Category: Life in the Libraries

2018 FSU Great Give

1.pngFSU’s Great Give is a 36-hour online giving campaign in support of academic programs, scholarships and student activities at Florida State University. Florida State supporters can make gifts from 9 a.m. on Thursday, March 22 until the campaign ends at 9 p.m. on Friday, March 23.

This year the FSU Libraries will be focused on two very important funds.

1.  Support the Heritage Fund: Your gift to the Heritage Museum will be used to take care of the Museum, open it more often with longer hours, enhance and update its exhibits, upgrade the space including improving lighting, and creating ways to safely display valuable objects. Learn More: http://fla.st/2prGvTS

2.  Textbooks for C.A.R.E. Students: The Text Book Fund will purchase text books to be borrowed by students throughout the semester at no cost to them.  Students who are already receiving financial aid or are on scholarship may still be eligible for this fund. Learn More: http://fla.st/2FNXrPf

To learn more about our funds and how you can help, please visit the links above. Remember, giving starts at 9 a.m. on Thursday, March 22!

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

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

What’s Next: Tutorials and Connected Learning

(Photo Courtesy of San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives)

Here in the Distance Services Unit of Florida State University Libraries, we scan the environment for current trends in academic libraries and digital scholarship in order to develop pilot programs and services for the future of the library. In other words, we are always asking, “What’s Next?”. This will be an ongoing series that examines topics related to emerging trends and technologies in libraries. This week we will be discussing the idea of connected learning and how that applies to the future of academic libraries.

Connected Learning is a learning model developed by the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative which connects learners to peers all around the world through social networks, is interest-driven according to the learner’s need. Connected Learning is interactive, and the potential has been realized through the advent of interactive technologies, from cloud computing to mobile devices, to the internet of things, to digital assistantship. It is modular by nature, so it can be appropriated for a variety of users and interests. It states that learning is most effective when it engages the information-seeker with information that is relevant to their interests.

Continue reading What’s Next: Tutorials and Connected Learning

Introducing our Newest Librarians…

FSU Libraries is proud to be growing our team, especially into new positions and service areas. Look for more posts in the future introducing more folks, as we have quite a few! 

Learning Commons is our front-line librarians and staff, and is located on the first floor of Strozier Library. Serving primarily undergraduate students, Learning Commons is where you can check out a laptop, read the New York Times, meet a tutor, participate in a marathon reading of great and influential literature, or just grab a [Starbucks!] latte and hang out in the air conditioning! Emily Mann and Lindsey Wharton are both new librarians in the Learning Commons department, and introduce themselves and their roles below. Continue reading Introducing our Newest Librarians…