications. The present work analyzes and improves on previous content analysis of transhumanist terms in military literature using the tools of library and information studies.
Developing and implementing a departmental award for textbook savings at Texas Woman’s University
(SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), 2019-05-13) Zerangue, Amanda
As a smaller, public, higher education institution with extremely limited resources, the drivers for OER adoption on the TWU campus are threefold-- grass-root initiatives, strategic campus partnerships, and a large helping of librarian tenacity. Named the H.E.A.R.T. Initiative (Helping Education with Alternate Resources and Textbooks) in a nod towards the TWU motto as a “campus with a heart,” this project began with the goals of developing a departmental award for textbook savings in order to improve awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER), forming a collaboration with campus partners to develop programming and communicate with appropriate campus leaders regarding the award, and developing a marketing campaign in order to spread awareness of the award. In the span of one year, what began as an exploratory conversation transformed into a model recognized and supported at the highest level of campus administration.
Breaking free of curricular confines: Seeking new opportunities to teach critical media literacy in the era of “fake news”
(2018) Morris, Abigail
The recent rise in “fake news” has brought renewed attention to developing students’ critical thinking and media literacy skills. Librarians, as both experts in the pedagogy of information literacy and as curricular outsiders have an opportunity to develop creative programming that addresses these skills, and find spaces where autonomous teaching practices that produce life-long learners and informed citizens can be cultivated. Ideas on how to apply the Framework to media literacy education, create programming to extend instruction and outreach efforts across campus communities, and emerge as campus leaders in information/media literacy and critical thinking pedagogy will be discussed.
The path to government funding
(Information Today, 2015-07) Evans, Woody
The U.S. Department of Education and IES (Institute of Education Sciences) awarded their 2015 Small Business Innovation Research grants to 21 educational startups this spring (ies.ed.gov/ sbir/2015awards.asp). FedScoop reported that this year’s grants will total more than $9 million and cover initiatives in two phases. Phase I grants run for some 6 months and help startups develop prototypes for educational products; Phase II helps them move on to “fully scale their products over two years to be used in classrooms.” Nearly one-fourth of the grantees’ products focus on environment simulations through augmented and virtual realities.
The Islamic State group attempts to survive in the information age
(Information Today, 2016-02) Evans, Woody
Leaked documents showing the Islamic State group’s (aka ISIL) plan for building a nation were recently published in The Guardian. Examples of the brutal enforcement of its own interpretation of Sharia law are all too familiar— burning a downed Jordanian pilot alive in a steel cage, systematic rape, and beheadings and mass murder of religious minorities—but these documents reveal another side of the Islamic State group. As The Guardian’s Shiv Malik tells it, the released documents present “a picture of a group that, although sworn to a founding principle of brutal violence, is equally set on more mundane matters such as health, education, commerce, communications and jobs. In short, it is building a state.” The Challenges of Building a Legitimate State In order to build and maintain a state, it is necessary to wrestle with data—i.e., generate, record, manage, access, and share information about infrastructure, economy and trade, military actions, internal policing, diplomacy, and social welfare, among other aspects of statehood. Decisions must be made about who gets access to what information, and how those controls will be designed, built, and enforced. States run on information, and if the Islamic State group intends to become one itself, then it too will have to get its philosophy on information straightened out. But there are barriers to its ability to do so that will prove insurmountable.
Workaday democracy
(Information Today, 2018-06) Evans, Woody
Do you live in a democracy? Do you work in a democracy? These are not rhetorical questions, but serious ones that we should all take some time to think through. As information professionals, our commitment to the free flow of information, to the critical evaluation of information, and to the ethical use of information in our service to others greatly impacts issues around what we might think of as everyday democracy.

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