Author: Devin Soper

DH Currents: The Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection

Land Acknowledgement: Florida State University is located on land that is the ancestral and traditional territory of the Apalachee Nation, the Muscogee Creek Nation, the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. We pay respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to their descendants and to all Indigenous people. We recognize that this land remains scarred by the histories and ongoing legacies of colonial violence, dispossession, and removal. In spite of all of this and with tremendous resilience, these Indigenous nations have remained deeply connected to this territory, to their families, to their communities, and to their cultural ways of life. We recognize the ongoing relationships of care that these Indigenous Nations maintain with this land and we extend our gratitude as we live and work as respectful guests upon their territory. We encourage you to learn about and amplify the contemporary work of the Indigenous nations whose land you are on and to endeavor to support Indigenous sovereignty in all the ways that you can.

“DH Currents” is a blog series conceived in the summer of 2020 by the members of the Office of Digital Research and Scholarship at Florida State University Libraries. The goal of the series is to identify and highlight digital scholarship projects that take-up anti-racist and decolonial causes as part of their methodologies, content, and intentions. These initiatives foreground the principles of inclusion, truth telling, and dismantling the often oppressive practices of academic and cultural heritage preservation work. Each post will include a project description in addition to input gathered from its principal investigators, maintainers, and other participants. This series aspires to provide both a platform to share information about these scholars’ important contributions to the field of digital scholarship and to spark dialogue on topics related to ways academic libraries and other memory institutions can engage in this urgent, necessary labor. 

Continue reading DH Currents: The Black Women’s Suffrage Digital Collection

Open Access Week 2018

There is a systemic problem in scholarly publishing that disadvantages academic authors, their institutions, the global research community, and the general public. The problem stems from the subscription-based model of scholarly publishing, whereby publishers place academic journal articles behind paywalls so that anyone who can’t pay can’t read them.

Open Access (OA) is a movement based on the argument that this situation is fundamentally unethical, and that the fruits of academic endeavor should be freely available to everyone. OA archiving and publishing are the two main strategies for accomplishing this goal, and they promise to benefit both the global research community and individual authors, moving published research into the open and thereby broadening its readership and generating more citations. OA is also fast becoming a requirement for recipients of research funding, as many public and private funding agencies have enacted public access policies to make the results of funded research accessible to all.

Open Access Week, Oct. 22-28, is an opportunity for the global research community to learn more about this important movement and the many ongoing efforts to make it the new norm in research and scholarship. To celebrate the occasion, FSU Libraries is hosting two screenings of Paywall: The Business of Scholarship, a documentary film that focuses on the need for open access to research and questions the rationale behind the $25.2 billion annual revenues of for-profit academic publishers. We hope you’ll join us at one of the screenings to enjoy some free popcorn and learn more about OA and how it can benefit you as a student, teacher, or researcher:

  • 12:00-1:30 PM, Scholars Commons Instruction Room, Strozier Library
  • 4:00-5:30 PM, Dirac Conference Room, Dirac Library

In addition, we’d also like to take this opportunity to highlight some important ways that the Libraries support the FSU community in taking action to advance openness in research and education:

So, what can you do to advance the cause of OA through your own research and teaching?

For more information, see our research guides on Open Access Publishing and the Open Textbook Movement , or contact Devin Soper, Scholarly Communications Librarian at FSU Libraries’ Office of Digital Research & Scholarship. And don’t forget to follow the conversation on Twitter! #OAweekFSU

FSU Libraries Announces 2018-19 Alternative Textbook Grant Recipients

FSU Libraries is proud to announce the winners of our second round of Alternative Textbook Grants. The grant program, launched by the Libraries in November 2016, awards successful applicants with $1,000 to support the adoption or creation of open or library-licensed course materials that are available at no cost to students. These high-quality materials are written by experts and peer-reviewed, ensuring a level of intellectual and instructional rigor on par with expensive commercial equivalents.

Applications were evaluated based on criteria balancing the estimated savings to students, the openness of the proposed materials, and the likelihood of the materials being adopted by other courses at FSU.

Based on projected enrollment figures for the courses in question, the instructors participating in the second round of this program are expected to save FSU students up to $213,580 by Summer 2019, and the total projected savings across all grant recipients since the program’s inception are expected to exceed $270,000.

Congratulations to this year’s winners! For more information about the open education movement and related initiatives at FSU, see our research guide on OER, or contact Devin Soper, Scholarly Communications Librarian at FSU Libraries’ Office of Digital Research & Scholarship.

2018-2019 Grant Recipients:

Filiberto Asare-Akuffo is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography. His research interests include transportation, healthcare accessibility, GIS, and spatial modeling and analysis. Asare-Akuffo regularly teaches GIS 3015 “Map Analysis”. He plans on adopting content from three open textbooks in his Fall 2018 “Map Analysis” course.

Gregory Burris is a US Army veteran and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography. He has two Master’s degrees from Florida State in Geographic Information Science and History. He has presented papers at the Southern British Historical Association, the Northern Great Plains conference, Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers meeting, and the annual AAG Conference. His research interests include biogeography, bioclimatology, and historical geography. Burris will use open textbooks and online videos in GEO2200 “Physical Geography” in the upcoming school year.

John T. Bandzuh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography. His research interests include health geography, political ecology, and vector-borne diseases. Bandzuh will incorporate journal articles in place of textbooks in his Fall 2018 GEO4930 “Geography of Wine” course.

Ella-Mae Daniel is Teaching Faculty in the School of Teacher Education within the College of Education. She teaches elementary education methods courses and supervises teaching assistants in the College of Education. Daniel will use journal articles to supplement regular course materials in a new IFS course entitled  “Reimagining Intercultural Conflicts and Diversity,” expected to be offered for the first time in Spring 2019.

Vanessa Dennen is a Professor of Instructional Systems & Learning Technologies in the Department of Educational Psychology & Learning Systems. Her research investigates the cognitive, motivational, and social elements of computer-mediated communication. She teaches courses on learning theory and instructional design and research methods for new and emerging technologies. Dr. Dennen is developing her own multimedia resource with graduate students for EME2040 “Teaching and Learning with Technology”.

Arash Fahim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics. His research interests include Applied Probability and Financial Mathematics. Dr. Fahim will convert his extensive lecture notes into an alternative textbook for use in MAP5601 “Introduction to Financial Mathematics”.

Giray Okten is Associate Chair for Graduate Studies and a Professor in the Department of Mathematics. His research interests include Computational Finance and Monte Carlo and quasi-Monte Carlo methods. He will use lecture notes in lieu of textbooks in his MAD3703 “Numerical Analysis” course in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019.

Paromita Sanyal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. Her research focuses on understanding development and anti-poverty & women’s empowerment interventions from a sociological perspective. Paromita received her doctorate from Harvard University and regularly teaches undergraduate and graduate Sociology courses. She plans to adopt journal articles and an open-access textbook in her 2018-2019 offerings of SYG1000 “Introductory Sociology”.

Koji Ueno is a Professor in the Department of Sociology. He received his doctorate from Vanderbilt University, and his research interests include sexuality, mental health, and social networks. Dr. Ueno will incorporate an open textbook, journal articles, and online videos in SYG2010 “Social Problems”.

Willie Wright is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography. His research interests include Black geographies, urban geography, and cultural geography. He received his doctorate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In lieu of textbooks, Dr. Wright will use online documentaries and videos in his Fall 2018 offering of GEA1000 “World Regional Geography”.

International Programs Grant Recipients:

Edward James Hansen is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Psychology. He earned his Ph.D. at Northern Illinois University with an emphasis in Social/Industrial-Organizational Psychology, and he also holds a master’s degree in Sports Psychology. Dr. Hansen has taught “Child Psychology”, “Psychology of Personality”, “Research Methods”, and a Special Topics course focusing on Industrial-Organizational Psychology. Dr. Hansen will use online book chapters and journal articles in Summer 2018 in PSY4930 “Cross-Cultural Comparisons of Applied Social Psychology” at the London Study Center.

Tracie Mahaffey is Associate Teaching Faculty and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Philosophy. She received her doctorate from Florida State University. Her research interests include philosophy of action, feminist theory, and ethics. Dr. Mahaffey will adopt the open textbook Reading for Philosophical Inquiry: A Brief Introduction to Philosophical Thinking in PHI2010 “Introduction to Philosophy” in Summer 2018 and 2019 at the London Study Center.

Patrick Merle is an Assistant Professor in the College of Communication and Information. He studies media effect with an emphasis on political and international perspectives. His teaching areas include Public Relations, Political Communication, and International Communication. He will in utilize alternative textbooks in COM3930 in Summer 2018 at the Florence Study Center.  

Lisa Munson is Teaching Faculty in the Department of Sociology. She studies social inequality and social justice, particularly public sociology – applying sociological knowledge to promote social justice in the community. She will use journal articles and open textbook material in SYG1000 “Introductory Sociology” and SYG2010 “Social Problems” in Summer 2018 at the Florence Study Center.

Open Access Week 2017

There is a serious, systemic problem in scholarly publishing that disadvantages academic authors, their institutions, the global research community, and the general public. The problem stems from the subscription-based model of scholarly publishing, whereby publishers place academic journal articles behind paywalls so that anyone who can’t pay can’t read them.

Open Access (OA) is a movement based on the principle that this situation is fundamentally unethical, and that the fruits of academic endeavor should be freely available to everyone. OA archiving and publishing are the two main strategies for accomplishing this goal, and they promise to benefit both the global research community and individual authors, moving published research into the open and thereby broadening its readership and generating more citations. OA is also fast becoming a requirement for recipients of research funding, as many public and private funding agencies have enacted public access policies to make the results of funded research accessible to all.

Open Access Week, Oct. 23-29, is an opportunity for the global research community to learn more about this important movement and the many ongoing efforts to make it the new norm in research and scholarship. To celebrate the occasion, FSU Libraries is hosting a number of workshops related to openness in research and education, and we hope you’ll join us to learn more about OA and how it can benefit you as a student, teacher, or researcher:

Open Educational Resources (OER) are free to access, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. This workshop will cover the benefits of using OER, resources for finding and evaluating OER, and considerations for sharing OER-based courseware and assignments with the world. This workshop will also provide a brief introduction to Creative Commons (CC) licenses and their role in the creation of Open Educational Resources (OER).

Interested in Open Access (OA) publishing, but concerned about the growing problem of “predatory” publishers? What are the benefits of OA publishing, and what tools and strategies can you use to evaluate the quality of OA journals? What about options for funding (or obtaining waivers) to cover OA article processing charges? This workshop will provide answers to these questions and more.

Wondering how to find the best conferences and publication venues in your discipline? What about building your scholarly profile and communicating the impact of your research in ways that will resonate with a broader audience? And, once you’ve got your work out there, what can you do to assess and quantify the impact of your research? This workshop will cover a range of tools and strategies that early-career researchers can use to accomplish these objectives and more.

In addition, we’d also like to take this opportunity to highlight some important ways that the Libraries support the FSU community in taking action to advance openness in research and education:

So, what can you do to advance the cause of OA through your own research and teaching?

For more information, see our research guides on Open Access Publishing and the Open Textbook Movement , or contact Devin Soper, Scholarly Communications Librarian at FSU Libraries’ Office of Digital Research & Scholarship. And don’t forget to follow the conversation on Twitter! #OAweekFSU

#Textbookbroke FSU

To celebrate Open Education Week (March 27-31), a team from University Libraries partnered with the Student Government Association to bring the #textbookbroke campaign to FSU. #Textbookbroke is a national campaign aimed at informing students about Open Textbooks, Open Educational Resources, and alternatives to traditional textbooks. It is also aimed at empowering students to provide feedback on their course materials and encourage their instructors to explore more affordable alternatives.

To that end, we organized two well-attended tabling events at Strozier and Dirac, with the goal of engaging with as many students as possible over the course of each event. We created an engagement display board where students could share the most they have spent on textbooks in a single semester, and we also encouraged students to complete a short survey on how the textbook affordability problem has affected them.


Over the course of the events, we spoke with hundreds of students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and at different stages of their educational careers. 316 students contributed to the engagement board, and 350 submitted responses to the student survey. Overall, the data from the engagement board suggests that $407.32 is the average maximum amount spent by students on textbooks in a single term across all disciplines. Some of the more striking findings from the survey include the following:

  • 93% of students would use an online textbook if it was free
  • 97% of students feel that a $30 print textbook would reduce financial strain
  • 72% of students have decided not to purchase a required textbook due to high cost
  • 11% of students have decided not to take a course due to the cost of the textbook

These findings not only underline the impact of the textbook affordability problem on FSU students, but also suggest that the vast majority of our students would support broader adoption of OERs and Open Textbooks at FSU. We believe that students can play a key role in promoting such broader adoption by becoming advocates for OER on campus, and we hope that our many conversations with students during #textbookbrokeFSU will inspire them to take action to that end. At the same time, FSU Libraries is doing its part to support FSU instructors in adopting more open, affordable course materials through an Alternative Textbook Grants program that launched in late 2016.

This is an exciting time for open education at FSU, and our team is looking forward to continuing to advocate for change in this space, providing both students and instructors with the information and resources they need to make a difference! For more information about the open education movement and related initiatives at FSU, see our research guide on OER, or contact Devin Soper, Scholarly Communications Librarian at FSU Libraries’ Office of Digital Research & Scholarship.

 

 

Open Education Week 2017

Open Education Week, March 27-31, is an opportunity to celebrate and raise awareness about the abundance of free and open educational resources (OER) available to teachers and learners around the world. OER are written by experts and often peer-reviewed, just like their commercial equivalents, but they are published under open copyright licenses so that they can be downloaded, distributed, and adapted for free. Many excellent examples of OER are available through online portals such as OpenStax College, the Open Textbook Library, OER Commons, BCcampus, and MERLOT.

To celebrate the growth of OER and the exciting opportunities they present, educational institutions from all over the world are coming together during Open Education Week to showcase what they are doing to make education more open, free, and available to everyone.

To mark the occasion at FSU, University Libraries and the Student Government Association are partnering to bring the #textbookbroke campaign to FSU. #Textbookbroke is a national campaign aimed at informing students about open textbooks, OER, and other low-cost alternatives to traditional textbooks. It is also aimed at empowering students to provide feedback on their course materials and encourage their instructors to explore more affordable alternatives. Stop by our event tables at Strozier Library on March 28th and Dirac Library on March 29th to share how much you spent on textbooks this term and learn about textbook affordability initiatives at FSU!

In addition, FSU Libraries will also announce the successful applicants for its Alternative Textbook Grants program, which was launched in late 2016 to support FSU instructors who are interested in adopting or remixing open textbooks and educational resources to replace commercial course materials. Based on the applications we have received thus far, participating instructors could save FSU students up to $100,000 by the spring of 2018!

For more information about the open education movement and related initiatives at FSU, see our research guide on OER, or contact Devin Soper, Scholarly Communications Librarian at FSU Libraries’ Office of Digital Research & Scholarship. And don’t forget to follow the conversation on Twitter! #textbookbrokeFSU

Open Access Week 2016

There is a serious, systemic problem in scholarly publishing that disadvantages academic authors, their institutions, the global research community, and the general public. The problem stems from the subscription-based model of scholarly publishing, whereby publishers place academic journal articles behind paywalls so that anyone can’t pay can’t read them.

Content by Jill Cirasella and Graphic Design by Les LaRue, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

Open Access (OA) is a movement based on the principle that this situation is fundamentally unjust, and that the fruits of academic endeavor should be freely available to everyone. OA archiving and publishing are the two main strategies for accomplishing this goal, and they promise to benefit both the global research community and individual authors, moving published research into the open and thereby broadening its readership and generating more citations. OA is also fast becoming a requirement for recipients of research funding, as many public and private funding agencies are enacting public access policies to make the results of funded research accessible to all.

Open Access Week, Oct. 24-30, is an opportunity for the global research community to learn more about this important movement and the many ongoing efforts to make it the new norm in research and scholarship. To celebrate the occasion, FSU Libraries is hosting a number of workshops related to OA publishing, and we hope you’ll join us to learn more about OA and how it can benefit you as a student, teacher, or researcher. In addition, we’d also like to take this opportunity to highlight some important milestones in efforts to advance OA at FSU over the past year:

So, what can you do to advance the cause of OA and start taking advantages of the benefits it can bring to you as a scholar?

For more information, see our research guide on Open Access, or contact Devin Soper, Scholarly Communications Librarian at FSU Libraries’ Office of Digital Research & Scholarship. And don’t forget to follow the conversation on Twitter! #OAweekFSU

How does Open Access relate to subscription journal pricing?

FSU Libraries have been forced to cancel a ‘big deal’ journal package with Springer. The available budget for library collections at FSU has remained flat for the past five years, while the cost of library resources has risen by 4-6% annually, and by as much as 9% for journal subscriptions in STEM-related fields. This situation is inherently unsustainable, and it is the product of the subscription-based model of scholarly publishing. Under this model, the cost of journal subscriptions has increased at 300% the rate of inflation since 1986, resulting in tremendous financial burden on academic libraries and their parent universities. The subscription model also restricts the dissemination of faculty research, placing it behind paywalls so that anyone who can’t pay can’t read it, and thereby limiting its impact on other researchers and the general public.

Open Access (OA) is a movement based on the principle that this situation is fundamentally unjust, and that the fruits of academic endeavor should be freely available to everyone. OA archiving and publishing are the two main strategies for accomplishing this goal, and they promise to benefit both the global research community and individual authors, moving published research into the open and thereby broadening its readership and generating more citations. OA is also fast becoming a requirement for recipients of research funding, as many public and private funding agencies are enacting public access policies to make the results of funded research accessible to all.

But how is OA relevant to FSU Libraries’ current budget crisis? Does OA provide viable alternatives to the subscription-based model of scholarly publishing? How does OA propose to counteract the predatory pricing practices of commercial academic publishers, and how successful has it been in that effort thus far? Do current developments suggest that OA will provide a long-term solution in future? To explore these questions, let’s take a closer look at the main forms of OA and how they compare to the traditional model.

Continue reading How does Open Access relate to subscription journal pricing?

Open Access Week 2015

Did you know that the e-journals you access through FSU Libraries are unavailable to most students and researchers in the developing world? What about people here in the US? Did you know that most members of the general public also don’t have access? The internet has revolutionized the way that we share and access information, yet most scholarly e-books and journal articles remain locked behind paywalls for the average reader.

Open Access is a movement based on the principle that this situation is fundamentally unjust, and that the fruits of academic endeavor should be freely available to the public. Open Access is also increasingly becoming a requirement for recipients of research funding, with governments and funding agencies increasingly adopting public-access policies to make the results of funded research accessible to all.

Making your work publicly available can also benefit you as an author, increasing the reach and impact of your work by making it more discoverable and potentially generating more downloads and citations than you would if your work remained locked behind paywalls.  

So, what can you do to start taking advantage of these benefits? And how can you get involved in the OA movement, more generally? Continue reading Open Access Week 2015